By Darla Youngblood
It’s never to late no matter what your age is to set goals of things you want to do with your life! I have a goal to travel as much as I can as long as I’m physically able to! So one of the goals is for a friend I grew up with who survived cancer twice in the last three years and me surviving again several seizures in one day, to go see the Grand Canyon by train! She’s never been to Arizona or seen the Grand Canyon before so it will be a fun trip for us to go there in the future. So not only is it something fun to look forward to it also makes me much more aware of saving money just for that goal.
If there’s a trip you want to take or even buying a car or something else big. Figure out how much it cost then divide that by 12 months to see how much money you will need to save each month to reach your goal. Maybe it will take more than a year to save but that’s okay and nothing wrong with that at all! Saving the cash for trips or buying something is so much better than putting these things you want on a credit card that’s only going to add interest and cost you so much more money. It feels great to pay cash for things and know your not going to be paying that interest you would on a credit card. Save money to a checking or savings account then you can pay for it with a debit card or take the cash out of the bank and pay cash for it. And we all know Christmas is in December and it would be so much easier to save money each month for Christmas then you are prepared and don’t have guilt in January with a big credit card bill to pay. I only had one year I put Christmas on a credit card and felt so guilty in January having to pay off that credit card.I only use a debit card or cash now and the great part of that is you don’t spend money on things on impulses because you know you have to save the money for it and it gives you time to really think about if you really want to spend money on a thing or save it for an experience like a family vacation!
So no matter what stage in life you are at think more about goals to work towards and think a lot more about spending money on experiences that you will have wonderful memories and pictures to remember than just things that you probably won’t use much. Live each day to the fullest!