Within the realm of finances, one of the more relatively frequent questions I get asked is how to avoid spending all your leftover money. Everyone knows by this point that they need to save money, but with a nice, padded bank account, it can be very easy to “forget” to save a set amount during a particular month, and it’s even easier to feel “accomplished” seeing a large sum in your savings account and thinking that you already have enough.
I am by no means rich, but I personally have fallen into this scenario before, and the best recommendation I have is to “create expenses.” I’ll explain.
I am very attentive and “obedient” when it comes to addressing expenses. I make sure everything is paid on time, but not so early that I miss out on interest yield. I never forget about any obligations, and I plan ahead to ensure that obligations continue to be met even in potential emergency worst-case-scenario situations. With that being said, I’m essentially exploiting the way my brain works by triggering that sense of responsibility by creating fake expenses.
As a preface to this, the “my savings account is big enough” argument should be completely invalidated if you have less than 6 months’ worth of living expenses saved up. A lot of people say 3 months’ worth is enough, but remember, the emergency itself that is causing you to lose your source of income will likely also directly drain your funds as well (for example, an injury that will rack up medical expenses), and there is no guarantee that you will recover and return to normal in a maximum of 3 months.
Going back to the main topic at hand, let’s create an example and say your monthly income is $5,000. Your expenses in this example are as such (heavily grouped and rounded for ease of calculation):
| Rent (or mortgage plus other homeowner expenses) | $1500 |
| Utilities (power, gas, water, sewer, trash, phone, Internet, etc.) | $300 |
| Medical insurance (health, dental, etc.) | $300 |
| Vehicle (loan/lease, auto insurance, fuel, maintenance, etc.) | $800 |
| Student loans or other miscellaneous installment loans | $200 |
| Food (groceries, restaurants, etc.) | $500 |
| Personal care (haircut, gym membership, etc.) | $100 |
| Household products and other goods | $100 |
| Subscriptions (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Spotify, credit card annual fee, etc.) | $50 |
| Travel and other leisurely activities | $150 |
| Gifts and charitable donations | $100 |
In this example, you have $4,100 in monthly “expenses,” leaving you with $900 remaining – I put “expenses” in quotation marks because you’ve already taken into account a very large food budget for eating out at restaurants, as well as an additional leisurely spending stipend, as “expenses.” Most people know that all $900 should be going straight into savings, but it’s easy to add an extra $50 here and an extra $100 there and end up shrinking your savings amount.
First of all, make sure you’re not forgetting about any expenses. Are you an independent contractor who runs their own business like I do and doesn’t get income tax withheld? Even if you’re a godlike optimizer of deductions of business expenses, you should be expecting to set aside at least $500 or so per month for income tax, unless you want to go from tax avoidance dangerously close to tax evasion. Are you saving for retirement? Making maximum contributions to an IRA means another ~$500 per month. Combine those two extra items you forgot, and suddenly, you’re short of money, have no savings, and need to cut back on other expenses.
Similar to how you’re budgeting leisure and luxury as expenses into your spreadsheet, also
itemize savings as different, individual expenses instead of just lumping everything together as “savings” or “leftover.” Set specific goals for yourself on where each component of your savings is going, and create
different savings accounts (where applicable) to keep track of each individual goal (savings accounts are usually either free or have very low daily balance requirements to waive the monthly fee).
Similar to the expenses above, here are some very simple example savings goals (mostly relevant to someone around my age) that you can tack onto your budgeting spreadsheet in the form of “expenses” to turn up the pressure to set aside money for said goals (as well as their corresponding monthly cost):
| Maximum $5,500 yearly contribution to a traditional or Roth IRA | $458 |
| Maximum $19,000 yearly contribution to a 401k | $1583 |
| 20% down payment on a $350,000 house purchase in 10 years | $583 |
| $15,000 for a wedding in 5 years | $250 |
| $15,000 for the first year of newborn baby expenses in 5 years | $250 |
| $35,000 Bachelor’s degree fund for a newborn starting school in 18 years | $162 |
Being able to cover all that pushes you into the six-figure yearly salary range, and then you end up getting more expenses piled on just by the fact that you’re richer – you’ll be pushing a 24% tax bracket, you’ll need to purchase more insurance to protect your life and your investments, etc. As you can see, things can very quickly spiral out of control, and it’s all about perspective – you can always put yourself in a situation where it feels like you never have enough money.
So, coming full circle, how do I personally avoid spending all my money? I expand my budgeting spreadsheet to include items similar to the second table, but custom-catered to me specifically. My personal budgeting spreadsheet goes nearly 100 rows deep, and at the end of each month, I “spend 100% of what I earn” … though after reading this post, you know that that’s just an illusion to ensure I’m financially set for my future.
The belt normally comes with a standard buckle, but I specifically requested an upgraded belt buckle to a more durable one made out of cast aluminum and molded in the shape of hornback scales. The first thing I noticed about the buckle was just how large it was—it actually looks quite aggressive and is pretty wide.
The belt itself had the rough-but-smooth texture that I would expect from crocodile leather. It has all the unique wrinkles and folds that you would expect from a real leather product, and twisting it into itself back and forth gives the expected “it’s alive” visual, where it seems like each scale and each part of the skin is moving both together and independently at the same time.
(Quick tip: This twisting and folding method is a very easy way to tell whether or not crocodile and alligator leather is real; fake and engraved pattern leather will appear to always move in a single piece and will often wrinkle and crease in strange places, such as through the center of scales.)
Of course, because this is a hornback belt, it comes with horns—mine had four large, pronounced horns, followed by a row of smaller ones along the remainder of the belt. The cut of the belt made it so the placement of the horns doesn’t interfere with your pants’ belt loops and doesn’t make it difficult to thread onto your waist.
The backside of the belt is lined with standard brown leather (which is good, because I’d imagine you wouldn’t want the pattern of crocodile jutting into your waist). It comes with a wealth of natural wrinkles and imperfections that true leather enthusiasts will love, and it’s finished off with a tasteful engraving of the Jacob Hill logo, along with a reminder of what type of leather you’re wearing.
If you want to mix up your belt buckle, it’s very easy to disassemble—there are three snaps that hold the tip in place, and undoing those snaps will allow you to slide off the rings and buckle.
This is useful because I noticed that, when wearing and centering a belt buckle as large and pronounced as the upgraded cast iron hornback one, the extra rings might get in the way of your first belt loop if you don’t skip it and start threading into your second belt loop. I like the visual touch that the rings provide, so I will likely keep them on, but if you want a more secure grip, you can remove the rings and slide the belt into the first belt loop all the way up snug to the buckle.
Another very minor complaint I have about the belt is the backside of the snaps that hold the buckle and rings into place. They look and feel like they’re made out of plastic, and although they are functionally fine, it’s not really something that I expected being used for a belt of this caliber. Regardless, this is probably something that will only bother someone with the utmost attention to detail; the plastic parts of the snaps face inward towards your waist, and you most likely will forget that they’re even there.
As I said at the beginning of the review, I was not paid to write this review and this is not part of a partnership or sponsorship—I wrote this simply because I was satisfied with the belt. Unfortunately, this does mean that I don’t have a special discount code to offer you. However, I noticed that their website has a dedicated section for specials where they run substantial discounts on various different products, so I recommend checking that out.
As for me, after browsing their website, I noticed that they make wallets as well, so I plan on making another purchase—just not right now, because if I don’t pace myself, I foresee easily being down a couple thousand dollars before I know it… 
