The idea of saving trees or otherwise not using paper turns out not to be such a great idea when those promoting a paperless world are seeking something they want.

As much as universities claim to be environmentally friendly, they’ll never eliminate paper mailings since alumni are more likely to give in response to a U.S. mail request for donations than an online request. I receive the alumni magazine for Northwestern University and the magazine for Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. The magazines tend to be pretty politically liberal with such topics as climate change and social justice, which is why my donations to Northwestern go to athletics or the library rather than to the general fund where the money could be used for political correctness in the classroom. I will at least browse through those issues, reading mostly the sports and 1980s alumni news items in the schoolwide Northwestern magazine and the history articles in the College of Arts and Sciences periodical. I don’t look at the Northwestern website, and while I gave them an email address in the 1990s that address is now obsolete. The only way I can read what Northwestern would like me to read is when they send me a hard copy. It includes envelopes with donation requests.

From time to time, I will copy an article or brief from one of the Northwestern alumni magazines. I did so recently with the College of Arts and Science magazine. The irony is that I had to reduce the article since the magazine was bigger than 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches – so Northwestern sent out more paper than necessary.

Going paperless sounds nice for universities in many aspects, but when the universities are trying to reach alumni the paperless sphere isn’t the best way to build a connection with alumni. It is doubtful that universities will eliminate hard copies of their alumni publications, and it is even more doubtful that universities will eliminate sending paper solicitations by U.S. mail.

During the primary election earlier this year, I received numerous mailings about how certain ballot measures were environmentally friendly or environmentally unfriendly. All of those mailings utilized paper. Internet political advocacy relies on a user specifically seeking a website. Paper political advocacy provides an outreach to those who would not take the initiative to use the internet. Even if voters use the internet for information, the proper keywords are required to find the specific website of a ballot issue, and the voter may find multiple sites with information and not necessarily look at only the one desired by the advocate.

The primary election also included candidates for office, and I received plenty of mailings from them. The general election will be no different. The mailings might not tell me what I need to know about how the candidates stand on key issues, but they tell me which issues the candidate emphasizes. If I use the internet to determine my vote, I will go to the website of an interest group and find how the candidates stand on that group’s issues. As is the case with a ballot measure, the candidate must reach out to me. They cannot expect me to search for them. Despite candidates talking about how environmentally friendly they are, they will never eliminate paper campaign mailings.

Saving trees doesn’t seem to be as important as obtaining donations or votes. The trend toward more online interaction stops when somebody is asking for something from someone who hasn’t made the decision to provide it.

Joe Naiman can be reached by email at jnaiman@reedermedia.com.

Saving money and getting out of debt can be a difficult road for many people.

In January 2020, the average debt per household in the UK was £60,363, according to The Money Charity, a number that may’ve been bolstered since the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking on Yahoo UK’s The Baby Bump with Lauren Pope, Lynn Beattie – a personal finance expert, also known as Mrs Mummypenny, believes it starts with everyday changes to your spending habits.

Beattie recommends starting small, with a spending diary or spreadsheet to start tracking what you’re really spending your money on.

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Contactless and card payments are great, but it’s easy to tap away and forget that it is real money associated to each purchase. That’s why Beattie advises going back to basics.

“Get a bit of paper, a nice new notepad or an Excel spreadsheet if that’s what you’re into and just write down everyday what you’re spending your money on,” Beattie explains.

And when she talks about writing everything down, she really does mean everything. A coffee on the school run, Amazon purchases, all the way up to those bigger household bills and debts.

In order to make the process easier for you, Mrs Mummypenny even writes down her own lists at the beginning of each week, to give you a real idea of how yours should be structured.

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“Do that for a couple of weeks to see how much your spending and on what. You can also spot patterns. Like this morning, I was rushed off my feet and the easiest thing for me to do was to buy my son some breakfast. So, how can you change patterns in your mind?”

There are plenty of different types of spender, from the people who buy things to make themselves feel better when they’re having a bad day (Beattie describes those people as emotional spenders) to those who buy things for convenience and lack time.

After you’ve written down this core information, the real fun begins. Beattie explains: “Once you’ve got this core information you can move into coming up with a plan of how to save some money. And, there are some quick wins.”

Many people in the UK spend too much of their energy bills, and Beattie says that by “doing a comparison” you can most likely save some immediate pennies.

