High. Yield. Savings. Nobody ever put me on game. But I am intrinsically curious on ways to make my money work for me. I’d imagine this is something all people either think of or have thought of as a fleeting thought. For me, I thought making my money work for me meant I needed a hell of a lot of money to begin. To some extent, that may be true, but start with where you are. With a high yield savings account. 

I opened one of these accounts thinking sketchily about how I was going to make anything… until you do the math and actually see it in work. I believed and thought constantly, “what’s the catch.” UNTIL: I got very clear in my mind that banks want to borrow my money so they can then lend it out and pay me a small commission of what they are charging to re-loan it out. No catch. Cash out when you need to. But while it’s sitting, I may as well benefit. You should too. Especially if you have savings sitting in a place that’s not yielding you much in return. Seems like banks are in a place currently where they are giving funds away these days, so again, if you’re able to take advantage, do it! I did two things at the beginning of this year. (1) I opened a CD with a credit union & (2) I opened an AMEX HYS account. I recently checked the HYS where I deposited $5,000 and saw that I made $14. May sound small to you but for me, I just made $14 by literally doing nothing. THIS is passive income at play. THIS is what I want to do consistently on a larger scale. The road to financial freedom is indeed going to take hard work, but it also requires smart decisions. Here’s my basic 3 step plan for the next 24 months:

1. Pay off all credit card debt – I won’t get in to this. It’s debatable for most folks but for me, I just don’t like paying someone to let me borrow money unless it’s an investment that makes sense to me (i.e. a home loan). I’ve taken an approach of opening a new line of credit with a 0% introductory period APR which means no interest for a specified timeframe. I transferred a credit card that has 14% interest to this one with the plan to completely pay off before that intro APR runs out. 
2. Once this debt is paid, I’m going in to major stashing season, meaning savings on savings on savings. All the money I was putting towards credit card debt will now go to savings. And not those very minute savings accounts, but savings where I get high yielding returns, because again, I need my money to work for me. There’s more here such as ESPP, 401(K) and other places to place money to grow but we will return to that in another post.
3. I’ll use portions of those savings to start heavy investing once I have a nest egg I’m comfortable with. Heavy investing for me means two things: Real Estate (medium/long term residential rentals) and Stocks. 

You read the post. What are you waiting for? Join me in savings some cash to invest for financial freedom! Let me know in the comments some of your recent finds with banks in getting them to pay you back money you’re loaning to them! Let’s all win!

Yours Truly,

Crystal