Day #4: Automate Your Savings

This is Day #4 of “25 Days to Healthier Finances”, a series of blog posts where Frugal Pinoy readers and myself work on 1 task a day to make our financial lives better. Please stay tuned for the next installment of this series, which will be up tomorrow.

Here’s today’s installment:

For some people, saving is painful. When our paychecks arrive, most of us are excited to spend it. Which brings us to today’s task…

Today’s Task: Automate your Savings.

What does this mean? Basically, you’ll set up your bank accounts in such a way that a specific amount gets paid automatically from your payroll account to a savings account. Doing so has the following benefits:

• Ease. You don’t need to remember to save. “I forgot to save this month” won’t be an excuse again.
• Consistency. Saving becomes regular, and before you know it you’ve built a well-padded emergency fund for yourself and your family.
• Lessens temptation. Since money is automatically deducted from your payroll account, every time you look at your balance, your savings won’t be there anymore. You can’t say to yourself “I can buy a new iPod since I still have X amount in my account.”

Even if you’re only automating P500 worth of savings each month, its still better than nothing.

How to start: First, call the bank where you have your payroll account. (If you don’t know where to find their number, I’ve listed the phone numbers of major banks below, so you have fewer excuses to avoid calling them up.) Ask them if they have a special account that automatically deducts a specific amount from your payroll account each month and transfers it to your savings account.

If their answer is yes (it usually is), ask them how to activate this feature or how to open this kind of account. Also ask a list of the requirements needed and the actions you need to take.

Here are the customer support phone numbers of major Philippine banks:

• Banco De Oro . (+632) 631-8000 or email at callcenter@bdo.com.ph
• BPI. 89-100 for Metro Manila, 1-800-188-89100 for domestic toll-free calls (where available.
• China Bank. (632) 885-5555 or through their online form (I’m not sure they check it, though, as I sent a query last month and they havent replied)
  
• Metrobank. (632) 860-3000. For provincial areas, 1-800-10-860-3000.
• RCBC. (632) 894-9577, Domestic Toll Free# 1-800-10000-7222
• Security Bank. (632) 867-6788
• UCPB. (632) 811-9111
• Unionbank. 84-186

Have you already automated your savings? Do you have a similar system set up?

Image by Taluda from sxc.hu