Quit Wasting Your Hard Earned MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!

Wasteful Spending:

By: Casey Eisenberg

 

            I am so horrible with money! I know we have mostly all said this to ourselves at one time or another, but how do we change this? No, overnight you are not going to have $100,000 in your bank account, that’s not quite how this works. BUT by cutting down and possibly completely out your wasteful spending you can one day look at your bank account and feel unbelievably rich! Anyone can do it! I know that I definitely am, I’m tired of wasting money. I don’t want to look at my bank account and see that I have spent 90% or more of what I have worked so hard to earn!

            So? Where do you start? For one week I want you to save up all of your receipts. Every single one, no skipping out. Save them up and keep them somewhere where you aren’t going to accidently loose them. No misplacing them, etc. I want you to KEEP them! Alright, enough emphasis on keeping your receipts, now after 7 days I want you to sit down with a calculator, paper, and different colors of highlighters. Don’t let there be any distractions, you need to take time on this step to really see what money is going where. Now, organize your receipts in to the following piles:

-         Groceries

-         Health (doctor, prescription, etc.)

-         Entertainment

-         Dining out

-         Car/Vehicle care and maintenance

-         Misc.

The next step is to pick one of these piles and look at it. Go through each receipt one by one and with preferably a green highlighter, highlight everything you bought that were necessary (groceries, prescription, fuel, etc.) Stuff that in other means you could NOT live without! On a piece of paper write down these “necessities” and a total

Once you have gone through all of the receipts go ahead and go back through and highlight in red preferably everything you didn’t need, things that you bought just to buy, stuff you could live without. If it’s a whole receipt just go ahead and throw the hole thing in a pile. Then once you have finished going back through the receipts go ahead and once again total up how much this was. Then, take a moment and see how much you made for the week and subtract the “green” number. This is how much you would have kept from your paycheck if you were to only buy the necessities, now subtract the red. You could have instead put that money that you decided to spend on luxuries, in to savings. Doing this weekly, monthly, and annually can make you see truly how much of your income you are wasting. I know when I did it I was shocked! I couldn’t believe how much I was wasting on coffee, clothes, and eating out! It makes me sick thinking that all my hard work is being wasted, I mean come on we all have goals!

Now that you see what you are wasting your money on, look for ways to cut that. Find out how to make your favorite restaurant foods at home, how to make fancy coffee at home. In the end, you will save more money than you know what to do with! That will make you feel good and show you that with time and dedication, you can reach financial and savings goals that once seemed so far away!