2. Skip the skins game on the course unless you know you can beat them.
3. Take the senior citizen discount even though you know in your heart that in your case, it is a mistake.
4. Plan your mornings so that the usual 4 trips to the store can be cut to 1 or 2.
5. Even though the kids are grown and gone, spend some time at the park, beach, forest or lake. Minimum, it will bring back some great memories.
You get my point. Make the savings an adventure and before long it will become a habit. What will it do for you? Cut a decade or more from your mortgage payments, saving you around a quarter of a million dollars, and change your financial life forever. Fifteen years from now, when you won't have a mortgage payment, you can spend what you want on a weekend, if you can break your current habit.
I always try to give you a light hearted approach to a serious subject so you will realize that changing your financial being isn't that hard. In fact, it is a lot easier than you would have ever thought. Remember when you were growing up and you marked your height on the door frame? Well, repeat the exercise with your weekend savings and watch the pot grow!
Next time the Holiday spending gets the knife -- figuratively speaking that is. For now, lets get the weekends under control, and the 15-year fixed working for you. It will be the best move you will probably ever make financially.
Roger Schlesinger's Mortgage Minute is heard on hundreds of radio stations and daily on the Hugh Hewitt radio show and Michael Medved shows. Roger interacts with his hosts and explores the complicated financial markets in order to enlighten his listeners and direct them along their own unique road to financial freedom. Roger is the President and founder of Manhattan West Mortgage.