How to Save Money & Stop Spending

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Bill Rae. I'm with Alumni Financial Services out of Seminole, Florida. I've been in the business in the finance world for well over 30 years, have helped a lot of folks with their budgeting and their planning. Got an interesting question, how to save money and stop spending. Well first of all we really need to get a little real here. You're never going to be able to stop spending. So what I think you mean is stop uncontrolled spending or curtail it. If you're looking at how to save money and how to control your spending, what you really need to do is to make sure if you don't already have one, setup a budget. Now before you panic, this isn't that complicated and you don't need a modern computer with tons of software. All you simply need to do is to take a look at how much money you're bringing home from your paycheck and over a period of either 30 days or 60 days, try to write down on a simple piece of paper everything you spend. You can put them in an envelope, you can put them in folders or files, you can even simply put your receipts in these little white things called envelopes. The whole idea is to get a handle on how much money you're bringing in and where is it going? You know most people haven't got a clue? They just walk through the day and they spend 5 dollars here and 10 dollars here and they say I'm not spending much. Try this experiment for 30 days. Carry a notebook. Little tiny notebook and every time you spend anything whether you use your plastic or you pull cash out of your pocket, record what you bought, where you bought it and how much you spend. At the end of the month, it's a real eye opener. Now you can sit down and say OK, this is how much I'm making, these are what I have to pay, my rent, or mortgage, my electric, my water, to most of us our cable, but the things you have to and then you'll have that other little category where you'll see a whole lot of cutting you can do. Hope that helps. My name is Bill Rae, I'm with Alumni Financial Services and as always we're here to help you build true wealth."