How to Grow Your Savings Account Without a Steady Paycheck

It can be difficult to set up a savings account when you don’t have a steady stream of income. If you’re a contractor who’s busy one month and then twiddling your thumbs the next, you might have to live off of some of your income from the previous month just to make ends meet. However, even under those types of circumstances, it’s still possible to put cash away for a rainy day.

Here’s how to grow your savings account without a steady paycheck.

Go on a Spending Diet

Why not give yourself a challenge so that you can keep some of your hard-earned money? Go on a “spending diet” that operates much like a food diet.

Try to spend as little as possible for 14 days. Consider your spending habit the equivalent of taking in calories if you were on a food diet. Once that 14-day period is over, you might realize how good it feels to not spend so much money and then you’ll make a habit out of it.

Also, get together with some friends and create a “challenge” about who can spend the least amount of money on discretionary expenses over a month. Whoever wins is treated to dinner by the people who didn’t win. You can deposit the money you save from that challenge into a Barclays online savings account or whatever savings account you use.

Find What Motivates You to Save

What motivates you to keep your money instead of spending it? For some people, it’s the peace of mind knowing that they’ll have money on hand for an emergency. For other people, it’s prestige: they want to be respected for saving money. For other people, they want to save so that they can buy something spectacular later on in life.

Examine your heart and find out what you think it takes to inspire you to stash some cash under your mattress. Maybe you need a chart that shows how much you’ve saved since you started saving. Maybe you need a chart that will show you how much you can save if you start depositing money into an American Express high yield savings account for the next 10 years.

Whatever it is, focus on what motivates you to save. Let your mind think about that, and your heart will follow.

Try Microsaving

The old saying is that the longest journey begins with one step. You can think of saving in much the same way.

You might not be able to put away $1,000 into a savings account this month. But can you put away $5? $10? If so, then do that.

Microsaving is a great idea because it gets you in the habit of saving. That’s a great habit to develop if you want to be financially stable.

Also, when you start small you’ll find that you challenge yourself later to start saving even more. So, you’ll not only enjoy the benefits of compound interest from the amount that you’ve already deposited, but you’ll also up the ante when it comes to future contributions. That’s an excellent way to build wealth.

The bottom line: start small if you can’t save big right now. You’ll be glad you did later on.

It’s not easy to save when your income is uncertain. However, if you follow a few principles of sound money management, you can build a healthy savings account.