A couple of days before I turned the ripe old age of 8 and was contemplating my birthday. I started reflecting on my life so far. I was thinking of my accomplishments so far and looking towards the future and what I wanted to accomplish…when all of a sudden it hit me and hit me like a brick!!
I had Never managed to save “one penny” in my entire life! I can not tell you what a failure I felt like! Going into my 8th year of life penniless, broke, nothing to show for all of my years of hard work!
I knew then and there that I had to come up with a plan and come up with one soon as I did not want to be in the same situation a year from then. Yep! When I turned 9 I wanted to be a “woman of means”!
So I started then and there formulating a plan as to how I was going to do that. I knew that people that had money also had bank accounts. I also knew that if you had no money you had no bank account so I then had my end goal.
By that time next year, when I turned 9, I needed my own bank account to validate myself to me and the World that I was “worth” something.
I had been to the bank many times with my mother, always looking around as I was waiting for her to do her banking business and I had seen that I could have my very own bank account with my name on it if I had $25.00 cash to open an account.
But how was I going to get $25.00 in one year since I had not been able to save even “one penny” in almost 8?
I knew I would have to work hard…harder and save more, (more? since I hadn’t saved a “penny” in all of my almost 8 years, saving more shouldn’t be too hard!!!), but how?
Well I thought about this for the next 2 days leading up to my birthday and finally the big day arrived. I didn’t really feel much like celebrating, seeing I was such a “looser” in the financial World but Mommy got me up anyway and told me Happy Birthday and to get up and come into the living room because she and Daddy had “lots of presents” for me.
Dragging myself out of bed, (I think this was the first time I had suffered depression!), I went to the living room and sure enough there were “lots of presents” for me to open.
Back in those days you didn’t get cell phones, video games and very expensive brand clothes and shoes so in today’s market “lots of presents” didn’t cost a tremendous amount…at least not when you came from a blue collar worker family, but life was “good” anyway!
Of course I got a pretty new dress and black patten leather “Mary Jane’s”, a few toys, (like a top or whatever the latest craze was at the time), and then came the last present of the day and the answer to all of my prayers!
It was a very odd shaped present and not at all wrapped pretty like the others…all neat and perfect, so needless to say I was very curious.
When I ripped off the paper there staring me in the face was a big, green and blue frog, fat with huge eyes! I couldn’t understand at that moment why anyone would give me this. It looked like some knick knack that you would display in the living room he was so cute, but soon I realized the reason.
As I turned him around to inspect his back I saw it had a small slit near the back of his neck…I had received my very 1st piggy froggy bank!
I was so thrilled. Now I would have someplace safe to save all of that money that I had never saved before! And then the most miraculous thing happened. Mommy and Daddy both got out their wallets and cleaned themselves out of change and put it into my froggy.
At the ripe old age of 8 I had a savings and became a “woman of means”!
What a Glorious Birthday that was!
After that my plan fell into place very easily. Since I had not even saved “a penny” since I had been alive I was going to start saving pennies and nothing except pennies would go into my froggy, (except the change that my parents had so generously donated to my cause)!
To make a long story short, (too late for that now!), I did all types of extra jobs and everyone paid me in pennies, since my story was well known around the neighborhood, and on my 9th birthday my Mommy took me down to the bank and I was able to open my very own bank account with not $25.00 but $32.24!
I was truly a “woman of means” now and have never been without a bank account since!
Now forward to today.
Saving my pennies is still one of the basics of My Plan for saving money. I will Never give anyone a penny, it will always go into my froggy and I have extended that to include all change.
As I grew a little older I had to revise my plan. Remember last post I said you may need to “tweak” your plan every so often to meet your growing needs. Obviously as you grow older your goals get larger than pennies, but once the basic plan is set in motion “tweaking” your plan is fairly simple as long as you keep it realistic.
I now have “The Cash Box”, (another tweak in my plan as my froggy could only hold so much), and I save every bit of change that I can get my hands on. (All of the store personnel always know not to ask me if I have the change when I buy something as they know it’s a waste of their and my breath asking and me saying “no”), and every year, on my birthday, I go down to the bank and make my yearly deposit of change.
You would be AMAZED at just how much change passes through your hands in a year! I am able to make a nice, tidy deposit every year just because I keep that little bit of change that I get, (I never miss that odd 12¢ or 72¢ etc. during the year), and it gives me a very nice pay off in the end!
So in closing, my first easy, simple, painless way to save money is to save all of your change in your froggy or Cash Box, (don’t go out and spend money to buy a Cash Box…that defeats the purpose, spending money foolishly, anything will do, an old shoe box, a jar etc. it will Still be Your Cash Box), and NEVER break into your Cash Box, (once the change finds it’s way in there then just pretend it isn’t there), and make a nice, tidy deposit at the end of the year…you’ll be amazed how good it makes you feel to know that YOU Can save money and see the reward in the end!
And for those of you that find you just can’t keep your hands off of your Cash Box…”tweak” your plan. Deposit the money into a savings account monthly…or even weekly, with your statements every month you will see your money growing and you won’t be able to get your hands on it so easily!
By the way…my froggy? I named him…
Riivet!
