Do you absolutely need to save money or want to learn how to? What if I told you that you can achieve some rather remarkable things if you did? Save for a vacation, an expensive tech purchase, or even so that you can try doing Steemit full-time? I've decided to cover one of the hardest topics to publicly write about—money.
In this guide, I will be covering everything from apps and technology to unconventional strategies including the psychology behind why we always end up broke. Get your bookmarks ready. Today, let's talk about money and help make everyone a little bit richer!
Reasons Why Saving Feels Impossible
- Unpropotional understanding of currency
- Immediate gratification
- You are trying to do it alone
- Your funds are leaking
- Not making the most of your resources
What is Currency?
"Time is money."
We hear that all the time, but do you really know what it means? Most people see money and time as synonymous, but that's where the train stops. Time, money, energy, privacy—the sum of these qualities is your TOTAL WELATH. Think about how much you have of each of these things, this is your money and these are your resources. As you read this guide, take note of each time one of these words appear.
No one will leave this article without having their mind blown,
I can assure you.
Miramar Recovery Center
What Are You Willing to Trade?
I live walking distance to Waikiki Beach, in a fully secured hotel, with AC—my electricity is free. I don't work a 9 to 5, and technically the apartment I rent is a condo. Sounds like I'm living the dream right? 31st floor with a mountain view. In a way it is, but I live my life differently to make up the difference of income I would receive working a normal hourly wage job.
For starters, this condo is a studio I now share with two other people. Can't do it? Then maybe you don't truly want a "luxurious" lifestyle. To make up for my lack of money, I trade my privacy.
How the Frugal Lifestyle Began
roosaare.com
I was originally supposed to move in May with my boyfriend and my good friend who I already live with into a 2 bedroom apartment. Fun story though, all of our credit was sub 700, and my boyfriend was living paycheck to paycheck. When I ran the numbers we were not going to be able to cover all of the deposits and fees that would allow this to happen. My roommate and I were equally stunned at where my boyfriend's finances were.
If your rent is only $400 and you make $1600+ a month, how can you be living paycheck to paycheck? He works full-time at $12 an hour, this shouldn't be possible. He came to sleep over one night, so we asked him. If we're all planning on living together in the future, we need to know what's going on.
He lived a little over a mile away from his workplace and works 8 hours a day. If it's raining or if he's too exhausted from his shift, he calls an Uber home. Since his job sells bentos, and plenty of ready to eat meals he buys them on his lunch and after work. When he's at home, he only has the budget and energy to eat instant stir-fry noodles.
Ellen DeGeneres—Quotefancy
Harsh Reality of Working "In the System"
I couldn't even be mad at him. Of course he's working hard, and is trying to take care of his body the best that he can. When we are exhausted we don't want to burn any more energy than we already have—so we end up burning money instead. The instant gratification of having your food already made for you can become the most alluring thing in the world if you feel on the verge of blacking out.
People who are dedicated to the grind have to make up for the extra energy lost by buying take out food, or eating at restaurants. Ask anyone living paycheck to paycheck, I bet you that they don't cook their meals. I did this too when I worked full-time. My paychecks were bigger, but my savings shrank. He was not only deteriorating his wallet but his health in the process. I came up with an idea. Why doesn't he live with us until we all can afford to move?
Cardcaptor Sakura—YouTube
Reprising Roles at Home
I started cooking all of our dinners and packing his lunches for him to take to work. I also live closer than he did, so walking is easier. I pay for all expenses besides rent and internet which is split equally, and if I need extra funds to cover something, I just ask. I pay by default, because I shop to save.
Everyone gets their food made for them and doesn't have to worry about chores and errands for the most part. The energy that I don't use working a 9 to 5, helps to save them money from eating outside. The energy they save by not having to do these things, brightens their moods and their days.
I don't have "roommate arguments" at home. Everyone's day is that much easier. My boyfriend and roommate go to work most days, so I can usually enjoy quite a bit of privacy every day. You would think that sharing a room with two other people would be overbearing, but it's how you play the situation that matters.
searchenginepeople.com
How Proactive Team Work at Home Saves You Money
Raise your hand if you find it difficult for your roommates to help with chores, or to fork up money for bills? This, amazingly enough, doesn't happen to me... anymore. When I ask my roommate to clean something—no hesitation, my boyfriend happily does dishes, and all of our bills are always paid on time.
What did I have to trade in order to make this happen?
Well, as previously stated, I do all of the shopping out of pocket. I also wash everyone's laundry. Now if you are trying to stick up for gender roles here, or think that I'm slaving away so that someone else can pay my bills—Then you are part of the problem! This is why you're poor!
Consideration For Others Saves Everyone Money
We don't have a washer and dryer in our unit, it's part of the building and we have to pay to use them. Explain to me why I would want everyone to use money to have half-filled washers and driers while washing our own laundry on our own time. I'm willing to trade some privacy for that. By doing our laundry together, we collectively save time and money that would have been spent doing it individually.
