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Renee Bennett | Bankrate.com (TNS)

Like brushing your teeth or getting enough sleep, the first step to developing effective financial habits is to break out of the bad ones.

Many Americans are struggling to save. According to Bankrate’s emergency fund report, only 43 percent of people say they could pay for a $1,000 emergency expense from their savings. A great way to start saving is by recognizing what bad money habits you have and committing to a plan to leave them behind.

Here are nine of the most common bad money habits and how you can break out of them.

1. Not having specific savings goals

Setting specific savings goals is important not only for the sake of knowing how much you need to save, but also to give you a tangible reason to save.

If you don’t have specific savings goals, you may not be deliberately thinking about how much you should be saving and what strategies to undertake to meet those goals. Breaking out of this habit will help set the stage for every other savings habit — and it’s an easy place to start. read more

By Erin El Issa | NerdWallet

Federal student loan repayment resumes in the coming months — interest begins accruing in September, with payments starting in October — after a 3½-year payment pause. According to a new NerdWallet survey, most federal student loan borrowers (88%) didn’t make payments during the pandemic forbearance. If you’re one of these borrowers, here are five steps to prepare for repayment.

1. Know your details

According to the survey, nearly half of federal student loan borrowers (46%) don’t know how much student loan debt they currently have, and 57% don’t know who their loan servicer is. Close to a third of federal student loan borrowers (31%) aren’t sure what their interest rates will be when forbearance ends, and 27% aren’t sure how to make payments at that time.

If you don’t know who your student loan servicer is, log in to the Federal Student Aid website using your FSA ID (you can create one if you don’t yet have one). On the left, you’ll see your total balance, and on the right, your loan servicer(s). You can make payments on your loan servicer’s website, as well as find interest rate information. Because of the payment pause, interest rates might only appear as 0%, but your issuer website(s) should tell you when loans were disbursed, and you can look up the rates on the FSA site by disbursement date(s). read more