Take the Time to Prioritize Your Spending!

There are only two ways to free up money to use towards reaching your financial goals: either decrease your expenses or increase your income. You might think that they are one and the same too, but is $1 in savings equal to $1 in new earnings, say at a new job, or even in overtime? The answer is no; one dollar earned at another job or in overtime is going to be taxed, so you'll lose approximately 18% of that one dollar. On the other hand though, if you save $1 in expenses, you have that whole entire dollar to pay off debts or to start a savings account. Over time, this can add up to quite a bit, so cutting your expenses should be your first priority if you need to adjust your budget.

One way to help decrease spending is to limit the amount of cash that you carry on a daily basis. Try to avoid ATM's altogether and only get back a few dollars in cash from transactions with your debit card. If you have the option to have your paycheck direct-deposited at work: DO IT! You are much less likely to spend your paycheck if you never have to cash or deposit it. We’ll discuss other methods for saving money throughout BuildMyBudget.com. All you need is to put some of these strategies to work for you!

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