Our laundromat is only on a different floor, and if I am too tired to do laundry myself, my boyfriend and roommate are more than willing to help me. They have the energy to do it. I came home from grocery shopping just a little while ago, and asked my roommate to pay laundry this time. He easily said yes.
It is not about playing the martyr. I can do these errands because I have the time and energy from not day waging. Any kind of roommate grumbling arises from the frustration of being exhausted and using all of your energy. I take a proactive approach instead because I am capable. When I'm not, they got it.
My interpretation of "Two Cows Economics". Feel free to use!
Collective Ownership is Important to a Household's Success
I've witnessed living situations countless times where all parties living together have a scarcity mindset. What do I mean? It's when a member at home whether family, friend, or roommate doesn't have money and can't eat anything because they didn't pay for it, so they have no rights to it.
This is the saddest kind of calamity I've ever seen happen in a first world country. This happens every day. A couple of days away from a paycheck, with a stocked fridge, but you can't eat anything in it. Devaluing another human is a great waste of any type of currency.
I grocery shop not just for me, but for everyone at home. When I am out, I ask both my boyfriend and my roommate if there is anything they need. Our understanding is that we have equal rights to eat anything at home, nobody should starve or feel uneasy at eating things in your own home. I don't ask them to pay, but they do give me cash when they have on hand before and even after I shop. I buy things that we can all eat and like.
My roommate may work at a restaurant, but on his days off or in the mornings if I'm up early enough, I also cook for him when I make myself food. I even stop him sometimes when he wants to eat at one of the restaurants we have downstairs. When you live inconvenience, you need to exercise self-control.
GoBoiano
Understanding Currency as a Group
What I feel ruins many relationships, and living situations the most are feelings of mistrust, animosity, and the belief that everyone needs to "pull their own weight". People get overtaken by pointing out the flaws in others to justify their own misunderstanding of currency (time, money, energy, privacy) and why their lives are lacking resources. To paraphrase what a wise developer once wrote:
"Good people shouldn't have to resort to violence to climb up in life."
Everyone at home fully understands that we are pooling our resources where needed to help each other come out stronger than we could have ever imagined accomplishing by ourselves.
TINYpulse
Your Life is Leaking Money and You Don't Even Know It
I do have a couple of strange and seemingly benign rules in place at home. These are:
- Anything you buy, give me the receipt.
- Give me any change that you have (including what I find when doing laundry c:)
Resorting to loose change? I must be getting desperate. Let me remind you, this why you're poor. Saving with coupons, and budgeting your purchases. Why does your saving have to end when you leave the grocery store?
I roll my own coins, and any coins they are carrying also become mine when they both come home. I lightheartedly joke that this is their payment for everything. In a way it is. Putting coins into coin rolls feels very relaxing as an activity, and reminds me to be aware of spending (being frugal).
Application 1: Reciept Hog
I have this one as an Android app.
What it does:
I snap photos of all my receipts and collect points that can be redeemed for Amazon, Visa, or Paypal respectively. I have to also rate my trip in stars (in app) and select how many people attended (in app). That's it, rack up points. Lol, I'm halfway to my first $5!
Permissions/Access: Location, and Camera
The Take: It's a great and intuitive application. I was already shopping, there's nothing extra that I need to do. I like this app more than Ibotta because I am not inclined to make specific purchases to use coupons offered inside the app. Plus, I also have electronic records of all of my receipts. My life feels more organized!
Application 2: Acorns
I also have this on Android c:
What it does:
Link your debit card, and anytime you make a purchase it rounds it up to the nearest dollar. When it hits $5, it transfers the money from your bank account to your Acorns account. It also moves the amount you set every month from your bank account to Acorns ($5 minimum). Once transferred, their team of investment experts reinvests your money into small holdings for you—paying out dividends, until you want to take it out.
Permissions/Access: Personal Info, Bank Account, and Debit Card Info
The take: Spare change huh? I made this account less than a month ago, I checked it and have over $25 in it (that I didn't feel bleeding from my soul). I don't know what penny stocks I'm buying, but I do know that my dividends pay higher than my current savings account!
Plus, if you don't have enough in your account for the "round up purchase feature" it turns it off, so you can't overdraft your account. I really like it, and the change that I didn't know I was saving will make a difference in the future!
trollsocialgt.blogspot.com
Delayed Gratification and Micro Investing
We're going to revisit the topic of instant gratification here, and why you lose out everytime that you give in. My nearest grocery stores are about a mile away from where I live. I already walk (saving money on car and gas), but it's hard to make one large trip than to do several smaller ones that waste time to do. When I carry large bags home, I need to take a break from using my energy carrying heavy groceries, those breaks also eat into time I could be investing elsewhere. If I literally have too many things, I have to call a cab or an Uber to get home.
When I grocery shop I use a lot more than money, how can I better manage my resources in this situation? Today I went shopping, and I remembered to use the recyclable (stronger plastic) bags that we have to pay for since our state passed the plastic bag ban. I have a cupboard with tens of bags at home, but every time I go out it's;
"I would like to buy a bag please!"
