How to Save Money Mindfully

Here’s a quick-and-easy six-step exercise to get you thinking more aggressively — more purposefully — aboutsaving:

• Brainstorm about all the recurring expenditures that you could eliminate or reduce to cut your expenses. Car insurance, cell-phone bills, lunch money, movies tickets. Think about where you can make changes.

• How much do these items or activities cost? Highlight the most significant of these expenditures and make a note of the associated costs. Next, calculate how many times per week you indulge in this expense and take a reality-check snapshot.
• Now, on a scale from 0 to 10 (with 0 representing none and 10 representing extremely pleasurable), how much joy do you get from each of the items above? Attach a number to each activity or item to help you associate these costs to your life.
• Next, think of what it would feel like to have Absolute Financial Freedom. “What’s the Price of Your Dreams? Make the Game Winnable”? Remember how it made you feel? But at the same time, remember that this was a feeling you experienced in the abstract, in theory. Here it’s close enough to taste. What would you be able to enjoy, have, do, be, or give if you were absolutely financially free?
• Decide which is more important to you: the joy you receive from the recurring expenditures on your list or the feeling of Absolute Financial Freedom. Remember that life is a balance. You don’t have to cut out everything from your list to move the needle on that feeling of freedom.
• Write down at least three expenditures you are resolved to eliminate. Calculate how much money this will save you over the course of the next year.

This Article is taken from MONEY Master the Game

Written by Arshad. A