I've always had problems with understanding the importance of having money aside and I would just spend EVERYTHING I had. In picture nr.1, you can see my failed attempt to save money. It has always been like this, I would always put some money aside and then, at some point, I would say "fuck it, let's just spend the shit out of it". Lucky me, I discovered this sub somewhere in the summer and as I always do with any new sub I discover, I checked the top posts of the sub. I was extremely inspired by the post of u/Atlas_Black, This one specifically. So instead of spending a lazy summer doing nothing and complaining about how I won't find work blah blah blah, I headed to work at a carwash with minimum loan and also reading tons of the posts of this sub. I might not be able to cover everything but feel free to ask me anything.
1- I learned that small amounts of money matter, so instead of thinking " ah it's just 3 euros so why not", I actually forced myself to treat each amount of money the same. So if I would count to 10 before spending a 1000 euros, then I will also do the same when spending these 3 euros. Think through each payment.
2- Have a (fairly realistic) maximum amount of money that you'll spend this month and increase each month. I tracked my payments with a pen and paper to see where I spend money on. I saw for instance that I used to spend more than 200 euros on food each month, I reduced that to 150 and forced myself to 'deal' with it. I had to be creative to cover that short of 50 euros but still, manage to eat (healthy) meals. I did this with most of the stuff and I actually managed to save 100-150 euro a month. Assign maximum amount of money on each category and get creative to spend less.
3- Reduce costs. This one might seem similar to the second one, but it has a subtle difference. It's basically cutting all the extra and un-needed crap. In my case, for instance, I had a 40 euros internet and TV subscription. I never touched the TV subscription but I was forced to take it because the provider is originally a TV provider and thus if you wanted their internet, you had to get the TV packet as well. I canceled that immediately and got myself another one which is about 60-70% of the original one. This might not seem a lot, but I managed to save 10-15 euros a month. Another example is, being a bit more careful about my water, , and gas. I used to waste a lot of electricity by leaving the lights on because "I'll be back in 10 minutes so why not leave the lamps on". Each time, I leave the bathroom, I turn the lights off. Each time I'm brushing my teeth and I'm not using the water, I turn it off. And so on. I have a few more examples but I think that you get the idea by now.
Of course the fact that I worked helped a lot with the saving, but honestly, as the school year is beginning soon, I'll still have around 150-200 euros a month to put aside. I'll still work two days a week tho.
So I started again with saving and working at the end of May (as you can see in picture nr.2). And 3 months later, I had €3500 on my saving account.
Last but not least, thank you r/Frugal, without your help, I wouldn't have had this money and would probably have taken me ages to change my shitty spending mentality. And thank you u/Atlas_Black for inspiring me!
August 28, 2018 at 05:44PM
