Finally! You landed a job. You got accepted. After sending out your resume to many different companies in the hope of getting hired, you got a call and got accepted. After rigorous interviews and exams, you received that text or email saying you got the job and you will start soon. And then, it was your first day. You learned what to do and how to do your job. You make new friends. You spend time with them, your colleagues. Talked about going out, eating out, going to resorts, and having fun drinking. You are living a life.
And all of these fun activities you do are financed by your salary. That income you get from working 40 hours a week, even more, enables you to enjoy these in life. You know from your salary that you can afford a now and then eating out, or drinking, or going on vacation. You know you are good to go. You know you got the money. Why not do it? It will be fun.
However, before you knew it, there is now a nagging feeling. That feeling of waiting for the next paycheck. That feeling that you do not have enough. The bank account that you zero out every time you get your salary becomes a regular thing. Then you start telling yourself that you need the money. Anyway, that is why you are working. You need money that you can spend enjoying life. It is a justification that you tell yourself.
But, you wanted to be rich. You want to be wealthy. You want to live the life of people you see with cars, nice houses, nice clothes, nice vacations, and nice food. Looking at them, you keep telling yourself that you’ll get there once you get promoted. You’ll have more money to afford it. You can have everything that you want. Your manager has it. You should be able to get it when you get promoted.
Actually…that nagging feeling will not stop if you do not start saving.
Saving is a great feeling
Saving a part of your income will go a long way. It creates a feeling that you did well in life as you see your bank account grow. It will give you a sense of accomplishment that after all of your hard work, the daily grind, the hustles and bustles of daily life, you can tell yourself that it was worth it. The money you see in your bank account will tell you to keep going because it is an amount that reminds you that you have money and you do not need to worry.
When you see that money in your bank account steadily growing, at one point in your life, you will not be that excited to get your paycheck. Of course, you still need to get paid for the work but, when your savings is equal to your monthly net income, it will spell the difference. It will tell you that you have enough for at least a month so even if salary is delayed, you can survive. You do not need to worry.
You get out of that cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. You will feel more driven to work because you are not working for money anymore. You are working in the pure sense of the word, work. While, again you still must get paid, your focus shifts to being productive and focusing your efforts on making quality outputs. This is the result of removing the worry in your head.
You do not worry anymore. You have a steady income. You have enough money in the bank. You can do what you want. You can focus and create quality output. You can spend time with family and friends without worrying about work or where you’ll get the money, or about time. That feeling of seeing your bank account grow will start creating a better sense of self. It will start you to think about where you are taking your life. How are you leading your life is up to you and it all starts with not worrying.
So, how do you start and get to that feeling?
Start by forgetting
Forget first that you have 100% of your salary or income available to you. This means that you must think that not all of your paycheck is for you to spend. Forget that. Tell yourself that you do not own all of it. You do not have the right to spend all of it. You are only entitled to spend a part of it. You can not exhaust it. You do not have all of it.
Part of it is yours to spend how many ways you would like to. Part of it is not yours. And who does it belong to? To your future self. This is when you start remembering. Remember that you owe your future self. You must ensure that the future you will not be going through the same struggles and challenges and hardships that you have right now will not be encountered by the future you. Or at least, you make your future you capable and enabled to overcome any other obstacles that would come.
By forgetting that 100% of your income and remembering that only part of it is for you and part of it is for your future self, you start a mindset of saving. You start building wealth. You start seeing that bank account grow. You start having that feeling that you are successful. You will eventually start developing the drive to keep pushing forward because you can see the results of your hard work.
Do not stop. It will get better.
At the start, it will be difficult. You will think that you’ll start the next time you get your paycheck because you have to pay a lot of stuff. You will think that you can not do it now and better start next time. While this may be good and true, just be aware that if you do it again next time, you will never get started.
So, start now. Start small. You do not need to start with big amount. You can start small. The important part is you start and you keep doing it. You do not stop. You keep doing it. Regardless of the situation, you must continue doing it.
And it will require you to budget but that is another topic for another day. For now, what you need to do is to start, do not stop, keep doing it and eventually, you will notice, you are richer than who you were yesterday.
