Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Savings: How I stay motivated in face of financial mishaps

Last month while we were driving on a freeway a stray pebble hit our windshield and left a big gaping hole. It cost us 225$ in repairs.

Last month was also the month when we saved roughly 10$ by increasing the gaps between our laundry cycles and line-drying the clothes in our yard. We also saved about 10$ in movie subscriptions by borrowing dvd(s) from city library instead of paying for a streaming service.

It was easy to laugh at these savings in the face of this mishap which cost us almost equal to the yearly savings we'll get from these two changes, provided we continue to keep doing them through the year. I used to despair at these happenings and think that "There goes all my effort and time...in one single awful event..." I used to consider abandoning all these snow-flaking ideas and also abandoned many of them until I begun to put things into perspective. It finally dawned on me that snow-flaking or not, that pebble could still hit our windshield and it would still cost 225 bucks. The only difference would be that right now I have 20 bucks of snow-flakes stashed somewhere, which will soften the blow a bit for me.

Life happens, and so do things. It doesn't matter whether you've been saving or blowing money like the currency will be discontinued tomorrow. Even if your savings wont be always enough to bail you out of the situation, it will help soften the blow, at the very least you can take comfort in the fact that you did all you could to avert the situation. I think the effort and time invested in saving money is well worth it.

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