Get inspire to save money

Time is tough but that doesn’t mean we are unable to control our finance. In fact, this is the best time to wake up and take control of our finance. The problem is, most of the Malaysian these days don’t save. I have known someone that generate negative cashflow every month and still prefer to eat at café which cost more than RM10-RM12 for 2 eggs, breads and coffee, where you can get the same for RM6 in a kopitiam.

 

Let’s explore some questions in order to find out why people can’t save and the solution for it. So, our first question:

WHY PEOPLE CAN’T/DON’T SAVE?

People have many reasons/excuses not to save. Whatever the reasons may be, it all comes to one main conclusion “People do not have the motivation to save”. Think about it, why do people give reasons for unable to save? Because they want to eat at a clean place, that is why they choose café over kopitiam? Because they want to enjoy now rather than later (motivation speakers and gurus love to use the words delay gratification)? But what if people have the motivation to save, would they give themselves such excuses?

Let’s take an example. Say, if you plan for a week trip to Japan for holidays. Would you not save for the trip no matter how hard your situation is? I have seen a person who, work as a junior staff in an international company, wanted to buy a BMW car. He saves days and nights eating breads only (not even eating at kopitiam let along café). Eventually he saves enough to buy his dream BMW. I have seen toys collector wanted to buy a limited-edition toy that worth RM2k doing the same thing.

With this, I am very confidence to conclude that people can’t save because they don’t have the motivation to do so. But before we move on, please do take note that not all circumstances are the same, trust me, I have come across that no matter how hard the person try, it is near to impossible for the person to save. For that, I will talk about it in my next blog. For this blog, it will be more for those that can save but don’t have the will power to do so. How do you know you are in this category? Ask yourself, are you able to eat at café? Or can you afford to spend RM10 per meal? If your answer is yes, then you are in this category.

 

Isn’t it obvious now that once a person find the motivation to save, he/she will have the will power to do so? Now, we will explore the second question.

HOW TO FIND THE MOTIVATION FOR SAVING?

So, before you get too excited on saving, which is a good thing, let’s make sure you are able to keep the fire of saving and turn that into habits. Here’s are the steps that I took:

Step 1

Take a step back and think of what you want in live. Maybe you got a bucket list of places to travel before you reach certain age or before you die, write those down. Maybe you want to collect certain collectables, write those down, maybe you want to buy property at certain age, write that down. Whatever it is write it down, and not only you going to write one dream down, write ALL of your dreams down.

 Here’s mine:

 

·        Overseas holidays once every 2 years;

·        Local holidays every quarter of the year;

·        Collect Star Wars and Transformers toys;

·        Pay off housing loan before I reach 60;

·        Feed the poor or do charity work once a month; and

·        Achieve 10% investment return every year.

Step 2

Buy a cardboard (I like mine to bid cardboard) then look for pictures that represent your dreams on the internet or magazines. Print it out (in colours) or cut from magazines and stick it on your cardboard. Call it your vision board, wish list board, dream board or whatever you want it to be but let’s just call it dream board. This will be your ultimate motivation for you to save.

Do take sometime to make a beautiful dream board because this is what you going to see day in day out. Here’s a Dream Board Blog that I managed to find from the internet that I think it is very useful. They have good tips to make the dream board. Do take note however that do not make an ambiguous wording on the dream board, for example, “make more money” would not give a very good motivation, you have to put figures on it like “going to make RM1,000,000 in 2022

 

Step 3

Stick it in your bedroom. This is what you going to see day in day out, first thing you going to see in the morning when you wake up and last thing you going to see at night before you going to bed. It will keep on remining you want you want then you brain will work towards achieving those dreams and that is how you find your will power and motivation to save.

And there you go, this is how I do it and I hope more people will be doing this. This will be your first step towards controlling your finance.

Proverbs

Here are 2 proverbs that were written more than 2,000 years ago that is very wise to read and follows:

 

·      The wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down.

·       Four things on earth are small, yet they are extremely wise: Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer.

Finally, one last question before I end my blog.

IS YOUR DREAMS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MONEY?

 What do you think? I will talk about this is my next blog.