Earlier today, I was following some links I found in the personal finance blogs that I read regularly, and I came across the above phrase. I thought the timing of finding the article was rather appropriate because just last week I came up with an idea for curbing frivolous spending that could easily be called impulse saving. My definition for it would be quite a bit different than the one that the MSN money article suggests, however (though I am by no means dismissing the article's validity).
My idea is to carry a little notebook with you and use it to record all the impulse buys that you are tempted to make. The kicker here is that YOU MUST NOT SUCCUMB TO THE TEMPTATION BY ACTUALLY BUYING THE ITEMS. At the end of the day or week, you total the amount of money you would have spent. Not only is this a sobering picture of just how much wasteful spending is costing you, it's an exercize in the hypothetical, i.e. you've not ACTUALLY spent any of this money!
Once you celebrate this small victory at regular intervals, you can move the money from your checking account to your savings--which is probably the hardest part, requiring the most discipline. But just think if you were able to keep this up for any length of time, how much money you would have in the bank! If you stick with it, you could even tweak this plan to where you could splurge on one item up to X number of dollars every so many weeks or months, too, because--just like many successful diets seem to have a "cheat day"--your spending plan might do well to allow a little indulgence every now and then; in so doing, you avoid the build to "binge spending" that may come with so much self-denial.
All of this works toward teaching you a hard lesson to learn: you would be training yourself not to spend beyond your means.
Does anyone want to join with me to make May Impulse Saving Month? I'll post my personal results at the end of the month and include anything I've learned along the way. Then, anyone who'd like to can reveal their savings in the comments section. Let's do this thing!
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