How to Pay Yourself First

You’ve heard it a million times… “pay yourself first”. And every time you hear it you think “I can barely pay my bills, how can I afford to pay myself first?”

Many people never start paying themselves first, because they are too concerned that they won’t have enough to pay the bills if they put any money in savings.

Well, this is one of those things that you just have to do, even if you don’t think you can afford to.

So how do you pay yourself first when you are worried that you won’t be able to pay the bills? Here’s how…

1. Setup a savings account that you have easy access to. This can be a savings account with your current bank, or an online savings account (you will probably earn more interest with an online bank).

2. Transfer 5 or 10 percent of your income every time you get paid to your new savings account.

3. Eventually, you will get used to saving this money and you won’t even miss it in your checking account. But until then, if you find that you’re short on funds and can’t pay your bills, transfer some of that money back from the savings account to your checking account to pay your bills.

This strategy may be hard at first, especially if you find you have to raid your savings every month to cover bills. But eventually, you’ll find that you are able to save money without dipping into your savings account each month. When that happens, you will already be in the habit of saving, so it will be no big deal to pay yourself first.

Do Something Every Day to Increase Your Income

If you’re self employed, you likely experience income slumps. It may be because your business is cyclical (being a tax professional, I am extremely busy the first 4 months of the year, but then things slow down drastically during the summer months), or it may be because the economy is slow, or it may be just because you haven’t done any marketing in a while.

Whatever the reason, I like to take some time to brainstorm about ways I can increase my income. And when things are really slow, I pull that list out and try to do something every day to get my income back up to where I want it to be.

So… here’s a few things I do to boost my income when I’m in a slump:

• the most obvious is to complete any client work I have in progress (usually because I’m waiting on info from the client, so time to nag… I mean contact the client for that info!)
• contact potential clients to see if I can answer any questions or objections they may have
• contact old clients I haven’t heard from in a while… time for an annual review?
• write an article or two and post to article directories
• add new products or services to the product funnel
• post to blog (stock up on posts for a while so you don’t get behind when business picks up)
• create a Squidoo lens or Hub page
• hold a teleclass
• hire someone to help out with the menial tasks so you can focus on billable hours or income generating projects
• create a system in your business to make you more efficient
• optimize your blog/website for keywords to increase traffic
• answer questions at Yahoo! Answers or on related forums

These are just a few ideas (in no specific order). What do you do when you’re in an income slump to increase your business?

Cooking on a Budget

One of my favorite websites is Allrecipes.com. I go there anytime I’m looking for a new recipe or just need inspiration for something to cook for dinner.

On my most recent visit, I noticed a section called ‘Cooking on a Budget’. Since inflation and rising food prices are at the top of many people’s minds these days, this was a great find!

In ‘Cooking on a Budget’ you’ll find articles on smarter meal planning, budget friendly recipes (the lemon garlic tilapia looks awesome!), tips on how to buy in bulk and how to freeze food, and videos on how to prepare “cheaper than takeout” meals for your family.

I’ve gotten many great recipes from this site over the years. I can’t wait to try some of the budget friendly recipes. I hope you enjoy this site as much as I do!

Visualizing Your Goals With Feeling

In my Living Debt Free ebook, I suggest that readers visualize their goals to help them stay motivated on their journey to getting out of debt.

Joan Sotkin of Prosperity Place takes this a step further, and says visualizing with feelings is a more powerful way to change your money thoughts and will help you achieve your goals faster.

For more about visualizing your goals, check out Prosperity Quick Tip: Visualizing with Feelings.

How to Save Money With Meal Planning

Here are some more articles on how to save money with meal planning:

Quick Ways To Save and Be Frugal With Meals - Make a list. Always keep a list on hand for what you need and what’s on sale. This will also help with your meal planning. Plan your meals around sales. If pork is on sale that week add it to your menu for the week. …

7 ways to save money at the grocery store - Fresh, frozen or dried, fruit makes a satisfying, sweet end to any meal. It will add vitamins, minerals and fiber that aren’t found in cakes or candy. Working some small changes into your grocery shopping habits will not only save money …

That’s our list and we’re sticking to it - Being further away has also forced us to plan our meals a little better as well. Again, before we just ran to the grocery store before dinner to get whatever was needed for our meal, now we can’t. My wife has been pretty much planing …

Healthy Eating on a Budget - Menu Plan. Having a menu plan for the week allows you to save money, time and brain power. 2. Coupons. Clip, clip, clip from your local paper. Print, print, print from money saving websites like Freebies 4 Mom, Money Saving Mom, …

Recommended Resources:

Dine Without Whine - A meal planning service for busy families. If you understand the benefits of meal planning, but need help implementing it, this is a great service to have. Get menu plans, grocery lists, recipes and more to help you save money and time!

Meal Planning on a Budget - Tips on how to get started with meal planning and how to slash your grocery budget with meal planning.

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