Today, while waiting for laundry to finish (I haven't bought and installed a washer/dryer in my basement yet), I decided to get my oil changed and have the fan belt replaced. The squeaking noise the belt was creating was becoming unbearable. As I was leaving the shop, the cashier offered me one of their savings cards. Every subsequent visit saves you a dollar more than the previous ($5 the first time, $6 the second, and so on). She offered it to me right after swiping my credit card. Thats when I remembered I had one of the savings cards from the last time I was there. She wasn't able to refund my credit card, but she gave me $5 cash back instead. It was amazing. The real cash felt a lot more real. "Saving" $5 felt like much more of an accomplishment when I was actually holding the cash. It was REAL money. Had she simply credited my credit card, I would have passed it over as no big deal.
That experience got me thinking. Every time I save money, I should transfer that much money into my INGDirect savings account. It doesn't cost me anything to make a transfer, and I can make as many transfer's as I like without being charged. So today, I transferred $5 into my INGDirect account. I'm going to start keeping track of every penny I save throughout the day and at the end of the week, add up the total and transfer that much money into INGDirect. These "savings" transfers will be in addition to the weekly transfers I recently talked about.
I've also started the long journey of reducing stuff, and increasing peace. In case you'd like to give me some of your peace, please check out my two eBay listings, here and here.
Very intelligent.
I myself had the same idea just last week.
Every time I think of something I want to buy, I am going to take that money & put it in the bank.
You have also inspired me to get rid of my film Rebel, & other such junx which clutters my life.