I’m confused, and don’t have a good answer here – just questions:

If you lose five pounds, you can step on a scale and see that your weight is down and – yes – your five pounds are gone. You have actual evidence of it!

That’s not the case when it comes to our so-called savings. If a store sells you something at 30% off, where’s that 30%? You paid $200 and saved $60, but you never see the actual savings! Sure, you have less of a charge on your credit card, or that supposed extra $60 still in your bank account – but it’s not the same as seeing it.

When you realize you should cut out one of your many weekly stops at Tim’s or Starbucks, intellectually you realize you’ll be ahead about five or six bucks every week. You might even do the math and get pumped that this translates to almost $300 a year, and you’d be right. Except there’s one problem: Where’s the money? Show me the money! There isn’t a cashier or someone who sends you that $300 a year and THAT is what makes it hard to stick with the plan, at least in my opinion.

I recently quit smoking and converted to vaping. It was a $130 one-time expense for the battery, cylinder and liquids, and it is a lot less chemicals in my lungs, and a lot of so-called savings over buying cigarettes. I actually did a little excel sheet now taped on my fridge to motivate me by looking at the savings in not buying cigarettes. That excel sheet says I’ve saved $244 bucks so far. But I don’t see it, or feel any richer! Where’s my money?

I’m still motivated, but not as much when I started to realize there wasn’t actually any extra money coming my way. It stinks that I don’t have any answers. Sure, I’m not spending the money on cigarettes a day, but the only way to HAVE that saving is to spend it daily and put it into a jar. Yet, somehow I don’t have that kind of money. Who has an extra $10 to $14 a day? Yes, I had it every day, come heck or high water to buy cigarettes. But when it comes to saving it, spending it to save makes little sense to my brain. If that’s my best thinking, small wonder others don’t bother skipping Tim’s or Starbucks…