Just One More Bill

Tweet

It is a concept perhaps as old as time, or at least since money has been in the hands of anyone—which has been the case for hundreds of years. Yet, many people still don't heed what happens to be extremely sound advice. Pay yourself first. But what exactly does that mean? To me, it is creating a bill that is as important, if not more important to pay as your mortgage or utility bill. If you don't pay these bills what happens? You lose your house, or they shut off your lights. What happens if you don't pay yourself first, or at least have some mechanism built into your earnings to save? You shut down your future. A good place to start is simply to start where you can, and to be honest about that. Sometimes by the time you decide you need to start, you've already stretched yourself very thin and then easily make the excuse, "I can't afford to save." The amount really doesn't matter when you start saving as much as getting into the habit and thinking about saving anything. Even if it's just a dollar a month. But whatever the amount you decide works, simply start doing it and make it a bill that must be paid no matter what, and always look for ways to increase the bill. All of our bills go up in cost. Why not the one where you will pay yourself? Especially considering as you continue along saving it is likely you will receive raises which you can use to increase savings. Or perhaps you had a car payment and finally paid it off. Why not continue to make the car payment you are already used to paying, but just put it into your savings instead? While it sometimes seems like an impossible task, one should always keep in mind that there are as many ways to find to save money as there are ways to find to spend it. Saving money doesn't necessarily mean living like a pauper. It just means taking care to ensure your future is secure just as much as you are ensuring your house is not repossessed or your lights aren't turned off. One small caveat. Saving alone will never make you rich. Only investing can do that. But at least you are making some headway by changing your opinion from, "I can't afford to save," to asking the question, "How can I save more?" Think you'll miss the money? You won't. Because just like all the other bills you have to pay, they are givens, and you just get used to the money going somewhere else besides directly in your pocket.