No one disputes that saving is essential to live with a certain economic peace of mind, but continuing to cultivate this habit in a context of considerable rise in the prices of basic necessities and mortgages can be a titanic effort for families who are too indebted or have too much income. low. Even so, savings influencer Sara Ferrer (Valencia, 1984) assures that “every person who receives a salary should be able to save.”
“It is clear that there are extreme situations in which it is impossible, as is the case with households that have to feed themselves with a salary of 800 euros. But a family with two people working and earning mileurist salaries has to be able to save,” insists the author of Ahorra y virás. Financial education to survive inflation, recession and whatever comes (Random Comics), with illustrations by Soraya Gálvez.
The Valencian, who works as a tax advisor, has a legion of followers on social networks, where she shares financial knowledge in an intelligible and fun way: from tips to spend less on purchases and reduce the bill with the Treasury, through strategies that help to prepare a Christmas budget well and avoid the January cost, to recommendations for paying more in interest when repaying the mortgage.
“I consider savings as a fixed expense, that is, just as I pay the mortgage, I pay my savings,” explains Ferrer, who declares herself a follower of the concept “Pay yourself first” that George Samuel Clason defended in 1926 in the bestseller The Richest Man in Babylon. And he details that, as soon as he collects the payroll, he transfers an amount to an account without an associated debit or credit card.
Ferrer also details the best methods to achieve an emergency cushion with little effort. “Having savings is having security, peace of mind, so that tomorrow money is not a problem in your life,” he says. Among the numerous tactics that exist to achieve this goal, his favorite is the 52 weeks.
This system consists of saving an amount every week that varies gradually throughout the year. For example, you can start the first week with only 2 euros; the second, with 4 euros, and so on until reaching week 52, in which 104 euros should be deposited in the piggy bank. In total, if followed to the letter, the amount saved amounts to 2,756 euros per year.
However, Ferrer recognizes that in December, a month traditionally of great spending due to Christmas, it can be difficult for many families to divert 100 euros into savings each week. “And January is not a good month to get it either.” The good news, he clarifies, “is that this method is adaptable”, so, once the Christmas hangover is over, you can start saving the amount that would correspond to week 52 and therefore begin the challenge at the end. Thus, while in the first week 104 euros would be put into the savings bank, in the last week only two euros, although the result would be the same.
However, there is another method that is easier to apply in low-income households for which it is already a sacrifice to make ends meet. A rule that can also be useful to raise the money that will be allocated to a specific or short-term objective.
The penny method consists of saving one more penny every day that passes. Thus, the first contribution to the piggy bank will be one cent; the second, 2 cents; the third, 3 cents, and so on until reaching 3.65 euros that will be added on the last day of the year. If this rule is strictly followed, there should be 600 euros in the piggy bank on December 31. And if you start with 2 cents, 1,200 euros. Another variant of this method is to save a fixed amount every day.
“This method is known worldwide and my grandmother already did it with pesetas,” says Ferrer. It consists of choosing the coin you want – one euro, two euros or even 20 cents – and every time you have that coin between the purchase change, it must be kept in a jar and not used until it is full. However, it must be taken into account that if the two-euro one is chosen for this challenge, “less is saved because there are not so many in circulation.”
And what do you think of the famous Japanese Kakebo method, which consists of recording income and expenses in a notebook to identify which items to cut in order to comply with a previously set budget? The problem with this method, comments Ferrer, is that people “are usually too lazy to sit down to make a budget and analyze their accounts; “They don’t want to take an x-ray of their life.”
According to Ferrer, what often prevents us from achieving the much-needed savings cushion is that “many people tend to set very distant goals, so they end up giving up.” In this sense, he argues that starting “little by little”, without drastically cutting consumption, and seeing how the money saved increases is a good tactic to avoid losing motivation. In any case, setting “long-term goals” can work, such as reducing mortgage debt to a minimum.
Finally, Ferrer recalls that new technologies can be an ally for savings, since some banking applications allow the remaining cents of each purchase to be set aside up to the exact number – without decimals – in a second account automatically. For example, if when going to the supermarket the ticket amounts to 19.45 euros, the 55 cents that are missing up to 20 euros are what this system will transfer to the savings account.
