Last week, I preached the need for a savings programme. This week, in this column's 150th appearance, a Top Ten of Tips on how to achieve one.

1 Have the bank automatically deduct your savings from your pay cheque. Use a standing order to instruct the bank to take a certain amount from each pay cheque before you receive it, and pay the money into your savings account. The bank will be happy to do this for you.

You can do the same with your fixed bills, such as (perhaps) your mortgage payment, rent, electricity, telephone and other regularly recurring items. This way, you will not have a chance to splurge on something you cannot afford and then not be able to pay your bills.

This may sound as if you do not trust yourself. Well, if you do not have a regular savings programme, you apparently cannot be trusted to look after your own best interests. Let automatic payments look after you instead. You will be ever so glad you did.

2 Think of your savings the same way you think of other deductions. We all have to pay social insurance and other taxes, such as health insurance and pension payments. How do you feel about those? You never think about them, right? They are just gone and you receive what is left after the Government has taken what it thinks should be its share. Very quickly after you set up a programme, you will feel the same way about your savings. You will feel something much more powerful, however, when the savings statement comes in, and you see you are getting somewhere.

3 If you are in debt, having run up a big balance on your credit card while on vacation, or bought yourself 1,000 pairs of shoes, or what have you, make a fixed monthly payment to reduce the debt. Do it the automatic way discussed above.

Then, when the debt is paid off (and it will be, much more quickly this way), simply pay the same monthly amount into your savings account instead of to the lender you borrowed from. You will by then be so used to making the payments that you will not miss the money you are saving. Nor will you have the chance to say "Wow! I have all this money to spend on useless junk!" (That is probably what got you into debt in the first place).

4 Enforce a 24-hour hour rule on impulse buying.

You are out shopping. You see something you absolutely must own. Instead of saying "I will have it!" and then waking up the next day with buyer's remorse, say: "I'll come back tomorrow". Then sleep on it. If you still must have it the next day, buy it.

I once almost bought a 60-inch flat-screen TV. Instead, I decided to think about it for 24 hours. When I woke up the next morning, I realised that I did not have room for it, and hardly ever watch TV. Saved $6,000.

5 Leave your credit cards at home. If you simply laughed when reading about the 24-hour rule, consider this: people spend between 12 and 50 percent more when they are shopping with a credit card than they do when spending cash.

Again, if this sounds like you cannot be trusted to behave sensibly, that is right. You cannot. You can successfully gauge the extent to which you cannot be trusted as follows: Leave the credit cards at home for one month. Then, every time you are in a shop and cannot buy something because you did not have your credit card with you, make a note of how much you did not spend. At the end of the month, add up all the money you did not spend. Then put that much into savings and take me out to lunch.

6 Budget to have a good time. As untrustworthy as you are, you must be nice to yourself. Do the following, reasonably simple calculation. Write down how much you take home each month. Take away from that your mortgage or rent payment, monthly bills, loan payments and other expenses you cannot avoid. Whatever is left, divide by 10. That number is your fun budget. You can spend that much getting drunk, or going to Tupperware parties or having your palm read, or whatever it is that you do when you want to have fun. Spend that much, but no more, on having a good time each month (This does not mean you have to be miserable once you have spent the fun budget. The best things in life are free).

7 Close any account you have that you keep money in, but which does not earn interest. Move the money into an account that does earn interest. You are working hard, but your money is not. Change that.

8 Set some savings goals. Round numbers are the easiest to think of. When you reach a target, treat yourself to a gift. Not something that costs the entire amount you saved, but something you want that will be a reminder of how good you are. I buy myself an ice cream, since that is normally on the banned list. And I can tell you, it tastes sweet. Well, it would, it is ice cream, but you know what I mean.

9 Have your chequing account and savings account in different banks. The hassle of transferring money, plus the delay, will reinforce your newly found good behaviour.

10 Stop complaining. The only person keeping you from being more comfortable financially is you. Yes, you make lousy wages, and yes, you have got to buy new things every five minutes, but in reality, other people in your economic bracket are saving, and you can too. Get on with it.

There are many other techniques, but start with these. The point is that whatever you are doing now is not working, and it is going to take behavioural change to bring about financial change.

Do all these things, and one day you will be as miserable as I am. Now there is something to shoot for. Secretly, of course, I am not miserable at all. I laugh at life, and it laughs back at me. Why? Because I have had a savings programme since my first pay cheque. I am not what you would call rich, but I do eat all the ice cream a person might need.

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I have only two vices: every day, I drink gallons of Diet Coke and smoke hundreds of roll-your-own cigarettes (do not try this at home). Neither the drink nor the tobacco I like is currently available in Bermuda. Do not ask me why. The Diet Coke situation has begun to sort itself out, but it looks as if whoever imports cigarette tobacco has decided to stop importing light tobacco, which means I will have to give up smoking after 50 glorious years, when my present supply runs out.

I expect to turn into a raving, psychotic monster (You ask: how will we know? Trust me, you will know). If I do become completely unhinged and run naked through the Houses of Parliament, or whatever unhinged people do, apologies in advance.