It is shocking to see how little money is left from your paycheck after the bills are paid.  If you are like me, you barely have enough to cover the bills, much less save anything. 

Of course, I always had great intentions of putting aside a little money every month but the truth is, I always ended up spending it on something else.  Unexpected expenses, such as car repairs, medical bills, and home emergencies were always very unwelcome because there was never any money to cover them. 

To compensate, I always turned to my credit cards but after awhile, the monthly payments got to be so staggering that I could not pay them either.  There came a point in time where I had to sit down and figure out a way to cut my monthly expenses so that I could pay my bills and put aside a little for future emergencies. The first thing I did was check my paycheck stub to see why my paycheck was so small. 

I found deductions for taxes, insurance, social security, retirement, IRA, and charitable contributions.  There was really nowhere to cut there but I did raise the amount on my IRA just a little because I know that retirement payments don’t usually cover one’s expenses once they no longer have a job to work each day.  Planning for future retirement is a must for everyone.

Next, I paid myself.  While it may seem strange to pay myself out of my own paycheck, it was the only way I knew to actually have any money to play with.  I didn’t take much at first, just $50 per paycheck and I didn’t really “play” with it, I saved it. 

It was only after putting that money in a savings account that I sat down and tried to figure out how to pay the rest of my bills. It wasn’t easy to pay all of my expenses after taking the $50 out.  My money was stretched to the limit already, so much so that I was juggling bills every month to keep them from getting too far behind. 

I had student loans, car payment, rent, credit cards, utilities, phone, and other normal monthly expenditures. I actually had to streamline all of my little “daily” expenses in order to find the money necessary to make all of my payments.  I stopped eating out at all and I cut out buying coffee, cokes, donuts, burgers, or any other unnecessary items. 

I stopped going out to lunch with my co-workers and started taking my lunch to work.  This saved in food bills and gas because I parked my car in the mornings and did not get back in it until it was time to go home.  If I needed to do anything during the daytime, while at work, I walked there. 

I cancelled my home phone and started using my cell phone for all of my calls.  I also cancelled my digital cable and made it with a few basic channels.  I did have to keep my high-speed Internet connection because I did a lot of my work at home from time to time. I found that, after making all of these changes, plus a few more, I was actually saving more than $50 per paycheck. 

Every penny I saved over the $50 limit, I put on the credit card bills.  For the first time in my life, I was making more than the minimum monthly payments.  I took one credit card at a time and got it paid off, then moved to the next one, starting with the cards that carried the highest interest rates. 

Once I got my cards paid off, I moved to the car loan and paid it off much faster than I expected I would.  I am now putting the extra money towards my student loans. It was difficult, at first, to make all of these changes.  Co-workers got a little upset with me because I would not go out with them and my life got quite boring staying home all the time.  But the end result has been that I have money in the bank and am no longer stressed out about all of my bills.  I feel good about my life again and look forward to a sound, promising future. 

I figure that, in a few more years, I will be able to start spending a little more money to make my life more comfortable.  But this time around, I will be much smarter about it.

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