Habit of saving

 Hi All,

My wishes for the last month of the year 2010.
Finance being one of the most boring subject of all times( i hope you will agree with me on that), i decided to start and then advance according to the feedbacks. So i will come with Finance, you (my readers) have to come with Fun with comments:)
The information coming next is mostly for those people who have just started working or for those who are working for around 4-5 years and still are in 'paise nahin hai yaar, bachte kahan hain' class.
An average IT person in India earns around 25K in hand. If you are staying in Bangalore, Gurgaon or Pune, basically, IT hubs, I think 25K is just enough to fulfill basic requirements.In such a situation if you are not inheriting anything from your earlier generation, you are on your own then you got to save for rainy days. But how  do you decide to save depends on your thinking. To consider this part, think about the below scenario:
There are two choices:one, you get a lump sum amount of 2 L rupees other, you get an amount of 2500 each month for 80 months. Which option would you pick? Think of it till we get back to this.
So when this is 'on your own' situation, you got to start saving irrespective of salary component. You have to figure out how to save and easier, you should fix some amount as little as 500 at least, to save, per month. Remember those good old,gullak days, when every single penny from anyone was supposed to be saved. There is nothing wrong in having a gullak even today:). The gist is 'start saving'.
The next step is a saving account, not the one which is a salary account. Because salary account doesn't let you have your separate gullak. So have a savings account. After a constant saving for 3 months, deposit this money in the newly opened salary account.Hide the ATM card of this account where you also cant find it. Basically, don't use it till the end of the world.
Just work on this habit for first 6 months;you wont like to leave it ever in life.
Why do I think we all can save? Remember those college days, when 5000 was a princely amount in which you lived life king size. Now, 5 times this money is not enough.
At the end, it is there in the mindset. After all, every year you pay taxes to the government, there is less salary in the month of March, you still survive, isn't it?
Just for few days, consider that those 500 bucks were lost some where:)
So what did you decide, which option will you take? Actually, no option is incorrect.But in practical life,over the years, people have found that a constant income is always better than the lump sum amount. You can virtually see the power of compounding through this constant income factor.
Till the time, we meet again, I hope you have started saving.
Last, welcome to the club of less than 1 percent of India's working population who actually consider saving as a habit.

Sujeet