Looking to save money? Join the crowd with our 5 money saving tips

By Gina Gallagher | Citizens Contributor

Growing up, my parents often warned me, “Don’t follow the crowd” — advice I’ve repeatedly shared with my own two children. Lately, however, I’ve realized that sometimes following the crowd can be a good thing (no disrespect, Mom and Dad). At least, when it comes to finding solutions to everyday challenges like saving money. I’ve struggled with this in my own life and often see my adult daughters waging their own battles with saving.

Whether it involves saving for unplanned expenses or planned events like retirement, finding money to save is one of the biggest financial challenges people face today. To help provide some solutions to this problem, we recently took a unique approach: we followed the crowd. Or, more specifically, we employed a growing technique known as crowdsourcing. As the name would imply, crowdsourcing is the process of soliciting input from a large number of people to uncover solutions to problems and generate creative ideas.

As part of this exercise, we asked our Citizens colleagues to submit their favorite/best saving tip. More than 552 tips were submitted during the month of January! Colleagues were asked to upvote their favorite tips via an internal bank portal to get to the top 10 tips. It didn’t end there, though, because we wanted to vet our customers and friends and ask what tips they thought were the best. So we put the top 10 saving tips to the test by polling our followers on Facebook and Twitter. These polls ran for three weeks in February 2020.

To uncover real and practical solutions to the age-old problem of saving money, we called on our social media followers to vote on our colleagues’ best saving tips.

The result of this colleague/customer crowd collaboration were these five practical, real, and effective saving tips from everyday Citizens:

1. Implement small changes to start saving

At the age of 21 and on her own for the first time, Christine Aleo, a Citizens branch manager in Hannaford, NY, knew she needed to get better with money. With rent and other expenses, she was forced to live on a small budget that left no room for saving toward her financial goals. That is, until she received a sign one day — literally. “I was in a coffee shop and I saw a giant sign that said, ‘What would you do with $2.74?’” She quickly did the math and realized that if she put aside $2.74 every day, at the end of the year she would have $1,000. “It’s the most basic way to save,” said Christine, who shares this tip in financial literacy classes she teaches.

2. Take advantage of tools like direct deposit

Daniel Kadis, a relationship manager in Solon, OH, is adamant about teaching his two young children a lesson he didn’t get in his youth: the importance of saving. “I didn’t learn how to save until I was in my 30s,” said Kadis. Today, however, Kadis has mastered the art for himself and his customers, whom he encourages to take advantage of a valuable tool: direct deposit.

“Often people come into the branch thinking they don’t make enough money to save,” said Kadis. He encourages them to have even a small amount of money direct deposited into a savings account each month. Then, as their income rises, they can gradually increase the amount. His advice has hit home, too, as his kids have heeded their father’s lesson, putting aside portions of their allowance to save.

3. Evaluate your spending habits

In her 20 years at Citizens, Melissa Burke, a branch manager in Amherst, NH, has had the opportunity to meet and learn from a lot of savvy savers. As a single mother who must budget carefully, she was struck by one tip she received from a customer: no-spend days. The process of having a no-spend day was, however, harder than she thought … at first. “I had to stop and think about everything I bought.” It eventually helped her to really focus on where her money was going and plan ahead. “If I didn’t have gas in my car on a no-spend day, I couldn’t go out.” This prompted her to budget her money wisely. She’s become so adept at non-spending days that she now has several per week, and often shares this tip with her customers.

4. Find ways to cut your spending

As the branch manager in Rochester, NY, Nick Failing is passionate about maximizing saving for the short and long term, although he admits it wasn’t always that way. “When I started with the bank at age 21, I was foolish with money.” His career at Citizens has helped change that. Both his job and encouragement from his managers motivated him to not only save money, but also be a catalyst that helps others to do the same.

“I actually learned a simple lesson: You don’t have to dance every time the music comes on.” For him, that meant learning to limit activities that weren’t in his budget to avoid overspending. “If my friends were going out for dinner and drinks, I learned that I could still join them, but could save money by eating at home first,” said Failing.

5. Start your retirement savings plan early

When it comes to reasons not to save, David Gonzalez, a licensed relationship manager in Charleroi, PA, has pretty much heard them all. Often, he meets people who are saddled with student loan debt and don’t believe they can afford to save or even need to think about retirement. “They’ll often say, ‘I have 40 years to retire’”, said Gonzalez. In response, he reminds them of the importance of early saving and taking advantage of a significant employee benefit: matching 401(k) contributions. “I tell them that when employers match, they are essentially giving you free money.”

While saving money can seem like a real and difficult challenge, it isn’t as hard as you think. In fact, we can help you reach your savings goals with the Citizens Savings Tracker™¹, dedicated to helping you stay on track of your financial goals.