Day 7
Feel Your feelings
We’re so proud of the progress you’ve been making toward your goals. We’re excited. We’re jazzed. We just can’t wait.
You are the Star lighting the way toward financial independence. You can do it — we know it.
Here's today's Small Step
Take 15 minutes to imagine how you will feel as you begin to reach your goals. Read through the goals you wrote down yesterday. Then write down your thoughts and feelings in your Super Saver Notebook. When you achieve your goals, will you feel relief? Empowerment? Self-confidence? Security?
Do any of those feelings scare you?
Be honest.
If you have been treading water financially and not making much progress for a long time, it probably has become a habit, a way of life. Although you may want to succeed at saving toward your goals, you’ll sabotage yourself if you ignore your feelings about the changes that success will bring into your life.
Write down any uncomfortable feelings that you have. Get it all out. We’re serious. Dig down deep where it’s “tangled and dark”. Feel those painful feelings.
It’s only 15 minutes, and you can do anything for 15 minutes.
We’re thinking of you — and we know you can do this.
Day 8
Work for Yourself the First Hour Each Day
Hey there, future Money Star!
You’ve been making great progress this week. You’re getting down to the nitty-gritty, and getting things done. Congratulations!
If you work a regular 40-hour week, you are trading 8 hours a day for your paycheck. If you spend every penny you earn, then you are working for the credit card company, the bank, the mortgage lender, and the tax man all day long. None of that money is for yourself and your own dreams. Isn’t that crazy? Shouldn’t at least a small part of the money you earn be yours and yours alone?
If you can save 10% of your regular pay, then you are working the first hour each day for yourself. If you start work at 9 a.m., the hour from 9 to 10 is your hour. That money will go to fund your goals and dreams, not other people’s agendas. Saving 10% of your income is a way to show that your own plans are just as important as the ones others thrust upon you. (If you don’t work outside the home, figure out what one hour of your services at home are worth — can you save that much each day?)
Here's today's Small Step
Use the worksheet you printed out on Day 2 called “Start Your Savings Program.” Figure out how close you can come to saving your first hour’s pay, each day.
Think about how you can boost your savings to capture your first-hour-a-day of pay for your future. Identify the Small Steps you are willing to take to save, and list them on a page you label “Saving Booster” in your Super Saver Notebook.
Can you save an extra $1 today? How about $2 tomorrow? $3 the next day, $4 the day after that — how high can you go? Make it a game. Can you eat out less often? Can you get less expensive haircuts? Do you have automatic deductions from your bank account for clubs and services you aren’t using any longer?
Trick yourself into spending less. Put your credit cards in a block of ice in the freezer so you have to wait until they thaw to spend. Avoid driving by the mall on the way home. Try not to spend anything one day each week. What else can you do to trick yourself into saving?
Think of all of the little expenses that add up during the day: the muffin in the morning, the expensive coffee drinks, the magazines, the stop at the convenience store on the way home.
Think, think, think. And then write it all down on your Saving Booster list.