My SHINY Nickels

Live Smart. Save Money. Retire Early.

Mr. Spock Would Say That Emotional Investing Is Not Logical

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[It’s Mr. Nickels at the keyboard today.  I may not write much, but when I do, I usually have something to say.]

The final tactic we used to get the price of the laundromat down to our purchase price of $105,000 actually started early last year.   In pursuit of that earlier investment, we developed a mindset that allowed us to negotiate from a position of power, by removing emotions from the equation.   Not only did we learn to project a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ attitude, we actually believed it.

Because, as Spock would probably say, emotions are irrelevant.

Lets go back…..

We had a large chunk of money in investments and thought it would be smart to diversify and move some of that money into investments we had more control over.

Our first strategy was to try to get into the real estate rental market. We had a friend that was a retired real estate agent, so we reached out to her to find an agent to help us find the right property. Laura reached out to the agent and told him what we were looking for.

We wanted a distressed property in a middle class neighborhood that could give us nice returns. I also wanted the area to be decent enough that I didn’t feel like I needed to pack heat to go fix a toilet. We had a few houses that we wanted to look at, about 10 miles north of us.  A few days later we met up with the agent and went through the houses on our list.

On that first outing, all of the properties were more distressed than we were comfortable with.  Hmmm.

Where, Oh Where is Our Realtor?

A week passed and we hadn’t heard a thing from our realtor.  To say that he wasn’t helpful is an understatement.  But we had found a few more houses on our own that we wanted to look at so we called him again to set up a time to see them. On this trip out, we finally found the one we wanted to make an offer on. It was a duplex with a two bedroom-one bath in the front and a one bedroom-one bath in the rear. It was distressed, but nothing that we weren’t comfortable with.

When we went to look at the back unit, the gate to get in was locked. He couldn’t find the combination and I had to climb the rickety fence to get into the unit.  Laura refused to climb over, so we relied on my observations and pictures to evaluate it.

While looking at the property, our realtor gets a phone call and tells us he needs to leave. He tells us to lock up when we’re done. (Yeah, we thought it was strange too. And probably not legal. Whatever.) We decided to make an offer. We called up the agent, and he sent over the fact sheet with the property details.  (Remember that locked gate? Yeah, the combination was right there on the fact sheet the realtor had the whole time. No comment.)

The asking price was $97,000. We made an offer of $91,000 and crossed our fingers.

Our Realtor Sucks!

We found out that our realtor didn’t submit our offer for two days.  When he called us back, he let us know there was now an investment group from the bay area that was interested in the property too. (Of course there is.) We were asked to submit our best and final offer. The investment group made their offer sight unseen.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, we lost out on that property. We did find out later that our offer was technically higher than the accepted offer, but we wanted help with closing costs, and we can only assume they went with the deeper pockets.

When our realtor called with the bad news, he apologized for not being more active and attentive with us. He admitted he didn’t take us seriously until he realized we were actually going to make an offer.  (No, we will not be using his services again.)

In the end, I admit we were disappointed, but we knew if it was the right thing for us, it would have happened. There was no emotion involved.  We weren’t going to pay more than it was worth.  This was a totally different attitude than we’ve had in the past.

On to the Land of Laundry

We were moving on to better things….and along came the laundromat in our neighborhood. Early last year, the price was at $150,000. By the time we came into the picture, the price had dropped to $129,500. Our initial offer was for $119,500. Our offer was accepted and we moved into the due diligence stage of the purchase.

The Key to Negotiations…Research, Research, and More Research…and the Right Attitude

When negotiating, the more you know, the better your position. I’ve said it before, Laura is an information sponge. When she is interested in a subject, she will research it until she knows everything about it inside out. So why did we drop our offer to $105,000?  Laura noticed a sudden drop in the rent for 2014, but couldn’t determine why. It was actually the landlord that answered our question. He sent the seller an email and we were copied.

In the email, the landlord said that the seller would have to catch up on his back rent and late charges, as he hadn’t been paying his full rent for most of the year. Wait, what? Not paying his full rent? This was a little slippery on the sellers part, and it had quite an impact on our cash flow calculations.  (In other words, the annual net profit dropped, which means the value of the business went down too.)

I called our broker and sent the seller an email asking for an explanation. That happened on a Thursday, and we had plans to be away that weekend. (After months of nothing but laundry on the brain, we needed a mental break.) But now with the recent news, it wasn’t much of a mental break after all.

