Budgeting and Saving

Set up a household budget:

You may have heard it before, and it’s more important now than ever: creating—and following—a budget is the only sure way to truly take charge of your money. It’s the way you can track exactly where your money is going each and every month.

• Figure out what your needs are—where your money has to go each month (eg: mortgage, utility bills, etc.). Then, you can determine the places where you’d like your money to go. What’s important to you? Leisure activities? Vacation? Philanthropy?
• In addition to your basic payment needs and the more “fun” spending, be sure to think about saving for bigger ticket items or for retirement.
• Make sure to set up an emergency fund. Do you find that your entertainment budget is lower these days? It might be the perfect time to think about where you’d like that money to go instead. Channel it toward emergency-fund saving or another big savings opportunity.
• Find tools that can make much of your month-to-month money management automatic. Associated Bank’s “Trends” tool within online banking* is one that can help.
  • Trends puts the facts you need to know in an easily understandable graphical format, so you can better track and manage your funds. Use automated and customized categories to track spending, budgeting, as well as investing and savings. Integrate information on all your accounts into a single desktop view. You’re well on your way to better budgeting!

Save—with ease:

After you’ve figured out your budget, you’re ready to take the next step toward the future by saving, even if only small amounts at first!

Looking for a savings solution? One of the absolute easiest ways to save is to set up an automatic savings plan.

• Open a checking and a savings account.
• Set up direct deposit of your paycheck into your checking account.
• When your paycheck hits your account, schedule a portion of it to automatically deposit into your savings account.

And just like that, you can begin to save without giving it another thought!