Several times a week I walk my dog at a local park. I used to do a small loop a little over a mile. It was second nature to do the same loop every time I’d walk the dog. Gradually I began to extend the length of the walk.
Before too long I was doubling or tripling the length of my walk with ease. It seemed natural to go a longer length and I thought nothing of it.
As the weeks and months went by, I began to think more about it. Why was I able to double or triple the length of the walk? I wasn’t in significantly better shape and I hadn’t had a weight transformation or health scare to motivate me to walk further.
I think the answer is relatively simple. Walking further became the new thing that I did, my new norm. It became my new mindset. I used to mindlessly take the small loop and head home without giving it a second thought. Once I became intentional about going further though, I realized I could just as easily walk a longer distance.
I see parallels between my walk and personal finances. I used to struggle to save or invest anything. I mindlessly went through the days, weeks, months, and years thinking it was normal to break even or save a couple hundred at most.
To be honest, it was pretty easy to get through the years this way. It didn’t take a lot of effort or willpower, I just kind of did it on autopilot. As long as I was getting by without accumulating any debt, I thought I was fine. What I didn’t realize was that I was in an endless pattern of treading water.
Treading water is appropriate some of the time. There are some months where the expenses are abnormally high and it’s nice just to get out of the month even. But it’s not ok to make that a pattern. If you’re treading water every month, it’s quite simply not possible to get ahead financially.
After several years of just getting by, I began to realize that I needed to save and invest every month. If I did that consistently, I’d be able to get ahead in the coming years. I would finally have a financial reward for my efforts at work.
Just like the walk, I started off slow. I gradually went from saving almost nothing to a few hundred. It felt good to see progress and get out of the breaking even cycle.
Right around that time, my then girlfriend, now wife, moved in with me. We put the rent she used to pay at her old place directly into a savings account, which significantly boosted our monthly savings rate. The next raise that we both got went straight to our savings and investments, further boosting our savings rate.
We were also both undergoing a mindset shift and change in our expectations. Our old baseline was to save very little, if anything, every month. The new baseline and expectation was to save at least $1,000 each and every month. Just like walking further, it seemed normal to save this amount of money.
It didn’t really require any more effort, and our happiness level actually went up, even though we were spending less. Saving this amount of money became the new norm for us.
As the years went by, we continued to put every pay raise towards savings and investments. When my wife got a higher paying job, we put most of that money towards our investments, further boosting our monthly rate.
A few short years before this, we both could not have imagined saving and investing that amount of money. Once we did it though, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal.
Our new norm gave us a good starting point to expand our savings and investments even further. We continued to allocate our pay raises to investments and eventually we were saving over fifty percent of our income. This would have seemed unimaginable only five years ago.
Zig Ziglar said “If you wait until all the lights are ‘green’ before you leave home, you’ll never get started on your way to the top.”
Everything is not going to be perfectly aligned to start improving your financial situation, or any other situation in life. Once you start and get going though, you start to see ahead more. New perspectives are created that allow you to move forward to higher levels than you ever thought.
You can’t see twenty green lights ahead, but you can see the nearest green light. Once you drive to that green light, you can see the next green light. And the next one, and the next one.
Before too long you’re at the green light that used to be completely out of sight. Keep going and there will be many more green lights in your future.
If there’s something in your life that you want to improve (it doesn’t even have to be related to personal finance), think about the steps you can take now—and take them. Create a new mindset and set of expectations.
If you want to improve your financial situation, save that first ten dollars. Then build it up to fifty dollars, one hundred dollars, one thousand dollars, and beyond.
If you want to get in better shape, walk around the block. Then twice around the block. Soon you will be walking around the park, maybe even jogging. If you want to eat healthier, replace one unhealthy food with one healthy food. Then replace another unhealthy food with something healthy.
You will be surprised how quickly your perspective changes, and how things you never thought were possible start to become within reach. Much like my walk, it starts with small steps. Over time, you’ll start to see green lights you never knew existed.
