In early 2007, Janssen and I both had full-time jobs. We had no kids and no car payments, and our only major monthly expense was our mortgage payment, which was a whopping $850.
So when we decided to start saving money, we saw instant rewards.
Every month, we'd sit down in front of the computer and decide how to allocate our extra income among our savings accounts.
That's when I discovered that saving money could be just as satisfying as spending it, if not more.
In other circumstances, I may not have felt that way. Had I not been frustrated with our lack of savings after working hard for what felt like a long time to establish our financial security, it may not have felt so good to save.
But I HAD been frustrated, and I HAD felt the stress of living paycheck to paycheck. And saving money was a method by which Janssen and I could overcome those things.
For the past couple of years, I've been doing the opposite of saving money. First, I tried my hand at futures trading and LOST money instead of saving it (don't try this at home). Then I took out over $30k in student loans for my master's degree.
And now we're paying off student debt as quickly as possible. It's not as exciting or satisfying as saving money, but it's liberating, and it's setting the groundwork to begin saving again, which I'm definitely looking forward to doing.
Have you experienced the satisfaction of saving money, and was the satisfaction as surprising to you as it was to me?
1 comment:
In october 2009, we sold our lincoln aviator. that suv was sucking the life out of us. once gone we bought a little kia rio cash and freed up $600 a month. now every month we have a budget meeting where we too allocate out savings - some to our HSA, some emergency fund, etc. what a great feeling it is to have extra money that isn't accounted for by bills. it is much more fun to put money into savings than driving that lincoln. we know someday we can save up cash and buy a lincoln again, but for now the rio is just fine.
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