“There are loads of comparison sites out there. If you haven’t switched your bill for more than a year I can pretty much guarantee you’ll be able to save money.”

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The same goes for all other household bills. The financial advisor, who is also the mum to three boys, said that she recently negotiated the price of her Broadband bill and saved £20 per month.

Although hanging on the phone to customer services can be tedious, it’s definitely worth doing to rack up some quick wins money-wise.

Beattie also recommends a site called Top Cashback, which has helped save her £4,000 over the last seven years.

“All this information, it’s out there, you’ve just got to know where to go to source it,” Beattie concludes.

If you find saving money a challenge, maybe the problem is that you’re not actually challenging yourself.

In other words, maybe you should do a money-saving challenge. As in, play a sort of game to inspire you to save money.

Money-saving challenges are a trend that have become popular online and are likely to become even more so if the economy continues to sputter. Seen everywhere from Pinterest to personal finance blogs, these challenges encourage spenders to become savers by hoarding money in creative ways. Like the famous challenge where you tell yourself to save $1 a week and by the end of the year you’ll have $52. Of course, that was probably a more impressive money-saving challenge back in, say, 1958.

Still, putting a buck away a week is about as simple a challenge as one can do, and plenty of people likely aren’t even doing that, if you believe the numerous surveys that have found most Americans don’t have $300, $400 or $1,000 saved for an emergency.

If you don’t save money, it may not be for a lack of money. It may be that you simply haven’t trained yourself to get into the habit of saving.

“The primary problem that keeps people from starting to save money is not that they don’t know where to find money to save. Rather, it’s their mindset around money. It is having thoughts like, ‘I’m never going to be able to save enough money or earn enough to make a difference,’” says Nev Harris, a financial coach in Pittsburgh who works with business owners and freelancers across the country.

Harris says that with many people who struggle to save, “Mentally, they don’t see the benefit of finding that money by changing their current spending, and so they don’t start saving for the future because in their mind they feel it won’t amount to anything significant.”

So if you’re looking to save money, you may want to try some of these money-saving challenges. Because, after all, as Harris says, “How do you become wealthy? By saving $1 at a time.”

— The 52-week savings challenge.

— The “no spend” challenge.

— The pantry challenge.

— The “keep all the change” challenge.

— The holiday gift challenge.

— The “pay yourself when you make a money mistake” challenge.

[See: 35 Ways to Save Money.]

52-Week Savings Challenge

This is the classic savings challenge alluded to earlier. It’s been a savings challenge that existed long before people were posting money-saving challenges on social media. Simply decide that you’re going to save $1 a week or $2 or $5. Something manageable is the key, but preferably something meaningful. If you save $5 a week, you’d have $260 at the end of the year, which is nice, but you probably aren’t going to feel all that satisfaction after a year.

But if you manage to save $100 a week, you’d have $5,200, which could pay for a vacation or holiday gifts or serve as an emergency fund and so on.

You could be a lot more creative with these 52-week savings challenges, too. Some people will put $1 a week the first week, $2 a week the second, $3 the third week, and by the 52nd week, you’re putting $52 a week away. If you did that, by the end of a year, you’d have $1,378.

The “No Spend” Challenge

This can be more fun than it sounds. You pick a weekend or a week — whatever seems challenging and yet doable for you — and you spend no money. That should allow an exception for paying for certain things like bills. Not paying your water bill or mortgage so you can win a “no spend” challenge isn’t really winning.

But you could tell yourself for the weekend or a week that you aren’t spending any money, unless, again, common sense dictates that you need to.

The idea, obviously, is to save some money by not spending. And it can be fun. You might be forced to come up with some creative workarounds because you suddenly can’t buy a specific tool that you need — or maybe you’ll dig deeper in your closet instead of buying new clothes. Maybe since you’re going to drive less and not gas up the car, you’ll end up doing more fun things at home. Yes, the no-spend challenge is perfect for these pandemic, sheltering-in-place times.

The Pantry Challenge

This is also a good money-saving challenge for these times — and is a subset of the “no spend challenge.” This is a contest in which you declare you won’t buy any food until you’ve exhausted all the possibilities from your refrigerator and pantry. You bought those artichoke hearts and that coconut oil for a reason, even if you can’t remember the reason, right? As long as it’s not expired, this is your chance to use and consume the food you’ve already bought and save money for a few days or weeks or however long you can stand not going to the supermarket.

