Some things in life you can just do without having to have much of a plan. However, others require a bit of planning to find success. Saving money falls into the latter category. You may think, “How hard can it be to save money?” Apparently, it’s pretty hard for American adults. According to a 2015 Bankrate.com report, nearly 46 percent of Americans save less than five percent of their income into long-term savings. Why? Because our brain is trained to spend money, to want more, to fill our desires that commercials and advertisements tell us we have. That’s why saving takes planning. Here are a few tips to help you create your own savings plan to start holding on to more of your money. Open a savings account- if you don’t have one already, come by any Bank of Blue Valley location to open a savings account. Create a savings goal- your first savings goal should be to create an emergency fund. This is an amount equal to three to six months of living expenses in the event of job loss, hospitalization, etc. Pick an amount to save from your income- there is where most savings plans fail. People think they need to save a lot to get to their goals. However, think of it like this: if you get paychecks about twice a month and save $100 from each one, that’s saving $200 a month and $2,400 per year. An easy amount to start at is 10 percent of any income. So if your paycheck is $400, you save $40 of it. Set up automatic savings- for those with an online banking account through Bank of Blue Valley, you can set up to have a certain amount of money transferred from your checking account to your savings account regularly to help you save. Pay yourself first- if you don’t want to set up automatic savings, then make sure the first transaction on payday is transferring your selected savings amount from your checking to your savings account. Money in your checking account is for paying others, while money in your savings account is money you pay yourself. These tips will help jumpstart your savings plan and put you on the fast track to being a savings superstar. In our next post we’ll tackle the topic of budgeting to help bring together your checking and savings account. Bank of Blue Valley Equal Housing Lender Member FDIC