No more. I packed up 3 bags in my backpack, heading out for a conquest—I mean grocery shopping. While there though, I thought about everyone having to load their carts up upon leaving, into a car, or a taxi. We have the security features that prevent you from stealing carts off of premises. Why not buy a cart. Today I forked over $40 to buy an asset, a cart that I could use to take my groceries home.
$40? Isn't that a waste of money? No, it's a valuable asset I can use for years to come. If I have to shop at minimum twice a month, I save $20 a month that would have gone to riding home. I'm not tired, and not struggling, squandering neither time nor energy, and I save roughly $240 a year, minus the $40 I spent on the cart. If that doesn't sound like a lot of money, give someone $200 today and then come talk to me. We don't even need to mention how much change I save by bringing my own bags to the store.
My welcoming banner. Feel free to use!
Steemit Full-time?
A good reason why I wanted to write this article today for everyone is the notion of doing Steemit as a full-time gig. Officially I don't have a day job, nor am I looking for one. I don't post twice a day, or even everyday, so what could I possibly mean? This is clearly not full-time.
What I feel stops people from taking on huge endeavors like this is that if you are only doing Steemit as your only source of income, then you must create quality and high-votable content every single day right? Now isn't that a lot of pressure? I can't pull a blog out of nowhere every day, even if it looks like I can sometimes.
My main goal in saying that I do Steemit full-time, is that I use many of my resources on Steemit instead of a regular day job! I didn't come to this platform to have the same experience of a structured and controlled environment like a 9 to 5. Doing Steemit this way relieves the pressure of "I have to write today or I can't pay my bills". If you are trying to make an income on Steemit and you are doing it with this in mind, it's probably not helping your cause.
By redirecting my energy and beliefs that Steemit can make me a line of income but is not a job, I can freely write and publish content that I truly enjoy without feeling financial pressure. My main purpose of my blog for today isn't to make me money (it's nice though), but instead help as many people as I can save a lot of money as well!
There's no way that I can make enough to live in Hawaii doing only Steemit. You're right! Multiple income streams are very important!
Amazon Turk is a Viable Income Stream
Okay. So have you ever wondered who exactly writes closed captions for the hard of hearing? How about the people who make captchas? Someone makes them right? Although we are advancing in technology, there are many "micro jobs" that are still done by people today! These tasks are known as Human Intelligence Tasks or HITS.
I was tipped off the other week about a service called Amazon Turk (MTurk), where you can do things like transcribing or actually participating in surveys and while at home. This is my current pending payout, and I don't even do it every day (yet!).
How it works is that you make an account, and you apply for these super small jobs. Pay per minute should be about 10 cents to one minute. You want to avoid tasks that pay 1 and 2 cents (you are worth more than that!). As you do more tasks and maintain a high HIT percentage, higher paying gigs become available to you. Some of these are really fun, and rewarding in the sense of helping others!
They pay out in Amazon credit to your account, but if you live in the US, you can transfer your payout to your bank account at USD! Paid in cash. You do have to file this one on your taxes as self-income, but if you like learning really cool things and helping out research firms and Universities while making side cash, this is the second best (after Steemit of course!) gig I've been able to find on the internet. These are real surveys on a slew of mindbending topics that don't require you to buy things, a lot of them are really fun.
I did one the other day about a product that doesn't exist. Part of this survey was that winners would be randomly selected to receive a $10 bonus. I thought oh cool! There was an interesting question in this survey about crowdfunding. "If you won the bonus, how much of it would you help donate to the crowdfund for the product?" There was a slider provided and I said 50% because the bonus wouldn't be possible if I didn't take their survey, let's share! I got this email today.
I Mine Coins at Home
Did I mention that my electricity is free? Now I'm not mining Bitcoin on the SHA 256 algorithm since I don't have a warehouse of GPUs, but I do get things like Digibyte, Gulden, Verge, even some Lite Coin when I'm lucky mining Scrypt. I making not much at all, but mining is good to learn if you want to understand cryptocurrency better! Am I going to teach you how to mine crypto from home today? No way! There's enough content for it on the internet when you DYOR.
My only point here is that every penny counts, every satoshi counts too. When you can understand how your resources work, you can make them work for you!
WiffleGif
You Reached the End!
Look at how much money you didn't spend because you were busy reading this very long and informative post! As always, thank you for taking some time out of your day to read my blog. There were so many things that inspired me to write today, and now that we're here, I feel like I can let you in on a little secret. I have not needed to sell any of my crypto into fiat currency since I cashed out during the December 2017 bull run.
The more I can save, the more I can hold in crypto. I have small holdings in DGB, VEN, BNB, and of course EOS—But don't take any advice from me okay? I'm not responsible for how you use your money. I am not a financial expert!
Feedback?
What do you think about the tips I provided here today, do you have a favorite part? The whole thing was my favorite part 😊 Is there anything that you do to save money that's not included in this list? I feel that by helping others we can not only enrich our own lives but the lives of those around us. Wealth is so much more than your bank account balance.
Don't be rich. Be wealthy!