In this day and age of spend, spend, spend it's hard to save a dime for the future. Everyone has at least one credit card and every single day a new credit card application or as most say, "junk mail" arrives at your home. To make saving even harder it seems that there's always an occasion to spend money, like Christmas, Easter, 4th Of July, Birthdays and on and on the "spending cycle" goes. So where does all that hard earned money of yours go? I bet it just seems to disappear month after month and all you have to show for it is a large credit card bill. But fear not, below are two great ways to get you started down the savings path.

But first the important thing about saving money is that you sock it away as soon as possible. Out of sight, out of mind! Another important thing is that you should sock it away in a high interest savings account. Why not make your money work for you? I mean you've worked for it so now it's time for your money to give you a little something back in return. One of the best ways to get a savings account with a high interest rate is to open a savings account online with a reputable bank. You can find online savings accounts that give you 4% to 5% interest rates on your money. Now that's a deal! Of course each high interest account comes with rules and stipulations and you must read the fine print, but all in all online savings accounts are the best place to stash your hard earned money for future use. Now I bet you're wondering how to round up and round down to save money? It's pretty simple actually so let me explain.

This isn't one of those pay yourself first ideas, it's actually a pay yourself all the time ideas. The main point here is that you're paying yourself a little here and a little there but as they say, "little things mean a lot", especially when it comes to saving money.

The first thing you need to do is "Round Down" your paycheck. It doesn't matter if it's weekly, bi-weekly or monthly you need to round it down. For example say your paycheck is for $783.00, you'd keep the $700.00 in your checking account but you'd have the other $83 electronically sent to your high interest savings account. You won't miss the money and before long you'll have a nest egg that's growing out of control. But you mustn't miss a paycheck, it's important to stay on schedule and always round down whether it's $1.00 or $99.00.

The second way to add more money to your high interest savings account is to "Round Up" every time you purchase something. Then you add the difference to your high interest account once more. For example say you must purchase a present for your friends birthday. The present sets you back $42.00. Now you round up to the nearest $10.00 level, so that would be $50.00. So you pretend you spent $50.00 and take that extra $8.00 and place it into your high yield savings account. You can round up by $5.00 or $10.00 increments, that keeps it pretty simple and you will end up saving a lot more money in your account. When rounding up you must keep track of how much you spend and at the end of the month transfer that amount from your checking to your high interest online banking account.

The key to rounding up and rounding down is that you do it religiously. If you forget to transfer money over you may end up spending it. If you get lazy and just stop doing it all together then you'll be stuck in the same boat once more, a lot of bills getting paid yet not a dime being paid to yourself. One way you can look at "Rounding Up" is that you're paying a fee to yourself for spending money. Sort of like paying interest on credit card payments but you're getting the money, not the credit card company.

Hopefully you're motivated to start saving money today, so open a high interest online savings account and start rounding up and down. After seeing how much you've actually saved in just a couple months you'll be very motivated to save more and realize that saving money really is easy and fun all at the same time.