Increase Your Savings 1% at a Time to Gradually Adapt to the New Budget
If you suddenly try to save 20% of the budget that you usually spend starting tomorrow, you probably won’t succeed. This is a shock to the system. Instead, gradually build up a healthy savings plan over time.
As personal finance site Afford Anything explains, most of us don’t know how to make huge changes to our budget. Small steps – the ones that you can take without even noticing the change – are much easier. So, if you want to start saving more, start by changing your budget by 1%:
Idea? If you increase your savings by one additional percent each month, you will be saving 12 percent more of your income by next year than you did today.
You can customize it the way you like best. Some people make a HUGE leap, saving 5 or 10 percent in one giant step. Others take smaller steps, saving an additional 1 percent every 2-3 months (which equates to an additional 4-6 percent of your income per year).
Eventually, you may reach a limit when the stress of change becomes too painful (because saving 100% of your income is probably not possible). However, this method will help you find out what this limit is in real life, instead of avoiding savings out of fear.
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