Giving tips for your sister on Simple Ways to Save Money

saving money is a good habit

Nowadays, things are getting more expensive and have a lower quality and quantity. I understand that sometimes you did not have money to buy things because I faced this kind of problems before. However, we can take some simple measures to prevent this problem to happen.

First and foremost, you can prepare a book to record your daily expenses. In this way, you will know how much you are spending and see where you have spend your money mostly. You can always keep track of your money and check on it regularly. At the end of a month, you can see the balance of your money and when you realize you have spent more than you expected, you will reflect yourself and check where has your money gone. It will also train you to become more organized.

Furthermore, you can make a budget plan at the beginning of the month. For instance, you can plan your expenses to avoid over-spending. You can also include your expenses that happen regularly such as stationery, food, book and transportation fees. By using this method, you can control yourself on buying things which are unnecessary such as luxury items.

Moreover, you can include savings in your plan. For example, create a saving category in your plan. You can categorize your savings into different categories such as entertainment, books and loans. In this way, you will always have enough money during emergencies. This will lead you to be more careful and become wise shoppers in the future.

In a nutshell, saving money is a good habit which should be cultivated from young age. Saving money should be adapted to our daily life. We can learn to be more mature and independent when spending on our own money. I hope you will take my advice and practice this good habit in your daily life.

Zehui, this is supposed to be an informal essay between siblings regarding how to save money. Yet the tone of your essay is too academic and formal. Why is that? Is there a prompt requirement that you forgot to include with the essay? Is this the IELTS or TOEFL exam? Or are you just practicing to write in English? In which case, the tone of the essay should be more informal because you are writing something similar to a letter to a friend.

One of the problems of your essay is that you are not establishing who you are talking to at the beginning of the essay. While yo clearly established the topic and point of the essay, the target audience is not clear. Therefore, the reader does not have any idea as to who your target audience is. That is important because the person the essay is making reference to sets the tone for the discussion and gives the reader the reason why you had to write the letter.

It was important for your essay that a reason was established for why you had to write this letter. Was the allowance of your sister mismanaged or something? Did she overspend? Why did you feel compelled to write this letter. Why did you have to say that you understand how she might not have enough money to buy things sometimes? The establishing factors need to be clear in order to give the essay more of a purpose for being written.

The advice that you gave for saving money is sound advice. It is advice that can be applied to everyday life. Your explanations in this aspect of the essay were clear and understandable. It is truly helpful advice that should be taken and followed by your sister. However the problem is the tone of the essay. It is so formal that you seem to be lecturing the person. If this is your sister, it should have a softer, more caring tone instead of coming across as a semi-admonishment on your part.

@Holt
Thanks for your advice, and I just realized I forgot to write the actual first paragraph. I'll repost it later. This essay is to practice for my exam and in our country we need to write like a very formal letter although it is informal. If can I also don't want to write until so formal. > <

This is a light and very formal piece of writing. Maybe you should try to focus on using some strong vocabs. Also, the intent of this writing is not clearly mentioned, leaving this essay to be incomplete.

Since you are writing this in a letter format, please make sure that you keep the format consistent until the end of the letter. That means, since you have a salutation as the opening of the letter, then you also need a closing salutation at the end. By the way, I think you used an android device to write this new letter because you wrote "Andrea" instead of and mother. Also, the word "mother" should be written in lower case since it is not accompanied by the name of a person as a title such as "Mother Teresa". Your tone is now consistent in terms of being concerned for your sister and comes across as the words of a sibling who wants to help a sister. The tone before was too academic because you did not have the proper format for the letter in place. This version though, does a very good job of accomplishing the task given to you to write about. While the grammar is not perfect, the sentences are understandable enough to allow proper comprehension of the message you want to get across to your sister / reader.

@Holt
Yeaa I was using my phone. By the way, can you help me to correct my grammar of the essay?

Okay. Here are some tips. When discussing in past tense, it is not always necessary to say the word "have". So in your first paragraph, you could have simply said "You mentioned in your letter..." That is because "have" connotes an action that is still taking place. In this case, it has already happened so it is no longer necessary to say "have". In the second paragraph, say "you do not have" instead of "did not have". Did not have connotes a past action while "Do not have" connotes an ongoing situation that still requires a solution. Third paragraph should say "where you spent your money". Again, this is all about the timeline in the letter. Most of your sisters actions have already occurred and as such, must take on the past form of presentation. Also, it is better to say "... you will reflect on your actions..." instead of "reflect on yourself". Basically, the mistakes in your grammar are so minimal and negligible since it does not alter the meaning of the sentence nor make the paragraph confusing to read. That is why I did not think the corrections were necessary. For an ESL, you are doing a very good job in expressing yourself in written English.

@Holt
Thank you so much on your comments. ><