The Magic of Thinking Small
There’s an old man who lives down the street. I don’t know his name, but every day I see him walking up and down the road with his cane. He moves slowly. He always wears the same thing: faded denim pants, a lightweight tan jacket, and a bright orange cap. For one hour every day — rain or shine — he walks up and down the street. Every day. We live on a steep hill, but he only walks on the flattest part. He’s been doing this for months.
We’ve exchanged greetings before, but I’ve never asked him about his routine. Does he do this for exercise? Is he recovering from surgery? All I know is he’s out there every day, making small steps, walking for an hour. I don’t know where he’s going, but he does.
The dangers of going cold turkey
When a person decides to make a lifestyle change, whether financial or otherwise, there’s a temptation GO ALL OUT. With the zeal of a new convert, she leaps headlong into the life of the frugal, for example, giving up everything she held important before.
There’s a problem with this method.
Most people who leap from a lifestyle of deficit spending to one of extreme frugality find the waters very, very cold. It’s a shock to the system. It feels oppressive. They struggle to tread water, but before long decide they’re going to sink rather than swim, so return to the warmer, familiar waters, the waters of debt.
I made several false starts before finding my way. I would decide to give up comics completely, or to never buy another computer game. These sorts of goals are foolish. Nobody has that kind of god-like self-control. Everyone needs an indulgence now and then.
Rather than quit cold turkey, I think the best way to begin a life of frugality is by taking small steps. Small steps eventually become big strides, but only after you’ve developed your frugal muscles.
Sweating the small stuff
This is true not just with personal finance, but with all self-improvement goals. You don’t go from couch potato to marathon-runner overnight. Instead, you begin with a slow, measured regimen of sensible fitness, gradually working your way to what might have seemed impossible before. Likewise, you don’t go from $20,000 in debt to having $20,000 in the bank overnight. You get rich slowly. You make one smart choice after another, starting with the small stuff.
If you’ve been putting off some financial goal, why not start today? Make a small meaningful step toward achieving that goal. If you’ve been intending to open a high-yield savings account, do it. Fund it with the minimum amount. Add $20 or $50 to it ever month. Don’t worry if progress seems slow. Get in the habit. In time, you’ll discover ways to accelerate your savings.
Or maybe you’ve been meaning to trim your monthly bills. Do it. Drop the landline. Quit playing World of Warcraft. Cancel some magazine subscriptions. Get rid of cable television. Recurring monthly expenses are money sinks, quietly eating at your ability to get ahead. Canceling cable is a small thing, but it’s a small thing that can have a big impact.
Small, easy changes may not make much difference on their own, but they can have a real impact when combined with other small moves. It just takes a while for the change to be apparent. For a long time, I didn’t think I’d ever get out of debt. Progress was slow. Eventually, however, because I’d been working so long and so hard at it, my debt snowball reached enormous size, mowing down all debts in its path. Now it’s a savings snowball of equal might. But this avalanche would never have started if I hadn’t begun with “snowflakes“.
There are those who argue that it’s the big personal finance decisions that make the most difference. They may be right. But I haven’t made any big personal finance decisions in the past few years — only small ones. Every day I got out there and took small steps, walking in the flattest part. And this made all the difference.
Start at the beginning
I recently started a weight-training program. I’ve never really lifted weights before, so it’s like learning a new language. Plus I’m weak. I haven’t exercised regularly in years. For many of my exercises, 3- or 5-pound dumbbells are enough to work my muscles to exhaustion.
These light weights embarrassed me at first. It felt demeaning to start with so little. But with the help of Get Fit Slowly readers, I realized there’s no shame in using light weights. This is where I start. It’s where anyone in my condition would have to start. And it’s where I started with my debt, too — saving just $5 or $10 at a time.
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There are 41 comments to "The Magic of Thinking Small".
