Q: What can I do to save money for emergencies?

A: Saving for emergencies can be difficult, because most people seem to find a way to spend any extra money they have, rather than save it. However, there are a few tricks you can use to make sure you have money on hand when your car breaks down or you face some other financial emergency.

First and foremost, hide your credit cards. You want to know where they are, but if you have trouble saving, a good way to set aside an emergency fund is to seal your credit cards in an envelope and put them somewhere difficult to reach. Then set up automatic bill payments for a few of your fixed, recurring expenses, and pay your credit card bills, in full, every month. This will help build your credit score and keep the full balance of your cards available for emergencies.

Another strategy is to open a Roth IRA (Individual Retirement Account). Unlike traditional IRAs, contributions to your Roth are not tax deductible. The good news is that you can have both a Roth IRA and a traditional 401(k), while you cannot pair a traditional IRA with a traditional 401(k), since they both have similar tax benefits. What's more, unlike with a traditional IRA or 401(k), you can use your Roth as an emergency savings account. That's because you can -- at any time and for any reason -- make withdrawals from your Roth IRA, so long as they do not exceed the amount you have put in. For example, if you contributed the maximum of $4,000 to your Roth in one year, and the size of your account grew to $4,500 due to good investments, you would be able to withdraw $4,000 (your contribution) without taxes or penalties, but you would not be able to withdraw the $500 in investment earnings. But best of all for people who have trouble saving, getting money out of your Roth is not easy. You have to fill out a lot of paperwork, which makes it less likely that you'll withdraw it for anything other than an emergency need.

A final tip: Try to avoid buying impulse items by enforcing a personal "24-hours-to-review" rule. For example, if you're at the store and you decide you can afford a new flat screen TV, don't buy it right then and there no matter how good of a deal the salesman makes it out to be. Instead, go home, do some research on the Internet, and really think it over for a day. It feels good to make big purchases, but the thrill of spending should not enter into the cost-benefit analysis of making an actual purchase -- give yourself some time, and this "high" will not fool you into buying things you don't need.

It is very important to have some access to cash or credit in the case of an emergency. People who don't have such access often fall victim to the payday loan and pawnshop industries, which typically charge interest rates as high as 350%! These consumers soon find themselves in a never-ending debt spiral, where they work all week to pay back their payday loans and then have to take out a new payday loan to meet their living expenses, ad infinitum. Having savings or available credit helps you avoid this trap.

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