Today is money saving Monday. Did you know Americans are saving less these days?
According to the latest data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis,
the personal savings rate last year was 3.9%.
That's well below the decades long, average of roughly 8.9%.
Yet consumers continue to spend.
So in this new year, let's take a new view when it comes to your finances,
we're going to help you change your perspective on how you save money
and make what seems impossible possible.
Joining me now is financial psychologist, Doctor Dan Pali
and who's a licensed clinical psychologist,
financial advisor and certified financial planner.
Ok.
You've got five great ways to just really, you know,
change your point of view on how to save.
So, first up you say rename your savings account. What do you mean by that?
Well, let's back up when it comes to saving money,
it actually feels like we're losing something
even though we're saving it for ourselves or
in the moment it feels like we're giving it away.
And so if you can rename a savings account to
the name of a child or your dream vacation it,
it helps to motivate you to save more into that account.
Ok. So Tahiti
or Zoe
and Zach, actually, I do have an account for each of them.
You probably save more because their name is on it. I don't even look at it.
It's direct deposit, just be done with it, right? Ok.
Next one you say share your savings goals
and this is just um counting on accountability from other people.
If other people know what our goals are,
we're more likely to follow through with them.
So when you identify your savings goals, share it, share it with your partner,
your friends, your family.
Yeah, let it out there. It's almost like a buddy system.
H I hear a lot of that like when people are
trying to work out and get to their fitness goals,
it's like, ok, I'm gonna tell someone about it.
So they hold me accountable.
So in this case,
financially you tell your other circle around you to hold you accountable.
Absolutely.
Ok. Sounds good. All right.
Next one, you say exercise before focusing finances,
are we sure we're talking about
more than just uh financial?
Yeah. Yeah, believe it or not. I am not an exercise guru in any means.
But, but when you exercise,
we release endorphins and dopamines and we feel
better and what we know about saving is
we're more likely to save more money when we feel good going into the process.
And so kind of using a bio
hack of increasing those feel good endorphins and, and emotions helps us save more.
Yeah, that's interesting to exercise also for financial reasons too. Ok,
meditate.
So I love this one. Me,
the practice of meditation
actually does help us save more.
And what it, what you do is you,
you identify the thoughts and the feelings and the
emotions that are going on in the moment.
So meditation is all about identifying maybe the,
the financial anxiety and stress that you feel and
just give it a place and give it a name
and believe it or not, you'll be able to move forward and save more money.
Once you identify what's holding you back, it's like manifesting it. That's right.
That's right. All right,
visualize you say manifesting has more to do with
this one where visualization is a similar practice,
but we're actually envisioning what we want our future to look like.
And so when, when we can see it, we follow through with it, we're more likely to do it.
And so visualizing your financial future um makes sense to do
it right before you decide how much you're gonna save.
Yeah.
And I'm thinking, I mean, I know it sounds kind of silly but maybe post its or you know,
putting something like right in front of you.
So you're constantly surrounded by, you know, that goal. Absolutely. Yeah.
Psychologists call that priming,
priming our environment to follow through with the
actions that we want to follow through on.
Oh, I like that. Ok.
So we also want to talk about a couple of financial
changes that took place at the beginning of this year.
People can make it to their qualified retirement account.
Tell us about these two most common changes. Yeah.
So the,
the IRS increased the amount that we can actually put into our savings accounts.
And so your qualified retirement account, if you're still working, these are your,
your 401 Ks and your 403 Bs and your TS
P accounts. And, and we can put more money into them this year.
And if you're over 50 years old, you can put even more, uh, in those accounts,
you can also increase the amount you put into your Ira
or Roth Ira even if you don't have an employer.
So there's different types of accounts that you can save money into for retirement.
Yeah,
we put that on the screen right in front of you
to just show the increase the 401k up to 23,000 now.
And the Ira. Roth Ira went up to 7000. So that's good to know.
Ok, more money stashed away.