How to Save Money

As most of the students at my age I was also a big spender. In fact I only spend didn’t make a penny. Though I don’t make any money for the moment I dream of starting my own business. I’ve tried few ideas but none of that made an impression on me as the competition is too high and I’ve very little time left behind other than for studies. Few months ago I came up with an idea and start working on it. There were few areas to be improved yet I couldn’t take my product to potential users as I didn’t have money to advertise my product. I was looking for an idea which I can implement without a capital that I did successfully but couldn’t execute the plan to take my product to public at no cost. I tried few things but none of that was useful. So I had to find a capital, so I started finding an investor, though my idea is cool and great, there is a huge risk behind it as I couldn’t grantee the success rate of my idea and to show any statistics to prove that it’ll work. SO THIS WAS THE MOMENT.

Since I felt I’m getting low marks for exams as my attention is focused on my idea than on my education, I thought to wait till the academic year ends, so that during the holiday months (2 – 4months) I can put myself 100% on it. As time goes by one day I changed the TV channel to watch a movie while having my lunch. It was Home Alone 3. Though I’ve watched the movie before it never made an impression on me other than just enjoying it. But after few days watching this time I realized that the kid in the movie had to take things into his own hand as nobody believed him. I was in his boat, when it comes to finding a capital, that movie really inspired me to come up with a plan to raise my own capital.

HOW I CAME UP WITH THE SAVINGS PLAN

My objective was to raise a capital since I’m not making any money my only option I had was to save money. I read few articles on internet but none of that supported me to fix my bad habits and to push myself hard to save money. But I constantly kept thinking about this and as I was doing something suddenly a technique we use in software engineering hit my mind (I’m a software engineering undergraduate student). It was “Divide and Conquer” method. It’s a pretty simple technique, theory is that you divide the original problem into series of small problems until you reach a problem which is easy to solve or something which have already solved. I realized that this is the best solution for me as it’s very difficult for me to stick to one thing for a longer period of time.

TECHNIQUE

Since now I know the method to save money, I stated to prepare a plan for it. First I realized I’ve 5 – 4 months left in this academic year which means within these 5 – 4 months I’ve to safe enough money to run an ad campaign. I realized maximum I can save is close to 50,000/- LKR which is around $500 USD. This is pretty much enough I believe. So now I’ve a target. Next I needed a way to reach the target. I realized that I’ve to save 10,000 LKR ($100) every month. So I started doing few calculations. I receive 16,000 – 18,000 LKR as an allowance for myself per month. I did more home work and figure out at minimum I need 200 LKR per day to eat drink and carry on but needs little extra money for educational expenses like for stationary items. Basically if I try my best I can save 8000 LKR per month ($80 per month).

Though I knew I’m not good at executing and sticking into longer plans I’m good at doing things by breaking them apart. SO MY PLAN WAS to SAVE 266.66LKR ($2.66) PER DAY. So at the need of month I can save $80. Though I’ve a plan I start to think, what might stop make me execute my saving plan successfully. And I realized the main reason which has jeopardized my previous attempts to save money was sudden expenses. Like money to buy a new mug, dinner plate (very good at dropping them) or some other things to maintain my life necessities. Other than this I do spend extra money on food and on movies to cheer me up after a tiring day or week. Specially after exams I do buy lot of movies. So I had to stop them all but I realized as long as I’ve money in my bank I’ll take them out from my card whenever I want. So I had to find a way to lock my savings away. So I opened another bank account without an ATM Card so I can’t pull out money without going to bank. Banks close at 3.00PM and I’ve to carry my bank book to take money. Since there are so many barriers before I take money it prevents me from touching my savings. My plan was to save $80 by end of each month. Now I’m saving that amount before the month ends. I’ve $80 left to spend. This amount I divide into 30 days and keep two 100 LKR notes for every day. I go out with only 200LKR ($2) so I must fit into that somehow. There is about 2000 LKR left behind which goes for expenses like printing assignments, buying stationary items and on things like that. But mean time I do my best to save money every day from the 200LKR I’ve for each day. Since I’ve no money for entertain myself I do well when it comes to saving money from daily allocated amount.

IN BULLET POINTS

Have a long term saving target which you can achieve with the allocated time period (Mine was 50,000 LKR ($500) in 4 – 5 months) Break it into each month (Mine was 8000lkr every month ($80) ) Save that amount up front and bring your monthly income down (In my case allowance was $160 saved $80 upfront) Lock away the saved money where it takes some effort to take the money back (In my case I put them into a new account which doesn’t have an ATM card. It prevent me from pulling that money out and to remind me that, that money is my savings) Manage with current income (since I paid my self first I’ve $80 left to spend) Break the income and allocate money for each day (In my case $2 per day) Keep that money at home and take $2 in the morning and stick to that. Try saving money from the money allocated for each day. Those saved money can be used to cheer yourself up or to pay for sudden expenses without having to spend your savings

SUMMERY

Reality is in any case until YOU want to do it you cannot do it. When I was small never wanted to study, I in fact left school early because I hated one size fix all education system so much. But now I’m doing a degree because with time I wanted to study, not necessarily academic studies but time is funny it lead me to start a degree and I’m almost done with it. Save first and bring your income down. Manage with the present income Break it again Spend daily wise save daily wise from the money allocated for each day You can save the money you save from amount allocated for each day or to spend it on sudden expenses or else to cheer you up. I believe in power of rewards so I use that saving to cheer myself up, if there is no extra expense; which drives me to obey this method. WITH THIS METHOD YOU CAN DO ALMOST ANYTHING EVEN A WAR WHICH IS DIVIDE AND CONQUER

Finally I recommend you to customize this technique to fit into your situation. I say this because I know one size does not fix all.


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