Coming into the summer months, with dreams of days in the sun, festival mayhem and hopefully a holiday or two, it’d be nice if you could actually save some of that hard-earned pay packet. If you’re anything like us though, saving money seems to be a magical notion that only real grown-ups talk about. A new study in Psychological Science found people were more likely to meet saving goals if they tricked their brain into thinking about the future as an impending date. So rather than thinking you have a certain amount of months or years to save, convert that time into days to make your brain sweat it out and start saving. The study found people saw the immediacy of needing to save for life expenses such as children, retirement or house buying when they had a daily countdown timer. Speaking about their findings, Daphna Oyserman, co-author of the study and co-director of the USC Dornsife Mind and Society Center said: “The simplified message that we learned in these studies is if the future doesn’t feel imminent, then, even if it’s important, people won’t start working on their goals. “If you see it as ‘today’ rather than on your calendar for sometime in the future, you’re not going to put it off.” So just some simple maths is going to help fatten up that piggy bank. Now just to avoid the shops...