Totally agree on those monthly recurring expenses being a nuisance to your finances. They add up and just eat at your budget. I’d love to get Tivo/DVR, but I just can’t justify it. I made myself choose between it and Netflix. Interesting thing is with Netflix I’m down to two a month cause I couldn’t justify the cost of 3/mon. Cell phone is another thing – I use Virgin Mobile prepay. I just don’t use the cell that much and can’t justify the monthly contract, eventhough I could afford it. Sure I have some monthly expenses but its few, and I make sure I use the ones I’m paying for. I’d just much rather buy an item outright then pay a “subscription” for it.
One more thing 🙂 I use lightweights all the time and I’m strong as an ox! I will put a lighter weight and do high amounts of reps. It makes me long and lean and is an addendum to my cardio workout (this type of weightlifting keeps the heartrate up there even after I’m off the treadmill). The point is to get toned. I see fat people using heavy weights all the time, but I’d rather be toned and lean than have a layer of fat over my big muscles. No shame in small weights!
I keep trying to budget and starting *too* small– there’s nothing for me to do, so I don’t do anything. This led to a very minor crisis (okay, this and UFB Direct’s Absolutely Horrible Savings Account) but I’m still doubting my ability to do this.
So I’d say to start small, but start with something you can or will do often.
Here’s my formula:
Small Vision + Small Steps = Poor
Big Vision + Small Steps = Wealthy
My current workout idea isn’t particularly impressive to anyone who has done ballet, yoga, etc. It’s definitely not pushing my cardio limits (though there’s some cardio involved). But that matters is that it’s getting me somewhere. Like that guy on the hill.
Hey JD. I’ve been avoiding putting money into my savings account, and I’m going to suck it up and take your advice by putting a few dollars aside every paycheck. You’re right-even if it’s twenty bucks, it will add up, and I’ll probably find ways to put more money away over time.
Good luck with the workouts! Everyone I know at the gym is impressed when people in less-than-stellar physical condition come in and show progress by sticking to it. Think of the small weights as initiation–something a little embarrassing you have to do to join the group! The weights will go up over time. How much you lift is really not the point.
hey. this is a great post. i tend to do that all the time…jump in with great gusto only to fizzle out. i guess my hardest problem is that because i live with roommates, a lot of those ‘montly expenses’ don’t get cut out because its a majority-decision.
i’ve only recently started to get serious about taking care of my finances. but with my tendency to jump in feet first, i’m a little worried i might have taken on too much. nonethelss, i’m going to keep going at it. i’m cutting out the coffee habit a bit by bit, learning to put aside money bit by bit too.
I agree with the post. Two things that have also helped me along the way is slowly making payments and savings automatic. I did this in small steps. Also writing down my plans and progress. But like JD stated, it’s been working best for me in small steps. Large steps are overwhelming for me and makes the task at hand seem too daunting to accomplish.
@ AJC, that’s a good way to sum it up. You should put that on a bumper sticker.
@ Diatryma, why don’t you like UFB? I’m with ING but I’ve been looking around and UFB has been on my radar… If you don’t mind, please share your thoughts.
It’s a shock to the system.
Yep. I’ve been working on changing myself in various areas. It feels too alien to me if I make changes too fast. Sort of like how you feel if you move to a new city and take a new job at the same time.
I had to go through a sort of experimentation process to discover exactly how ambitious I could be with my financial lifestyle changes. Some months I overshot it, and other months I was too conservative. I think I have found the proper balance now.
/gasp cancel World of Warcraft? never!
I love this. I just cancelled two recurring things that I’ve been holding on to for no good reason. Thanks for the inspiration.
I need to cancel my cable as soon as my contract is over. I am watching so much crap and get caught up with advertisements! I end up spending more. That would help me cut my expenses. You are right..little by little makes a significant difference.
