Many of us are good with saving money while many of us are terrible with savings, budgeting, being frugal, etc. Half of us don’t even know what those terms mean!
If you have even the most basic types of savings — like an emergency fund, retirement accounts, and all of the things one is supposed to have as they move through their young adulthood and want even a bit of stability and security — then congrats ’cause you’re ahead of most of us. But if you lack the personality type that drives one to save money as if it’s actually fun, then having a savings account can be incredibly difficult. A lot of people — like many of the staff here at KBH — who get truly excited about saving money can come up with a staggering amount of ways to save even more. These are usually some combination of “earning more money” and “lightly tricking your own brain into being happy with less.” And while you can definitely have a touch of “saver brain”, this will probably never become an activity that you genuinely love.
With that being said, we like to find creative ways to do things more intelligently, and that includes ways to save money. For some, it could be changing the way you shop and being much more methodical about your purchases. For example: begin by buying a few things of the highest quality you can afford, and frequenting stores which prioritize loyalty and great customer service. It could save you a ton of money in the long-term, and it’s much better to have a few exceptional pieces versus many mediocre belongings.
But that kind of change in shopping costs money as a rule, so it’s important to talk about creative savings with someone who is very good at the nitty-gritty of wringing more pennies out of your dollar, even when you don’t have that many dollars to work with. Erin of Broke Millennial, a very smart money person, joined Chelsea Fagan of the Financial Diet to talk about the creative ways you can save more money.