Money is important in our current society, it’s the base of our economy and gives you the power to obtain almost anything that you want. Given its importance, you must have a healthy relation with money and not be scared of it. In the end, it’s just a tool that could help you live your life more comfortably. This is the story of how I started to save money after noticing the importance of it.
When I was 15 my parents started giving me money monthly for going out with friends or buying new clothes. As you might imagine, this money wasn’t enough to satisfy my teenager desires, and I ran out of money in the first two weeks of the month.
At that time I was obsessed with technology and I wanted to buy a good PC or a newer smartphone. The problem was that although I wanted those things I was unable to save money.
One day I get tired of having no money, so I did what almost every teenager would have done in this situation, I googled “how to save money”. After a few hours of watching videos and reading about money, I’ve got an idea of how could I save some money.
Saving money is all about cutting expenses and abstaining from temptations. For achieving this, the first thing that I did was to note every expense that I made within one month. Once the month was over, I started to notice where and when my money was going away. After this analysis, I started to question myself which expenses were necessary and which weren’t. This step is all a matter of negotiating with yourself and picking only the most important expenses. For example, having dinner outside 3 times per week may not be essential and could be reduced to once a week.
With my expenses analyzed, I budget the money I was going to spend each month. For example, if your parents gave you 100€ per month you commit yourself to spend only 40€ and save the other 60€.
Additionally, to help me be consistent with this budget, I decided to open another bank account for transferring the money that I was going to spend to and control my expenses better.
Summarizing the strategy, you have to:
- Track all your expenses
- Analyze which expenses are indispensable and which aren’t
- Budget your expenses for the month
- (Optionally) Transfer the money to another bank account made for expenses
- Be disciplined and stay on budget
Thanks for reading, hope you start saving money and spending it in useful stuff.