If you read much personal finance, you’ll see there is a lot of talk about saving, but fewer people actually show examples of how it is done.
So far, Miel and I have been able to save about $20,000 for our wedding.
Here is how we did it.
1) High Yield Savings Accounts: Get one of these to hold your savings in. We find that the internet is the best place to research which account is best for you. You can use bankrate.com or other online tools to compare rates. Most of the major banks don’t give good rates, so don’t be afraid to shop around and let the market work for you. We went with ING direct.
2) Direct Deposit: Direct deposit removed the administrative hassle of savings. Both Miel and I set up direct deposit into our ING account. This way we could build up our savings while gaining the maximum interest. Miel deposited about $700.00 a month, and James contributed about $500.00. We just let our direct deposit build up in the ING account so the interest could compond. Over the period of a year, we could scrape up about $13,848.87 this way.
3) Reprioritization: We had some money from other accounts (some leftover saving from our house downpayment, old accounts from when Miel was in oregon, etc.). We transfered these funds into the ING account as well. If you want to achieve, you have to prioritize.
4) Other Stuff: we did pretty much everything we comfortably could to save money for the wedding. For example, we both participated in research studies , saved our tax return money and contributed all the gifts we got from family to the wedding fund.
5) We also set goals and monitored our goals with a handy score sheet.
Over time, things added up. We’re getting married on July 1st and are happy to be able to have everything covered.
The breakdown of our savings is here:
We enjoy saving money, so feel free to drop us a line if you’d like to swap tips!
-James
No Comments yet!