The 1% Trick That is Changing My Financial Life

“Many times we override simple changes in our life due to the many deflectors we are exposed to every single day. No matter what we say, the society around us does control a share of our choices. I guess that is called living in a society.”

While I agree that there are unlimited benefits of being part of a society, we also have the other side of the coin. Most of us are surrounded by compulsive consumers that are part of this massive “buying” economy which leads us towards this gigantic economic bubble where we buy what we wish and not what we need.

What many people don’t really think about, is that the choices of today will affect their future. Running away from this “consumerist” society is not easy at all and does require quite a strong mental game.

For me personally, having the focus and the ultimate goal to be able to retire early and not depend on a 9-to-5 job to live, is a great tool to take the control of your financial life.

Budgeting, saving and investing will be the main words coming out of the dictionary.

As all of these “-ing” terminations become part of your life, the next step will most likely include improving them in a certain way.

The Simple Improvement

What if instead of setting unrealistic goals, such as “I want to save more next month”, you could simply take a baby step to improve your financial life? Wouldn’t that be something worth trying?

So the game I played with myself was to increase by 1% each month, the following indicators:

1. Total Income

2. Saved Amount

3. Invested Amount

How can I do it?

On the income side, one of the easiest ways to improve it is to sell something that you don’t really need or use anymore. No matter what you might think, believe me when I say you will find something worth selling. Search in your wardrobe, open the boxes you have in the garage and there you go!

Other ways can be of course to focus on a side income. I mention a few of them here:

The saved and invested amounts are actually the easy part. In my case, I have set up automatic transfers on a monthly basis to such accounts. Therefore, the only thing I need to is to add the 1% extra.

So let’s say you are saving $500 a month. The 1% is simply $5 extra. Does it sound really such a big effort? My guess is that you will not even notice it. So the next month it will be 1% of $505, so $5.05.

“ The key here is to keep on doing it every month and be consistent. “

It is also implicit that if you are increasing 1% in your income and saving/investing 2%, the difference will have to come from decreasing by 1% of your expenses. Whether you do this or try a 2% increase in your income is a simple choice.

“ I tend to prefer what I can actually control and that is my expenses… ”

What are the improvements you are doing in your financial life? Any other ideas I can take from you? Let me know in the comments below.

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Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. Always do your own research when investing.