Saving Money Tip
If you’re in college, chances are you always feel like you need to be saving money. No matter how much money you do or don’t have, it never hurts to save, but it can feel hard when you feel like you’re not really making any money.
This tip isn’t really a tip to earn money fast, or how to teach you to stop spending, cause I can’t fix all your bad habits, but my tip will help you save some money over time, almost like a savings account but so gradually you won’t even notice.
I only have one tip for you to help you save money, and of course because it’s 2018, this tip is an app.
Qapital is a free app that you can link to your bank account, and it can help you save your money in a couple of different ways.
Qaiptal will give you a lot of different options on how to automatically send money to you in like a mini savings account.
The app will say “Create A Goal,” and has a few options like do something, go somewhere, get something, pay off debts, just start saving, and something else. So I think the concept of setting up goals can be really beneficial, because you can see what you’re working towards, and you can see yourself getting closer to your goal.
It will tell you to name the goal, choose a cover photo for the goal, ask how much you want to save, and will tell you to activate rules, and this is how you save the money.
You can choose round up to the nearest dollar, so this means every time you spend something with your debit card, it will save the change up until the next dollar. So for example, if you spend $1.50 on something, it will save $0.50
You can choose a set & forget rule, which you can set up to deposit daily, weekly or monthly. So if you want to save $5 every week, or $1 everyday, it will automatically save however much you choose.
The payday rule, so when you get paid you choose a percentage to be saved in your goal.
The guilty pleasure rule, so every time you spend money on something “you’re trying to resist,” Qapital will save money. So if you’re trying to stay away from Victoria Secret for example, but there ends up being a 7 for $27 sale and you can’t resist, you can set up your Qapital account to save however much you want every time you give into this temptation, so at least you’ll save a little something.
An under budget rule, so you’ll set a budget, and if you end up spending less than you set aside, Qapital saves the difference.
There’s more rules that you can explore, even ‘customizable rules’ but I wanted to summarize the most popular rules.
You can even share goals with friends so that you can all contribute to a goal, so for example if you all want to save towards a trip and are splitting the money, then you can all save together!
Also, don’t panic if you feel like you’re not going to have the money, if your checking account goes below $100, Qapital will stop taking money out of your checking account. All the money you saved towards your goal will still be there, but Qapital won’t keep taking from you when you don’t have it.
There may be other apps similar to this, even apps that are better than this, but this is the one I’m familiar with, and like. You’re not going to save a million dollars overnight, but these dollars and even your change adds up. Since December I’ve saved about $115 with the round up rule, so thirty cents here 47 cents there over ten months has turned into a pretty big chunk of change.