Tips on how to build SAVINGS and to stop wasting it:
Keep what you earn. Make what you earn Earn it’s keep. Waste-not-want-not. Work smarter, not harder. A penny saved is a penny earned. Any of this sound familiar?
We are presented with choices, decisions and hassles every day. Without any pre-set guidelines for those choices, we often make gut or emotional choices like stabbing at a bobbing apple in the dark. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up anywhere but where you want to.
Sometimes we just don’t know what to do or we’re so busy that money management is a little bit like random drive-by shootings. Then, at some point, we reap the snowball of headaches over piled up bills and over the limit credit cards.
Managing our resources (money, time, energy, etc.) requires basic effort in understanding of conservation, self-control, seeing the big picture, patience and balance in life.
Money management consists of: conservation, labor, and priorities. This includes a balance between wants, needs and goals.
GETTING STARTED: (In no special order)
1. Learn to do a budget of bills and income. Keep trying until you find a method that works.
2. Don’t waste what you have. Take care of it. Use only what you need of it (not the amount advertisers claim you need). Conservation is a big topic on which whole books and many articles are written.
3. Read the tiny book called “The Richest Man in Babylon”.
4. Put 10% into savings. Then Pay yourself 10%. Use the rest to pay everything off that you can.
5. Decide ahead of time what your limitations or permissions are in regards to purchases or expenses.
6. Devise a savings method, limitations and permissions for family members so that they can buy what they want without breaking the bank. Each person NEEDS to earn their ‘toys’ or they won’t appreciate them.
7. Research and devise tricks to help you spend less on impulse. Some ways to do that are: designate impulse shopping times with a set limit to spend, leave credit cards at home anytime it’s possible to do so, use a grocery shopping list and don’t buy anything not on the list (if you really need it, write it down and come back for it on another trip to force yourself to plan better)…
8. Read a book called “The On-Purpose Person” by Kevin W. McCarthy.
This list of basic big picture suggestions should get one started onto the path of better money management with less waste without major sacrifices.