Do you find yourself creating debt because it’s simply impossible to get by on the money you bring home? Are you avoiding saving because you can’t simply grasp the idea of life without ALL you earn to make ends meet?

Are your parents attempting to persuade you into saving some of your hard earned money?

Our parents had it a bit easier than we have it today. Well, in one area anyway. Their ability to prevent the massive amounts of consumer debt was easier.

Plastic and credit lines from far away states hadn’t come into existence yet. The ability to pay for our electricity, phone and groceries with plastic wasn’t available either.

Are your parents flabbergasted when you mention your household’s three cell phones, that you had your nails done or that you burn money on pay-per-view programming on your television? How about that four dollar cup of coffee? Because of our easy credit, what our parents saw as luxuries seem to us to be simple, everyday occurrences.

And you know what? Their parents thought the same things about them.

Your grandparents told your parents that they didn’t need a television set. Your grandparents told your parents, they didn’t need many of the luxuries of their day, either. And your grandparents were simply appalled at how your parents blew through their money.

Your parents learned their lessons the hard way and started saving.

Today it seems tougher because of the peer pressures we all feel. When you’re worried about having enough cash to get the car out of the shop or baseball uniforms for the kids, implementing a savings program can seem like a stretch. We try to save. Then our property taxes go up, the air conditioner goes out or somebody needs new eyeglasses.

We think, we’re not living luxuriously. We have a good income. We’re not doing anything wrong. Shouldn’t we be getting further ahead? Each generation starts out thinking, “Why work and earn money, if you can’t enjoy the stuff?” Then as life happens to them, some reconsider that theory discovering, someday real soon, they could end up homeless and broke.

As your parents learned, look at everything you spend. Everything. Get a spiral notebook and start writing down every penny coming into and going out of your life.

Until you know where every penny is going, you’ll not know what is a luxury and what’s not. By always recording when we receive or send money, we become more aware of how and where our money is going. It’s very easy to do.

Whenever we spend our money, we receive receipts generated at the time of the transaction. Think about and watch what you do with those receipts. So many of us never even give them a second thought or look at them closely. Along with the bag used to carry the purchase home, we discard the receipts.

When we take a few seconds and write down how much we spend, we create the opportunity to think about the purchase. This is raising our awareness of what and where our funds go. This gives us a second opportunity to decide whether we got real satisfaction in the trade of our money (work credits) for the items we received.

Doing it immediately isn’t necessary. Simply carry the receipt with you until a more convenient opportunity arises. By applying this little technique to your life, funny things start happening to your spending habits. Taking an extra few seconds, purchases not in tune with your value system cease happening.

The process turns into an increased efficiency in our financial lives. We start to figure ways to get real value for each penny we spend. We discover ways to get value without spending any money at all.

Simply by taking a few seconds to write it down, rather than not paying any attention, we gain more profits. More profit means less debt. It’s a very simple and very powerful technique.

Just as your parents did, Write It Down!

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