Saving is a Habit

Saving is a habit that takes time to cultivate.

However, once cultivated, the habit of savings will stay with a person for a long, long time.

The best way to start learning to save is to save spare change. $100 sounds a lot to save every month, but $0.20 per day seems so easy to save.

Not many like to carry a lot of spare change with them when they go out shopping. Most people will take the spare change from the cashier, bring them home, and put aside.

Put the spare change into a cookie tin, a bowl, a can or even the empty jar of tomato sauce. Since you are likely to buy a lot of tomato sauce and peanut butter, you can recycle the empty jars into "piggy banks" to save your spare change.

Every time when you go shopping, pay with the bills, accept the spare change from the cashier.
And do not use the spare change.

For example, you buy a cup of coffee for breakfast. Pay with the bill. Keep the change. In mid morning, you are hungry, you go for a doughnut. Pay with the bill, keep the change. Come lunch time, you order your sandwich. This is the third time in a day that you pay with the bill, and keep the change.

After work, you go to the supermarket to get a carton of milk and some bread. Pay with the bill again. Keep the change.

Once you reach home, toss the all coins into the jars. You will be surprised to see how quickly the mountain of spare change grows. At first, you see a few coins inside. A week later, the jars is a quarter full. A month later, you have a full jar of coins.

Think about it, that is your saving, that is your money. Unknowingly, the jar contains a few dollars, even a few hundred dollars, of your savings.

The satisfaction of seeing the money grows can motivate you to save more money. After all, these are real money, money that you can hold, you can touch, you can hear the tinking sound. It is different from using credit card, when sometimes you do not feel like you are spending real money.

Make it a habit to save loose change. Seal up the jar once it is full. Continue to fill in jars after jars of coins. Bring the money to the bank once you have a few jars full of money. Open a new account for the money saved. Do not spend a single cent from it.

You are saving the money for emergency, for retirement and any other purpose. You are not saving the money so that you can buy luxuries.