For years, environmentalists have promoted the benefits of helping our environment by wasting less and decreasing the amount of “stuff” we put into your landfills.  A side benefit of reducing the amount of waste you create is that is helps you save some cash, too.

Paper Towels: As convenient as anything disposable tends to be, you can get used to replacing most paper towel use with rags and washcloths.  Keep a box of rags in the kitchen for messy spills, and use a clean washcloth to wash the children’s hands and face after eating.

Water - Keep your water bill down by catching rain water in buckets to use to wash your car and water plants and gardens.  You can catch the cold water coming out of your shower faucet in a bucket to use as well, while you wait for the water to heat up to the proper temperature.

Laundry Detergent - Most detergents are made with formulas that require far less soap than they did in previous versions.  Keep a close eye on the measuring lines in the cap of your detergent as they can be very deceiving!  Often you only need to fill the cap a quarter of the way for a normal load of laundry, yet habit has most of us filling half way or more.  Often you can even use less detergent than the directions say, and still wind up with clean clothes.

Electricity - Stop giving the electric company money for phantom electricity use.  Whenever you aren’t using your electronics, unplug them.  Anything with a digital clock or lights when not in use is drawing electricity.  If it’s easier, you can plug your electronics into power strips and hit the on/off switch to use or turn off.  Don’t forget to turn the lights off when leaving a room, replace lightbulbs with the energy-efficient version, and use task lighting rather than overhead lights to reduce energy consumption.

Heating - Many homes keep their heat on warmer than is really necessary to be comfortable.  If you turn the heat down a few degrees, chances are you won’t notice the difference.  Move the temperature down a degree or two a day until you start to feel chilly, then add a sweatshirt!  You can wear warmer clothes and reduce the amount of heat you need to be comfortable.    If you’re still cold after a day or two of wearing warmer clothing, you can raise the temperature a degree or two until you find the perfect temperature.

The money you save while reducing waste can be used to start or add to your existing savings account or investment plan.

If 2009 is the year you are determined to save money and pay down your debt, you no doubt have come up with some financial resolutions!  Here are 4 tips for saving money in 2009:

1. Take one last drag and then say goodbye to the pack-a-day.  Chances are you’ll save around $2,000 per year if you’re smoking a pack of smokes per day!  When you stop buying your ciggerettes, put the money you WOULD have spent on them in your savings account of choice, so you can really reap the rewards of quitting financially (as well as healthwise).  If you don’t do this, the money will just get absorbed into your spending and you won’t notice it.
2. Stop paying late fees. If you are paying late fees on your credit card accounts because you forget to get the payment in the mail before it’s late - set up automatic payments so they occur before they’re due.  If you’re averaging $50 a month in late fees, this can easily add up to an extra $600 a year - why not set your accounts to pay automatically to never pay late - and just send as much as you’ve been paying in late fees previously?  This will pay your debt off faster.
3. Know what to do when extra money comes in. There are times in our lives when we get more money than expected.  Maybe we win a few dollars on a scratch-off someone sent in a birthday card, or we get a bigger tax refund or rebate than expected.  Whatever the reason, what normally happens to unexpected income?  It gets used up quickly and we don’t even remember half the time what we used it for!  Make a plan right now for where to put any extra money.  You could decide 50% of all extra money will be applied to your highest interest debt; and 50% will go into a savings account for your vacation fund.  Whatever your situation, having a plan before it happens means you’ll know exactly what to do to make the best use of any extra income.
4. Wipe out silly subscriptions and memberships. It happens to the best of us - subscriptions and memberships sound like a great deal and you save money over paying per-item or per-month, but take a good look at your recurring payments to make sure you are really getting your money’s worth out of them.  Even your cable tv bill is worth some consideration, now that you can watch tv online for free (or much less than your cable bill, anyway!)

If you expect to be able to save some of your current income for your future, a household budget is necessary. You need to know where the money is coming from and where it goes when it leaves your wallet or bank in order to manage it effectively.

To get started, you’ll need a pen, calculator and paper – and/or a spreadsheet program. Gather all of your pay stubs, income records, monthly bill statements, check register or online bank statements if you have them, and statements for retirement or other investment accounts.

