When you live paycheck to paycheck or carry a lot of debt saving is one of the hardest things to do.

Reading other blogs or following the advice of other finance writers, savings is a simple formula, make more, spend less. I remember watching a Friends episode where Monica lost her job and her father told told her that she should be fine if she followed his advice. Just put 10 percent of your income in the bank.

If you pay yourself first you will have less impulse to buy anything, after all if you have zero in the bank you can’t actually spend it. But what if every last penny is accounted for. How do you save, for an emergency fund, for retirement, for some big purchase that you know is coming up.

Budget First, Cut Spending Second

There are many methods to save. Budgeting is probably the first step. Cut where you can, take that $5 you spend at the coffee shop and put it into a savings account, but allow yourself to splurge once in a while.

The first step to saving is to build an emergency fund. Many finance specialists will say have at least $1000 in a high yield savings account (HYSA) and then begin to pay off debt. Psychologically for me it took more than that to start really paying off debt.

Again, how can you build up to $1000 in a short amount of time? Look around your house for things to sell, maybe start a side hustle, put all your change in a jar at the end of the day, and by the end of the month deposit that in the bank.

Of course there are some apps that round up every purchase to the nearest, dollar, or even to the nearest half dollar and you would be amazed at how quickly that can add up.

My normal checking account moves fifty cents for every transaction made. If I make 10 purchases over the course of a weekend, the bank will deposit $5 in my savings account. This adds about $60 to my savings per month. That is just a small amount but it adds an additional amount to my savings that I do not have to think about.

Additional Investment Apps

Acorns is another app that works to invest spare change from your checking account. It is essential a robo-advisory that can be used to invest in your nest egg but it can be slow and the fees can be high if your balance is low.

There is also SoFi which is similar to Acorns but the fees are a lot less. SoFi is fairly new to the market so there is a limited track record, however the reviews on other sites such as NerdWallet has been pretty promising.

There are a few other ways to invest small savings and we will go through the apps in a different post but many of the larger investment firms are catering to small invests.

Whatever your method is, saving is key to beginning the road to financial recovery. When I put my mind to it and cut my spending I can save quite a bit of money, but like anything it takes discipline.