Saving money is hard because many Americans simply don’t save. Then the peer pressure to spend as much money as you possibly can influences you. Then you feel good about spending money because everyone else is doing it too. It’s a vicious and never ending cycle.
When I first started my job after college graduation, I told everyone that I was putting 50% of my salary into my 401k. Everyone else laughed at me. I told them I wanted to retire in my 30’s. They laughed at me even harder. Either they didn’t believe it’s possible or they thought the idea was ludicrous.
That experience tells you everything you need to know about the American spending culture. If you save money, you are going to be ridiculed and laughed at. “Save money for what?” Will be a common question that people ask of you. Even with endless financial literacy resources at their disposal.
American culture is to spend money as much as you can and live for the today than for the tomorrow. This is a classic example of excessive consumerism. The government has a vested interest in getting you to spend as much as you possibly can. Even take on debt to buy!
They need the economy to heat up so they can have power against other countries. Not because they care about your well being but because they care about their own. Saving money is hard because the system is designed to get you spending and keep you poor.
It’s high time we fight back!
Saving Money is Hard: How to Overcome it
Lucky for us, there are many strategies and tricks you can employ in order to save more money.
1) Financial Literacy Education
The first and most important step is to take financial literacy education seriously. When I was in high school, none of the school administrators talked about money, let alone taught it. Therefore, financial literacy is on ourselves in order to learn the ins and outs of it.
Lucky for us, there are actual millionaires and multimillionaires who are actively teaching financial literacy on the internet… For free! That’s the best part. If anything, you can also spend $10 or $15 on a book to learn about financial literacy. A $10 book that gets you a $1,000 idea is worth it.
How I learned financial literacy is by reading personal finance blogs who became millionaires themselves by practicing what they preached. Now I have a $400,000 net worth to show for it just six short years later. I can only imagine just how great the next six years will be.
Saving money is hard but financial literacy makes it easier.
2) Make More Money
Saving money becomes easy if you make more money. Now is the time to make more money by getting a promotion or changing jobs. Company loyalty is expensive for the employee. You would think employers reward company loyalty but they sure do not.
Companies take advantage of loyalty. Therefore, it’s high time to take the power back into the hands of the employee and switch jobs whenever it makes sense for us to. Saving money is hard when you don’t make enough money. When you do, it becomes much easier.
When I first graduated college, I saved 50% of my $52,500 salary. Saving money was extremely difficult because the salary was so low. However, over the years, I 3x+’d that salary and grew my salary to heights I never thought was even possible.
Saving money just became much easier after that. Maxing out my 401k became just that much easier.
3) Have a Long Term Mindset
Saving money is hard for the one who practices instant gratification. The ones who have a long term mindset of their lives, the ones who know how to look at the long term, saving money becomes easier. I personally look to spend $10 tomorrow rather than $10 today.
I look at my life over the long term, in decades and decades, and do not mind sacrificing short term gain for long term gain. The long term gain is exponentially greater than the gains I get today. I just believe and trust in the process and know that will be the case 20 years from today.
Therefore, I save to my heart’s desires and content. When you have a long term mindset and have the ability to delay gratification as much as possible, saving money becomes easier. If you are not thanking your past self for the position you’re in today, it’s time to change that.
You always have time to change course.
4) Control Your Desires
The government conditioned us to think that living the hedonistic lifestyle where we buy everything to our heart’s content is the way to live. They were geniuses in figuring out how to make us desire buying things so their marketing is cleverly designed to target us.
It’s time to fight back. We can’t let ourselves be our own worst enemy. We have to control our own desires so that we don’t commit any of the 7 money sins out there. Our desires are what ruins us, not anything else. It’s one thing to lose to someone else.
it’s another to lose to ourselves. There’s no reason to get the newest iPhone 14 if it’s basically the same thing as before but just more expensive. It’s going to get cheaper as time passes, anyway. People are going to sell their used phones online when they realize the one they had before was even better.
Saving money is hard because we can’t control our own desires.
5) Avoid the Marketing to Save Money
Marketing is so clever these days that even the most frugal is tempted. They know how to get the lighting perfect to make a phone be more shiny. Companies also know regular food isn’t tempting for the regular person. So they use tricks to make it seem more appealing to the consumer.
The cheesy pizza you see on the screen? You think it’s actual cheese? No. it’s glue they use to make it even more cheesier. Companies know how to manipulate your senses to make it more appealing to you so they can get more sales. I don’t know how this isn’t considered deceptive marketing.
