How to Save Money Painlessly

"A Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." -- Lao-Tzu
The hardest part of any endeavor is beginning-- and saving money is no different. Advice abounds about paying yourself first and while some of us have no problems with paying ourselves, we tend to spend it as soon as that "payday" arrives!

Some methods like rounding up purchases when entering them in your checkbook register seem wonderful--until the day arrives when we see that special item on sale, knowing that the "extra" money is sitting in the checking account just waiting to be spent!

There is one method that allows you to painlessly stash money away without realizing just how much you are saving on a daily basis. By not knowing exactly how much you have stashed away you can't mentally spend the money. Over time you may not think of it as money at all!

To begin you will need a container preferably half-gallon sized or larger. This container doesn't have to be fancy and can literally be anything. For safety make a place away from plain view to store it or take steps to ensure that the casual visitor will not know what it contains. An old vase filled with fake flowers would make an excellent container so long as no one saw you putting money in there (and the money didn't overflow).

Start using cash for as many of your purchases as possible. Always pay with paper money and never have exact change. At the end of every day empty your pockets and/or purse of all the loose change and put it into the storage container.

Make it a habit to empty your pockets into this container every night. Don't worry if the odd screw or receipt ends up in there, just think of this container as a place to lighten your load. This mentality is very important because by not thinking of the change as money you will not consider spending it. Do not count the money or play with it--just dump the money in and move away quickly..

When the container is close to filled go to your local bank and request some coin rollers. They will provide these to customers free of cost. While you are in there verify how much money you need to open a simply passport savings account--some places will allow you to open one with as little as a dollar but some require more.

Take an evening and watch a good movie while counting and rolling out the coins. Don't focus on how much money you've got there, instead count the numbers: 40 quarters for a roll, 50 dimes for a roll, 40 nickels make a roll and 50 pennies make a roll as well. Focus on the numbers and not the dollar amounts. When you get them all rolled put the whole batch into a sturdy sack like a reusable shopping bag.

The next day take the bag to the bank and ask to set up a passport savings account. Allow the teller to count the rolled coins and deposit all of it into the new savings account. Consider how much metal you have just recycled and how much less stuff you now have around the house before going home and repeating the procedure.

The trick to this method is that you really don't think of it as money to be spent but simply as little pieces of metal. Try not to look at the savings book to see how much you have, just keep emptying your purse or pockets into your container every night before rolling them up and dropping them off at the bank.

Do not use those counting machines like the ones CoinStar has. The CoinStar machines in particular charge 9.8 cents for every dollar you run through them, meaning that for every hundred dollars in change you are spending $9.80 just to get it counted! These devices also tally up how much change you have in a commercial area which makes it easy to just spend the money instead of save it. Save your money and avoid the temptation by rolling your change at home.

Do not attempt to store your money in your checking account. Regardless of your intentions the money will get spent. Place the money in a savings account and forget it exists.

Once you become accustomed to saving the money you can look to see how much you have accumulated but do not do this until you are content with saving the money instead of spending it. Take the savings book and hide it in an inconvenient place like a safety deposit box to minimize the possibility of raiding the funds--just allow it to grow in peace.

If you decide to increase your savings you can start paying for things with nothing less than a five-dollar bill and add singles to you savings container, or just toss in all of the bills of a certain denomination (singles or fives for instance) that are in your pockets at the end of each day.

Using this method will enable you to painlessly save money for any goal--one penny at a time.

References:
CoinStar: Coins to Cash