When I grew up, my parents always tithed: that is, they gave 10% of their income to the church.
Once I got out of college, and had an actual income, I started to do the same thing. Except I decided that the 10% would go to charity generally, not just to the church.
I got a separate checking account, and when each paycheck came in, I would put 10% into the “charity account”.
That meant that, if I saw something that I thought I should support, I could just write a check from the charity account. If I didn’t see anything for a while, then the money would just pile up, and I could write a bigger check when the time came. Psychologically, the important thing was to take the money out right at the beginning. Then, when I decided to donate, it wasn’t a trade-off between that, and rent or vacation or whatever. The money had already been set aside.
This made it so easy, and painless, to donate that I almost felt guilty about how easy it was. At the beginning, my salary was small, my paychecks were small, and 10% was even smaller. But still, it added up. And now, the decades have gone by, and the numbers have gotten larger.
Even from the very beginning, I was astonished by how good it felt.
Being able to donate to good causes makes a huge difference in how you feel. And I really never noticed the difference between my regular checking account having 90%, versus 100%, of my paycheck. (That’s partly because I’m naturally a frugal person, but I think that taking the 10% out at the beginning would be helpful to a spendthrift, too.) It doesn’t have to be 10%. That’s just the tradition in the church I grew up in.
Try it. I think that doing this will make a significant difference to you.