Simply Effective: How To Implement Easy Ways To Save Money

If you believe saving money is hard, you're right.

And, you're also very wrong, too.

Saving money is made difficult for two reasons: poor planning and even more suspect decision making.

If you have a financial plan and an idea of a few basic elements of your money, you should be pretty adept at not only saving but planning for the future, flourishing in retirement and being able to have an emergency fund to prepare for the uncertain.

While all of that sounds good, you can't underestimate the action plan and executing it, and if you're still of the opinion that is a lot more difficult than it seems, think about what it means to save in general and what path you want to take.

Like for instance starting with a financial calendar, a tool that often is overlooked in favor of trying to put together a budget. The truth is the financial calendar is merely writing down when your bills are due, the amounts from one month to the next. This allows you to craft a game plan that is two-fold: you remember when to pay your bills on time and also start to the lay the groundwork for a budget.

And as long as we’re on the topic of a budget, think about what that word truly means. A budget isn’t just knowing, generally speaking, what you spend each month but rather a budget is balancing expenses versus income but more importantly setting goals of where you want to be in 30 days, six months or by the end of a calendar year. Being able to set those goals will lead to better budgeting on your part and force you to make decisions about what is truly important and what you can live without. Once that happens, not only are you almost sure to have extra money, but you’ll also start changing the culture in your mind of precisely what it means to be financially capable.

Planning and saving money also mean assessing the larger scale and smaller scale purchase you have made or make on a daily basis. That means no more expensive cups of coffee every day or bottled water bought one at a time. That also means you might want to consider downgrading the large scale items, too, such as your car or home. While those decisions aren’t meant to be knee-jerk ones, they can be made out of necessity to get yourself financially turned around, so that 180-degree turn you make finally puts you on a path to save money and not feel so worried about it being so difficult in the process.