Good and bad personal finance days…
I am very financially inconsistent.
Over the long-term, I am able to make progress towards my financial goals, but over the short-term I’m a mess! I eat far too many lunches out, make impulsive purchases and ignore any spending targets that I’ve set for myself. Why do I do that?
Fortunately, I have set up several direct deposits that funnel out living expenses, long-term savings and short-term savings from my paycheck before I ever see it. Which means that overall, financially I’m doing pretty well. But I have this niggling feeling that if I could get my personal discretionary spending under control, I could be doing even better!
So how to accomplish this. I’ve toyed with the idea of the cash envelope system. For example, I decide I’m only going to spend $100 over my two week pay period on lunches out. At the beginning of the pay period, I withdraw $100 in cash and store it in my wallet with a “lunches out” designation. Once the cash is gone, it’s gone! Another category I desperately need to control is miscellaneous purchases, which I’m also going to set at $100 a pay period. This includes books, yarn, or anything I run across that I have to have.
This requires planning. If I’m organized I can bring my lunches most days and spend very little on extra food, but I actually have to do it! For the misc purchases, I need to look ahead and think about what purchases I might wish to make over the two weeks. I’m going to give this plan a whirl for the next pay check which starts on Tuesday. I’ll let you know how it goes.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.