Bryan C. Fleming

If you’re worrying about money it’s because you don’t feel you have enough. Every fortune begins with only a few dollars and grows from there. That’s why it’s so important to learn to save money. It’s a habit you must learn to develop.

You might feel like you can’t save money because you don’t have enough. This is because you’re a victim of today’s advertising. Advertisers have gotten very good at making you feel like you need things that you simply don’t need. We’re bombarded by advertisements from morning to night. It’s no wonder we’ve all bought a bunch of things we don’t really need.

Throw credit card companies into the mix and you’ve got a cocktail for financial hardships. Easy credit and fancy advertising can lead anyone into a pit of credit card debt that can be very hard to get out from. So how do you save money when you don’t have enough?

In that question is the answer. You see you really do have enough money. What you’re doing is paying your bills and spending the rest on things you think you need. People rarely have a money-making problem, they almost always have a money-spending problem. You must understand this. You already make enough money. You only have to play a better defense and learn to spend less. Why? Because until you discipline yourself to control your spending you’ll continue to have money problems—No matter how much money you make.

Learning to save money is actually pretty easy. You should set up an automatic system to save money before you get a chance to spend it. Trying to save it afterwards rarely works. The saying “Pay yourself First” is famous for a reason. Life seems to have a way of taking it before we can sock it away. If you’ve never saved money before do this:

Take 10 cents for every dollar you earn and get it out of our bank account immediately. It doesn’t matter how many bills or creditors you have screaming to be paid. Just get 10% out of your bank account. Pay yourself first. Pay yourself before anyone else gets paid. That’s how you save money. You’ll naturally adjust to the new spending level and everything will take care of itself.

So what do you do with the money if it’s not in your bank account? Well, for the first couple months I’d strongly suggest you keep the cold hard cash somewhere safe. Somewhere where you can see it regularly and here’s why:

Seeing a pile of money is so much more powerful than seeing a number on bank statement. A giant stack of 20’s or 100’s really drives home what you’re doing.

I started doing this a few years ago. I can vividly remember how quickly, I had a pile of money. By saving 10% of my $60,000 per year salary, I quickly had almost $500. Then a short while later it was $2,000. There’s something powerful about sitting on the couch counting out $2,000 in cold hard cash. No matter what financial problems I was having, I felt like I had a lot of money. Eventually that money made its way into a bank account and gets some interest now, but if you really want to save money you need to see the cash!

So let’s save 10 cents for every dollar we earn. Let’s pay ourselves first, and let’s do it in a way where we can see the cold hard cash.

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