An Easy Way to Save
Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. I wish I had some good advice as to how you can save money when the holidays come around, but I’m coming up short. The only thing I can say is don’t be tempted to buy things you don’t need just because they are on sale. And if you missed some of the big sales over the weekend, don’t worry because there will be more when Christmas time approaches (and afterward for all the stuff they didn’t sell).
Any way, the whole idea of this post was to give you an easy way to save. So here it is: Pretend that you smoke. Smokers can’t go a day without their pack of cigarettes. No matter what, they find a way to get them. If you do the same with your money, you can save a lot. Everyday stuff 3 dollars into a jar or container, and forget about it. This is your pack of cigarettes. You do this religiously, because you can’t go a day without it. The money thereafter is “spent.” You can’t get it back, and you don’t use it when you need to go to the movies. Every once in a while, deposit this growing wad into your savings account. This will help to lessen the temptation of spending it. Or you could do it like some smokers, and “buy” a whole carton once per paycheck. Put about $25 or so in your jar every paycheck.
Another easy way to do this is to set up an ING Direct Savings Account and have the money deducted from your bank account and put into your savings account automatically. This could be weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. That way, you don’t have to worry about forgetting to do it or physically taking your money to the bank. It’s all done for you.
If you follow this plan, you should end up with about $1,000 in your account by this time next year. Wouldn’t that be nice?
If you already do smoke, one way to save is to stop smoking. It will save you about $1,000 per year (and probably several years of your life).
That’s all for now.
-Brad
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That is a great savings plan; I currently follow it myself. I once read somewhere to pay yourself first than worry about everything else. Once I took on that mentality it became so much easier to save, it’s just like a bill, $100 a week goes straight from my checking into my savings, no questions asked. ING is great too, however, the only problem I’ve run into with them is access to the money. If I need my cash now, I have to transfer it, which can take up to a day or two. If I keep it in the same bank, I can transfer right away for those unexpected expenses.
That makes sense,but do you have any suggestions for people who wants to help a family member that goes through at least teo packs a day?
The problem with keeping your money in the same bank is that you probably are earning less than 1% interest. What I do is keep a decent chunk in my physical bank for access right away for those unexpected expenses. Then I put the rest of my savings into ING so that I get some decent interest back.
As far as suggestions for quitting, the first thing that needs to happen is that your family member has to want to quit. If they don’t want to quit and do not resolve to quit, it will never happen. You can try to appeal to them that it’s a good idea to quit in several ways such as doing it for you, doing it for themselves, doing it for their (future) kids, doing it because it saves them money, doing it because it’s smart, etc. After the person is ready to quit mentally, next is to help them kick the physical addiction. This can be done through patches, gum, an additive to their cappuccino, etc. Lots of support will help too. But again, none of these will work if the person isn’t already committed to quitting. Good luck.