Are you a Spender or a Saver?

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I believe there are two kinds of people in this world. There are Spenders and Savers. Spenders have the urge or need to spend every penny that they come across. Savers have that same need or urge but it is to keep as much money as they can. I will be the first to admit that I am a Spender. This does not work well when you are trying to dig your way out of debt, get ahead in life, save for a rainy day, or end generational poverty. I was raised that as soon as you get paid you spend it all. Payday is when you go out for a big fancy dinner, you go rent movies, you go buy that thing you've been wanting, and after you've done all the spending you want to do, then you figure out how you're going to pay the bills. Oh, now we don't have money to pay the bills? That's ok, we'll just write checks to all our bills. The bank will put the money in the account and make sure the checks clear and then we'll just use our overdraft protection and it will be fine. I was also raised to always have a checking account because if you have checks you have money and the bank will cover you. The person who taught me about finances also was bringing home about $5,000 a month for a single person and was a slave to the Payday lenders. Every bit of that $5,000 went to payday lenders across 2 states each payday and he could not break free of that cycle. I've had to use paycheck advance places at 2 different points in my life and I was able to get out from under it by using common senses. I tried to show him how to do it but he couldn't wrap his head around not getting the full amount each time. He was too worried that they would be upset because they counted on him to keep the doors open. Getting out from under it will take time but all you do is you decrease your advance by $20 or $50 each time. It will take time but it is so much more doable than quitting cold turkey and not being able to pay bills. I've stressed to my kids, as they've seen me do this twice, that this is a trap for the poor and they prey on the poor. When your vehicle breaks or you have a disconnect notice you will agree to any interest rate and that is what they are counting on. For a payday advance in the state of Nebraska the interest rate is 36%. They lowered it to that from the 405% that it was. All the payday lenders have since left Nebraska. A payday advance in Wyoming comes with an APR rate of 391.07%. THREE HUDNRED percent. Look at that number and tell me that they are NOT preying on poor people. And yes, I get it. A lot of people are poor of have a poor credit score due to their own actions. I know my credit score is due to my actions. But there are so many situations that can take you from comfortable to poor in less than a month. Job loss is the major one. Divorce or separation is another one. A death of an immediate family member is a third thing. So now as I try to fix all the teachings in my brain about how once poor, always poor, and such it is a struggle. It is always a struggle changing who we are. I am working hard on changing me from a spender to a saver. I found cash stuffing. I take my paydays and put the money into envelopes. I only shop with cash in person and save all of my change. My change currently goes into a big water jug. The kind you buy at the dispenser at Walmart if you don't have a Culligan. My daughter decided that she would only drink bottled water (which she pays for) and got herself a jug. I asked if I could buy it from her when it was empty. It cost her $13 to get another one so that is what I paid for mine. She can take her new one back to the store and refill it for $6 and it lasts her a couple months so it isn't that bad. She gets bottled water, I got a coin savings jug. Everyone wins. I love to spend so I am making saving challenges that I can spend my money on. Saving for Christmas made fun? That is simple, get an envelope and decide how much you want to spend on Christmas gifts, divide that by the amount of paychecks you get in a year, put that much money in the envelope each payday. Today You spends the money by stuffing it into the Christmas presents envelope to help Future You out. When it is time to start buying Christmas presents Future You takes the money out of the envelope and can only spend what is in the envelope. For my family I am budgeting $300. That is $100 for each of my kids who are all into Amazon so two will get $100 Amazon gift cards and the oldest will get either a gift certificate to have her new car detailed or get her driver seat upholstery fixed. Her birthday is the 22nd so I am combining her birthday and Christmas presents. I think this is only the second year that I have ever combined for her. I do my best to keep them separate. So my $300 for Christmas presents envelope gets $12 a payday next year. That means that I'll have $312 to work with for presents. $300 for presents in 2024 and $12 to roll over for 2025. I spend all my change by putting it into my big savings water jug. I am saving all of my silver change in a container and each payday I will be buying a few rolls of pennies with my saved silver change. My weird goal is to fill it with pennies first, then nickels, then dimes, then quarters. I just want to see how much I can save in change. I am also going to do some change savings challenges in 2024. I have my eye on the penny challenge and then also doing a nickel challenge. 2025 will be the penny challenge and a dime challenge using the same rules. My goal with saving all of my change and doing the various change challenges is to save up for my dream retirement. I found a cruise I want to go on but I priced it out and it is like $20,000. I figure if I start saving for it now I won't notice it all gone at once. The trick will be actually spending that money once I have it. Here's to new changes.