You need to ask yourself questions like this:

• Do I need to have it?
• Can I live without it?
• What are the most important things for me to have
• What do I really need?

When you understand your goals, you can start to implement your savings strategy.

Here is one way in which you can do it.

1) Make a list of 5-10 important things you want to achieve in your life. This could be absolutely anything from owning a Mustang convertible to skiing.

2) Assign monetary value to the things you want to achieve. In case of a Mustang, it could be $30,000. Or if you want to save a healthy sum for your retirement, work out how much you can afford to save in your budget.

3) Now is the hard part, saving itself. If you have a job, you may want to consider getting freelance income in order to get you to your savings goal.

It is important to always think of your savings goals in monthly terms. Instead of thinking this year “I will save X amount of pounds”, think this year, “there are 12 months where in which I will save X amount each month on a specified day for my goals.”

• You know your money is safe for a certain amount of time
• There is a fixed rate of interest on your savings
• You can’t touch it, so no way of impulse spending

The cons

• It can be locked away from any time from 5 years to 30. This is not practical if an emergency happens and you need to release the liquid assets.
• Different banks have different minimum investments that they expect. This may not be useful for you if you don’t have a lot of money saved away to begin with.

Thoughts

I can see the appeal of fixed rate savings bonds. They would be practical if you are saving for a long-term goal, such as if you want to save for a round-the-world-trip in five years time or you want to save for your wedding. What do you think?

This looks like a good deal from West Bromwich.

• You need a minimum of £1K but…
• …you get branch access
• The rate iss 2.92%

How this could work

I think if you are a student or have recently graduated and have an overdraft to pay off (that is interest free), you could put £1K into the account and look at the interest grow, and then use it to pay off the overdraft.

Do you think this is a good savings account?

My pension pot is small at the very least, but there is something comforting about knowing that it is exists (for now).

Here are some providers:

• Standard Life: £20 a month. This works out to be £120 per year.
• Aviva: Also £20 a month.

What do you think? Would you do a personal pension? I think they are a good idea. If anything, it makes your portfolio look more varied.

Pathetic I know but at least it was still something!!

I really need to giddy up with my saving because it is just paltry sums I am putting away!

My £10 off voucher if we spent more than £30 meant that my friend and I spent £10.35 on a pizza, drink, and a dessert.

I must say I am proud that I learning the usage and importance of hanging onto vouchers! Does anyone else use vouchers?

I can see that I have the following patterns:

• I’m an impulse buyer. I will randomly decide to buy Company magazine, as I did today (argh!)
• I buy chocolate when I’m at university but I buy it less on the weekend.

Sometimes, I wish I could just stop spending money!

So now, I have around £39 saved.

It’s not a massive amount of money but it is something. I just kept putting the money away and now I have £39! It’s exciting.

The next things I have to do are my March debt payments for my credit card, overdraft and my ISA savings account so I will do them on Friday, the last day of February.

My pension is really important to me and this global crisis is making it lose fuck loads of value, which is pissing me off a great deal.

If I put £10 each month for 5 years, I would have £600 in my pension plan.

This is not a bad look at all considering many young people do not have pensions. I am going to try and put the minimum payment of £18 in my account each month to make sure that I have some sort of security.

The financial crisis has meant my pension worth has plummeted to £232.

This is disheartening when it was around £280 earlier this year.

I called up my bank to enquire about my student overdraft. As you may know, my student overdraft is at its limit and the current balance sits at a tonk -£2, 049.

However, the bank explained the following:

• I am hopeful to start my MA course in September. They said that when I finish that course, I will then have one year interest free on my overdraft. So that means that I will have until 2010 most likely to pay off the full £2,049. Anything can happen in those times but I am deeply relieved

I would go to sleep thinking about how much I needed to pay to pay off the student overdraft and my credit card. Now, those sleepless nights can start to be combatted.

And I am just so relieved that I have more time now. So technically if all goes well in life and I go to my MA in September, that will mean from this month until July 2010 for instance, I will have basically 24 months to pay off the £2,049, which works out to be around £85 or something pence a month.

I have broken them down into several options of how to pay back this money:

Option 1: £85 each month x 24 months

Option 2: £100 each month = 20 months to pay off.

I truly could not afford to give more than that when I am going to be a student.

I will work really hard to stick to the plan but it will be difficult because I truly want to start saving dosh.

This means I will have to now start looking for a part-time London job for september.

What are your thoughts?