September. The month when financial websites admit you f*cked up your New Year's resolutions and try to sell you the same garbage that didn't work nine months ago.
The tools in question: budgeting apps and high-yield savings accounts. Revolutionary technology. One tracks where your money goes. The other pays you 4% interest while inflation runs at 3.8%. You're getting wealthy at roughly the speed of continental drift.
Here's what happened. You set a savings goal in January. Maybe $5,000. Maybe $10,000 if you were feeling ambitious after three drinks on New Year's Eve. You downloaded a budgeting app. You linked your accounts. You watched it categorize your Chipotle purchases as "Dining Out" in a little pie chart that made you feel poor in a new and digital way.
Then you stopped opening the app. February, maybe March if you had discipline. The push notifications kept coming. You ignored them like you ignore your check engine light.
Now it's September and some website is telling you there's still time. Get back on track. Build a savings plan. As if the problem was never having a plan. As if you failed because you lacked access to a smartphone application that rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar.
The high-yield savings account pays 4.5% if you're lucky. You'll save $800 this year if you can scrounge together $200 a month for the next four months. That's $36 in interest. Enough to buy yourself a congratulatory dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, where you'll spend $40 and restart the cycle.
The real tool that helps people save money is called making more money, but that one never makes the listicle.
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