Before I paid any bills, I set a portion of my salary aside to save. Sometimes I was only able to save $20 from my paycheck. There have been other times when I was able to save hundreds of dollars per check. Either way, I am still committed to this practice today. The money that you save by paying yourself first is NOT for vacation or some new piece of electronics. As you are working toward your future, this money is to invest in an opportunity, your dreams, your future.
God forbid you have an emergency. At least you know the money is there. My definition of emergency is something like dental surgery, you are out of work because of a health issue, or you need to repair your car because it's essential for work.
Set up an automatic deduction from your checking account into a savings account. For me, the money comes out the day after I get paid so I don't have much of a window to spend it. After a while, you will forget that you are deducting this money and will learn to live without it. Hopefully, after a year, you will be able to see the hundreds if not thousands of dollars that you have been able to save through consistency.
I also want to add this. NEVER let anyone know how much money you have in your emergency account. Biggie said it best in the "The Ten Crack Commandments". Never let no one know, how much, dough you hold, cause you know, The cheddar breed jealousy 'specially if that man fucked up, get your ass stuck up. Letting people know how much money you have saved, especially broke ass people, you will quickly start getting request to "borrow" money. As for me, I'm always "broke". Once people know that you are a reliable back up source of money, you will quickly become a 2nd source of income to them.
Don't get me wrong, I believe in helping people but, I believe in helping those that help themselves. After all, that's the way I learned.
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This is awesome advice, Thanks so much for sharing....especially the auto-deduction piece. I do that currently and at first I thought it would be tough but after a while I learned to pretend that that extra money didn't even exist...and its come in handy many times when I in a serious pinch. My dad always told me to follow this formula...pay God, pay yourself, then pay your bills. I'm still working on getting that formula right...but I cant wait to get there one day! :)
ReplyDeleteIsn't it funny that we struggle to save money if we pay our bills first instead of paying ourselves first. Your Dad gave you great advice.
DeleteYou are so right about this...never ever let people know that you have a stash as you will be the go to person and then you'll remember you told them all about your stash and might have to kick out a few bucks and then they won't pay you back or might even tell you...ha! you got big money, why you running me down for ya money back eh!?
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