Building military mental discipline. There’s three parts to this, and it’s how much money should you save? The easiest way to achieve this, And the main purpose to do it this way is to forget about your savings account.
How Much Money Should You Save?
You have to be realistic. Then stick to your decision with military discipline for at least two months, then adjust accordingly. It’s better to save a consistent amount, opposed to saving random amounts. Now, why is that? Remember the saying? We’ve said it in two other chapters, so we might as well say it again. I don’t fear a man who can punch the bag a thousand times in a day. I fear the man that can punch the bag once a day for a thousand days. That’s the basis of consistency, right? By doing that, you’re building a habit. If one week, you’re saving $10, the next week you’re saving $20, and the next week you’re saving five and 30 and 40, you’re not building a discipline. Right? Find the average of all of those numbers I just said, and save that much every week consistently. Do not deviate.
Why are you doing that? You’re just building successful habits. Right? You’re sticking to something. You came up with a plan, and you’re sticking to it. That’s why we’re saying do it for a month or two. Do it for a few months, maybe six months. It all depends on how long you need to ingrain something into your head. And then adjust accordingly. Was it strenuous on your life? Were you saving too much? Was it not enough? Was it too easy for you to save? Because what we’re doing is we’re building disposable income. Right? And with that disposable income, you can use that money for investments.
All right. That’s why we need to save a consistent amount, to build a discipline upon it. If you’re struggling and you can not see any way you can save anything, right … And I know a lot of people are like, “There’s no way I can save anything.” I made a video. Well, 14 years ago, 14 years ago about quarters. And it was talking about how much money you can save just by saving your quarters. And at the time, I know this was before plastic was really as prominent as it is today. But by Wednesday, starting the week on Monday, by Wednesday, I had $3 worth of quarters. If you were to just stick those $3 away, hide them from yourself, and do it every day for a month and then take that money and put it into dollars and figure out what you have, then guesstimate that’s how much you’re going to save.
But if you have a problem saving, then just save anything. Right? Start with a dollar a month or even a penny a day. The important thing is you start building the discipline of saving, opposed to spending. The skill you’re developing to save robotically will change your life. Right? Again, the fact, the whole point of doing this, the whole reason you’re building a discipline to save is you’re building a discipline. Right? The more disciplined you become, the more military minded or military mental discipline that you have, the better it will serve you later in life.
If you’re not disciplined enough to manage a dollar, then there’s no way you’re disciplined enough to manage a thousand. Right? And we can go up the scale. You’re only going to be able to manage to your discipline level. Does that make sense? If you’re having a problem saving a dollar a day, then it makes sense why you don’t have a hundred dollars in your savings. Does that make sense? If you’re having problems saving a thousand dollars, right? Adding up and stacking a thousand dollars. It would make sense why you don’t have a thousand dollars in your bank account. Right?
It’s hard for us to perceive a number that we do not have. If you have a million dollars in the bank account, then $1 doesn’t mean too much. You’re used to it. You have a discipline of a million dollars. But if all you have is $10 in your bank account, then you have a discipline of what? Ten dollars. By saving robotically, changing our lives by creating a new discipline in our lives.
The Easiest Way To Achieve This
I spoke of one very easy way, which was saving quarters. Right? If that is not easy enough for you and you need a different way, then you can open the additional bank account. Just the account. Do not have a check. Even though you might not even know what checks are. Don’t have an ATM card, and do not have any way to access this money. Right? Then automatically withdraw your predetermined amount the same day you deposit your paycheck or other source of income. You want to withdraw it at the same time so your brain does not miss it. And if you notice, you’re most lenient with your money the day that you are paid.
What you’re doing is you’re taking the money out before you even see it, before you have that euphoric attitude about yourself, where you’re just like, “Ah! I just got paid! It’s payday! And I can go party!” Right? You’re automatically taking the money out, so when you go to the party, you’re kind of like, “Well, I’m missing some money.” In a positive way though, so now you can’t party and celebrate quite as much as you used to. Is that a problem? No, you can still do what you want to do, but this time, 10 weeks down the road, you’re going to have a nice little nest egg.
And maybe you can take that money and invest in something else. That’s why we say the easiest way to do this is to open up an account that you don’t have access to, and automatically, before you even look at your bank account, let it be taken out. Just how the government takes money out of your check before you even get to touch it. Well, pay yourself just like you have to pay the government. Before you even get to touch it, pay yourself.
The Main Purpose To Do This This Way Is To Forget About The Savings Account
Right? We kind of went into that. Let’s go into it a little bit more. The best way to save something is to not think about it or focus on it. The best way to save it and the best way to not think about it is to not have access to it. Because if you give yourself an out, right? Then you might succumb to it and take that out. That’s why saving money under the mattress isn’t the best place. One, the bank’s not going to give you much interest either. On that, they’re about even on making money. However, you’re just tempting yourself. Right? Unless you have supreme military discipline not to ever touch your money underneath the pillow, then go ahead.
I understand. You’re going to be like, “Well, Erik, I’m making money, man. I save my money under my pillow.” And I’m fine with that, But what happens on a rainy day when you stop making money? Then you’re going to be susceptible to go into your stash until there’s no stash anymore. This is the whole purpose why we want to make it to where we do not have access to it. We want to give ourselves kind of a three dayer, right? I have a couple of accounts where it takes me three days to get access to the money. And that means that it’s weekdays, too. Banks close on weekends. If I want the money, I have to think about it Monday, Tuesday. And then Thursday, Friday, I’ll have it.
What I’ve noticed the majority of the time, by Thursday or Friday, I don’t even want it anymore. So I save the money. If your own discipline isn’t as mature as that, then do not give yourself any way to touch that money until you’ve built the necessary disciplines to be able to have access to your money because you know that you’re going to put your money in a more profitable situation. Because, again, what we’re doing is we’re creating disciplines to be able to make more money. Right?
But if we don’t have the discipline because it’s really easy and you hear on YouTube, you hear all over the place, it’s like, “Yeah, you need a lot of money,” and all this other stuff, and they’re talking up all this big money and everything, and you’re like, “Man, I can’t even save $10.” Well, I’ve been there, too. And so part of the reason why I’m saying that and why I’m trying to start from this beginning is, part of it is the discipline in your mind. Right? We talked about this earlier as well, in earlier chapters. Change the way you think, and it will change what you do. Change the things you do, and it will change the way you think. If you start doing this, then it’s going to change the way you think about money. It’s going to change your values because you’re going to start thinking about, yeah, maybe I don’t want those $200 pair of Jordans. I have something better to do. Right? Buy Nike stock.