1. Pay yourself back, with interest. If you have to tap your savings, aim to pay yourself back with interest. For instance, say you need to withdraw $250 of your savings and you figure it will take you two months to pay it back. At the end of two months, throw into your savings another $40 or so.

2. Moonlight for money: Figure out what you could do in your spare time to bring in some extra cash. Then take some or all of that found money and save it toward an important financial goal. Here are five moonlighting jobs and what they typically pay: kid's party clown ($75 an hour and up); house-painter ($13 an hour); word processor ($8.45 an hour); pet or house-sitter ($5.50 an hour); and baby sitter ($5.25 an hour).

3. Earn a higher return on your savings: The higher the interest rate on your savings, the less you have to salt away each month to meet your goals. One way to earn more interest on your savings is to put your money in a CD or bond with a longer term than you had originally planned. Another idea: Make your annual IRA contribution every January instead of at the start of the following year. That way your savings will earn an extra 12 months' interest tax-deferred.

4. Deposit your stash where you can't easily get at it. The biggest enemy of savers may very well be the automated teller machine, or ATM. Sure it's convenient and easy to use. But that's just the problem. Your ATM lets you have instant access to your money any time of the day or night, and the more you withdraw, the less you have left in your savings. So try to limit your ATM visits to one a week. If you are saving for a short-term goal and like the idea of keeping your money at a federally insured institution, consider CDs, which carry penalties of up to six months' interest on early withdrawals.

Those lock-up penalties actually serve as a useful deterrent against unnecessary savings withdrawals. If you are saving for a longer-term goal, take advantage of a tax-deferred savings plan. It will also discourage you from pulling money out by slapping you with a 10% penalty for withdrawals before age; in some cases you won't be able to withdraw cash at all unless you can prove financial hardship.
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