It's time to get to the personal finance part of this blog! Personal finance is well, personal, meaning the choices I made/make were the best for me and might not be the best for you. That's totally fine! Live your life!
Personal finance for women, especially young women, is often posed as stop your silly spending sprees and then you'll magically have money. When I was first getting started trying to figure out my finances, blog after blog told me to cut out my daily Starbucks. Ummm okay...
So at the time I was working, often nights or evenings, and there was a Starbucks on the way to work. Here's the thing...I don't even really like coffee! I would get a super fancy whatever or a chai latte and walk into work feeling like a put together adult, convinced that this pricey caffeine was the way to proper #adulting. I scoffed at the notion that this would make an impact on my finances. Then I started tracking my spending and I realized that I was actually spending between $23-30 dollars a week, or $92-120 a month or a wild $1196-1560 a year.
WHAT?!?!?!
I decided to give myself a challenge- every time I skipped getting a coffee, I'd immediately move $5 dollars into my savings account. If I wanted the coffee, I'd get it! But soon the satisfaction of watching my savings grow started to go into other categories like take out or fun Target splurges. If I could talk myself out of spending, I'd immediately save. It became like a weird mental game with myself.
I never fully told myself "no" though and that's important. It's why crazy strict diets rarely work. You have to be able to cheat without guilt. So if you want the latte, get the freaking latte. It's your money after all, you decide how to spend it or save it intentionally.
How do you spend YOUR money intentionally?
留言