May be it is ironic, but I think we can classify saving money is one of our income sources.

A friend has been shared to me. While she was having her first job, the salary was not that high. Fortunately it still enabled her to survive. 2 years after, she hopped to another company and managed to fight for a much higher salary. She worked quite hard and she was compensated with increment. One day we have a chance to chat. She was telling me that she did not have much left for saving at every month end even though she earned more.

Well, it is simple to explain. In view of her current life-style before and after the new job, I realized a few important changes in her living status. First, the car she is driving now cost double of the previous one. Then she rent a nicer place to stay. She visits more frequent to high-end restaurants. She did shopping more often then before. In overall, she has unconsciously upgraded her lifestyle to a higher level.

We so happen to have a general mind where we should treat ourselves better when we earn more. We have been working so hard, that's not wrong to pamper ourselves. Yes, I agree. But we need to have a limit and balance up our expenses.

Save first and spend the rest, this is the philosophy I give it to myself. We probably have many ways to earn more incomes. However, we can be easily fall in a trap where spend more is ok since we have worked hard for it. For instance, if we manage to earn extra 500 dollars income and when we do not have a control (or limit), we may end up we spend 700 dollars more than average monthly spending amount. As a result, we indirectly have overspent 200 dollars more than usual.

I asked myself, if I manage to save 5 dollars a day by cutting down food consumption (I explain that is for diet purpose, :) ), transport fare, cell phone usage etc, I can actually get 150 dollars extra for a month. It is up to you how you want to view this extra money. You may take this as an extra income to top up your total income revenues; or you may reduce your part-time job working hours in order to spend more time with your family or love ones. I strongly feel that the latter is definite important to me, and so to you, I hope.