How to Save More and Spend Less

There are many simple ways to save more money without feeling the pain. You can even turn it into a challenge or a game to make it more enjoyable.

【小题1】

You went shopping and now your pocket is heavy with loose change. Count it, keep what you might need for bus tickets and put the rest in a piggy bank. After two months, empty the piggy bank and deposit(存储) the amount in your saving account.

Give up your expensive habits.

Cut down on the beer and cigarettes. Not only will this keep you healthier, but it’ll let you save up on unwanted expenses. 【小题2】 If you don’t stop now, you’ll end up paying a lot more for them anyway.

Visit ATMs less often.

Reducing the times you use the ATM can help you cut down on your costs. 【小题3】 By doing so you won’t have to make unnecessary withdrawals(取款).

Use cash.

Every time you use your credit card or cellphone to pay for something, you’re losing track of exactly how much you’ re spending. If you’re buying something, buy it with cash. This will give you a clearer idea of how much you’re actually spending. 【小题4】

Carry your own bag when shopping.

With the government taking measures to reduce plastic usage, most shops have moved onto paper and cloth bags. 【小题5】 Instead of paying for these, carry your own bag.

We will all probably know both some introverts （内向的人）and extroverts （外向的人）in life, and yet we can gain a wrong impression about both types of people. For example, some introverts can be extremely confident and they can be able people. However, some extroverts aren^’t as confident as they'd like to appear to be and often try to hide their true identities behind a false appearance.

Shyness can affect both introverts and extroverts and anybody else too. It can be very debilitating （使衰弱的）and, if severe, can have a huge negative influence upon our ability to form meaningful relationships and it can also affect our careers or jobs.

A lot of people feel shy because they have low self-respect and feel unworthy when comparing themselves to others. They find it difficult to communicate with others whom they don't know. In that case, one of the best ways of overcoming the shyness is to focus the attention on the other person instead. Shy people can try changing people's focus on someone else， so that they don't need to talk about themselves too much.

If you recognize that you are shy and see that as a lion in the way of enjoying your life. you should first overcome it by accepting that it's causing a problem for you. Trying getting into conversations with strangers is helpful. Shy people are challenging themselves and over- coming their shyness. In this way, shy people can get their own self-respect. Each time they do it, this will be repeated until they feel confident enough.

Like any negative thought， determination can also help you beat shyness and having a positive attitude is the key to overcoming the shyness.

To err is human. To blame the other guy is even more human.

Common sense is not all that common.

Why tell the truth when you can come up with a good excuse?

These three popular misquotes (戏谑的引语) are meant to be jokes, and yet they tell us a lot about human nature. To err, or to make mistakes, is indeed a part of being human, but it seems that most people don’t want to accept the responsibility for having made a mistake. They naturally look for someone else who could be responsible for the problem. Perhaps it is the natural thing to do. The original quote about human nature went like this: “To err is human, to forgive, divine (神圣的).” This saying mirrors an ideal: people should be forgiving of others’ mistakes. Instead, we tend to do the opposite —— find someone else to pass the blame on to. However, taking responsibility for something that went wrong is a mark of great maturity.

Common sense is what we call clear thought. Having common sense means having a good general plan that will make things work well, and it also means staying with the plan. Common sense tells you that you take an umbrella out into a rainstorm, but you leave the umbrella home when you hear a weather forecast for sunshine. Common sense does not seem to be common for large organizations, because there are so many things going on that one person cannot be in charge of everything. People say that in a large company, “the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.”

And what is wrong with a society that thinks that making up a good excuse is like creating a work of art? One of the common problems with making excuses is that people, especially young people, get the idea that it’s okay not to be totally honest all the time. There is a corollary (直接推论) to that: if a good excuse is “good” even if it isn’t honest, then where is the place of the truth?