The Secret Sauce For (Financial) Success

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Is there a Secret Sauce to Financial Success?

If you look in the self-development section of the book store (or Amazon now that they’ve put most bookstores out of business), you’ll see plenty of titles relating to how to get a handle on your finances. If you look on business news sites such as Business Insider or Yahoo Finance, there are plenty of articles on how to save for retirement and maximize your savings. The topic of improving your personal finances is nothing new.

Plenty of people out there claim to have advice or an opinion on how to better manage your money and even “how to get rich”. We all want to know the secret to having a lot of money, getting bigger incomes and living a life with financial security.

But in reality, is there a secret to financial success?

And my simple but complicated answer to that is YES! But also no….

In reality there is no secret to financial success. Simply put, we need to do these 3 things in order to achieve financial success:

• Increase your income
• Spend less than you make
• Invest wisely

 

(Zach over at Four Pillar Freedom does a great job at expanding on these items)

That’s it folks. Those 3 things (or the Big 3) are the secret to financial success. Sounds easy, right?

Yes, what you actually need to do is very simple, and this makes it seem like there really isn’t a secret to financial success. However, how we go about doing the Big 3 is much more complicated than simply increasing income, spending less than we make and investing wisely.

The “What” is not really a secret, but the “How” is a different story. There are plenty of secrets for how to approach the “How”.

 

But How About The Little Things

Similar to achieving success in any facet of life, achieving success financially is all about the little things. The little things that are done day in and day out, cemented habits in our daily routine, that over the course of many years can make us financially successful.

Here are a few of the little things you can do that can help you accomplish the Big 3 better….

 

Every time you receive a deposit into your bank account, do you divert a percentage of it into your savings?

Do you know how much money you can spend each month without going over your designated budget and watch your spending via Personal Capital every few days?

Do you have a daily mindfulness or gratitude practice? When you are grateful for what you have and mindful of your actions, you are significantly less likely to impulse spend. (I’ll be writing a guide on this very soon!)

Do you prioritize learning new things and growing as a person? This could include developing your career to increase your income, or learning about simple market investing tactics to grow your savings.

 

These are only a few of the little things, that done on a regular basis, can help to influence how we use money in our lives in order to bring ourselves into a state of financial success. Think about how neglecting to take care of one aspect of our life can spill over and have a negative influence over the other areas of our life.

Poor relationships can affect your career. Poor health can affect your personal finances. Neglecting personal growth can affect your relationships.

So not everything that influences our financial success has anything to do with finances. This is the secret to financial success. We need to find balance in our lives and focus on the little things.

Focus on growing, learning and making yourself into the best person you can possibly be, and I can almost guarantee that you will find financial success as well.

 

How The Little Things Have Helped Me With Financial Success

Focusing on the little things has helped me personally to dig myself out of a few tough spots and put me on the path to financial success, even when I didn’t really even know what I was doing. These little habits I created for myself allowed me to unknowingly build my ability to accomplish the Big 3 and make more money, spend less than I make and invest wisely. Here are three brief examples of how I did this….

 

Spending Less and Making More – Getting laid off from my job back in 2015 was the catalyst for just about every great thing that has happened in my life in the past 3 years. It’s the reason I moved to Australia, why I started to learning about personal finance and ultimately it’s why I’m currently writing this post on a Thursday morning in an AirBnb in Hanoi, Vietnam. Finding myself without a job while living in Chicago during the dead of winter, forced me to learn and grow as a person. I learned how to live on significantly less money since I no longer had an income. I also had to get creative and started an independent business tutoring students using Varsity Tutors and other online platforms. To fill time, I read books, exercised and spent time with friends. I didn’t sit on my couch and watch Netflix, but made sure that I was growing and learning.

Spending Less and Investing Wisely – After my first 6 months of living and working in Sydney, I found myself out of shape and stuck in a bit of a rut. I decided to start focusing on my health by learning more about nutrition and getting back into a regular exercise routine. The discipline and routine that was required was then directly followed by my new interest in saving money for a mini-retirement. Soon after, I started saving 30-40% of my income each month and prioritizing cooking at home to save money and improve my health!

Making More, Spending Less and Investing Wisely – Once I really started saving some serious money and had established an emergency fund, I realized I needed to find a way to wisely invest my money so I could grow my savings. I had tried buying a few individual stocks and mutual funds through Fidelity after I graduated from college and quickly failed at generating a return for myself. So this time around I stumbled upon Mr. Money Mustache’s blog, which led me to learning more about personal finance and how to use Wealthfront for index investing. Quickly I found that I had a lot to learn and decided to regularly spend time learning about the personal finance world. This learning curve helped with my personal growth and developing my interest in writing. Ultimately, I leading to starting this blog!

 

These are three examples of how the little things helped me in learning how to increase my income, spend less than I make and invest wisely. So the Big 3 held true, but how I went about getting better at the Big 3 was in the little things, and the daily habits. Prioritize personal growth and balance in your life. Over time, you’ll find financial success.

 

Question: Do you think there are any secrets for financial success? What has worked for you?

Leave a comment or send me an email!

 

NYPFGuy