As a living human being on this planet, and especially in this space of Canada, you’ve probably heard either through the newspaper or television about the Smart Cookies. No, it’s not the calorific-free version of your fave mocha-chillo macadamia cookie–it’s the successful "brandization" of five young, career-upswinging women who had bills and credit cards that caved the opposite way of their aspirations and carefree spending habits.
Since their credit-card monster heydays, this group of women has turned their lives around. I can’t say specifically how much, but to the tune of Oprah-style, book-selling success. I’m not here to tell you to buy their book. I’m here to tell you that it’s not hard to be a Smart Cookie…it would kill you not to be!
It’s a simple, multi-step plan:
1. Get a cookie. (This one’s the easiest, so I thought I’d give you a little encouragement before getting on to the harder steps).
2. Find a close Asian relation, preferably one you know who immigrated here, and just shadow them for a day when they go grocery/car hunting/clothes shopping. Take a lesson from this chapter, Smart Cookie grasshopper! You’ll learn how to save more money in one day than you realized you could stuff your piggybank full of. Learn from how they think when they shop–I’m not saying copy everything they do, but you’d be surprised at what watching someone at work does for your train of spending habits.
3. Do the $5/day latte thing…(yes I just DID say "DO IT"–just not every day.) The worst thing you could do, in our have-it-all society, is to suddenly go cold-turkey and decide to have nothing in order to have mo’ money. You may stick it out for awhile, but your credit card reflexes will decide to cave in eventually . . . and like a yo-yo diet, the bingefest will begin again!
4. Do the cash thing . . . not the credit card thing. There is something raw and tactile about opening up your wallet and forking away your hard-earned cash to anybody, that will make you think twice before paying out. A credit card is so much more impersonal. Yes, it’s yours, but it’s about a size of a business card, half as thin as a stick of gum, and so very unrepresentational of the heavy duty financial damage it could cause you.
5. Sit down with yourself, and set very clear goals about what or where you’d like to put that chunk of money you have saved into. A trip to Mexico? That flat-screen telemonster screen your wife or girlfriend is very clearly opposed to? Put your money either into a glass jar or separate banking account where you can check in on a regular basis to see that you’re clearly GROWING your money. Trust me, it’s really quite a nice feeling of surprise to see money where it wasn’t before!
6. With the sharp memories of a recession biting the back of many banks’ heels, many banks are now offering a new way to save money–every time you use your debit card, you can select an automated amount that gets deposited into your savings account. So now, everytime you whip out your debit card, you can feel a little better knowing that while you’re spending, at least you’re SAVING some money elsewhere.
Do all of the above, ONE bite at a time. Yes, these tips don’t offer anything profound or "NEW", but as in weight loss and other challenges in life, goals are achieved, in truth, by commitment to oneself. Our job is just to follow up with ourselves long enough to succeed.
This ends the first bite-sized portion of little tips (and chocolate chips?) that can add up to a whole LOT of savings.
