You’ve heard the quote, “A journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step.” The point is that focusing on incremental improvement is the way to attack a large task, rather than being overwhelmed by the idea of the effort it will take to achieve your goal. This can easily be translated into some save money tips as well: saving money effectively is really about making a series of personal improvements for the long haul. I’m not talking about how to save on travel on your next vacation. I’m referring to a sustainable lifestyle change.
Saving money, possibly for a down payment on a house, to buy a better car, or simply to give yourself some monetary padding in case you should lose your job, doesn’t have to be a painful process. To save serious money you will have to make lifestyle changes, but the important thing is to get started, without gauging your progress or lack thereof against some imaginary time frame.
Plan your approach. List literally every monthly expense that you have, including the splurges and discretionary expenses. Once your situation is visible in front of you, you can break some of your monthly spending habits into an “unacceptable” container. You will also find justifiable discretionary expenses that can be trimmed back without you having to feel deprived.
The idea is that completely eliminating a few expenditures each month, combined with cutting back a little on several others, can add up substantial, consistent savings. This is a way to start slowly instead of completely rearranging your lifestyle for a month, then finding that it’s unliveable, and regressing back into your old habits. You achieve nothing in the long run if you do this. Take some small steps in the beginning without putting too much financial pressure on yourself a job and feeling satisfaction in making the progress that you do make. Maybe this feeling of making progress will lead to more aggressive cost-cutting down the road. But leave that for ‘down the road’.
As with anything in life saving money will get easier when you establish some momentum toward more of a ‘saver’ mentality. This is the way to actually save that large sum of money that you have in mind, not by trying to do it in a few months-that’s not mathematically possible anyway. Reprogramming yourself into a saver is absolutely doable if taken slowly and if you give yourself credit for progress that you do make.
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