Work has been very busy, leaving me very little time for being frugal, much less writing about it. After several months of more eating out, convenience foods, and more air-conditioner use than usual, my wallet is feeling the pinch. Remember that maxim about your spending stretching to cover a larger income? It's true. It's hard to admit, but this frugal guru has not had the time to balance her own household accounts in a several months! Ah well - maybe the summer will prove better.
Living a frugal lifestyle, like dieting, requires some willpower. Once your will to pinch pennies diminishes, it's hard to continue. Face it: a spendthrift lifestyle is just plain EASIER. Unfortunately, a lack of certain set frugal habits can create "yo-yo" frugality - much like yo-yo dieting, where the same 10
kilograms are lost, and gained, and lost, and gained. Except in this case, it's the same 100,000 yen that is saved, and spent, saved, and spent.
So, how can you prevent yo-yo frugality? Well, here are three basic tips, or frugal habits, to get you on a sustainable, healthy financial track. Even a very busy person can (theoretically) implement them.
1) Start an automatic withdrawal savings plan at your Japanese bank, called a "jido tsumitate teiki yokin."
Basically, the bank withdraws a specified amount of money from your main account every month on a day you choose, and saves it in a separate savings account with its own bank passbook. You can, in most cases, withdraw funds from this account if absolutely necessary at the window (you'll need your passbook and inkan) or at the ATM (passbook, ATM card, and friendly staff member to help figure it out). I've said it before, but I'll say it again: this is an idiot-proof way to save money. Set the withdrawal date to the day after payday (or the day after your bills are subtracted), and you'll never miss the money.
2) Are you on a fixed budget for your household expenses?
Would you like to be? Why not try the envelope method for cash management! Essentially, this involves parrying out a set amount of money each month for a certain expense category (say 40,000 yen for food expenses) in an envelope. During that month, you only buy expenses from that category with cash from the "food expense" envelope. If you are, for example, trying to limit Starbucks purchases to 3,000 yen a month you could have a Starbucks envelope, or a "work lunch" envelope. Some people run their entire household accounts this way, but I find it works well for busy folk with a limited number of envelopes (maximum three for me).
3) Are you still using your credit card for routine purchases?
Do you pay it off, in full, every month? If the answer to these questions is yes, then no, then you've got some thinking to do. Credit card debt, and consumer debt in general, is unsecured. For those using US credit cards, high interest rates and minimum payment requirements mean you could be paying for that impulse T-shirt purchase from Uniqlo for years after its gone to the great dumpster in the sky. The typical Japanese credit card (with
non-revolving debt) is slightly better, but having large purchases show up two months later can make a dent in your bank account. My best advice? Leave the credit cards at home (in the freezer is my favorite place), or if you must use a card, use a debit card.
If even these small steps help you rejoin the frugal bandwagon, then I'll be happy. I (literally) have a stack five months of good intentions receipts piling up in my cabinets, and no time to sort or track them. Starting with simple, sustainable habits is looking pretty good now.
By Wendy J. Imura. Copyright 2006.