Micro Paymentality
Members of the Financial Planners Association were asked in survey what monthly expenses are the easiest to cut back on. Not surprising, with 81% of the votes, the answer was “Eating one less dinner out per month.” True, it does seem pretty easy to cut out only one dinner out over an entire month of spending. To me that barely seems like much of a sacrifice at all.
The tough part for me was once I sacrificed a dinner, passed up a mocha, or dodged an evening with friends was putting that salvaged dough to good use. Normally the money would stay in our checking account until I managed to blow it on something else and not making any progress financially even though I “sacrificed” my lifestyle in some way. So I came up with a plan to attempt to pick up these scraps and try to take advantage of every little opportunity I could to crawl further out of the gutter.
It was pretty simple. If I “sacrificed” something, no matter how small, I would note how much money I saved from our budget. Once I get back home I would immediately access our checking account online and make a payment to our next debt in the same amount I just saved myself from spending. In some cases this was this was as small as skipping a $4 iced mocha or as large as us passing on the opportunity to spend a $100 night out with friends. No matter how small the sacrifice was I would transfer the money immediately towards the debts. Yes, this was far from a life changing debt elimination plan but when we added this to what we were already putting towards our the debts it all added up to more progress at the end of the month. Not to mention the motivation that came with making progress almost daily. I also recently used my Micro Paymentality habit and wrote about my Sick Day Bonus Pay. I figure I only have to skip those Starbucks mochas 32500 more times and I can afford my new car!
So have you tried this style of making payments? How did it work out for you?
...."so when I got home we had a talk and decided this money situation had to change. I didn’t know how I was going to change it, we were barely making enough money to cover the monthly payments so how the H-E-double-hockey-sticks was I going to fix it?"
Also, when I spend money for work, putting the reimbursement check I get four weeks later straight to a bill, not back in my checking account. I already spent the money, so it is easy to do.
This can be several hundred dollars a month sometimes.
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