financial success

69. Choose the latté or a million dollars.

You feel that no matter what you do or how much you try and save, you’re never able to get ahead. I think we all feel like that a little bit. The problem could be not that you don’t have money to save, but that there are some holes in the bucket.

There are really two principles to saving money. You can either increase the amount coming in or decrease the amount going out. Now increasing the amount coming in can occur but often may take some time, further education and additional training. The easier way is to fill some holes in the bottom of that bucket. When I mention this to people, they always exclaim that they have tightened things up the best they can. I find this may not always be the case. After reading The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach, I discovered that you only need to make a few small tweaks to have close to a million dollars at retirement.

We all have things that are comforts each day. Things that we have come accustomed to that we like to think of as our things. They act as our little rewards or treats during the day. Sometimes we just feel we need them. For example, many of us purchase something like a mocha and a muffin each day during work. It serves as a start to our morning or a retreat we make with others at break time. Did you know simply cutting that out and investing that money could make you a millionaire?

I am not going to go through all the math and compound interest equations to prove it to you. The point is when you feel like there is no way to save, you have to really look at your daily habits. “Well, I deserve to have my mocha each day.” Well then, you also deserve to be poor when you get old. Find the holes in your bucket. What needs are you fulfilling with daily four to five dollar purchases? As always, let’s keep things in perspective, I’m not saying that you need to drink tap water and only listen to free radio. I am saying if you buy a couple of magazines a week and a soda each day, there still is a way to tighten up a bit and save. So if saving money is hard for you, stop looking at your paycheck and start looking at your habits.