Saving In Tough Times
An Entrepreneur’s Diary for saving in Tight Times
How is your Financial Saving Accountability?
By Cheri Ruskus
Basically, if you look at it head on, there is two ways to have the asset we call “Money”. The first is to make it, which business consultants, Trish Thomas and Laurie Taylor discuss so well in the two other articles in this issue. The second is one of the Master Mind principals and that is to create the habit of saving it. Of course without the first it is impossible to do the second but also without the second…our cup stands a very good chance of running on empty. This is good cause to have us continually looking over our shoulder and worrying needlessly.
Let’s face it, one of the glorious opportunities available to us as Entrepreneurs is that we are not limited by a salary, we have unlimited earning potential. However, along with this inflow potential comes the very real outflow potential as well. In many cases leaving absolutely nothing for “savings”. This is in fact where many an Entrepreneur (yours truly included) can get tripped up. The rainy day we are supposed to be saving for seems to occur sometimes on a daily basis. We seem to always pay ourselves last, when, as many wealth advisors recommend, we should always be paying ourselves first.
A basic Master Mind principal as shared by Napoleon Hill is the creating saving as a habit that we do on a regular and consistent basis.
Tip Yourself
Our investments are indeed our tomorrows. While it’s important to “be” in the moment to fully enjoy the richness of today, it is equally as important to plan for tomorrow to insure our financial independence. The easiest place to start today, especially with the stock and real estate markets tanking out, is through simply saving. Insuring we have the cash reserves we need at hand. Not that we necessarily use them – just having them seems to create an opportune probability for more coming our way.
So how do we do it when funds are tight? Think of it as if you were a server in restaurant. Most of us do not hesitate to give a tip at the end of well-served meal. Standard practice is 15-20%. What if you saw your self as the main server of your business and every time you gave yourself a draw or a paycheck you placed that 15-20% tip in your savings account. Just letting it accrue as it needs to do.
Jack Canfield in his book, The Success Principals, actually speaks of a couple that placed 50% in their income consistently in savings and another 10% for tithing to their church. The result was that they were able to live just fine on the 40% leftover, in fact they became billionaires in the process.
A Savings Log
When I was in my teens, I remember opening my first savings account. I remember the joy I felt each time I made a deposit. They gave me a “passbook” (appropriately named!). Each time I went into the bank they would put it into the computer and it gave me a printed log of my ongoing transactions. At the time my incentive was to take a trip with mAny sister to Hawaii for my 18th birthday. Each time I got paid by my part time high school jobs I would head to the Savings and Loan and watch my savings, and the reality of my trip to Hawaii grow strong.
Two full weeks in Hawaii became a reality and cherished memory for my sister and I. She presented me with a pineapple full of lighted candles on my 18th birthday. The passbook log had worked and has me thinking today that creating another log would be effective, even if I do it myself without the teller in the bank having to put my passbook into the computer or Hawaii as a carrot prompting me. Taking the time to make up my own “passbook” will get me in the spirit for what I must accomplish and the habits I must once again form.
Getting the Groove Back
My mother, who worked for the Savings and Loan industry for a little over 25 years, always instilled in us the continual need to save. I watched it give her a retirement that has her traveling around the world and doing, for the most part, exactly what she wants to do. My husband is also a saver and perhaps over the years I began to let him take care of all the saving efforts for our family. But what about me? Somewhere along my entrepreneurial way I digressed severely. All my extra funds have become “reinvestments” into my businesses.
As I write this article and think of how I have slipped in this area I am making a commitment right here, right now, to start paying myself first. First I will create that passbook. Perhaps not as official as it used to be – but I will make it something I look forward to completing on a weekly basis. I will make it similar to a money journal.
Secondly, I will think of myself as my favorite server and pay the gratuity to me for all the work I do each day. Finally, I am going to find an accountability partner to assist me in having the fortitude in saving my funds – not for fun or to reinvest in my business – but to build my wealth. This I know will allow my “passbook” to attract more money to me.
I encourage you to try it too. While we all might use the excuse that “times are too tight to start anything so ambitious right now.” We need to remember that there is no time like the present. Many a fortune was brought together during what was perceived as tight financial times. Keep these words in mind of Benjamin Franklin: If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.