Saving Made Easy -- No Nonsense Version

Saving Made Easy (No Nonsense Version)

Kirk Holding a 28 Pound Brick of Gold

Have someone else take care of saving money for you.

Go on and live your life… be a solid citizen… party your brains out… divorce… marry ten times… be a politician… be homeless… be rich… do whatever you want to do or can do with your life. During your life you will have savings to help you do all, or any, of the above. You may even save some money for later in life… like next week.

If you have a job your company may have a savings plan. The way it usually works is that the company will take the money right from your pay without you ever seeing it and put it in a savings plan. Many companies will contribute some of their own money. You just got a raise. You are getting more money without doing a thing.

Some companies have a stock purchase plan. It usually works the same as the savings plan above but your company will buy shares for you instead of putting the money in a savings plan. If you don’t like the idea of being in the stock market just take the money out regularly and spend it or save it or (my personal favourite) spend some of it and save some of it.

If you do not work for a company with a savings plan, then check with a bank (but be careful of their “free” investment advice) to see if they can help. Sadly, the banks will not match your savings like a company will.

That’s it for the savings plan. Now for some advice from a worldly scholar… me.

Start small. I started with $25.00 per month, got laid off after only one month and had to suspend the savings program. I still retired at 53 years old.

Increase the amount you contribute in small increments over time when you find out that you do not miss the money that goes into savings.

Use at least some of your savings for things you want now. Saving for retirement is admirable but I want to live well my entire life including when I am young and when I am retired.

Kirk at the Canadian Mint in Ottawa

Comments

Kirk McDougall's 3 Rules of Income

These are my 3 Rules of Income.

1 - You are spending more money than you are making. You will eventually go bankrupt if this continues.

2 - You are spending as much money as you are making. You will be doing the same thing forever if this continues.

3 - You are spending less money than you are making. You will eventually be wealthy if this continues.

The third rule has helped me incredibly. The first two... not so much.

Useful Links Saving Money Make It Easy

Hoey the Truck

Growing up I spent about a third of my time on the farm with my Gramma, Grampa, and Uncle Hoey. How did he get the name Hoey? When I was very little I tried to say "Uncle Harold" but what came out was "Hoey, Hoey, Hoey" so that was my Uncle's new name.
As I grew older I was able to help out on the farm shovelling wheat and eventually driving the grain truck. In Harvest I would drive the truck out to the combine, load up with wheat, and drive it back to the farm yard. I backed up to the auger which carried the wheat up to the top of the grain bin. It was a bit tricky and if I did not back up just right it would take longer to unload and delay the entire operation. At night Gramma brought the half ton truck out so that she could shine the headlights on the area where I was backing up. This was in addition to all of the other things that Gramma did on the farm. I tried to sneak into the yard so that Gramma would not hear me and she would be able to get so…

Space Game

In the late seventies (yes, the 1970s) I was enrolled in an Electronics Engineering Technology program. There was some minor programming involved. I had to write my first program on ticker tape but I loved it right away. I could write some code and then watch the machines do what I asked them to do. It was just awesome.
The school had some minor games on the central computer. One of them was a space game. No one had personal computers at the time so this was brand new to me. Just picture yourself at 23 years old being able to play your first computer game. It was mesmerizing.
We did not have terminals, just teletype machines, so each move we made in the game had to be printed out. It took a lot of paper. And now we see the problem. The school shut down the computer games because of all the paper use. It was a sad, dark time indeed.
We were all quite upset so in programming class I inquired about the space game only to be told that it was not coming back. Then I asked “What…

Happy, Healthy, Wealthy

Search This Blog