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Originally Posted by celstu1  What works for me is I count 'savings' as a bill! So each paycheck when I pay my bills I automatically deposit money into my savings account as a bill. I leave myself a certain amount in my checking account and that is what I have. No more! So if its $100 a week and I spend it on coffee & water, then thats it... doing this I have learned to cut back on things. I realized I was spending $40 a month or more for coffee at dunkin donuts! i have cut back to 2 a week now and I spend about $20 a month now.. a little more manageable!  |
We do this too. Ideally of course you want to have a cushion in your checking acct, so don't do this unless you are extremely good at bookkeeping! (I balance my checkbook *daily*) When we get paid I only leave a few hundred dollars for non-bill things like gas and groceries. The rest goes to bills or savings. It helps us not spend if we see there is only $200 in the checking acct. If I leave $800, guess what? We manage to spend it all by the time we get paid again.
Once we get all of our debt paid off, then I will relax a little bit and build up a reserve in the acct. I also helps if you have a bank that will automatically transfer from savings to avoid an NSF fee, just in case. Even though the money is there, it's separate, and I *hate* transferring money into checking unless it's an emergency. So it does feel separate, even though it's really not.