Are you the type of person who is a savvy money manager?Or, are you normally struggling to scrape by till your next paycheck? If you are still living paycheck to paycheck then now is the time to grab control of your financial situation, plan your spending and save money via a high interest savings account.

You’ll never know what financial emergencies you might encounter along the way – which is why it helps to establish a savings account. This is a secure way of saving money in a bank, with the added bonus of earning a particular percentage of interest for the amount that you will deposit.

Saving Money 101: How to Create a Spending Diary, Keep Tabs of Your Spending & Get a Head Start with Your Savings

There is nothing unusual about taking $100 or so from an ATM and then wondering where it’s all gone when you check your wallet the next day.

This usually happens because you are not keeping tabs on your spending habits. This is not a good practice at all, especially if you seriously wish to start saving money by actually adding funds to that savings account which you opened a year or so ago.

So what’s the best way that you can use to get a head start with saving money? You can do it the old-fashioned way: by creating a spending diary, keeping track of your spending habits and adding money to your savings account so that you can start saving money.

In a nutshell, a spending diary allows you to track where you money has been spent and allow you to see where improvements and cut backs can be made to save money. Going back to the example mentioned earlier – if you did take out $100 from your savings account through an ATM machine, you will see where that amount actually went.

Once you take the money from the ATM write down everything you used that money to purchase. Did you spend it to buy coffee or a magazine on your way to work? Did you use it to buy food? Or did you have an ‘attack’ on your conscience and you actually put that amount towards your savings account?

If you’d rather not use cash then try a debit card such as Visa debit and then cross check your spending via your online banking.

Once you have developed the habit of writing down on your spending diary the ins and outs of your finances, you will be able to see which aspects of your spending you can actually cut back on. If you see that you’re spending too much on eating breakfast outside of the house on your way to work, you may want to pack a hearty sandwich for yourself. Better yet, wake up earlier and enjoy the financial and health benefits of eating a nutritious breakfast at home.
You might be surprised at just how faster you will be able to save money and actually add funds to your savings account once you are already keeping a spending diary. By doing this you can classify which purchases are wasting money, which are valuable and which can be done once in a while.

In addition, your savings account will be given a boost because the money that you will be able to save from the unnecessary purchases can go towards saving money instead. It might be a bit tedious and difficult at first to keep a spending diary. However, once you have gotten used to the notion of keeping tabs of your spending, saving money will be much more instinctive and less of a burden or a chore for you.

Post by Richard Greenwood who runs the Click 4 Group to help people compare credit cards and other money products and then apply online.