UNITED STATES—It’s the one thing that every person wants: money! It’s a commodity that is traded daily to purchase goods and services. While some have lots of it, others don’t have as much. So a big question many of us ask ourselves time and time again is how do we save more money to place ourselves in a comfortable situation?
When it comes to money, its all about resisting temptation. If we were to keep track of all the money that we spend on countless things during the day or in the course of a week, we’d discover we could save hundreds of dollars a year.
Of course, no one wants to stick to a budget, but putting a budget in place helps you see where you income is going, and where you can ‘cut’ things that are not essential needs. Think about that cup of coffee that you purchase daily for seven days a week, you might be spending $3-$5 a day, which means that’s about $21-$25 a week. In a given year, you could be saving close to $1200. Just think about what you can do with that type of money, pay off some credit card debt, take a vacation or purchase a gadget you’ve been eagerly seeking or place the money into your savings account.
Look at the cup of coffee as an example of something that can be cut to put yourself in a better situation to save. It always starts with the little stuff; I boggle my brain when someone says its just a few bucks. “Yeah, it’s just a few bucks, but if you add those dollars over the course of a year, you’ll see much more.” Another great tactic to saving money comes with paying yourself each week. Just exactly what does that mean? Take a specific amount from your paycheck and put aside. When you pay yourself you have a better chance of rewarding that savings or checking account. You can start off with something small like $10 or $20 a week. That’s $40-$80 a month that you could save; in a year you’ve saved almost $480-$960.
With baby steps you can learn how to do small things that can add up for you over time. People always say I want to be rich, not realizing being rich doesn’t happen overnight and more importantly, rich is temporary. No one should want to be rich; you should instead want to be wealthy. Make lifestyle changes that place you in a position to consistently add onto what you have.
When we come into large sums of cash, we tend to spend more than consider the option of investing to turn that income into even more income. We will always have bills until the day that we die; it’s a cost of living. Anyway that a person can create a safe cushion that places their finances in a better situation, its makes the stress that you may encounter so much better.
With the New Year in the corner, its time for implementing some changes to pay off that hefty load of debt most of us accumulated over the holidays. Look at things this way, implementing some of the changes indicated can help you have that holiday shopping taken care of come next Christmas, because you’ve already put away cash by cutting something that wasn’t a need to begin with. That’s the key to saving money, understanding the difference between a ‘need’ and a ‘want.’ As humans we tend to have way more ‘wants’ vs. ‘needs’ and we fail to realize a ‘need’ is something we must have, while a ‘want’ is something that we can do without. This is not to say you cannot reward yourself because where’s the fun in not doing that. You must reward yourself when you work, just be cautious not to overdo it, or it can cost you big time in the long run. The acronym JOB stands for (JUST ON BILLS). If you work, you should have the ability to treat yourself to a little something each week or at the end of the month if you’re looking to make a larger purchase.
