How We Grew Our Savings By 16x in One Year

You keep trying to make yourself save money so you can finally buy that home you want, quit your job, buy a new car, get a lawnmower, or you just want to be able to take your kids on the best vacation ever but just can't seem to get ahead? I totally get it.  

Before I became a CPA, my husband and I had nothing. I mean, we were worth negative dollars (on a piece of paper). We were using credit just to buy groceries. Our car got totaled a week before we got married, and with 4 kids (step-kids for me), we had to have something bigger than a Ford Mustang to get around. So then we had to finance a car (because no savings) - it was just a mess all around. We were accumulating debt faster than we could pay it off, and we had no savings to boot.  

But as we worked to better understand money, we became committed to paying off debt and growing our savings. We took FPU by Dave Ramsey, which I learned so much from, but his method just didn't resonate with our money personality. So in tandem to snowballing our debt, we  wanted to continue to build our savings, even after the $1,000 emergency fund because it helped with our mindset to stay on track. In the year that we setup this system, not only did we pay of over $13k of debt, we went from less than $500 in savings, to over $8,000.  

It was seriously the simplest system to implement, didn't require any fancy tools, and we were still able to achieve all of the other Christmas and vacation goals that we set. 

3 steps to multiply your savings this year: 

Automation: 

Setup automatic savings contributions which not only saves time, but also takes the temptation out of spending that hard earned cash on something else. It frees up your mind so that you don't have to think about how much to save, and allows you to better focus that mental energy on living the life you want. Even start with just $10 a week or a month – set it and forget it. You just need to start building the habit and building momentum.  

What we did:

My employer at the time would allow our direct deposit to go into multiple accounts. I allocated a percent of my income to retirement, health savings account, and personal savings account and then the remainder would go to checking to cover bills. Eliminating the manual allocation of this process took the temptation to keep it and waste it on something else, built momentum as we saw our wealth grow, and we learned the true meaning of paying ourselves first.

We also setup automated transfers in our online banking to come out of our checking every, single Friday to go into our Christmas and vacation savings accounts. We just started with $10. 10 DOLLARS. You can save $10 a week.

We started with $10 because we just needed to build the habit, we just needed to build momentum and see if this strategy would work for us. Now we’re savings $100’s a month as a result of automation and the mindset shift it created for us.

Elimination: 

This part takes a little more effort because it requires analysis of what you spend money on. Scale back how much you go out to eat, use online grocery pick-up instead of going in the store, cancel one (preferably all) of those unnecessary streaming subscriptions, and then take that extra money and put it all in savings!  

What we did:

We made a deal to split entree’s when we went out to eat rather than getting one for each of us, only went out to eat once a week (or less often times), eliminated all streaming subscriptions except for one, had monthly budget reviews to keep each other in check, stopped buying alcohol, hosted potlucks with friends instead of going out, shared vacations with extended family to cut costs.

Be creative. Make it your own. Your budget and the things you eliminate will not, and should not, look exactly like someone else’s. Focus on 1 thing that’s super important for you to enjoy and eliminate all the other fuzz. It doesn’t mean forever, just until you can afford to enjoy it again at a later point in life.

Simplification: 

This is a little more indirect, but it is 100% essential in generating steam to get this engine moving. You don't need to worry about investments, or which account has the highest interest rate, or having 14,782 savings accounts for all the goals you have. Keep. It. Simple. Especially if you don't have a dime in savings at this point, open one account, and shove all that you can in there. Have one account for bills/spending, one account for savings. 

What we did: 

We have different savings account for different goals, but that just helped us save more because we wanted to fill all the buckets up. Otherwise, we have one checking account and one credit card (that we pay off EVERY month). Everything, except for 4 expenses, are paid for with our credit card. This makes it simple for us to make our financial plan and review it each month and only takes a matter of minutes.

These 3 concepts have completely transformed our financial picture and our life. Our mindset has noticeably shifted - we focus on an abundance mindset because now that our process it so simple, it’s opened up mental time and space to focus on things that fulfill us and help us grow. Our dreams are not just imaginative now, they’re actual goals that we feel confident we’re going to achieve.

Having the home that you've wanted to give your kids, buying a new car, or taking the vacation of a lifetime isn't a dream when you take action and implement these simple steps. It's a literal, achievable goal.

If you feel like you need help implementing these steps and tailoring it to your life, let’s get an actionable plan into place.