According to a recent report by Keynote Systems, leading provider of online customer experience research services, three banks that offer best customer experience for online banking services are National City, Washington Mutual and Bank of America. So if you have decided to give online banking a try you might want to check out one of these banks first.

They were chosen out of a group of ten banks which included: The Bank of America, Bank One, Chase, Citibank, National City, Sun Trust, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo.

Now that you have checked out banks to save money on your checking account, do yourself a favor and check out a savings account. If you don’t open one up, you will always be able to give yourself a reason not to save.

I happen to use ING Direct. Their savings account has a 2.35% APY a year. It is highest one that I have been able to find. Although it is an online bank, it is attached to my checking account so that I can transfer money to it when I need to.

The thing I like most about ING Direct is low minimums. If you are like me and need to start small, there are no minimum deposits to worry about. You can open your savings account for $25.00 or less.

Make it a point to save all of your change in a jar all month long and deposit it into your account once a month. It really does work. We paid for both of our children’s birthday parties this year just by depositing our spare change into bank that way every month.

Also if you are leery of stock like I am (we lost some money in market a couple of years ago), than you can open up CDs. If you ladder CDs (open a 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 4 year and 5 year at same time). It is almost same as dollar cost averaging with stock market if you keep adding to them over time and then keep rolling them over. There are also no minimums on CDs with ING Direct.

Many other banks have minimums of $500.00 $1,000.00 and more to open CDs. Their rates are a little better but if cannot meet minimums at this time, this is way to go. It will help you to make a start.

You can always transfer them to a bank with better CD rates once you have accumulated enough money to meet their minimums. As they mature each year you can transfer them one at a time to a bank with a higher rate.

If opening a savings account is not an option you want to explore right now, see if your employer has an employee stock option plan or a 401k you can take advantage of.

You can have money taken out of your check, usually before taxes, and many employers will match what you put in up to a certain amount. That’s a 50% return on your investment. You won’t come close to that in stock market.

If you have been telling yourself that you have time, eventually you will start saving, stop kidding yourself. We all know that tomorrow never comes, life happens, things come up if we keep allowing them to.

I used to tell myself same thing and something would always come up. It is not going to change until you decide to pay yourself first and make it a priority.

Pretend you are paying a bill that has to be paid then put that amount into your savings account. Save your raise when you receive it. Forget that you got it and put that amount toward your 401k if you have one or put that amount in your savings account every pay period. As you pay off your debts, put part of money you used to use for your debts in your savings.

There many ways to save. Cutting expenses, clipping coupons eat one less lunch or dinner out a week, cut out one cup of coffee out a day and more. Make it a habit to look for ways to save just like you make it a habit to save. The two habits go hand in hand.

None of us know if Social Security will still be there when we need it. If you don’t make saving some money every month a priority and a habit now, you might just find yourself with only your savings or lack there of and goodwill of relatives to depend on when you retire.

Don’t wait for that. Check your budget now and see where you can squeeze a few extra dollars from. This is one habit you will eventually be grateful you picked up.

Teresa Kaufman © 2004-2005. All rights reserved < a href="http://www.yourdollarsandsense-budgets.com" rel="nofollow" target="resource window"> Personal Budgets to Fit Your Lifestyle, Needs and Wants

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Using good old loan calculator on www.nodebtever.com we can see that a standard $100,000 loan at 5% over 25 years will cost you over $175,000. That's a big $75k in interest. What about same loan over 40 years at 4%? That's cheaper, right? WRONG! You'll pay over $200,000 over period - an extra $25k or so! And if interest rates stay at 5%, add another $30k to make $55k of extra costs for you!

A repayment mortgage will suffer an additional penalty on a longer loan - amount of capital you pay off each month is adjusted to take account of fact that it now runs over 40 years, not 25, and this means you build up equity in your property far slower than in a shorter loan.

So what's advice? If you can't afford a house on a 'traditional' setup, rent. The price will undoubtedly come back into line with wages at some point. If you already have a mortgage, overpay when you can - difference over years can amount to TENS of thousands of dollars!