It’s tax time. This is the one time a year we’re forced to look at our W-2 forms and un-opened bank statements from last year to prepare our IRS forms.

It’s the time you take measuring just what you want to do with your money. Whether it’s buying a car, paying off student loans, saving for retirement, sending your kid to college or paying off debt, it’s reflection time. Have you experienced any financial mistakes or set backs this year which you didn’t foresee?

Generally, you can’t go back in time to fix mistakes that you’ve made but you can learn and implement different actions for your future. Here are three quick tips involving money and debt you might consider this tax season.

One: The only way you escape being a wage-earning slave for the rest of your life is to set aside savings. Every dollar you spend on the short-foam cappuccino with room or the movie popcorn, eliminates that dollar’s opportunity to earn money in it’s future.

Look at the taxes you’re paying as you earn a salary for your labor. Next think about the sales-tax you’re paying when you spend those dollars as you go about your daily life.

In our neighborhood, after paying our income taxes, we can spend about sixty-five percent of our wages. Then it costs us about nine percent in sales tax to spend those dollars. This means we can roughly spend fifty-seven percent on each dollar we earn through the sweat of our brow.

If we instead SAVE some of those dollars, in tax-deferred accounts, each and every dollar works for us, earning more.

Two: The biggest obstacle to tip one is personal debt of any kind (other than a mortgage for your home or a loan for a vehicle to get you to and from your workplace.) When we have debt, we pay interest instead of earning interest. Paying interest, to finance our lifestyle, robs any chance of that dollar’s opportunity to earn us money in its future. When we say we can afford that monthly payment, we assign ourselves to more months or even years of being a wage-earning slave.

I forgot.

You purchased that item with a zero-percent interest loan! SORRY. Doesn’t work that way. When you get that car or that bedroom set with a zero-interest loan, the interest is already figured into the retail price of the item.

Don’t believe me? Ask the retailer how much the item is, if you pay them with cash. You’ll find you’ll save money by paying a lower price every time. If you don’t, find another retailer.

Three: Keep your finances under control by watching every penny you spend. Go back to a cash system for at least thirty days and leave the cards at home hidden somewhere. Keep a spiral notebook or a three by five card on your person at all times.

Each time you spend money, write it down onto the card. Within thirty days, you’ll find all kinds of places you spend money that you’re not even aware of, right now.

Even if you don’t have a debt problem, try this technique. We use it at our house. It has something to do with the way we identify the cash.

As children we learned that money was cash. We programmed ourselves that cash is a method of exchange. We also trained ourselves that exchanges don’t happen without it.

We spent it wisely. With credit cards (plastic), we tend to think there is an unlimited supply to the exchanges. It is money. It might not be cash, but it is a form of money.

Much of the text of this article originates from the book No Balance Due. It’s available at bookstores and most internet bookstores like Amazon.