Though the accepted wisdom is that we should save simultaneously for different things that will happen in the future, this is often not practical if you also want money left over to live in the present. So, many of us prioritise, and focus most of our savings plan on one specific goal – let’s use home ownership as an example. We work hard at it. We sacrifice. This takes years.

When we finally amassed enough wealth, we get busy looking at houses, pricing kitchen backsplash tiles and becoming addicted to HDTV. With our new house as the catalyst, we move into a serious “spend” mode. It’s around this time that we also experience savings fatigue. We look back at our years practising delayed gratification and think: it’s time to live a little!

But this is where we go wrong. Practicing prudent financial skills is not like riding a bike – you can forget how to do it. If you stop doing something, chances are that you lose the skill. And the habit of saving and investing is too important a skill to lose because it’s so integral to our quality of life.

The tertiary education of children, a comfortable retirement, the capacity to live through the loss of a job, the destruction of a house, the cancer of a body – these all directly impact the quality of our lives and these are only made financially bearable by amassing sufficient wealth through savings and investments to cater for them whenever they may become necessary.

And while the decision to save sequentially (first comes this, then comes that) is often made out of practicality, the fact is, the vagaries of life don’t happen in a neat sequence. They come at you fast, from all directions. And after the high of your big purchase, you can find yourself, unbelievably, back at savings square one.

These are my 4 suggestions for the ways in which you can re-energise specifically your savings habit:

How much do you still have saved? What’s the status of your current investments if any? Where does your money go on a monthly basis? What plans do you have for the next year? Ten years? Twenty?

Get specific. If you’re doing this exercise with a partner, be frank.

Then reduce these life plans to dollars & cents and compare it to your current level of dollars & cents. It’s unlikely you’ll remain a lapsed saver when you calculate the shortfall.

Sometimes just before I cross a road, I wonder whether my insurance will be enough to cover a full stay at a private hospital if a car knocks me down. There’s nothing like compounding a physical tragedy with a financial tragedy to get your savings habit revved up.

You can escalate or de-escalate this scare tactic to suit your personal threshold but don’t go too easy on yourself. Really let your imagination run wild.

Whenever I start a new exercise routine but deep in my heart I’m not ready to commit fully, I never tell anyone about my plans. I just put on my sneakers and take my lil jog. Four times a week, three, two times a week, once. Welp.

When you tell a friend that you’re increasing your savings so the restaurant dinners will have to decrease, you’re taking the bold step to hold yourself “publicly” accountable. This helps you to…

Yes, I know, so helpful. But, I mean…just do it. And do it quickly. Banking automations make it easy to move money out of your immediate reach and into savings products. It’s likely you had some of these set up to save for your initial big purchase, so it’s a matter of starting them back or increasing the amounts.

I do not recommend transferring money out of your current account to your savings account if this “savings” account has a debit card attached to it. Who, precisely, are you fooling?

Once the money is “out of sight”, you can take some time to research investment options which will help your money grow faster and therefore increase the likelihood of attaining your new goals. We’re here to help you with that!