Anger Management

By that Sunday, we hadn’t received any response, and we were very angry about the whole situation (let’s face it, I was pissed!). We really thought this was the end of this journey. On Sunday afternoon, we went to a local coffee shop to relax before our drive home. I broke out my laptop and wrote a lengthy email to the broker.

Some key points I brought up besides the latest slipperiness (is that a word?):

We thought the laundromat had a lot of potential, but we would not pay for potential.

The current lease was above market rates. We had negotiated the renewal back down to market rates, but we still had to assume the stinky current lease and ride it out for three years.

In the industry there is a calculation for determining value. I presented our revised calculation, and made our final offer of $105,000. Take it or leave it.

And most importantly, we were not emotionally attached to being business owners. If this fell through, we would find another investment.

That attitude/thought process we had in the end was huge. We really were at peace with it and kept our emotions out of it. If it happened, great! If not, something better would come along. We were both totally prepared to walk away. Without that attitude, if we had let emotion creep in, we would have paid way too much and possibly struggled because of it.

We didn’t get a response until that Monday night, but our final offer was accepted.

Keep Calm and Use Your Head

As I write this, we are almost a month in, and all the numbers are right in line with our projections. It makes me think back to when we were deep in debt. Most of our spending was done with emotion and not logical thought. We have come a long way since then in how we view our purchases.  And we couldn’t be happier.

 

“Insufficient facts always invite danger.” –  Spock

Star Trek: The Original Series, “Space Seed”

We’re Getting an Unexpected Windfall…What Would YOU Do With It?

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Every once in a while, a sweet little cash angel may drop an unexpected gift in your lap.  Sometimes it’s just $20 from a coat pocket, or a crisp $100 bill laying on the ground (this actually happened to me).  But if you’re lucky, it turns out to be a whole lot more than that.

On Monday we received a letter in the mail.  It was from Kodak, my husband’s former employer, asking if he wanted to cash out his pension benefit.  It’s not a large pension, but it would have provided a fixed $6,600 annual payment once he turned 65.   Now they want to cash us out with a lump sum.

Hmmmm.  Interesting.

Turns out we have 3 options:

  1. Take the lump sum in cash (which means a 20% tax withholding and a 10% early withdrawal penalty)
  2. Receive the annuity as originally intended
  3. Take the lump sum and roll it directly over to another qualified retirement plan (no tax withholding or penalties)

So how much is this unexpected chunk of money they’re offering?  

$32,050.20

And with unexpected chunks of money, come decisions.

Decision #1

Take the lump sum in cash?  No way.  Uncle Sam will take 20% in taxes right off the top, as well as a 10% early withdrawal penalty because Randy is not at least 59 ½.  (And… we could still have a huge bill come tax time depending on which tax bracket that extra cash pushes us into. Ack.)

Leave things as they are and just receive a monthly check?  No thanks.  We can invest the entire lump sum ourselves, and get a better return than if we took the monthly annuity option.  So that leaves us with…

Roll over the entire lump sum into another qualified retirement plan?  Yes, please.

Why?

We don’t want a single cent to go to Uncle Sam…yet.   We want every dollar working for us, growing over time.  When it’s time to withdraw, the government will get their cut.  But for now, we want tax-free growth.

And in order to accept the lump sum without that tax withholding or the early withdrawal penalty, it must be transferred to another tax-deferred plan such as a Traditional IRA or a 401k.

Decision #2

Traditional IRA or Randy’s current employer 401k?

If we roll it over to a Traditional IRA, we can’t make (penalty-free) withdrawals until he turns 59 ½, but the IRA will allow us access to all of the low-fee index funds we want to invest in.  If we roll it over to his 401k, he can withdraw the money beginning the year he turns 55, but our investment options are limited to only those his employer offers.

So…drum roll…we’re going to take the lump sum and roll it over to a Traditional IRA.

We’ll have enough saved in other accessible accounts when we begin our early retirement that we shouldn’t need to access this money (or the money it generates) until after he turns 59 ½.  So we’ll open a Traditional IRA, invest the cash in solid index funds and let it marinate for a while.

The decision, for us, was fairly easy.  We looked at each scenario logically, and determined that we would get the most benefit from rolling it into a Traditional IRA.

Why I Am Telling You This Less-Than-Fascinating Tidbit of Our Life

As I said, the decision for us was pretty easy.  A little bit of math and a long-term wealth-building outlook, and we had our answer.

