His Hers Money

Everyone knows that automating your savings is definitely the way to go. Right now I feel like I have my savings so disjointed because I have accounts all over the place. I took advantage of the Suze - TD Ameritrade offer where you deposit at least $50 a month for 12 months into a savings type account and they will deposit an extra $100 in at the end of the 12 months. I don’t remember what the rate is but it’s better than I’m getting at ING right now. The promotion code was 701 so you might try it and see if it still works.

I also have an ING account that I send $200 a month to and a savings account with my credit union that gets another $200 a month. So that’s $450 a month in savings. My goal is to have $15,000 in emergency funds . I was aiming towards $10,000 but my financial advisor bumped that up to $15,000 during my yearly financial check up.

I also have some retirement based investments. I fund my Roth IRA in full every year ($5000 for 2008) and my 401k in full every year ($15,500). This all adds up to a whopping $25,500 in deposits in a single year!

Today was an important day in the start of my becoming more secure financially. I opened a savings account with ING Direct. I was able to get the free $25 they offer for new accounts as well as get Hers a $10 bonus.

I’ve been needing to start an emergency fund for a while now and of course starting this blog provided a much-needed incentive. ING Direct offers good rates of course but a bigger reason for choosing them was that they are NOT my bank! That was a problem in the past when I would try to put money into savings on a regular basis. Access to it was far too easy and I would end up just transferring it right back into my checking when I wanted to buy something.

So I’m starting out with $275 ($250 + $25 bonus). Automatic deposits are set up for the 15th and end of the month so if I can stay the course and not touch the account, it should end up with $1775 by the end of the year. That’s not quite the 3 months of expenses that I would like it to be but I plan on being VERY aggressive in paying down my credit card debt.