In either case, ads are so clever because they know exactly what they need to do in order to use your senses for their own benefit. They know how to get more sales. There’s a reason why they put celebrities in commercials. That excites you to buy the brand even more.
The advertising industry’s influence is enormous, which is why saving money is hard. It’s time to get more education so we can fight back.
6) Make Saving Money a Habit
Saving money is hard because it’s not a habit. The easiest way to make saving a habit is by automating savings. You can’t spend money if they automatically goes to your 401k. You can’t spend money if it automatically goes into your savings account that you can’t touch.
Making saving a habit is the easiest way to fight back and better your financial life. These days, saving money is such a habit that I feel anxious if I don’t save money. That’s how much I trained my psychology, which is a wonderful thing that I love for myself.
Every paycheck, 50% goes into my savings account and brokerage account so that I can invest the money to grow into more. The smartest people in the economy are always the savers and investors. These days, the yields on savings accounts are so high that it makes it worth it to park cash there.
2% yearly yield is just a wonderful return!
7) Create a Budget
Saving money is hard if you don’t know how much is coming in and how much is going out. When you create a budget, you get to see firsthand how much you’re spending on each category. The biggest items are taxes, food, and rent.
Having a fun money budget isn’t a luxury either. it’s a necessity. Make sure to have a monthly fun budget once in a while so that you don’t feel restrained so much. Budgets are not meant to be restrictive but rather liberating so that you know how much you can spend freely per month.
After a while, you won’t even need a budget in order to go through your day to day life. You will be so used to knowing how much you can spend that it comes to you like second nature and muscle memory. That’s a beautiful thing.
That’s when you know you are completely independent from the marketing that’s out there.
8) Use Cash for Every Purchase
Psychologically, it’s is more painful to you if you use cash to pay and not a credit card. There’s a reason why casinos use “chips” instead of real money to represent real money. It’s more painful to see actual cash go down the drain than artificial chips.
Using cash for every purchase is a good way to save yourself from yourself. I personally use credit cards because I’m very disciplined in using credit cards and I’m sure the credit card companies dislike me for how little credit I actually use month over month.
However, for the one who can’t control themselves, it’s best to use cash. Cash is painful to use. Saving money is hard because people use credit cards too much. They can’t control themselves with them because they think the max limit is the amount they have to spend.
That’s not true. People should never use their max limit on the credit card. It hurts our credit score.
9) Get Afraid
The reason why I wanted to save so much money was because I was afraid. If I don’t have any money, then no woman would want me. I can’t start a family and I can’t have the life that I want. That’s how much fear helped me set my life straight.
Money is a leading cause of divorce. Money plays such an important part in our lives that not having it will lead to some bad things. Saving money is hard because you’re not afraid. Fear plays such an important and evolutionary aspect in our lives.
It fired me up to not mess up the one life that I was given. I’ve been in poverty before and let me tell you, it really sucks. To feel like someone else controls so much of you? It’s a scary thought especially because it’s legal to have that much control over you.
If saving money is hard, using fear to make it easy is a great goal.
Saving Money is Hard but It’s Necessary
Given that we are living in a consumerism culture, I will be the first to say that saving money is hard. Peer pressure is real and it’s not as easy to shake the pressure off as people think that it is. When we see other people doing well, we immediately ask ourselves, why don’t we have that too?
When we see coworkers getting a Tesla while they have the same salary as us, we ask ourselves, “how?”. “Should I be driving a Tesla as well?”. What you see is the Tesla. What you don’t see is the financing documents and the debt they had to take on to take on the shiny new toy.
Just seeing the surface is not the whole picture. Americans have an abysmally low savings rate of 5%. Even during the great financial crisis of ’07-09, Americans had a sub 10% savings rate. I have no idea how people even lived during those periods with that low of a savings rate.
We think rainy days won’t happen until they do. Rainy days will happen at least once in our lifetimes. That’s just a part of life. The good times NEVER lasted forever. Saving money is hard but it’s a necessity these days. We need more people educated about financial literacy more than ever now.
Besides, after you go through the exercise of saving money, you may just find out you may be living on excess. Simple living is the best kind of living. Minimalism isn’t gaining in popularity because it’s just a fad. It’s here to stay as a lifestyle choice.
I currently live a minimalistic lifestyle and let me tell you, it is amazing.
Saving Money is Hard Shortlist:
- Financial literacy education
- Make more money
- Have a long term mindset
- Control your desires
- Avoid the marketing
- Make saving money a habit
- Create a budget
- Use cash for every purchase
- Get afraid
