Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Savings Goals for the New Year

It's the beginning of a New Year, and that means it is a great time to sit down and figure out what your savings goals are for the coming year.  Long term may be to increase retirement savings or education savings for your children. Short term may be a vacation, a new vehicle, home renovation or major purchase (new tv, appliances, new furniture etc).

For us, we want to increase our rainy day savings, save for Disney, and also want to purchase new furniture for our living room.  When we moved in we had hand me down furniture. A few years later we purchased furniture for our family room, but still haven't replaced the hand me down couches in the living room.

For the Disney savings, I am using the 52 week saving challenge to add to what we have already saved and for our rainy day fund I have automatic deductions set up from my chequing account.  I found that if I had to transfer the money myself, I often forget to do it or find something else that the money can go toward. Having the deductions set up leaves me with no work to do - the money transfers over the same time every week - and I can sit and watch the account growing!

Even if you only have $5.00 a week that you can take from your budget, you would find an extra $260.00 at the end of the year - it may not seem like a lot, but every little bit helps ($260 is approximately what I spend on groceries for the month).

Are you a saver? What do you find the best way is to save money for your family?

14 comments:

  1. We are currently working on the same goals. We are Disney fiends and have been 3 times in the last 2 years. We are going again this year. We can't wait! And our girls RESP's have hit a new record. We gotta keep working at it, it does pay off.

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    1. that's great! it really does pay off in the end

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  2. I tried the 52 week challenge last year, it was tough. I need to set some money
    saving goals. DS is heading to some major competitions this year.

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  3. Definitely a saver! We have had automatic payments go into savings for the kids education and retirements savings for many years.

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    1. that is wonderful - it is nice knowing the money is there, and won't be such a stress at the time

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  4. We have similar goals Ashley ( although hubby doesn't know about the Disney one, LOL) and I like the idea of the 52 week challenge. I have been using the TD automatic transfer for years, long before it was a "thing" and it is great for building up your savings almost without knowing it!

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  5. We have saving goals for other projects! True: every amount adds up!

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  6. Ahh...We're currently working on similar goals for this year too. As a frugal farming family, we're pretty good with our money, but still...*sigh*

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    1. I try to manage our money well, but things always crept up to eat up our rainy day fund...not anymore!

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  7. We are trying to save some for a holiday but it seems that as soon as we get a little put aside something comes up that need fixing or replacing :( But we keep trying! (Judy Cowan)

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    1. I know that feeling SO WELL - it sucks when that happens. Good luck with your holiday savings

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