Saving Money

Besides vacations it’s been years since I’ve purposely set aside money to save for something I’ve wanted. It’s always been much easier to somehow justify and throw it on a credit card and worry about paying it off afterwards. 

Luckily for the most part I don’t usually  spend much money on myself, but I do have my moments and when I do it’s usually something more expensive than a small treat.

Starting tonight I’m going to try an experiment and stop that. When I look at my life there is absolutely nothing I need, so I’m going to stop spending money on my wants and instead put money away for something specific. 

When we were in Park City one of the most enjoyable things I did was go for a bike tour. It had been years since I’d been on a bike, but in my younger years I did bike a lot. A number of years back now I purchased a bike again with the intent on using it to lose weight and excersise.

The bike was cheap and not even the right size for me. One of my very first rides on it had me over the handle bars because things weren’t tight enough and when I turned the wheel didn’t turn with me. That and being very overweight made it awkward and really hurt my rear so I almost never rode it. 

Yesterday I took it out for a spin and things are seized so the brakes don’t work well and I can’t switch into most of the gears. Even with that I still had fun though. Having lost weight it doesn’t hurt by butt nearly as much. 

While I was away though I got it in my head that I was going to buy myself a new half decent bike. The day before yesterday I went down to the local bike shop to talk to them about what I was looking for and price point. It looked like we found something they had in stock that would work but more expensive that I was looking for so I walked away. Turns out that was a good thing. 

Right before I left for the meetup I had taken the car into get an oil change and checked over but it needed more work. So I left it at my mechanics while I was gone so he could take care of it. Today I went to pick it up and found out how much I owed. There goes my bike for now. 

That and other conversations got me thinking. As an experiment I’m going to stop buying any of the extra things I want, or treats I might see and start actively putting that money away to save for a new bike. That way maybe in the spring I’ll have saved a fair amount to put towards it just in time to enjoy it. 

As there aren’t many things I treat myself on the one big thing I see is coffee. I drink a lot of coffee so after I run out here at home I’m going to give it up and start saving that money instead. But there are other times where I’ll randomly buy myself something I don’t really need as well, that will stop too. 

I figure this will do a couple things. One it will start getting me back into a more disaplined state with money, and when I do buy the bike I won’t feel guilty about it because it will be like I earned it.