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Money Matters

How much of my income should I save?

 

Have you ever wondered how much you should be saving each paycheck? We take a look at some easy ways to supercharge your savings and figure out what percentage of your income you should be putting away.

How much should I save each week or month?

Whether you get paid weekly or monthly, it all depends on how much you earn.

There’s a popular trick called the 50/30/20 budget split and it’s an easy way of working out how much you should save and how much you should spend. Start by dividing your income into three parts:

  • 50% of your salary is for your basic living expenses like housing, food and power bills
  • 30% is for your wants like restaurants, streaming sites and gym memberships
  • 20% should go into savings.

So, if you make $1000 a week, that’s $500 for all your living expenses, $300 for the fun stuff and you’ll save the leftover $200.

For those who like to feel super secure, you might think saving half your income is a good idea. Ultimately it depends on how much you earn and what you’re comfortable with.

Tips for how to save more money every month

Looking for some life hacks to kick your savings into overdrive? Here’s a handy list to help you hit your goals.

  • Try meal prepping to have your lunch and dinner sorted for the week so you can avoid those last-minute takeaway meals
  • Keep an eye out for supermarket sales and search for discount codes when online shopping
  • Make your coffee at home – it’s a small expense, but one that definitely adds up when you drink one or more coffees daily
  • Leave a little more time and walk to your destination where possible
  • Cancel any subscriptions you signed up for but never use
  • Set up automatic transfers to your savings account on the days you get paid.

Tools to help you save

There’s heaps of perks when you’re a ubank customer. Here’s some of our tools and features which could help boost your savings:

  • Get bonus interest on all your Save accounts with ubank (including shared Save accounts). All you need to do is deposit at least $500 each month into any of your Spend, Bills or Save accounts and you’ll get bonus interest on a combined balance of up to $250K. Increasing your savings can get a whole lot easier when you have a savings account with compound interest.
  • Open up to 10 Save accounts and set individual savings targets on any of them. For example, you could have one account for a house deposit, one for an overseas trip and one for emergencies. Tell us when you want to hit your savings target, and we’ll come up with a plan to get you there.
  • We’ll let you connect your other accounts from over 140 financial institutions in our app or online banking so it’s all in the one place. Our total savings graph makes it even easier to visualise how much you’ve saved across the board.

At the end of the day, how much you save each week, and how you like to save is totally up to you. Saving isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it.