If You Have Less Than $5K in Savings, These 5 Steps Will Get You There

When you log into your bank account, how do your savings look? Probably not as good as you’d like. It always seems like an uphill battle to build (and keep) a decent amount in savings.

But what if your car breaks down, or you have a sudden medical bill?

If you have less than $5,000 in savings, you have work to do. We’re not judging — we don’t roll like that. We’re here to help. We just don’t want you to have to sell those Elvis-Presley-signed velvet pants you inherited just to pay some lousy plumbing bill. Those pants are sweet.

Try these five tips to get the ball rolling, and start building up your savings so you can breathe a little easier.

1. Let This Company Pay off Your Credit Cards

When you think about how much debt you have, you might feel a little anxious.

That’s where a company like Fiona can be helpful. It can help you find personalized lending options to refinance or consolidate your debt to potentially save thousands of dollars in interest.

Fiona will show you all the lenders willing to help you pay off your credit card and eliminate the headache of paying bills by allowing you to make one payment each month.

You can borrow up to $100,000 (no collateral needed) and compare interest rates, which start at 4.99%. The idea is to secure a loan at a lower interest rate, potentially helping you save thousands. Repayment plans range from 24 to 84 months.

Take, for example, Katherine, who faced $12,000 in credit card debt. Holding her back? The 15.24% interest rate. By refinancing with a 5%-interest, seven-year personal loan, she saved $12,000 in interest.

If she’d kept on the same road, she would have paid something like $14,000 in interest alone over 25 years. Yikes.

So even if you’re simply curious about what’s out there, know that checking rates on Fiona won’t hurt your credit score — and can probably save you in interest.

Money you don’t spend on that interest is money you can put toward your savings. Then it can earn interest for you. Switcheroo!

2. Get Control of Your Money With a Budget

Budget. There. We said it, and it wasn’t so bad, was it? Budgeting can be a little scary, but it doesn’t have to be. And… we all need it.

The first step is to find out how you’re doing now. Luckily, you can have a financial assistant right in your pocket to help you out.

The Empower app is a powerful budgeting tool that can help you figure out how you’re spending your money and develop a budgeting plan to keep you on track.

Link the app to your bank accounts, and it will track your spending. It will also categorize your spending, so you can see exactly where you are overdoing it. That’s right: It will show you just how many times you went out for dinner because you didn’t want to do the dishes.

Set a monthly spending limit and the app will show you a graph that can tell you in one snapshot just how you’re doing for the month. Are you over the line or under it? It’s that simple to see how you’re doing so you can adjust your spending accordingly.

Sometimes a little accountability is all you need. Quit tweeting, and use your phone for something better, like finally learning how to budget.

Once you have your finances under control, it will be a lot easier to see where you can find a little extra to slide over to your savings account.

3. Be the Change You Want by Investing Change

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just start saving without even really trying? You can.

If you like easy, consider starting an investment account through Acorns.

You can start small and stack up change over time with its “round-up” feature. That means if you spend $10.23 at the grocery store, 77 cents gets dropped into your Acorns account.

Then, the app does the whole investing thing for you.

The idea is you won’t miss the digital pocket change, and the automatic savings stack up faster than you’d think. For example, we reviewed how Penny Hoarder Dana Sitar was able to save at a rate of $420 a year!

At that rate, you could set aside $1,000 in about two and a half years — without trying.

The app is $1 a month for balances under $1 million, and you’ll get a $5 bonus when you sign up.

Saving doesn’t get any easier than that.

4. Let a Robot Negotiate Your Bills Down

Why aren’t you saving more? Because you have a lot of bills, right?

The price of internet — and cable, if you’re still into that kind of thing — certainly isn’t decreasing. If anything, prices are steadily climbing.

And if you’ve had to chat with a representative from your internet/cable company recently, you know how long you can sit on hold.

That’s why it’s time to call in a robot. The negotiation bot Trim will negotiate your cable or internet bills down for you.

It works with Comcast, Time Warner, Charter and other major providers.

You can sign up simply with Facebook or your email address. Then, upload a PDF of your most recent bill, and Trim’s AI-powered system gets to work. If at first it doesn’t succeed, it’ll keep negotiating until it can save you some money.

Also, if you have any outages, Trim believes you deserve a credit, and it’ll handle that for you. Trim takes 25% of the savings tab, and you get the rest.

When you save money on bills, you have money to put into savings. This is easy, folks.

5. Get a Better Savings Account

Are you getting a decent interest rate on your savings? Probably not. How about fees? They might be stripping your hard-earned money away as fast as you can stash it.

It’s time for a better savings account.

Chime is an online-only bank account that offers some unique features other banks haven’t caught on to yet.

Consider:

• Chime doesn’t charge overdraft fees, monthly maintenance fees, foreign transaction fees or minimum balance fees.
• Chime customers have access to thousands of fee-free MoneyPass ATMs around the country.
• When you set your payroll up for direct deposit to your Chime spending account, your paycheck will post two days before payday, giving you more time to plan, save and pay the bills.
• You can open an easy-to-access, connected savings account. It allows you to automate your savings with features like the round-up tool, which will round up your transactions to the nearest dollar and dump the change into savings.
• Its mobile app boasts more than 2,000 five-star reviews, making managing money super accessible via iPhone or Android.
• It has a “Pay Friends” feature, so you don’t have to mess with cash, math or other apps to split the bill.

Plus, it takes about five minutes to sign up. The bank verifies your personal information, takes note that you’re at least 18 or older, then you’re good to go. No opening deposit required.

For an account that’ll help you strike up savings — and that’ll pay you two days early — check out Chime.

Think Small, but Dream Big

It’s tempting to just shrug and say, “I can’t afford to have a savings account.” Sure, you think you’ll plop that $1,500 tax-refund check into savings. But those big windfalls also come with big temptations.

If you can find a way to save just $5 each day, you’ll be $1,825 richer in a year.

Having $5,000 in savings isn’t some magic number, but it’s a great starting point. Use these five tips and you’ll be amazed how fast you can get there. You’ll sleep better knowing you have that cushion.

Then, you’ll start dreaming of $10,000. Am I right?

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.