I personally use my internet banking saving plans and budgeting tools to work out how much I can save. I can also use this to track how I am going and look back on where I spent my money. How do you track your savings goals, and do you use internet banking tools to help?
I don't use any type of special software. I use online banking so I don't receive any paper statements or anything from my bank for that matter. I usually withdraw cash and make sure that the proper amount was taken from my account. I don't use my debit card that often because I don't know much about my bank's fees regarding them. And also it would be harder to keep track of all the payments I make and I would have to keep all the receipts until I confirm online that all those purchases and the right amount of money was taken from my account.
I am close to the very opposite of you. I only use card to pay for everything and limit my cash. I would be lucky to use $20 cash from my wallet in a fortnight. I understand all my banks fee and how to minimise unnecessary fees so that I average about $5 per month. You check the balance when you approve the purchase, so that is never a problem and I always check my transactions list every day or two. Havent ever been incorrectly charged. My internet banking has a link to budgeting tools that categorises spending so that I can see where I spend all my money. It is really powerful and helps me reduce spending and forecast my savings.
I earn cash once a year. So unlike most people, tracking my expenses for one year before I find out if I've saved any cash is a lot harder. Since I'm not good with fancy software [I'm that old school] I record all my expenses in a book. At the end of the year I'll add up the figures, subtract the sum from whatever cash I have left in my account and see how much I saved for the year. Then I'll think about how I'll invest my savings.
You only earn cash once a year? I think I'm misunderstanding how that would happen.... I don't see anything wrong with recording expenses in a book instead of software, by the way, so long as you're careful and comfortable with it. You can mess up just as easily by mistyping into some fancy software.
Now that the technology is every where, it is but right to maximize the use of it. I have an iphone where I installed an application called CASH TRAIL. This allows me to monitor my expenses, monitor the savings i have, track recurring expenses, monitor my credit card debt and others. It also allows me to monitor my cash in different countries. I have dollar account, the currency in my home country and the currency where I currently work. It is very helpful and easy to use. I always use this application to record my daily expenses and monitor the remaining cash in my wallet and in my bank account. try it.
I really don't have a plan in place, but I really need to implement one because sometimes I lose track of spending, and most times I don't save at all. It would be a good thing for me to set some kind of saving goals, even if the goal is to save. I'm going to read through some of what people have written here in this thread and see what others say they do. Saving is simple, but it is not easy. The main thing is to start saving and to be consistent with it.
