I hated to clean my room when I was a little girl. (I still do, as a matter of fact.) But one day while performing the odious task, I found a welcome surprise. I had taken a handful of quarters and tucked them away in one of my doll socks. I was delighted to find it. I wasn’t in the habit of saving money, and consequently I rarely had any. You can imagine those quarters didn’t last long once I rediscovered them.
Years later, married with children, I was having the same problem. How do you save money when there are always bills to pay and food to buy, not to mention the fact that family cars are notorious gas-guzzlers? Any money that came our way was soon sacrificed to the gods of necessity, with only a small remainder going toward our wants.
But then I had an idea. Just like tucking quarters away in my doll sock, I started “hiding” money in our checking account. I wrote an amount down on a slip of paper and put it in an envelope. I then wrote that down in the checkbook ledger and deducted it. For all intents and purposes, that money was gone—it was spent and no longer available. I knew it still existed, but it was no longer in the running.
As time went by and needs arose, I could pull out one of the slips, tear it up, add the balance back into the checkbook, and spend it, but there had to be a good reason.
Of course, this was just a psychological trick. The money hadn’t gone anywhere. But isn’t it true that when you look at your bank balance and discover you have a little money, you suddenly think of a thousand things you need, and that balance shrinks right before your eyes? By “removing” the money and tucking it away, I wasn’t as tempted to spend it on wants, and instead spent my money on real needs, saving up for a rainy day.
If you have online banking, it’s also easy to take money from your regular account and put it in a savings account, transferring it back when you need it. At the time I came up with my nifty little trick, we didn’t have the Internet, and so I just improvised with the old-fashioned tools of paper and pen. You could even withdraw some cash and keep it in an envelope that you tuck away in the back of a drawer, perhaps getting $5 cash back with each grocery purchase. Whichever method you use, you just might find that “hiding” money from yourself enables you to put a little away for savings without being too great of a hardship.
Related Blogs:
Saving Money with the Dollar Sign
Creating a Dream Fund for Your Child