My Savings Has Been Wiped Clean; How Can I Replenish It?

Q: The last few months have been tough on my finances, and I’ve been forced to use my savings. My emergency fund and savings account are zero. Now that my financial situation is starting to improve, I’d like to start building these up again. But how do I replenish my savings?

A: Watching savings that took you years to build up disappear in just a few months can be disheartening, but you’ve made the right choice. Using emergency funds to survive prolonged unemployment is the best way to make it through financial hardship. If your savings are depleted, though, you’ll want to start rebuilding as soon as possible.

How Do I Replenish My Savings?

Set a goal

Before getting started on saving up money, it’s a good idea to establish a tangible goal. What’s your magic number? You can try to recover the value of the savings lost or start smaller, with a more attainable goal. Bear in mind that experts recommend having funds to cover three to six months’ worth of living expenses set aside in an emergency fund or savings account.

Review your budget and trim your spending

A good place to start finding savings is by carefully reviewing your spending for ways to cut back. Look for expenses that can make a difference in a monthly budget without dramatically affecting your quality of life. Think about subscriptions or services that are rarely used, a dining-out budget that can be scaled back, and expensive recreational activities that can be swapped with freebies. There’s no need to live like you’re broke, but stripping your budget of some extras can give you the boost of cash you need each month to build up your savings again.

Find a side hustle

Another great way to land extra funds is through a side job. There are many ways to pad a wallet without a major investment of time. Some options include taking surveys on sites like Survey Junkie and Swagbucks and doing gig work for companies like Uber, DoorDash, and Rover.

Sell your old treasures

If you’ve spent part of the COVID-19 lockdown giving your house a deep cleaning, you may have unearthed some forgotten treasures that can turn into easy moneymakers. You can sell old clothing on ThredUp, unwanted jewelry on Worthy.com, make good money off your unwanted furniture through Chairish, sell or trade unused sports equipment on Swap Me Sports, and sell kids clothing and toys on Kid to Kid. Use the cash you earn from these sales to jumpstart your new nest egg.

Make a plan

Once you have a goal in place for building your savings, and you’ve maximized the possible monthly contributions toward savings each month, it’s time to create a plan. Map out a timeline of how long it’ll take to reach your goal when putting away as much as possible each month. Remember: the more aggressively you save now, the sooner you’ll reach your goal.

Start saving

It’s time to put the plan into action!

The best way to ensure regular savings happens each month is to make it automatic. You can set up an automatic monthly transfer from your Focus Federal Credit Union Checking Account to your Focus Federal Credit Union [Share/Savings] Account on a designated day of the month. You may want to have the transfer go through several days after you receive your monthly salary, or it might work out better to put a smaller amount of money into savings each week. Give us a call at 4052301328 to discuss your options.

Put unexpected windfalls into savings

To speed up the process of rebuilding depleted savings, you may want to resolve to put unexpected windfalls into an emergency fund or savings account. This can include tax refunds, a work bonus, and gift money. Earmarking future windfalls for savings can shorten the amount of time spent cutting corners.

Rebuilding an emergency fund and savings account from the bottom up isn’t easy. It takes commitment, hard work, and the ability to keep a long-term goal in mind; however, the security that comes from knowing you have a safety cushion to fall back on in case of a financial setback will make this goal worth the effort many times over.

So, how do you replenish your savings? Dedication and some financial know-how will get you back on track in no time!