Its never too early or too late.........To start saving

If you are reading this fresh out of high school/college and have just started your first job.......I say "It’s not too early to start saving". If you have been working all your life and don’t have a savings account…...I say “It’s not too late to start saving”. Most people I know are broke, in debt or spending the money they have like there is no tomorrow. It seems like these days every one has excuses as to why they can’t save some money or they have some new thing that just came out that they just have to spend their money on.

Whether you are young or old, making minimum wage or a decent salary you need to start saving for now, later and for when you retire.

Start saving for now
Most people don’t get why they need to have some money saved up to handle unplanned expenses that come up in life. Think about it….If your car breaks down, you need to move on a short notice, you get sick and need prescriptions with no health insurance, your microwave breaks or any other unexpected expense comes up how will you pay for it? Credit cards, loaning money from family members, hold off on paying your other bills? These will only If you save $50 every month, that’s 600 per year. Six hundred dollars that could be sitting in a savings account ready to take care of your unexpected expenses.

Start saving for later
Most of us these days are so used to using credit cards that we don’t realize how much we pay extra in interest when we purchase things on credit. Let’s say you buy a computer on a credit card for $500. If the interest rate on the card is 18% and you pay $50 per month, it will take a year to pay off and you will pay $51.52 in interest. If you want a new computer, car, phone, a vacation start an account and start saving for the purchase instead of pulling out the credit cards. www.smartypig.com is a great internet savings bank for these types of savings accounts.

Start saving for retirement
If you make $30,000 per year and you save 3% in your employers 401k plan that’s $900 per year. If your employer has a 401k matching plan that could be easily doubled to $1800 per year. I know that a lot of young people my age think that it’s too early to start saving for retirement because it’s so far away. Well you are just missing out of years of your money sitting there gaining compound interest and missing out of the free money that you can get from your employer's match. Another thing to keep in mind here is that your living expenses are more likely to get larger in the future. You probably will be making more money later on, However that does not guarantee that you will have more money to save. You probably will be spending more for your housing, car and have a larger family to provide for.