If you missed Part One of the mini-series, scroll down or click here.
Now that we’ve got some “fundage” from handing in those old electronics, what should you do with it?
How about a Christmas Club at your local bank? These popular bank accounts from the 70s and 80s are finally making a comeback due to the high interest rate they offer. Most banks offer a higher interest rate on their Christmas Clubs then they do for their regular savings accounts.
Not really wowed by your bank’s Christmas Club? Create an ING account. ING is awesome because you can schedule for payments to be taken from you account and if you come into a windfall of money, you can easily transfer it into the account. This is what we use for our “Christmas club” account and have small payments of 10 dollars a week taken out of our bank account. By the time Christmas rolls around, we are ready for any extra gifts that may pop up. The best part is that if we don’t use all of the savings, they can be rolled over for next year, or rolled into another sub-account that may need extra money. It’s a win-win situation!
Speaking of money, what about all of your change? Do you collect it? What do you do with it once it’s all together? By collecting change, you can easily save up hundreds of dollars a year. Some take the time to roll their change and deposit into a savings account. Others have wonderful banks with change machines that will count the change for them and deposit into the account. What do we do with our change? We take it to the coinstar machine. No, not to get money back(they take .08 of every dollar you put in there!), but to exchange it for gift cards! I actually do this 2 to 3 times a year and save them up for Christmas. They can also exhange your change for amazon.com gift certificates. Little known secret: this is one of the ways I do giveaways on here!
Another great tip is to create a dollar jar. Dollars are something that we take for granted when spending, so coming home and emptying your wallet of those dollar bills shouldn’t make too much of a difference. Before you know it, you’ll have another amount to add to your Christmas Club account. On average, when I did this last year, I saved around 50 dollars a month just from dollar bills. Some months, it was even more. We had an extra 700 dollars to use as we pleased during the holiday season. This year we are saving 5 dollar bills instead. We see them less, but we’ve saved quite a bit already. I could tell you how much so far, but what’s the fun in that?
But what if you have no extra money to even start a holiday savings? There’s still hope…tune in tomorrow!
Our credit union doesn’t pay a lot of interest on the Christmas Club account, but it is handy to be able to to have part of my paycheck direct deposited every payday.
I like the idea of saving change, though we never think to do it. I have a friend whose family always saved dimes. They wouldn’t spend any dimes and would end up with a nice chunk of change for the holidays.
My mom had a “Christmas Tree Fund” jar in the laundry room. All change she found in the laundry went into that jar. There was enough for a nice tree every year.
That’s great Frances!
Since we did the dollar jar last year, I reserved the change for giveaways on here. And I’ve done quite a few of them, so I KNOW how much you can totally save just by throwing your change in the jar.
The “Christmas Tree Fund” idea is also really cute :o)
I couldnt find your side-hustle posts. Sorry 🙁 If you show me where they are I would love to link to them!
When I was growing up, my grandfather always saved the dollar bills that had “11” on them. (Look at your dollars, there’s a two digit number on there.) He thought they were lucky or something. I got into the habit of it too for a while. I don’t do it anymore, but it would be a good way to start saving again.
I think any method you pick that helps you to save a little extra is a great thing! Whether it be saving a particilar coin or choosing a number on a dollar bill. It is just a little each time, but can sure add up!