Squirreling away money

     So. I work at a bar. I think we all already know that. If we don't; I do. The point of this is that most cash based incomes are very difficult to manage. At the end of the night I don't go home thinking "wow, I made a lot of money for my paycheck" I think "wow, I have 150 bucks in my pocket, spending 20 of it really isn't that big of a deal". This can be INCREDIBLY destructive for us restaurant folk.
     
I've always been sort of cheap frugal. When I got a few dollars to go to the mall with when I was little I would squirrel it away while my friends rushed off to spend theirs on cheap earrings or sodas or whatever. Being naturally a tightwad, I found it strange that I was unable to save money. My bills were always paid, food was always in my fridge and I felt successful for that, but I never even started a savings account because I never had any extra to put in it.
   
Fast-forward to St. Patrick's day of 2011. I work in an Irish bar. I don't think I have to paint a picture for you on how busy we were on said day in 2011. At the end of a very long shift I started counting my hard earned money and found it to be somewhere in the realm of 700 dollars. Now, this is NOT a typical days wages for me. If this is a typical days wages for you: 1. congratulations. 2. is your workplace hiring? Anyway.. I started diligently sorting through what I could spend the money on. We could use a dining room table.. we would put it away for the trip to California this Summer. Clothes? Make up? I wanted to be responsible with it and have a plan on how to utterly blow through it.

This is when a lightening bolt struck. How dumb is it to try to be responsible in how you throw away your money? 

Why did I have to spend it?

I went online and started two new savings accounts. One named "retirement" one named "emergency fund".  I also started a ROTH IRA. The next step was crucial. I set my account to automatically deduct 25 dollars a week into each account. Here are my rules: The retirement account is not to be touched, however, it is in a standard savings rather than the IRA because you can still take money out of a traditional savings if, say, you chop your leg off and absolutely need it. The emergency fund is for emergencies. Which means I can get in to it for things that happen that I wasn't planning for (car repairs, etc). The IRA can't be touched even if I want to. The money is stuck in there until I'm 59 1/2.

Can I tell you something? I don't miss the money. I don't even notice its gone most of the time. 300 extra bucks a month squirreled away without my knowing and I don't even miss it. How insane is that? I was trashing all that money each month on crap.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you to start brewing your own coffee because starbucks is ruining your retirement or how using 1 ply over 2 ply can save you 73.15 a year in toilet paper. Sure, I've started using some of those concepts to save more money (accept the toilet paper, a girls gotta have standards), but we are all our own people and some of us just really like the things we do and buy and I'll leave it up to you to decide which of those things are wasteful and which are rewarding. We all work hard (or at least I do) and when I decide to splurge, I feel like I've earned it. But please do think about retirement and saving money if you haven't already. Its really important.