Personal Finance Challenge #51: Make It Easy On Yourself

Here’s the deal. You want to make this personal finance thing as easy on yourself as possible. Meaning this…

Everything that lets you save a dime…

Everything that helps you make more money easier…

Everything that helps you to eat inexpensively (yet still healthy)…

Everything that helps you make the wisest of buying decisions…

Anything and everything that helps you to spend less than you earn…

Focus on making those and every other smart financial practice easier for you.

How do you do that?

One way I already mentioned is to automatically deposit 10% of your check into savings every month. You spend a few minutes setting it up and you don’t even think about it again until you really need it, or some of it can be better invested elsewhere.

How do you make a big buying purchase like a car or house easier on yourself? Do your research months and possible years ahead of time. Last time I bought a car I did my research for a vehicle that would meet all my requirements and decided on the make and model ahead of time. I took a few weeks to shop around and found a car for $2,000 less than blue book value. Thinking about these things ahead of time helps a lot.

How do you save money on food? Prepare most or all of your meals for the week on the weekend. Then when you are busy with your workday you never have to worry about buying an expensive lunch because you didn’t have time to make one that morning. Or come home late and exhausted from work, and want to go out to eat again. If you have meals prepared ahead of time, or simple, fast, and easy meals already thought up and practiced then you can save a lot there too.

How do you save money on most other things in life? Don’t let things be emergencies. Plan ahead for problems. And don’t always automatically plan on spending your way out of a problem. Sometimes you can fix a problem for free that would have cost you one hundred dollars.

I just recently heard an example of a lady who had a problem with her swamp cooler. A technician came out to give her an estimate and told her to replace it with a brand new one. She had another person come out who was honest and told her she could fix it with $20 worth of parts and an hour of her time. Sometimes we aren’t so lucky, but it pays to do our due diligence and research the topic at hand as much as we can.

Make savings automatic. Make spending planned. Make increased earnings guaranteed and you are pretty much bulletproof.

Remember, the easier you make it on yourself, the better you will be at the personal finance challenge. Good luck!

This is our 51st challenge in The Personal Finance Challenge Series…