In this series of articles, I will explore the art of saving money for things you want. I can’t guarantee that you will achieve your objectives, but I can guarantee that you will find that there is some money left over at the end of the month if you stick with it.

The human being is an animal of habit. The first thing we are going to look at is the human habit of spending. My grandparents were very tedious spenders. They looked at every purchase they made and debated the pros and cons of having it. They looked to see if it would cost them any money to run it, and tried to figure out if that kind of regular expense was in their budget. As a young boy, I found the whole thing tedious and very boring. I still do. As far as I’m concerned, if I need it, and I have an income, I should be able to get it.

Here is a way which will allow you to save the money to be able to purchase what you want and when.

Step 1 – Accumulating Money

Okay, so you don’t have any money left over. I understand what it’s like, I never did either. But, ask yourself an honest question.

“Will it honestly change my life if I had $20.00 less every pay cheque?”

If the answer is no, then increase the dollar amount to $50.00 or $75.00. The higher the dollar amount, the better the system works. If the answer is yes, then decrease the dollar amount to $10.00 or $5.00. Again, the higher the dollar amount, the better the system works.

If you now know how much you can part with every two weeks, you can now start to actually part with it. What you need to do is go to a bank, (not a machine, talk to a real live person) and open an account. If you can get an account that doesn’t charge you money for anything except more than 2 withdraws per month, that’s perfect. With any luck, you might just get a decent interest rate also. If your paycheque is deposited automatically into your bank account, have the money transferred to your savings account the next day. If you receive a cheque, deposit it into your regular account, and at the same time, transfer the money over to your savings account right away.

Here comes the hard part.

The habit we need to break is “I have it, so I can spend it.” This money is NOT for spending, this money is for saving. What we want to do is to make a habit of saving money. Name your account for its purpose. It could be the “I want to vacation in the Caribbean in January Fund”, or the “I want to go to Europe Fund” or the “I want to buy a new TV Fund”. Anything you want, you can achieve if you follow these guidelines.

Now, that you have put your first $50.00 into the “Fund”, you have to promise yourself that you will not touch that money until you have enough to achieve what you planned. Here are some tips for maintaining the habit of saving.

1. You are “dipping into the fund” to pay important bills. Re-evaluate the amount that you can honestly set aside, and lower your transfers to accommodate your situation.
2. You keep forgetting to make the transfer because you have a pay cheque instead of direct deposit. You can have an automatic transfer done three days after you get your cheque. This way, you can get into the bank to deposit it before the transfer goes through, and you know there will be less money available because the transfer is going through.
3. You keep clicking on the wrong button at the cash register. You can have the account coded as “Other” in the account system. There are no buttons for “Other” on the “Interact” keypads, only checking and savings.
4. The money is there, so you want to spend it on things other than your “Fund”. Make getting the money difficult. As we know, it’s difficult enough to save; it should be just as difficult to spend it. Try having a very low dollar amount set as a daily withdraw, or you could get a requirement for a co-signer on cheques or withdraws at the bank.

    

In the next article, I will be discussing how to increase your savings, and plan for the purchase of a big ticket item.