But the sad truth is that for others who find themselves with a lump sum of cash, the decision is made with emotions, not logic.  They don’t have the luxury of sitting back and deciding how this windfall could benefit them long-term.  They can’t see beyond next week,  let alone 5…10…20 years from now.

When your financial life is in chaos, you just take the cash (and the 30% tax/penalty hit) and run.  Maybe there’s unpaid credit card bills, or you’re behind on your mortgage.  So you cash out to get yourself back above water.  Or worse, you see a big shiny car/boat/thing-a-ma-jiggy that has your name on it.

(Now, just so I’m clear, if you’ve got debt, and your intent is to pay it down and become debt-free, then cashing out and paying it down (or off!) is the best thing you can do.)

But my real point is that when your financial life is in order, you can make the decision using logic, allowing that windfall to really work for you. 

A jumpstart towards building wealth.

So don’t wait and hope for a windfall to rescue you from your money troubles.   Get (or stay) debt-free now, so that if/when the sweet little cash angel drops a windfall in your lap, you can use it to really build wealth and be ahead of the game.

 

 

P.S.  Remember that $100 bill I found?  I was 18 years old, on vacation in Hawaii.  I was walking down a path to the beach at Hanauma Bay, and there it was, a fresh $100 bill just lying on the ground.  Not a soul was in sight, so I picked it up and stuffed it in my beach bag, with a grin a mile wide.

Fast forward to a few months ago, and I’m telling the story to my son.  With a look of excitement, he asked if I still had the $100 bill.  I told him, no, of course not, that was almost 20 years ago.  Then he stomped off and pouted, mad that I had spent it.  It was kinda funny, but I have to say I agree with him.  Sigh.

Guest Post by Mr. Nickels: If Only Marty McFly Had a 401k

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back-to-the-future

[Every once in a while, Mr. Nickels likes to take over the keyboard. Enjoy!]

— Mrs. Nickels

 

When I first began what would become a 20-year career in the photofinishing industry, I remember looking at compounding interest charts.  The charts came with the literature about contributing to the company retirement plan. I specifically remember looking at a chart very similar to the one below.  The concept of compounding interest was intriguing. “Ben” only invests a total of $16,000 between the ages of 19 and 26. He ends his career with $2.3 Million. Arthur doesn’t start investing until he is 27, and invests a total of $78,000 until his retirement at age 65. He ends his career with $1.5 Million.

Recap?  Ben invests $62,000 less, but ends his career with $756,830 more than Arthur.  All because Ben started early.  Amazing.

benarthur

 

I did end up contributing to my 401k, but it was more out of obligation, than desire. I didn’t act on this new information with passion. Why not? I’m not really sure.  Looking back, I’m fairly sure that if I had made a similar chart using my own numbers…what I could have saved, what interest rates I could have realistically expected, what I needed to retire…I may have acted. Would my life be different? I don’t know.

Me at the beginning of my career, circa 1986

Do I have regrets? Not at all!  I am where I need to be. I’m a sci-fi nerd and have seen enough time travel episodes to know that a small change in my past can drastically change my future (sorry, off topic).

I admit I have made some HUGE financial mistakes in my past. I have also made some very smart moves. It all led to where I am right now. This post is about finding the motivation to change your future. But, just like history class, we can often look to our past for clues. So, what motivates me? What is it in me that makes me give up so much now to invest for a better future? I began to think of some goals I accomplished in the past. What motivated me to reach these goals?

 

The Marathon

It’s a Sunday afternoon in early December, 2011. The family and I are at my favorite Mexican restaurant, enjoying a few tacos. Out the window, we watch as the back-of-the-pack stragglers running the California International Marathon start to pass by.  The wheels in my head started spinning…I want to do that!  Back in high school, I hated running.  So why did I want to run a marathon? I think it was just the fact that not many people can run 26.2 miles.

When I first started running, I couldn’t run half a mile without stopping. I kept at it. Within a week or so, I finally ran a full mile non-stop. Pure joy! My first goal was accomplished. Soon, I was running three miles, three days a week. By that summer I was ready to start training for the marathon coming in December. I went online and found a conservative training plan and started the 18 weeks of progressively longer runs in preparation to run 26 miles + 385 yards.

That December morning in 2012 finally came, and in the middle of one of the worst storms of the year.  The rain was blowing sideways as I exited the shuttle bus. What am I thinking? The gun went off and I crossed the starting line. In the pouring rain, my emotions got the best of me at the half mile marker.

I was actually running a marathon.

