A hundred years ago, Japan was a traditional agricultural country – nothing like how we know it now. How did it manage to become the most technology-savvy country, with a developed economy and one of the highest living standards? One of the reasons is the high financial competence of the Japanese themselves. They’re experts in personal finance. They use Kakeibo. So what is it?

- Japanese are experts in personal finance. They use Kakeibo. This means they don’t buy that third handbag in 2 months and manage to save up to 35% of their income.

- “Kakeibo” translates to “household account book.” It’s a notebook where you write down your income and expenses. Long before any financial apps or digital tables appeared, the Japanese had this system of writing up a budget.

- No apps, no technology, no tricky calculations. That’s the point: you rule out everything that’s not necessary and focus on your habits and decisions.

- Kakeibo appeared in 1904 and grew popular thanks to the first woman journalist in Japan – Hani Motoko, who sold it to a wide audience.

- To draw up a Kakeibo style budget, you’ll need 2 notebooks - a big and a small one. You’ll use the big one to write down your income, and plan expenses and savings.

- You’ll need to record all the money you get as income: advance payment, salary, debt return, the money you get from selling a secondhand laptop, etc.

- You write down how much money you’d like to put in a money-box or a savings account. It’s important to decide this amount before you start planning your expenses.

- A monthly expenses plan. Here, you write down your common expenses: utility bills, apartment rent, mobile, and internet bills.

- At the end of each month you’ll analyze if you’ve managed to follow the plan and save or spend extra money.

- Put all the returned debts into the money-box. In fact, it’s not an income. You just get back money that was taken away from you before. After all, you’ve managed to live without it all this time.

- Every time you buy something, round the sum up. Say, if you have a $74 bill, round it to $100 and put the other $26 into the money-box. It's a great tool that'll allow you to save daily.

- Work out a system of penalties for yourself. You can “punish” yourself financially for bad habits like skipping the gym or having an argument with a partner or friend.

- Always make a shopping list before you go to the supermarket. This piece of advice is as old as the hills, but who actually follows it? Kakeibo fans do, and it works for them.

- The writing process activates the part of the brain that lets the information pass directly into memory.

- Writing makes the process personal. We internalize everything we write by hand; it becomes more important to us.

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