We live in an age where you may rarely
see your money. Paychecks get directly deposited to
checking accounts where automated bill pay functions
whisk large chunks of it away to pay bills in faraway
states. You use a piece of plastic for paying gas
and another for shopping at the mall. You use a debit
card for groceries and receive an alert on your phone
when your funds are getting low, but it's just all
numbers flickering on a monitor. The concept of money
is even disappearing from our language. We talk about
account balances instead of how much money we have.
Under these circumstances, it's easy to lose your
connection with money.
For some people, sitting down and figuring out a budget
on paper works fine. For others, the association between the squiggles on the
screen and dollar bills is more tenuous. If you're having trouble sticking to
a savings plan, these tips may help make the concept of money real to you again.
Making
your money real
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Association
game
Figure out one expense
that you can do without every once in a while and use that as a gauge to help
make your savings tangible. For example, if your goal is to save $40 a month
and you know that you spend $4 a day on espresso drinks, you can think of
your savings as 10 coffees. This way your savings goal is not just an abstract
number, but something specific to tackle. How you save the $40 is up to you,
but you can start thinking of how to reach your savings goals in terms of
familiar items.
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