Its hard to make savings when you are earning money and cannot cover your total expenses for the month. When we end up having debts or more things to take care of before the month ends, how do you expect the masses to save?
the first issue is people spend first, then look at their bank account near the end of the month.. and react after the fact
the first change people need to make is plan at the start of the month, before they spend.
many people are happy to have their pants pocket wallet contain multiple loyalty cards, credit cards. but they only have one bank account
they are failing because they think if they spend, they can save via discounts/loyalty points/cashbacks but they then spend the rewards/accumulations too before the end of the month, thinking they have won/achieved sucess
if you instead replace the 6 credit/loyalty cards with 6 debit cards. where you budget a spending plan. EG a grocery budget in a grocery debit card whereby only having a weekly deposit from income account to grocery account means you have to only buy X groceries or the card gets declined
it pushes you to stay within grocery budget without eating into your budget for clothing/kids school stuff/transport
..
if you just rely on one card for everything. people overspend on groceries by seeing the whole income as available.. which then means they dont have the money for clothing or kids school needs
so the first lesson is budget amounts for different purposes and stay in that budget. mainly by splitting the income over different cards for different purposes and only use a specific card for a specific purpose to avoid eating into the other purpose budgets
My friend would always say that the only people who save are those who have had enough to cover their expenses and still have more left in their hands.
this again is about pre-planning. when accounting/budgeting their bills expenses. then organising what to do with whats left AT THE START OF THE MONTH before spending it
Currently, I cant remember the last time I saved. However, I prefer investing my money instead of saving it. I dont know if this is a terrible idea since there are no emergency funds to look up to in case anything goes wrong in the future.
you dont need to constantly "save". saving is not about wealth accumulation. its about having ease access rainy day fund to avoid needing to take out a loan to cover an incident. basically becoming your own bank to secure you in dire times. instead of relying on a bank to bail you out and then have to repay them twice as much..
a trick to do this is simple
think up a possible incident cost that could occur. pretend it just did happen this hour. pretend you took a loan to cover it. and now calculate how much you can afford to pay it off ASAP. and now budget to set aside that repayment in a account you own. meaning when the event does happen in the future. you then have that rainy day account fund to cover it without a loan when it actually occurs