Hang on – what does that mean? It sounds like a scam, and we could all do with a lot less of those. But Skimming your bank account is actually a good idea.

Skimming your bank account is something all of us can do – and when you find out more about it, you’ll realise it’s something you should do, too.

What is skimming?

If you’ve ever skimmed the fat off a saucepan of soup or stock, you’ll know how it works. You’re taking off the top layer and getting rid of it.

When you skim your bank account, you’re taking the pennies out of it and sweeping them into a savings account. You’ll do this every day if you have any spare pennies in your balance.

How to skim your bank account to save money

Let’s say your account balance stands at £301.78. You log into your online banking and make an internal transfer of 78p into your savings. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? The trick here, though, is that you’ll check each day to see if there are any pennies in your balance. If there are, you’ll transfer them over, leaving you with a balance rounded down to the pound each time.

Can you skim more?

Absolutely! This is the best way to build your savings balance more quickly. Taking the same example that I gave you above, let’s see how this works. You start with £301.78. Instead of skimming just 78p, you could skim off the odd £1.78. That would certainly help boost your balance further if you did it regularly.

You can also round to the nearest £5 or £10 if it works to do so. If your balance sat at £106.12, you’d round to £100 and sweep £6.12 over into your savings. If you had £521.02, you might consider your upcoming bills and decide you could happily transfer the £21.02 over. If you needed most of the money, you could stick to the £1.02 in this case.

You get the idea.

In some cases, people begin by transferring the odd few pence over, then progress to the odd pound or two on top, and then start rounding to £5 or £10 as I explained above. The trick is that starting with those few pence gives you a savings habit that is easy to keep up with. Most of us wouldn’t miss those few pence each day. Over time, once the habit has been formed, we can save a little more. We can build up with a pound or two each time. And from there we can go further still.

Try the skimming technique today

You’ll need online banking to make it easy to do. However, once you’ve set that up, you’re ready to begin skimming. Even without a target in mind, you might be surprised at the amount of money you can easily save using this method over the space of a few weeks or months.