I have adopted a pay-myself-first strategy recently. I put 10%/pay of my gross income into my 457 plan. Then I put 10% of my net into a Roth IRA every pay. I am sure I can do higher percentages of either, but those are the small steps and I will acclimate to those levels of investment and step up every few months. So, the 457 will become 10% + $20 in a few months as will the Roth, until I feel a pinch. I can always back down to a more comfy level, but will try to never go below 10%/pay in either plan.
i am that old man and my daily walk is the highlite of my day. i have all the money i want and need. my day starts with coffee and a bowl of cereal. then my walk. then i read the paper and check out current events on my computer. watch some news and then a short nap. reading books in afternoon and enjoying sitting in the sun. if you notice, i dont speak of spending money any any such thing concerning money. the simple pleasures are the best.
It’s amazing how much you can save by trimming the fat from your monthly “fixed costs.” A lot of the things we think are mandatory expenses really aren’t!
It is how I wrote in my post: http://www.kacperwrzesniewski.com/try-opposite-strategy/
For some people, ‘cold turkey’ is good approach and gives amazing effects. But not for everybody. Then it is good to take opposite approach.
But is it a magic of ‘thinking small’ or rather ‘small steps’?
This is so very true! It’s the reason doctors always recommend small changes in diet as opposed to going from McDonald’s and pizza daily to vegetables and protein bars.
The worst part of the “cold turkey” approach? When you do collapse, you’ll fall into a hole deeper than you were when you started. You just won’t be able to help yourself, and it will be that much harder to get out of it again.
Give up World of Warcraft? Not me…Though, trutfully, I don’t spend a lot of other moeny on hobbies because World of Warcraft is my primary hobby.
But if I could just get my employer to let me work from home. I could give up paying for gasoline (or at least reduce that cost by a significant amount)…
This is a great article. From what I’ve observed this is what causes a lot of people from cleaning up their financial lives, the inability to identify a small step and stick to it or feeling that a small step is to insignificant so they take a ‘why bother?’ attitude.
Cutting out that $4.00 Latte every morning won’t make you rich and it won’t wipe out that $10K in cedit card debt, but over the course of a year, combined with other small changes can really add up.
Mira at 8, it’s only partly their fault; I expected them to be much more flexible than they actually are, and expected to not need the money in the savings account for a while. I’m just having a lot of trouble getting to that money– the ATM card they sent didn’t work, and now is imprisoned at my actual bank’s ATM, and will be sent either back to them or, if I can get there and convince the bank people to just let me try it again, maybe to me. Who knows. In order to do a wire transfer, they require a written request from me, but when I asked my bank to send them one along with the information for the card– my bank said they’d need UFB to release the card to them; UFB said they’d need details of what happened before they’d do anything– my bank explained that there’s actually a form that my bank, at least, is required by law to fill out. UFB knows nothing of that; I asked.
It would be *better* if I could remember how to get into the online banking part, but not much. I really just want to clean it out and close the account in six months… but if the ATM card isn’t working, the cheapest way to get my money back for use is to close it now, early-close fee be damned.
They are trying to be an Internet bank, but they aren’t. Long-distance banking is inconvenient if you need to do anything complicated. It’s not entirely their fault; we just don’t work well together.
Yup: evolution, not revolution.
Most of us don’t get a personality or life transplant when we want to change something in our lives; we have to work with our lives and who we are. Some changes will work for us without much effort, some will take a lot of experimentation and adjustment, and some just won’t fly.
That’s me – I usually jump in head first and go all out, quickly burning out with whatever new endeavor I’ve chosen. Slow and steady always wins the race, and gets better results as well!
If you don’t start small you will usually give up. If you are starting to live a frugal lifestyle I think starting small is usually the only option. Big ticket purchases don’t come up that often for most people and of course you want to handle them frugally, but for most people it is the small things throughout the day that do add up in the end.
I wonder what that old man is doing on his walks.
Faith in the nature of happiness is what this requires. If you can have faith that if you forgo the most efficient things in your personal life– the most efficient in manipulating your mood, the most efficient in entertaining you– your mind will find other things to replace them that will make you just as happy or entertained, you have then mastered your lifestyle, with all its personal finance implications.
