Savings

Savings

Save your Money! Don't spend any money that you don’t need!! I want change from that!! These are all phrases that we hear from our parents and sure we all hate it but one day we are going to thank our parents because they are teaching us a very valuable life lesson. I am sure that many of you are about to shut this page because I am telling you to listen to your parents which is unacceptable because we are teenagers. However I am hoping that since I am a teenager telling you this that you might listen a bit more. Savings isn't always just putting money in a jar like when you were a kid or putting money into your debit account that you don't plan to touch but you always end up spending it anyway, that may be a form of saving but it is not the type I am talking about. I am talking about long term savings. Savings that you deposit into a savings account that is strictly for savings only, you do not spend the money in this account unless and absolute emergency and no girls fashion emergencies do not count. If you put your savings into a savings account and leave it there for a long period of time it is highly likely that you will gain some kind of interest on those savings. I would list on here which banks have good savings plans but the plans and rates change all the time so you really need to look into them when you are planning on opening one soon. Most banks in Australia have youth bank accounts (back accounts for people under the age of 18) these bank accounts do not have a minimum monthly deposit like many adult accounts do.

Many banks in Australia have special accounts which reward you for saving. For example, Westpac has the 'Westpac Reward Saver' where you can earn bonus interest when you deposit $50 and make no withdrawls. There are also 'Student Reward Saver' accounts where full time students can earn variable bonus interest. There are a whole range of savings accounts, you just need to shop around and find one that will suit you. Banks also offer a range of financial planning tools. Some of these include:

Budget Planners:

Savings Comparison Calculator:

Term Deposit Calculator:

Savings Calculators:

Some banks have online tips for students on saving, living out of home and surviving on a budget etc. Here are a few links: [] [] []

I was taught once that if you could put $100 dollars into a high interest bank account with compounding interest every month until you plan on retiring you could have over $100,000 in that account. Compounding interest means that you can get interest on the interest earned in the previous month. Say you put $100 into a compounding account and gain 7% interest in the first year you now have $107 in your savings account, the following year you earn interest on the $107 instead of just $100.

Saving money and thinking about the future can be hard, I know that as a teenager thinking about anything but the next couple of weeks is hard so thinking about saving in the long-term can be very daunting to most. Most of us will save for a couple of weeks to buy that new top or to go out for dinner with friends but that is about as far as we go. I know it is very hard to predict how much you are going to be spending when your social plans change so much and there are very few fixed costs that we as teenagers have but a rough budget will really help you to begin saving. Set your self a goal of how much to save in a week or a month and instead of rolling over that extra $50 you have sitting in your wallet at the end of the month, take it out and put it in a savings account or the box under your bed with all the money you have saved. Small things like this will go a long way. Start small, don't overwhelm yourself.

Saving is a really important life skill and a great habit to get into at a young age, it is also something that is not really taught much or emphasised at school often.

"Budget your expenses so that you may have money to pay for your necessities, to pay for your enjoyments and to gratify your worthwhile desires without spending more than nine-tenths of your earnings." ~ Richest Man in Babylon