The “Keep All the Change” Challenge

A lot of people do this anyway, but you could formalize it. Any time you get change at a store or stumble upon some change in your house, find a jar to put it in. Do it for a year, and see how much you have at the end — and then take it all to a coin counting and collection machine or your bank.

You could also do the spare change challenge in a more modern way and download an app like Acorns. Any time you make a purchase, Acorns will round up the total and take that money and invest the spare change into a diversified investment portfolio.

There are monthly fees for Acorns, starting at $1 a month.

[See: The 5 Best Free Money-Management Apps.]

The Holiday Gift Challenge

This is an idea that has been around for decades. Many credit unions offer holiday interest-bearing savings accounts, where you put $5 or $10 or whatever a week, every week, and then when December comes, you have money for the holidays.

It’s pretty simple — and smart. Think about how much you spent on the holidays last December, or better yet, go to your bank account or credit card statements and tally it all up. Assume that you’ll spend that much, or more, this December. Then take however many weeks are left and figure out how much you need to put away every week in order to have whatever holiday gift amount you’d like to have.

Yes, it may not be fun to put away $15 or $20 or $50 or whatever you feel you need to every week. But in December, you’ll have bought yourself one of the best gifts you can — the peace of mind of knowing everybody’s gifts are paid for.

[See: 10 Money-Saving Websites to Check Before Shopping.]

The “Pay Yourself When You Make a Money Mistake” Challenge

This doesn’t seem to be much of a national thing, but it could be, and it makes a lot of sense. You could promise yourself that whenever you do something foolish financially, you’ll put $1 — or $5 — or whatever denomination you like — in a piggy bank or an additional checking account. If you pay a bill late, or if you receive an overdraft fee at the bank, or you do some impulse shopping — whatever rules you come up with — you punish yourself with a fee.

By the end of a year, you’ll win either way. If you have a lot of money, you’ll be thankful — but chastened by all of the financial errors you made throughout the year. If you have almost nothing in the account, you can feel great about yourself and how financially responsible you are — and try or invent a different money-saving challenge.

More from U.S. News

25 Ways to Fix Your Finances Fast

9 Money Mistakes Parents Make

15 Money-Saving Tips for Big Families

Money Saving Challenges originally appeared on usnews.com

Whether you are laid off, furloughed or changing jobs, it’s important to carefully consider what to do with the money you have stashed away in your 401(k). Surprisingly, if the savings are minimal, many people forget about it or simply cash it out. This could lead to missed opportunities for building up a healthy retirement nest egg.

Now a new feature will soon encourage workers to hang on to those smaller sums. Called auto portability, it lets you move your 401(k) account from your old job to a new employer’s 401(k) plan — automatically.

Researchers at the Employee Benefit Research Institute say using technology to enable auto portability of 401(k) plans could keep as much as $2 trillion in the U.S. retirement system.

More from Invest in You:
If you left or lost your job, here is what you can do with your 401(k)
What you need to know before taking out a home equity loan or borrowing from your 401(k)
Nearly 1 in 5 working women have nothing saved for retirement

Retirement Clearinghouse, which developed the auto portability feature, and Alight Solutions announced Tuesday that Alight will be the first 401(k) plan provider to adopt auto portability, with 185 companies and about 5 million employees able to have access to this feature by the end of the year. 

This changes what happens to your 401(k), even if you do nothing. “Today if the worker does nothing, they either get a check with taxes and penalties withheld or the money goes into a safe harbor IRA — this is for balances of less than $5,000. There, it’s invested in money market or stable value funds,” Alight Solutions executive vice president Alison Borland said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday.

“What happens in the new world with auto portability if the worker does nothing, when they find a new job, the 401(k) automatically follows them. They don’t have to take any action,” Borland said.

“If people know that they have an alternative to cash out, they know their 401(k) will follow them when they move from job to job, believe it or not, that human behavior says, ‘Let me think about it,'” RLJ Companies’ founder Bob Johnson told CNBC. He is a majority stakeholder in Retirement Clearinghouse. 

Fidelity and Vanguard, the nation’s largest 401(k) plan providers, are not yet offering auto portability for their 401(k) plans, and most employers have not adopted this feature.

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