Anyone have good techniques for saving money? Like do you have so much of your paycheck deposited into a savings account or something like that, looking for ideas on how to save up some money
Lower your expenses and recreation. Just to have more money sitting in the bank. Yep sounds like a great trade off.
Start paying attention to what you spend your money on. Every time you spend money, right it down. Put what you bought, where and how much. After a week, take a look at it. I bet there's a lot of money in there that you don't remember spending, things that are now not as important as they were that day that you bought them, and a few other things will pop up that show you how poorly you are spending money. From there you can start spending wisely, stop impulse buying, and spending more time comparison shopping. Start breaking entertainment down into minutes per dollar. This is a big one with people once they take an honest look at it. For instance, $60 for a new video game seems like a lot. $20 for the movies (movie, popcorn, soda) doesn't seem all that bad. But the movie is going to provide 90-120 minutes of entertainment for $20. A video game is going to supply 40-60+ hours of entertainment for $60. So, for $60 you can be entertained for 4-6 hours (3 movies) or 10x that with a video game. Just an example, but you can do that with whatever you spend your money on.
You could smoke bowls instead of a sweet I been going though a half oz a week, so I did this last week and went though a 1/4 in ten days.
I've been a saver since i was a wee boy. Its prolly turned into a bit of an obsession if im trully honest. The thought of having no money is horrifying to me. I do waste money aswell, but my nest egg must never drop below a fixed amount. (Known only to me).
Put it in the stock market. You'll still have the money but can't spend it Don't forget to diversify your portfolio
IRA's and 401 K's help. I'm always saving for retirement, and if I wasn't putting money away, it would probably freak me out. Other than that, it's pretty simple. Expenses need to be lower than what you take it. Keep track of your expenses. Eliminate bad values and find cheap/free recreational activities to participate in. Learn to save for things instead of having to have them now. Come to terms with the fact that you might want something but that doesn't mean that you have to have it. I love saving money. If you practice it, you will become that way. It will be fun to save money even when you could spend it.
Have money automatically transferred monthly from your checking account to any of the large discount brokers (I like and use Schwab) and buy shares of a good no-load balanced fund WITHIN AN IRA. IRAs are very simple to set up, the broker will do it for you. Increase your contribution as your income increases as you age. There will be no taxes taken out until you start withdrawing. Do this for 30 years and you will have enough to retire on. I've been doing it for 25 years and I have enough to retire, but don't want to yet.