Cash Only?
October 25th, 2009 at 01:40 amI've noticed that in the past few weeks I've switched to completely cash only. Even no debit card. And by doing this my savings/checking accounts have been fed and are somewhat full.
Now that I have completely paid off my credit cards and keeping them unused for some time now, I cringe at the thought of swiping them and charging them back up. And even if I did just pay they off right away that's still money down the drain on something that I probably didn't need in the first place. As I was looking through some old statements I came across the fact that about a year ago I was spending close to $800 a month on my credit card. It never dawned on me that I was doing that because I make payments every week. Yup, every week just to keep the balance down. That was a year ago. Fortunately, now that I have a steady job and steady source of income... keeping fingers crossed that it stays that way... I'm finding that my time and money is more valuable to me. That $800 plus whatever other bills I had, student loans, insurance... etc... was eating up all my income. Well not all because i was still saving too. More like saving to spend. I don't know why it just hit me like a wall laying in bed last night looking at my last pay stub that hey... I made... $xx,xxx. amount of money so far this year as a gross salary... and $xx,xxx amount net pay... where is all that money now? Not that I completely spend it all, but still... I should be at least $x,xxx... richer that I was last year.
Then I tried to give myself all these excuses like, well I did pay extra to my student loan. Well.. that was only like $5000 in a year... started with $17,000... when to $12500. I didn't even contribute that much to my Roth last year... that was only $2,000. So where is the rest of it? I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't gone into some of my savings and my savings would have stayed stagnant.
So, I guess I've had my ah-ha moment. I always thought that I was good saver. Handling money was my thing, excel spreadsheet and all. And I could just make a budget. But I can barely stick to my day planner let alone a budget. But I think now that I'm fully aware of the situation, I'm more apt to being good in the store.
My question to myself is... "am I going to use this today?" If I can't say yes then I guess the purchase can be put to another day. And who knows I may just forget about it and save myself some more money. Of if it comes to clothes, my biggest weakness, "will I wear this to work tomorrow?". Because chances are I will not wear it the next day... and maybe if I'm lucky I'll wear it within the week. Like those two new pairs of shoes sitting on my bedroom floor... I bought a month ago... still sitting in the box. I needed to replace my work shoes because the sole is starting to come off and I happened to find the same shoe online... on sale and bought them. But I don't know why I have to keep wearing my beat up ones.
I'm going to start now and maybe I will start seeing some real progress with savings and net worth!