This year, I made a New Year’s Resolution to drink no alcohol for a year. Yep. Haven’t touched a drop in almost three months. I rarely feel the lack; other stuff came in to fill that space in my life. And I’m not spending $40 a month on beer. (Also, kind of as a perq, I’ve lost ten pounds!) I highly recommend it.
My usual modus operandi is to go “all out” and then “burn out”. Personally, I am tired of that fruitless cycle. I have wasted so much money over the years that I have no choice now BUT to go full throttle and stay there. For once, I may just actually accomplish something. I wish I had started saving years ago but I didn’t. It would’ve been a lot easier to accumulate in a sane, steady fashion rather than doing it this way.
I don’t have cable TV or World of Warcraft, and I’ve already cut all magazine subscriptions many years ago. So I’ll have to think of something else to cut.
Saving money is a lot like losing weight and getting in shape. Both require you to make permanent lifestyle changes, but you won’t accomplish either if you don’t start somewhere you’re comfortable, achieve a tangible goal, and work from there.
We hear a lot about recurring monthly expenses, but for me the change came when I could walk out of a Target having spent $4.29 on cat food… and not a penny more. I had to practice little by little, but I eventually trained myself to stop WANTING. That ended up saving me more in the end than changing my Netflix plan from 2 to one movie at a time.
And just like losing weight/getting in shape, it required a change of lifestyle — a change in perspective, rather than just simply cutting things out.
This is just the kind of information that got me started into my personal finance state of being. Since I ran across this site around the first of this year, my financial life has truned around, I am tracking, I am budgeting and I am saving. I even started my own blog a couple of weeks ago. I do not expect this to become a full time thing as others, like yourself have done, but it keeps me going down the correct path. And who knows what the future might bring. Check out my site at http://nowmymoneyismine.blogspot.com/
Thanks for getting me started.
funny you mentioned world of warcraft.. because i recently started playing again.. i actually think the $15.00 monthly charge is worth it.. because it’s a pretty cheap way to keep myself entertained.. and prevents me from spending money outside of the house
just gotta keep it in moderation because the game can get pretty addicting =O
What you say has a lot of merit to it, especially when you’re talking about a huge change in lifestyle.
Some things, though, you really have to do cold turkey. Getting off the sauce is one of them. Like handworn, I made the decision that I would stop drinking for a month (a year sounded a bit extreme). In the past, I’ve thought I would limit the swiggles to one a day or even one a week–laughable!
Setting a day to quit and then just doing it worked spectacularly. I’ve felt no particular desire to run out and buy another bottle of wine or beer. And for some reason there sher is a lot of money left in my checking account this month.
The month is up on the 29th. But I think I’m going to continue the new teetotalling lifestyle indefinitely. It’s mighty nice to have 80 or a hundred bucks left in the bank. And it would be even nicer to lose those ten pounds handworn reports!
re: cutting cable tv
maybe a bit too radical for some, but how about cutting the tv itself?? so much toxicity comes through that little box.
if you need something to do with all your spare time, put in a small garden bed, maybe just 4’x4′ to start.
it will take five years to learn the how-to of efficient organics and is a good place to invest for when the fdic does tank.
I’m new to this blog and I’m finding a lot of the information quite useful. However, it is becoming ever clear to me that the level of a person’s frugalness is something that they have to arrive to on their own.
What’s too frugal for one, is not frugal enough for the next.
In response to your post, I think it is all about cutting back where you can first, and where it hurts later (if need be). Some would say to absolutely cancel netflix because it’s a waste of money, where I think it’s a good way to have access to a wide library of movies without having to buy everything you want to see (but only end up watching once). So in my eyes netflix is a way to save money, or if not “save” in the literal sense make a more financially sound purchase.
Likewise, doing something as simple as not buying books, but instead using the library. I just started doing this again myself and I’m amazed that I ever stopped going. There is so much good stuff there, and 90% of anything I would ever want to read is located in my library system somewhere. How often do we really read books anyway, and whenever you would want to chances are it will still be at your library.
