I officially have $25.00 of touchable money in my savings. This is big for me. The challenge is going to be not to touch it.
It's always been a challenge for me to keep a savings account, but after going through such a rough time with money recently, I'm ready to commit to one. With a dual income, $25.00 a week is feasible. Like most things though, I'm having to make putting money away a challenge and a game.
In this case, my plan is to play the carry over game. Come next payday (for either myself or the BF), half of whatever is left from the previous week gets put into savings, the rest stays to pile on top the new incoming money. This may not be feasible every week, especially when there's major bills to pay. But my hope is that by doing it this way, we'll stay motivated not to spend a whole lot of money, a tendency that we've kept at bay for awhile now but which I know I can easily fall back into.
If anyone has any tips on savings, I'd love to hear them. I'm willing to try anything at this point.
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Coming soon… a new way to save!
6 years ago
1 comment:
I've always been fairly good about savings but not as much since having more bills and what not. Also, now that the hubby and I trying to save for a house and also trying not to get hit so hard when the big bills come in (like insurance (car, renters, etc) and Christmas) or when unexpected things come up like fixing the car we're trying a lot harder to save more and stick to a budget. So, what really helped me is I made a list of all of the money that was coming in each month as well as how much each of our essential (every month) bills are (rent, electric, water, gas, etc.). For the bills like electric that can vary each month I estimated what the maximum amount they would likely be so for those it's a range in the budget but I always assume it will be the highest and then any extra that there is goes into savings. After figuring out what was left I made a range of how much we could spend on food and gas each month and added those to the budget. For the the big bills like insurance and Christmas I figured out how much we needed to put into savings each month to have the right amount when they came due and added those to the budget. What's left from how much comes in each month has a set amount that's supposed to go into our house fund and maintenance fund (for unexpected car problems). That all added up should equal how much the two of you make each month. Oh, and I also budgeted in an allowance for the hubby and I so that we each get a little bit of money that we can spend on whatever we want each month that's not necessary. And what's really helped me stick to it is that I typed up all of this and printed it out so that each month as each bill is paid and each amount is put into savings I can check it off to make sure that I'm actually doing everything. Then for the next month I can just erase the check marks and start over. We do have more than one savings account so that we can keep some things separate.
It was really kind of crazy to see it all written out and how much we should actually be able to save each month. Because we weren't really saving much before I did this and I'm baffled as to where all our money went!
Well anyway, I hope that made sense maybe will help.
Sometimes being a grown up really sucks. Best of luck :)
~april 8)
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