Stashing money away

Liz Pulliam Weston has an srticle on MSN Money entitled "10 easy ways to stash away thousands" which lists a bunch of techniques for boosting your savings. I would add my best technique:

• Spread your savings over multiple accounts which don't show up on the same statement. "Out of sight, out of mind" really does work, at least for me.

The money sitting in your checking account will always be "fair game" no matter how disciplined you are. Ditto for a linked savings account that shows up on the same monthly statement.

What you really need is to have your cash stashed in several different locations so that even if you see all the numbers every month, you never see the sum sitting in one place where you can easily spend it or even start thinking about spending it. There is something psychological about seeing a bunch of smaller numbers even if they add up to that larger number.

The other advice I would give is:

Have a detailed monthly budget with plenty of reserves for both regular expenses and occasional expenses that don't occur every month. If you don't do this, you will continually be confronted with "surprise" expenses and always be "wondering" why you can never find money to save. Having such a "tight but loose" budget will also have the psychological effect that you always feel like you need to keep a tighter control over expenses when you see how little is left on the formal budget for discretionary expenses. Once again, "Out of sight, out of mind" rules.

-- Jack Krupansky