Me, the one that hated running, was running with 8,000 other people toward the finish line 26 miles away. It was a once-in-a-lifetime feeling. At the halfway point, I was feeling really good. My legs felt great, I was breathing steady, and I was confident I would finish strong. Then the bolt of pain hit me. I had pulled a quad muscle at mile 17. But I was still going to finish! I limped, walked and jogged my way to the finish line. It took everything in me to get there, but I reached my goal. The rain was gone and the sun was shining by the time I finished 5 1/2 hours later.

What was my motivation?

marathon

 

 

Climbing Half Dome

I’ve been to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite three times, but I will never forget that first trip. It’s about 7 1/4 miles of uphill hiking to the base of the dreaded cables that lead to the summit. There were people standing at the base, refusing to climb those cables. I admit, they are a little overwhelming and daunting to look at. From the bottom it looks like a vertical death trap. But after all the energy it took to get that far, there was no way I wasn’t going to finish.

ry=400

The dreaded cables at Half Dome in Yosemite

I put on my gloves, grabbed the cables and started the climb. About every four feet there are two-by-fours across the path so you can rest. As it got steeper, I remember thinking, “just one step at a time…stay safe for my kids…I can’t die here.” So with each vertical step, I said the names of my daughters….. Kelly…… Lindsay……Kelly…….Lindsay, all the way to the top. It seemed like hours to get there. Fifty to seventy-five people caterpillaring their way up, stopping every four feet to rest for a few minutes. Finally, I was there and the views were spectacular. Worth all the effort and fear to get there.

What was my motivation?

halfdome

My first trip to the top of Half Dome. This is one of my favorite pictures.

Side note: I would love to climb Mt. Everest, but my wife assures me I will be a single man upon my return.  [Mrs. Nickels’ Editorial Comment:  For the record, he wouldn’t be a single man when he came home.  My fear is that I’d be a single woman when he DIDN’T come home. So there.]

 

So why am I only now, at this stage of my life, using my money wisely? What changed in my mind?

The only difference between then and now is a GOAL, a PLAN, and a DEEP DESIRE to reach that goal. The biggest motivator for me was seeing on paper a plan to save with an end date just seven years from now. I believe if I’d had that information in my early 20’s I would have had the motivation to retire that much sooner. But I’ll never really know. However, now I know what we want and what it’s going to take to get us there. Everyone is motivated in different ways. Look at other parts of your life where you have succeeded in completing a goal. What was your motivation? In the two stories above, I had a goal in my head, a desire to accomplish that goal, and a clear, no questions asked, plan to get there.

So what motivates you?  Find your motivation and use it to change your life for the better.

So You Want to Retire Early? It’s All About the Numbers

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numbersA comment from a reader on my last post, Would You Rather Have Money…or Look Like You Do?, asked for some ‘nuts and bolts’ information on our ‘retire early’ strategy.  I was planning on writing this in the near future anyway, but moved it to the front of the pack. So “Paul V”, this one’s for you. My motto “Live Smart. Save Money. Retire Early.” pretty much sums up our strategy. We’ll go through them one-by-one.

1.   Live Smart.

This means cutting back on at least the ‘big ones’…housing, car expenses, food…and, when possible (it often is), increase income.  We made most of these changes as soon as we decided to turn our financial life around.

Efforts we made to LIVE SMART:

  • Downsized our home.  (This may mean renting out your current home and renting something smaller and less expensive, or selling your freakishly-large McMansion with the equally-large property taxes.  Don’t be afraid to make a big change, especially if it means big monthly savings.)  Even a $500 monthly savings = $6,000 a year.  We saved thousands per month when we downsized.
  • No car payments.  If your current vehicle is worth more than $10,000…sell it and buy something less expensive and practical.  There are plenty of used cars that are economical and would pass the coolness test.  Once you sell, invest the cash difference, if any.
  • Cook more, eat out less (when you do eat out, go somewhere that gives you high pleasure-per-dollar.  If you’re going to pay someone else to cook and bring you food, it should be WORTH IT.)
  • Buy groceries in bulk – we shop almost exclusively at Costco.
  • Make sure you’re getting paid what you’re worth.  If not, seek out a higher-paying job.  (My husband found a new job making 30% more, even in a depressed job market. It’s worth the effort.)
  • Increased our auto insurance deductibles to $1,000, and because our vehicles are paid off, dropped comprehensive coverage completely.  These two changes cut our monthly premiums by 50%.  We comparison shop every year, and the best value the last 3 years in a row has been esurance.com.
  • Lowered our heating/cooling bill by 30-40% after installing The “Nest” Smart Thermostat. Paid for itself in 3-4 months.
  • Learned some DIY tricks.  Treat every repair/maintenance issue as an opportunity to do it yourself.  This won’t always be possible, but it’s always worth looking into.  Start with small projects, and work your way up to bigger things.
  • Once we made the changes above, the monthly cash we freed up skyrocketed.  We eliminated our debt, and then started Step 2…Save Money.