Step One: Determine your income. If you are on salary this will be easy, as you earn the same amount each month. It can be more complicated if you are self-employed, work on commission or have variable income for other reasons. Do your best to get an accurate monthly average of income earned, and remember to include tips, bonuses, child support, alimony or any other type of income you receive regularly.

Step Two: Determine your monthly expenses. List everything you pay. If there are bills that fluctuate, like utilities or food expenses, for example, just find the average by totaling a year’s worth of that expense and dividing by 12 months.

Step Three: Take a deep breath and check your totals! Is your income less than your expenses? No wonder you haven’t been saving! Go through your monthly expenses list and mark items that can be eliminated from your expenses (coffee shops, gym memberships and/or unnecessary subscriptions, etc). While you’re at it, you can also mark expenses that could be reduced (food expenses can be reduced more than you think with use of coupons, buying items on sale, eating out less, etc). Once you’ve tipped the scales so your income total is greater than your expense total, you can determine how much money to save. Pick a weekly or monthly savings amount that also allows for a little cash buffer in case you have some unexpected need for more cash than you included in the budget.

Step Four: Post the budget on your refrigerator or another area that you will see it every day. Refer to it often to help stick to the budget and grow your savings. As items are paid off, you can increase the amount you are saving.

Online savings accounts are a great product as long as you stick with a high-quality bank. You can often get better interest rates, lower fees, and better bonuses than what you would find at a traditional bank. Not all online savings banks are the same, some of them are much better than others. You’ll have to do some comparison shopping and find the best bank to place your money at.

Here are some things to consider when choosing an online savings account:

Interest Rate – This is one of the most important things to factor in, it’s how much money you’re going to make. Right now, online savings account are offering anywhere from 2.75% to 3.75% APY. You’ll want to find a good one that’s toward the higher end of that spectrum. Of course the going rates will change over time, but you’ll want to find an online savings account that has had a history of very competitive interest rates.

Amount Limitations – Some online savings banks have limitations as to how much money you need to open an account. Some also have a minimum amount of money you can have in your account and a maximum amount of money in your account. Make sure that the amount of money you’ll be putting into your online savings account won’t hit any of these amount boundaries.

Customer Service – There are a few online savings accounts which have horrendous customer service, and a few that offer very good customer service. After selecting an online savings bank, search for reviews by people who already have that online savings account and make sure that others have had positive customer service experiences.

Fees – Some of the less competitive online savings banks are offering accounts that had a set of fees for certain types of transfers, going under a certain minimum balance, and other actions. In most cases, it’s not worth considering an online savings bank that has a bunch of fees, because most of the very competitive online savings banks offer great interest rates with no fees to speak of.

Transfer Limitations – A few online savings banks are very restrictive about how much money you can put in and take out of the account each month. Be sure to look at the bank’s transfer limitations to make sure that you hit the boundaries that the bank has. Quite often you’ll have to dig deep inside of the service agreement to find this information.

ATM Card – In most cases you probably won’t need an ATM card, but there are a few instances that you’ll want one. If the money in your online savings account needs to be accessed quickly, say for an emergency fund, you’ll want to get an ATM card.

New Account Bonuses – This shouldn’t be your primary consideration, but if two online savings accounts appear to be equal and if one offers a new account bonus and the other
one does not, you had just as well take the free money if they’re offering it!
This might seem like a bit of work, but it’s definitely worth your while. After doing a bit of research, you’ll find the perfect online savings bank for you.

You might also be interested in reading our reviews of online savings accounts.

Recently there have been a number of different bank failures which have left people with large amounts of money deposited in savings high and dry when the dust settled. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will insure up to $100,000 for any consumer at an individual bank and up to $250,000 for a retirement account. To most of us, we won’t have to worry about exceeding these limits for many years to come, but for others, saving money above the FDIC insurance limit is a major problem. Fortunately, there are options for individuals who would like to keep their money safe well above the $100,000 limit.

NetBank is the quintessential example of why wealthy individuals should take very specific actions to keep their savings FDIC insured. Many consumers though the bank was doing just fine and had a lot of money saved there. It was FDIC insured and people never even considered that their money might not be safe. NetBank hit some hard times and went out of business and a whopping $109 million of their deposits were not FDIC insured and the people who held those deposits were simply out of luck.

