Monday, March 1, 2010

Paradise Falls Fund

The wife and I watched "Up" a little while back and enjoyed it. We thought it was a well made movie with a good plot, and we especially liked one of the ideas in the movie.

In the movie, a married couple had a jar on their shelf for their dream vacation. They wrote on it "Paradise Falls" named after the amazing place they wanted to go. Over time, the movie shows them breaking the fund many times for various expenses. The movie has a good message in that regard, life happens, and it usually costs more money than you thought it would.

One day I took a pasta sauce jar and made our own "Paradise Falls" jar. We've already had to "break" it a few times, but it works well as a memory device for saving change and extra one dollar bills. We try to make a habit of throwing some random cash in there every week. While we have some automatic deductions set up for bank accounts and such, this is an easy way for us to save some extra cash for unseen stuff. If we use the money for something, we replace it, and add more money on top of that the next chance we get. If nothing else, it works as a visual way to remind us to save. As an added bonus, we actually do intend to use the fund someday (when it's bigger) for a random awesome vacation.

As you can tell, I put a lot of effort into the label. Not.

Do you have a way you try to save some cash around the house?

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