The Science of Saving Money So You Can Retire Early

You know what they say, 60 is the new 40! Are you ready for retirement? A lot of folks we work with have asked for some ideas on how others have made their retirement the best it can be. We scour the internet for the best articles and bring you the highlights here, along with the latest news on Reverse Mortgages.

Today we are pleased to have fellow blogger Ben Davis of Cents to Retirement share some money saving tips that just may help you have the funds necessary to retire early.

Saving daily

The most important way you can save money is on your day to day expenses. I have published an extensive list of saving tips and techniques on my blog, but I would like to explore a few of those points in more detail. You’d be surprised with how much money you can save by simply turning the lights off more often or take a walk to work instead of driving there (when possible). However, the following techniques are something that work better at a more structural level:

• Cash out the money you’ll need for the week / month and leave your card at home. Do you know that people, in general, are way more reluctant to spend cash than money on their cards? Here’s what I did when I started to save aggressively: every Sunday I would cash out the money I needed for the week, from an ATM, and hold the cash throughout the week. Of course that it was very important to have a list of products I needed to buy and how much they would cost.  
• Write down ALL your expenses. OK, so using a brain trick that makes you hold onto your cash in a more effective way won’t do the complete trick unless you know exactly where you’re spending your money on. I use to write down my expenses and kick myself when I spent money that I felt was not worth spending. Today I actually look at it differently – I ask myself how much happier will I be if I spend that money. Either way, it was effective: I found myself spending money on one or two products once and once only. I’d kick myself so much that I would naturally reject to buy the same thing again when I came across it.
• Convince yourself you’re spending more money than what you actually are. I would actually come home and through a few bucks to a bucket. Because I knew that I could only live off of the money I had in my wallet (as I didn’t allow myself to use cards), I had to be extremely effective in managing my money. This has helped me saving thousands of dollars over the years.

http://www.thefrugaltoad.com/personalfinance/science-saving-money-retire-early

On – By Paul Vachon