Tuesday, March 03, 2009

My new personal savings plan

He-who-should-not-be-named suggested them, Obama made a skirting reference to them, and now I've devised my own spin on the matter - my own Personal Savings Plan. Now, my idea is nothing as exotic as some tax-deferred, annuities-based, windfall-whatzy-dinger sophisticated financial derivative instrument.

No, I've come up with an idea brilliant in its simplicity. I charge myself $1 to spend money. That's it. Every single time I spend anything, whether it's a $0.50 candy bar, a $0.99 MP3 from Amazon, the water bill, or a mortgage payment, I charge myself $1.

I take that $1 and move it to my left pocket. When I return to my bedroom later that day or evening, I take the money from my left pocket and stick it in my change cup on my dresser.

I've been doing this for about a month, and I'm averaging about $10/week. Granted, that's not a huge amount, but it's more than if I wasn't doing this, and had I begun saving this way when the Wii was released, I'd have enough saved to purchase one by now.

And this is easy enough to actually do. Plus, unlike my 401k, the money saved won't decrease in value to 2005 levels. What goes into the savings cup, STAYS in the savings cup. (Apologies to the Las Vegas tourism commision.)

No comments: