Kick your bad financial habits

Are you STILL smoking? Really? How about tossing back a dozen or so beer on the weekend? Have a wicked obsession with the latest rag mag? Can’t stop yourself from ponying up for a venti two vanilla shot extra foam? Get a grip!

If you’re putting your financial future at risk – if you’re NOT SAVING – all the while dropping ten bucks here and thirty bucks there for your constant onslaught of bad habits, it’s time to take control of your money and your life.

How stupid will you feel when you look back over years of waste and realize what you could have had if you’d saved just half of your bad-habit indulgences. Hey, I’m not talking to the people who have their I’s dotted and their T’s crossed; I’m talking to the folks who say they have no money to save all the while smoking and drinking, letting the money slip their fingers for all sorts of no-value purchases.

Let’s say you’ve decided to cut down on your premium coffee on the road. Cut a $10 a day habit and you’ll have $50 a week to send to your savings. Multiply that $50 by 52 and you’ll see that you’d save $2,600 a year. Give up only half your weekly coffee habit and you’re up $1,300 that you can use to ensure you can eat decent food when retirement rolls around. So that’s lots’a coffee now and ramen noodles later, or a little less coffee now and a healthy balanced diet when you’re retired. Hmm …

You can’t say you don’t have money to save if you smoke, drink booze, buy lunch, purchase lottery tickets, use an ATM that isn’t your bank’s or carry a balance on your credit cards. Since you have the money to waste on bad habits, you’re just making excuses for not saving.