College Money

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That first car may still be a few months – or even a few years – away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to save money for a car right now. Besides the ability to buy a car, saving bucks will teach you how to manage money wisely throughout your life. But for now, just think about how sweet it will be to drive you and your friends to school every day or the movies every Friday.

There are three basic principles involved with knowing how to save money for a car; generate income, spend wisely and save big. We will go through each of these principles so you can learn the best strategies and path to success.

Keep in mind as you read through that your financial abilities are strictly up to you. If you want a car, you have the power to make it happen with some savvy financial finagling.

1. Generate Income
If you’re going to save money for a car, you’re going to  have to generate some income from somewhere. So the first thing you may want to do is  start up your own neighborhood business, walking dogs, shoveling snow, mowing grass or babysitting. You might be pleasantly surprised at how much income you can bring in from these odd jobs and you will learn a thing or two about entrepreneurship at the same time. There are loads of other ways for you to generate the money that you need to save for your car.

For example, you can sign up at a bunch of freelancing sites on the Internet to completee odd jobs for people to make money. Some site that you can sign up at include guru.com, rentacoder.com, scriptlance.com, ifreelance.com and many, many others.You don’t have to be a genius to find jobs at these site. All you need is the desire and drive to  make money.

On these sites you’ll find all kinds of freelancing jobs that you can do – some skilled and some unskilled.  Plus, you can find lots of other ideas  here at College Money Making Ideas and other sites across the Internet on how to generate money for your new wheels.

2. Spend Wisely
The best way to understand exactly where your money is going is to keep close track of your spending. While it may seem silly to record every trip to Starbucks or McDonald’s, you will be amazed at just how revealing that spreadsheet will be. You may find that you are spending the equivalent of a full tank of gas on frivolous non-essentials that you can easily live without every week. This knowledge may inspire you to spend less – by renting a movie with friends instead of heading to the theatre or forgoing your afternoon French fry habit in favor of saving a bit of dough every day. Getting in the habit of living under your means (spending less money than you make), will be a lesson you will benefit from for the rest of your life.

3. Save Big
So where does all that savings go? Into a savings account, of course. Check this out – open a savings account at your neighborhood bank (many will offer accounts to students with no minimum balance requirement). You will probably get a bank book to keep track of deposits and withdrawals. Print off a picture of a totally cherry auto that you can attach to the front of your bank book. This will serve as a reminder every time you get tempted to take money out of your account as to why the cash is in the bank in the first place. For added incentive, see if you can talk the parents into matching your savings deposits dollar for dollar. Remind them how much you will learn about company retirement plans with this simple matching program.

Saving for a car may seem like the impossible dream right now, but you can make it happen.  By generating income, spending wisely and saving big, those wheels will be parked in your driveway before you know it!