May 12, 2008

Snowballing my allowance towards debt

Yes, you read the subject right. I think sometimes I'm just fooling myself that I have an allowance. :-P

I give myself an allowance of $100/pay period, which is a fortnight (or 2 weeks). That equates to 10 working days, or simply put, $10 a day.

At the end of each day, whatever's left of my $10 gets snowballed into one of our credit card debts. No matter how small it is I still put it away. Fortunately, we have been very good about packing lunches to work so my $10 does not get spent. To me snowballing like this works because I consider allowance as money foregone once it is budgeted. It is also easy to part with my $10 instead of $100. It's probably just like buying coffee at Starbucks. It's been 5 years since my regular cafe-made fix that I don't know what the prices are anymore. It was then when I realized my latte factors.

Anyway, you might want to try this technique. I want to also mention that I don't snowball the money until after I get home from work. This gives me the feeling that I have an allowance the entire day but also challenges me not to spend it.

I read many snowball techniques from many PF bloggers. If you have one that's not out there yet, please share!

No comments:

Post a Comment