One of the best ways I found for increasing my savings was to decrease my debt. In the case of my family we were able to eliminate it and plan to stay out of debt. We followed Dave Ramsey's Babystep Plan. One thing that really shocked us into being committed to living debt free was to total up the interest we were paying each month. That was basically money out of the window, and it was a bit sickening.
We looked for ways to cut our spending. We each have an allowance of money that is spent on whatever. This gave us the freedom to give in to our wants without having to feel guilty. Any extra money went toward the debts. It was so great to knock them off one by one. When we were finally debt free, it was exhilarating. That was better than the purchase of any "thing" could ever have been.
Since we are committed to being debt free, we did not put that extra money into the spending category. We have a vehicle account where we make payments to ourselves. Instead of paying interest we are earning it! When the time comes to purchase another vehicle, we hope to be able to pay cash. I always thought that only rich people paid for vehicles with cash, but we are going to do just that. If we cannot afford to pay for something, we do not buy it. That seems odd in our instant gratification society, but I have never been one to follow the crowd.
Want to watch the Dave Ramsey show? It comes on the Fox Business Channel nightly. I love that his advice is simple to follow and down to earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment