Most Americans today don’t save enough money. In fact, over 70% of Americans don’t save what they should save. Why is this a big number? It’s simple. People like to spend money and you could be in that crowd. The big question you need to ask yourself is how you exactly everyone saves money.

Saving money isn’t hard and in fact, if you just save a little bit a month from an early age, that money will go a long ways once retirement comes up. Just take a pizza for example. If your family doesn’t eat out at least once a month, that’s fifty dollars right there that could possibly dip into a mutual fund, stock, savings account, etc. I think you get the picture.

Let’s say you’re not a disciplined person with your money. A nice and easy way you can save money is creating a “fake” bill each month and billing yourself. Treat this bill as if it were your mortgage bill, gas, etc. Instead of this money going to the corporations, it will go into a separate savings account.

The process is quite simple. Start up a money market account anywhere in your neighborhood or online. Every time you pay your savings bill, the money will go directly into this account. The reason we pick a money market account is for a few reasons.

A money market account only allows so many withdrawals per month. So if you’re having that spending temptation, you will remember that bank will slap on a banking fee for taking that money out. This might encourage you to back down on the spending a little bit.

If you do decide to go with an online money market, you will find it takes a few business days to get back to your money. If you’re an impulse buyer, this is great. Instead of having the bank right around the corner where you can get the money at any time, you won’t be able to access this money until a few business days. By the time it got there, your impulse buying distinctions would probably be gone.

Even if you’re a disciplined saver, it’s always nice to be organized. This is why a fake “saving” bill would help you out. Every time you made a payment on your bill, you could file it away and look back at it at the end of the year to see exactly how much you have saved.

Savings in the long run is completely up to you. As bad as it sounds, sometimes you need to think long-term because you don’t want to work the rest of your life. Thinking about today can shave a few years off of your working life!