The Social Marginal

I’ll start off by saying that I am far from a ‘rich’ man, I am certainly of average means, I do work hard though, and the amount that I make directly is proportionate to how much time and effort I put into it (and a little luck).  I reached a milestone of sorts today, that, aside from retirement, tax (I’m self employed), and emergency savings, I’ve finally reached $20,000 in my discretionary savings account.  The best part about it, to me, is that I only started it in September of last year with nothing.

It’s funny, I use to be a gadgetholic and spend my extra income on various things such as new laptops and televisions, etc.  Ever since I started that account, not by reading any article, but by my own internal guidance, I’ve started to see how frivilous such spending behavior is and it has innately made me into a better consumer.  Now my enjoyment comes from watching my savings account grow, knowing if there ever is that cool new toy or whatever, I can buy it, guilt-free; of if I’m surprised with a child, it will relieve some of the financial stress from it and allow me to enjoy the excitement as I should.  And now when I think about buying those cool toys it causes me to pause and consider if I truly do want them and whether or not I’ll really get a lot of use out of them, and if I don’t, I toss some money into ‘my’ account and I’m just as satisfied.  Don’t be mistaken, I don’t deprive myself of anything but guilt and a lot of waste, I still buy plenty of ‘gadgets’.

I urge everyone to open a discretionary savings account at a financial institution that offers High (relatively these days) Yield Savings and give it a couple months, if you can only afford to transfer $5-10 in it here or there, you’d be amazed at how fast it grows and how quickly you become addicted to it, and it’s a good addiction to have in my opinion.  I use ING Direct, because, well, at the time they had some of the best rates (they still do have good rates) and they have excellent customer service and make it easy to transfer money between accounts when needed, regardless of your needs.  Watching that little “Interest Earned this Month” total at the top of the Savings account page is certainly satisfying.

Ok, that’s all, I’m done bragging; certainly not about the amount of money saved for ‘no reason’, as it’s miniscule compared to most I’m sure, but about having the self-discipline to make my plan happen and to reach this, what I feel is an important milestone in my financial growth.  Hopefully when people see this that are knee high in debt and have no savings, they will realize that it is possible to turn it around and start living without (relative) financial stress.

Tags: discretionary, financial growth, savings

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Money Matters, My Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.