We all see that the money have no value and, most of the times when we spend enormous amounts at the supermarket without filling a bag, we find ourselves sighing like the pensioners who stand in a line to get cheaper medicines. Sometimes, though, we use this thing as an excuse for the fact that we can’t save any money and the end of the month finds us with our pockets empty. We wait for the raises with no patience, only to discover a few weeks later that the money isn’t enough. Not because we are spenders, but because the country we live in a country that doesn’t allow us to be different.
Yes, the cases when a person has to take several jobs to cover the expenses are often. There are also many situations in which persons who earn a high salary can’t get to the wage day without any debts. The truth is that, no matter how much you get, if you don’t plan your expenses you will end up without money. If you learn to be a spender, you can get salary increases every three months that you will still be without money.
When you receive your salary, cut the rental expenses and the bills and look behind:
How many things that you don’t really need have you bought the month before?
How many times did you go out just to get bored in a bar?
How many times did you go shopping in an expensive supermarket just because you were lazy to go a few more blocks with the bus?
How much money do you spend on food at work?
How often did you ask for loan money, or a salary advance, and what amounts did you ask for?
You might get scared when you put the amounts you have spent without a purpose on a sheet of paper, but it is necessary if you want to change your situation. All the men think they are good at business, they keep commenting the way the PIB is divides, they look with an expert look at all the financial programs but most of them don’t manage to make an effective plan of personal expenses. If women are touched by the shopping disease, we suffer from commodity and we get to the same place when it comes to money.
Set some objectives and follow them strictly:
- Go shopping in cheap supermarkets in a certain day of the week. If they are far away and you don’t have a car (although if you save some money you may get one soon), go with a friend who has one. Don’t go shopping on an empty stomach because you will buy only the products you feel like eating then and they will only last for 2-3 days. Make a list with all the necessary products before you leave home and don’t buy anything else.
- Buy quality clothes, but try to take advantage of the discounts. They shouldn’t be branded, but they have to be from a good fabric and they have to be well cut, in order not to throw them away after the first time you wash them.
- If your rent is quite big, get a roommate or check the announcements in the papers for something more convenient. Until then, try to save money from the bills: don’t leave the lights on in the entire house, set the heating machine on lower temperatures when you are not at home, don’t leave your computer on overnight.
- If the telephone bill is too high, get a more generous plan and don’t talk more than the free minutes you have, even if your girlfriend wants to tell you in detail all the nonsense.
- Take lunch at the office even if it seems to you that you are in the junior high when you had the sandwich and the apple in your backpack. A lot of employees order during the lunch break from the fast food because it is comfortable and tasty, but it is also expensive and you will soon have the belly flowing on the belt. Not to say that an hour later you are hungry again. Calculate: 1-2 sandwiches, a juice, something sweet = around 150$ every month.
- Don’t use the taxi unless you are in a hurry or if you are really, really tires. Wake up earlier in the morning and take the bus.
- If you don’t feel like going out, don’t go out because it seems you have nothing better to do. Read something, rent a movie, sleep, play on the computer.
- Don’t buy: magazines that you don’t read, gadgets you don’t need, something that you are not planning to use.
It seems stressful to think about all these things, but if you take them serious, they will soon become a habit. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t allow any pleasures, it is on the contrary. If you reduce useless expenses, you will e able to give yourself things that you really want.