In order to keep your initial deposit and the interest you earn FDIC insured, you should never deposit more than $90,000 in any one bank. If you deposited the full $100,000 into a bank and it went out of business, any interest that you earned would be lost. By only depositing $90,000, you are giving yourself some room to earn interest that is still FDIC insured.

To accomplish this task, it’s as easy as opening up several different savings accounts or certificates of deposit at multiple banks. This works fine until you hit the range of several million dollars when keeping all of your money FDIC insured would require opening dozens of different bank accounts. There’s a service which addresses this exact issue. The Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service (CDARS) will invest your money in certificates of deposit across dozens of different banks and keep the money invested for you. You’ll only have one account to deal with and earn one interest rate. With the CDARS service, you can deposit up to $50 million and still have your money FDIC insured. This is a great option for people with a large amount of money to deposit who want to maintain FDIC insurance on their money.

Never leave more than the FDIC insured limits in any one bank, no matter how financially stable it is. If you’re going to leave a substantial amount of money in savings, make sure it’s diversified across a number of different banks.

There’s a percentage of the population which is a group of people that are just absolutely nerds about numbers. They count where every single penny goes, and sometimes even keep track of fractions of pennies. They know where every dollar they spend goes, and can probably rattle off their debt to income ratio off the top of their head. If you’re someone like this, a company called Yodlee has created a free service that might be of interest to you.

Yodlee’s service is called “Yodlee MoneyCenter.” You can do so many different things with it to track your money, it’s amazing. Unlike other budgeting and money management software on the internet, Yodlee will make use of your online banking information and format it in ways that statistics oriented people would love. Many people wonder how safe it is to give your online banking information to this company, but it’s actually very reputable, many different major American banks make use of its technology for their own online banking systems.

When you log into Yodlee, you will first see a listing of all your accounts and their balances. You can login to each of the sites by a simple click of the button. Essentially it’s a portal for all of your online banking. After a bit of further examination, you’ll notice a “Net Worth Summary” link, which is also very interesting to look at. Basically, it will add up all of your assets and subtract them from your liabilities giving you your net worth, of course this does not include your non-liquid assets such as vehicles, but that’s okay. You can also view a detailed net worth button. It will show you a graph of how your net worth has changed over time. This is a great way to see if you are headed in a positive direction financially!

Another interesting function of Yodlee’s MoneyCenter is its expense analysis chart. It shows where all of your money is going each month! You can view information for the last month, 3 months or 6 months. It will list all of your spending by categories and create a pie graph for you to see. You can also create a budget for each category and Yodlee will tell you how you are doing on each category that you specify an amount to spend on!

There are a number of other great features, such as a function which makes sure you make the most of your credit card rewards, as well a fancy graph of your income versus your expenses. A bit more savvy users can create their own custom reports as well!

More than a third of large companies in the United States are offering the automatic 401(k) savings plan as an employee benefit. The intention is that the automatic savings will help employees save despite the decline in Social Security benefits and struggling economy. There is also an automatic 403(b) retirement plan option for teachers and nonprofit organization employees.

Increase Contributions Each Year

One of the primary benefits of automatic 401(k) plans is the ability to increase the amount of your contributions each year – connected with your annual salary increase, for example. When you increase the percentage of money you contribute when you receive a raise, you won’t ever see the extra money in your take-home pay, and will never miss it.

In addition to contributing more to the plan over time, larger contributions will also reduce your tax liability, which is helpful as your earnings increase.

Professional Finance Advice

The automatic 401(k) option includes investment advice, typically with computer-generated portfolio, managed accounts, or target-date retirement funds. Some employers bring in financial advisors for employees at various times of the year, at no charge to the employee as an added benefit. It’s definitely a feature you’ll want to take advantage of, since seeing a personal finance advisor on your own can be expensive.

Disadvantages of Automatic 401(k) Plans

Despite a number of advantages of auto saving plans, there are some disadvantages as well. If employers set the initial savings percentages of 3% of each employees salary, some employees may just accept that and they may be able to (and should) save more as it’s recommended that individuals set aside 15% of their gross income (including any employer matching contributions) for retirement.

Additionally, many of the automatic plans will place employees into pre-selected investments- which may not be a bad thing though! Between 2002 and 2006, John Hancock compared employees who selected their own investments with those who invested in pre-selected plans, and found that after 5 years – the employees who selected their own plans would have been better off if they had been in the single life-cycle fund, instead.