It's Money Monday and we're looking at another belief that holds people back in building their ability to manage money.

Today we're looking at the belief: 

I’d rather have happiness than money.

This is another example of a type of thinking that keeps people poor.  I’m not saying that money automatically brings happiness (regardless of where you shop) but there’s no reason to think that money will prevent happiness. This is just another way our beliefs can work against us and in this case it’s a rationalization that allows people to avoid looking at how they handle money and how they feel about money.

So, let’s put the question in its place with another question: 

Would you rather keep your arms or your legs?  

We never ask this question because it’s understood that we want to keep the use of all of our limbs. 

Similarly, we don’t ask if we want our cars or our homes; most of us don’t have to consider whether we want friends or family.

Again, it’s understood we want both.

Just as there’s no reason for choosing between any of these options, there’s no reason to have to choose between money and happiness.

Again, money won’t automatically make you happy, but the ability to manage money can relieve a great deal of stress from your life. And having money, both in the form of savings and money coming in regularly, can provide to you options that you’d be unlikely to have without it.

And isn’t that something most of us would be happy about?

Money Monday: Money Games

We've been talking about the importance of saving money. A lot of people feel that saving money is..

            Hard work

            No fun

            Too confusing

Actually one of the best ways to start saving money and have fun doing it is to play money games. A money game is any way you make it fun to regularly save, even in small amounts.. Some money games to try:

The Change game

Empty your change at the end of the day and keep it in a jar or container of your choice.

1’s and 5’s

A variation of the change game but consists of stashing away $1 and $5 bills.

Save a latte

The latte you have each day costs about $3. This game watches for those opportunities to choose saving small amounts of money. Can you choose saving over a latte even once or twice/week? Can you choose saving instead of buying a magazine? What are the other small items you can pass up in order to build savings?

‘Found’ or Bonus money - when you come into some unexpected cash do you let it disappear..Sure it goes to something, but too often it's gone quickly and sadly we often don't even know where it went. Instead you can use it to help fund a money goal.

What's a money goal?

It's anything you want to save money for. One money goal would of course, be emergency savings. But for now, let’s have some fun. Think of something you’d like but have felt you couldn’t afford. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. For now a smaller goal will be more manageable and help you experience a money game in action.

Decide on a small money goal: designer handbag, trip to a nearby amusement park, dinner at that fancy restaurant you heard about. It’s up to you. What's important is that it's something YOU want and that you feel good saving for it.

Now choose one or more money games that you’ll use to fund the money goal you’ve set. Again, the choice is up to you, just try to have fun as you find ways to fund the goal you've set.

I’d love to hear the goal you’ve chosen and what games you’ve decided to play. Be sure to share your experiences in the comments section to each post.

Money Monday

It's Money Monday and we're looking at some common misconceptions about money, continuing with:

I’ll save money, when I have money to save.

Like last week’s “I’ll learn to manage money when I have money’ this type of thinking keeps people broke. We all have times when we have an unexpected expense such as a car or appliance repair, or an unexpected trip to the doctor or dentist.

Without savings we are forced further into debt to pay these unexpected expenses that’s why it’s important to set money aside and let it grow - even small amounts can grow quickly to become the cushion you need for emergency expenses. 

Lunch to London update:
Last week was a short week due to Spring Break, so lunch savings were $21 for Monday through Wednesday. For those keeping track that brings the total to $71 ($50 as posted last week plus 3 x $7)

Money Monday

I thought I'd use Mondays to explore some money related ideas. And I wanted to start by looking at some money beliefs that hold us back. A good one to start with would be:

I don't need to learn about managing money, because I don't have any money to manage.

This is the proverbial cart before the horse. Can you imagine going into a car lot without first knowing how to drive? Every teenager knows they need to learn to drive before they can ever get a car.

Insisting that you have to have money before learning about money, keeps you poor because you will remain stuck in the mindset of "I don’t have any money" and the statement becomes self-fulfilling.

That’s extremely unfortunate because the statement is an exaggeration, after all, you paid rent or a mortgage, have clothes and food – so there is some money and it’s learning to manage small amounts of money that leads to managing larger amounts of money.

Are you holding off learning to manage money? Now's the time to reevaluate beliefs and start making small changes.

Lunch to London
Update 2

And speaking of managing money, $7/day is adding up.

Last week, the first full week, had some challenges but everything has it's learning curve and it felt great at the end of the week to realize I had nearly $50 saved. For those following the math, the $7 after 7 days was now at $49. In fact, when I added the $7 for Friday there were only 2 singles available as change and I was already tempted to add a dollar to make it an even $50..so there we go..now at $50 saved.

Lunch to London Update 1

So the goal was to start this week, but in actuality I decided to get a little jump and started bringing lunch last Thursday.

Now one of the challenges is that I'm not much for sandwiches. I will eat salad but I knew I'd need more variety if I'm going to do this for about a year, maybe a little more. So I got some great lunch ideas off pinterest.

Yesterday and today lunch was eggplant pizza on corn tortilla with extra tomato slices. Today is a simple combo of ground beef with brown rice and corn, which got a head start as dinner leftovers.

I mentioned that I'd be doing this for about a year. I've calculated that a year is likely to be the amount of time to save lunch money for airfare to London. Here's a rough breakdown:

Typical lunch savings each day is $7 or $35/week. Fares to London were running about $1500 which can be saved in 43 weeks. Of course fares may go up or down so I'll have to monitor fares and either adjust the timeline or explore additional ways of saving money.

I also located a resealable baggie that's now labeled, "Lunch to London' and I'm adding my daily savings to it so that the actual money saved is being redirected.

This is important, because often when we talk about saving money we really mean we spent less but the money wasn't actually 'saved' in the sense of being set aside toward something. This is an important distinction. When we focus on 'saving' by spending less we may ironically spend more. But when we focus on redirecting money we've saved then we empower ourselves and start to build our financial know-how.

I'd love to hear from you. What are you saving toward? What have you wanted to save toward?

Better Living Better World Relaunches with Lunch to London Challenge

Today marks the relaunch of the Better Living Better World Blog.  It is also the place where I will post about Lunch to London which is my way to motivate myself to finally start packing a lunch. I've long known that I could save money, eat healthier and reduce waste by packing my own lunch (a good example of Better Living Better World) but somehow I haven't been able to motivate myself to do it on a regular basis. Then it hit me, I needed to apply the strategy of saving the money for something I really wanted. And something I've wanted, like forever, is to go to London.

Photo credit: André Zehetbauer Creative Commons

I have never been there but I've always wanted to go. I decided this recently but also decided I would do it as part of a relaunch of the Better Living Better World blog and I set March 1st as the date for relaunching the blog as a way to remember and honor my mom who has been gone from us 13 years today.

I hope you will enjoy this site and come back often for tips and strategies that make life better while having a positive side effect for the environment.