Maybe this will change over time, but I’m all about the baby steps now.
Magazines are also nice at the library. I have two subscriptions that are already paid for, I read my fitness magazine cover to cover the day it comes and sometimes consult it later, but my Working Mother magazines often go untouched month to month . . . I find if I really want to read a magazine I will, and I can find them all at the library. The articles are so short that I can read almost an entire issue in a half hour or so, and a lot of magazines have their most current news on their web sites.
Anyway, I think that’s an easier cut, unless you really use the magazine. My husband get Bon Appetite and keeps them in a three ring binder. He really uses them, and typically makes 4-6 dishes from each edition when it comes. He’s a trained chef though, so it makes sense for him. Same thing with hobbiests I suppose.
I agree that there are no ultimate or hard and fast rules, it’s what works for you and what you love and want out of life.
Amanda (sometimes guest blogger)
Good topic. I have been kicking around the idea of dropping DISH Network. We do use it (maybe a bit too much sometimes) but the $90/month is ridiculous. I don’t NEED it. I have an HD antenna on the garage that will be able to pick up NBC,CBS, FOX, ABC all in HD. These are the channels that I mostly watch anyway (except for ESPN and the Food Network). WE would also miss the DVR but we got along fine without it before.
The $1095.96 that I will save over the course of the year will be put to a lot better use. Also it would free me up to keep things up around the house and read some of the books that I haven’t gotten too as well as my fitness level.
My wife and I have been talking about it and I just called today and found out that I am out of my contract in May. At that point, I am going to pull the trigger.
Teacher – we got rid of digital cable over a year ago, and saved about $1100 a year since. We miss the DVR occassionally and sometimes we miss on demand and IFC, but we honestly have spent more time reading, going to the park with our kids, and visiting the library. Also the Writer’s Strike was SUCH a blessing – no TV to watch meant things got done in the evening instead of piling up.
I’m not bashing TV, it’s just amazing how much more time we got back than just saving money. We do spend $5 a month for basic reception – same stations you mentioned – they give it to us for such a tiny amount with our cable modem.
Good luck!
Amanda
I totally agree. I would love to do it, but every time I have a few so hard saved dollars or my credit card is 0 balance my husband have a emergency and I have to resolve it. I have told him that he needs to put some money appart in order to keep his business going, but he doesn’t hear me. What can I do? Nothing I think.
I am a single mother with one child. Our television broke three months ago, and I couldn’t afford a new one so I cancled the cable and we have been living t.v. free. At first it was a challenge (5 year old son) but it has been one of the most rewarding experiences ever. My son now helps me with dinner and lunch, we are putting puzzles together, and reading more. When he walks in the house… his imagination gets turned on. Since then, I have had at least ten offers from people to GIVE me a television and I have turned them all down.
There are so many other ways to get information… newspapers, internet, and just going out and SEEING the world. I would encourage any parent to get rid of their television… you not only save money but you become more aware of the world around you! Also, for the first time a week ago, my son actually suggested going to the public library and while we were there he went wild picking out his books… I don’t think this would have happened if we had the t.v., cable, dvds, or video games. In the long run, everyone wins.
Great post on the importance of slowing things down! It is so much easier to replace costly habits, little by little, with something less costly. This is what I’ve been doing with my bagels.
Instead of buying a bagel every couple of days at the stand, I’m now buying a package and some cream cheese at the store. I get more bagels, they’re better, and it saves me time and money.
It sounds silly, but a lot of these small lifestyle changes really start to add up.
I don’t get the “toxicity” argument about tv. There is crap, but also good shows, cartoons and films, information… If you think tv is Evil and rules your life, there is something wrong somewhere anyway. I had my share of cartoons when I was a child, but used to get outside, use my imagination, read comics and books, which my parents made me familiar with. When you forbid children tv, you give it much more importance it should have and it sure becomes an object of desire. Talk about stuff instead, make children think…
about tv…
if you are near a library, check out this book:
“Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television”
definitely will make you think.
–Joe