My financial resolutions for 2009, #4 in a series

Editor’s note: We asked our resident money experts to share their financial resolutions for the year ahead. Here, the fourth in our series:

This year, my goal is to expand on a change I made last summer. After years of writing stories in which we advise readers to build an emergency fund that ideally should be at least a year's worth of living expenses, I am finally acting on that advice myself. Certainly haven't made it to a year's worth of expenses set aside, but I have more than doubled the amount I have automatically deducted from my paycheck for deposit into my credit union savings account, which recently was paying a more competitive interest rate than most banks in our area.

It hasn't been painless, but I've found that with more careful grocery shopping and other cutbacks in discretionary spending, it is indeed possible to make spending contract to fit my new net income after the larger automatic deduction. (Just as my "necessary" spending in the past  always somehow mysteriously expanded whenever my net income increased!) The key, of course, is having to make that decision only once—setting up the automatic withdrawal—rather than deciding each payday how much I can spare for savings.

I'm also trying to instill that savings habit more strongly in my 13-year-old and 20-year-old sons. I feel it's crucial to teach them the wisdom of saving for what they want rather than being lured by the buy-now, pay-later message that has created such heartache for so many Americans. So far, so good: My older son has resisted the siren song of the credit card companies trying to get him to sign up on his college campus.

My challenge now is to  get them both to set aside in a savings account at least 20 percent of any cash they earn or receive as gifts. Part of the reason the Chinese have such a high savings rate (and are financing our deficits) is that savings discipline is so deeply instilled in their culture. That discipline is a gift I hope I can give my children. —Andrea Rock, senior editor