So I recently had a visit to my silly little blog from the author of How to Stuff Your Pig Blog. I was so intrigued by their blog’s name that I had to go check it out. I can’t use any identifying pronouns because I actually don’t know if this blog is written by one person or group. What I do know is that I liked this week’s blog post!
It was a great post on the current state that most people in the US live in…the inability to cover a $400 emergency without selling or borrowing money. I can definitely attest to the fact that I was one of those people a few months back. I lived paycheck to paycheck and didn’t have the savings in the place to cover the unexpected on many occasions. My solution was always to send a bill late or skip it…which of course added to my balances and affected my credit score.
I still need to work on creating a savings pool for big emergencies, but I’m in a good place to try and tackle two things – whittle down the student loans and start saving (even if it’s a small start).
So I’m going to try out this one percent idea….the concept that every week you put away 1% of your gross pay in to your savings account. It’s not a huge percentage weekly. For many people cutting out one day of eating out or a few coffee runs will do it. I decided I would go ahead and try to do both 1% to my savings and 1% to my student loans every Monday.
That 1% weekly payment to my student loans doesn’t seem like a lot on a monthly basis but when I multiplied it by 52 weeks, I was pleasantly surprised to see the total. That would be a huge impact to bringing that balance down.
So here goes nothing. It seems to be a very good place to start!