Lesson 26 - Saving money, even if you have debt
May 07, 2024
Saving money is sometimes our last thought when we are first working on our Financial Sobriety.
In reality sometimes we don’t have any space in our spending plan to include savings.
What I always love to remind people when they first start this journey is it’s just that, the start.
When you first start working with your money it doesn’t mean that what it looks like is going to be your forever. The more you work on it the more capacity you are going to have to start to save. Saving might not happen right away but it will in time.
When I took my Financial Recovery Counsellor credential my teacher Karen Mcall introduced a teaching called “saving yourself out of debt”. I loved this teaching!
Overall the teaching was that it’s important when you first start working on your money to save, even if you have debt.
Sometimes when it comes to healing our relationship with money the dollars and cents of it doesn’t matter, it’s about starting to build different habits, like saving.
A lot of times when we reach for our credit cards when working our Financial Sobriety it can be when something unexpected comes up, like your car breaking down or your pet swallowing something toxic.
How would it feel if you actually had money in a savings account to pay for that instead of adding to your debt?!
I say often when we start to focus on our debt that it’s important to make minimum payments and not adding to our debt, in other words I say “stop the madness, let’s plug the hole so it doesn’t leak anymore”. Karen calls it stabilizing your debt.
Here is a copy of her “saving your way out of debt” pyramid:
We stabilize our debt, start saving and as time goes on in your Financial Sobriety you will start eliminating debt while increasing your savings!
When we start to put money aside in our savings we get to be prepared for the unexpected, the unexpected happens. I’m unsure why we call it unexpected, let’s start to EXPECT the unexpected.
One of my fave tips is to open a savings account and start an automatic transfer from your chequing account into it. When you know you are going to get paid set it up to transfer what you can to your savings, even if you start with $10. In time you will be able to increase this as you are building this habit.
It feels SOOOOOO good to be able to actually put money in your savings account and keep it there instead of moving to your chequing account to cover your latest spending spree.
Happy Saving!
All the money love sent your way,
Linda Parmar
Financial Sobriety Expert