2.    Save Money.

  • Before you can know your own savings strategy, you need to play around with the numbers and see what different savings models do to your timeline. Go to Networthify.com and use their early-retirement calculator.  I suggest using 9% as your rate of return, and 4% as a safe annual withdrawal rate.   We plugged in our numbers, with a 60% savings rate, and it gives us an estimate of about 7.5 years until retirement.
  • For those with a net annual income of $100k or more, you should be aiming for a 50% savings rate…if you want to get hard-core, and really shorten your timeline, aim even higher.
  • Our first savings efforts went towards our employer-sponsored retirement plans (401k).  Next we each opened a Roth IRA at Charles Schwab.  Then the rest of our savings is invested in a regular taxable brokerage account, also at Schwab.  I like Schwab; their website is intuitive and simple to use, and opening a new account is as easy as it comes.  They process deposits and purchases quickly as well.
  • Invest in low-cost index funds
    • The mutual funds you invest in should never have expense ratios of more than 1.0%.  (Take a look at the ‘fact sheet’ for each mutual fund, and search for ‘expense ratio’ or ‘net expense ratio’.  This is how much the fund manager will charge you to manage your investments.)  That’s why index funds are so great.  Their expense ratios are usually 0.25% or less, which means they take a much smaller cut of your money to manage it.
      • Example:  If you have $250,000 invested in “Mutual Fund A” with a 2.0% expense ratio, they will take $5,000 out of your fund in fees each year.  If you have that same $250,000 invested in an index fund, “Mutual Fund B” with a 0.25% expense ratio, they will only take $650 each year.  Invest in index funds and keep more of your money.
    • The majority of our money is invested in four (4) index funds.  50% is in an index of the S&P 500, 20% in a medium-cap index, 20% in a small-cap index, and the last 10% is invested in an international index.  We’ll eventually move some of our balance to a bond fund (less risk) as we get closer to our retirement date.

3.    Retire Early.

  • If you used the handy calculator I suggested in Step 2, you should have a good idea of what your savings strategy will be and the timeline until retirement.
  • When your investments reach the point that a 4% annual withdrawal rate will cover your desired expenses, you are financially independent.
  • When you retire, you’ll continue to live smart, spending money on things that mean the most…for us this will be travel and eating good food.  In every other category, we’re going to live as economically as possible.
  • Check out one of the best posts I’ve seen on the math behind early retirement, by a blogger known as Mr. Money Mustache.  Both he and his wife retired at 30 years old.  He does a much better job explaining the early retirement strategy than I ever could.

 

Once you understand the power behind extreme savings rates and compound interest, the goals you can reach will blow your mind. Someone starting with a $0 balance, who begins saving 50% of their 100k net income can retire in 13.7 years with nearly $1.4 million dollars.

After my husband and I started living smarter, we were able to quickly pay off our debts.  Then the extreme saving/investing started.  We couldn’t believe how much we were able to put away.  Many times we’ve said to eachother, “Why did we wait so long to wake up?” 

How to Avoid “Lifestyle Creep” (and Start Saving!)

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Let’s paint a mental picture together…you’re at work, and you get a phone call.  It’s your boss…telling you…you’re GETTING A RAISE!

You calmly set the phone down…acting very cool and collected as you let the good news sink in for a moment…then suddenly…you valiantly rise up from your tiny cubicle in your ill-fitting khakis and begin performing acrobatic leaps through the office, whistling “Eye of the Tiger”, while fleeting images of all the amazing things you can buy begin filling the lobes of your brain…and……….“POW!”  

Hi…it’s me again, giving you a solid punch in the nose, in an effort to interrupt this ridiculous daydream you’re having.  So snap out of it.  (Yeah, I realize I kinda led you right into that one. Sorry, I can be cruel at times.)

Here’s an ice pack, now let’s move on.

We get a raise, and what’s the first thing we all do?  Start figuring out how much more our paycheck will be and visualizing what we’ll do with it; how we can “live a little higher on the hog” with this increase in extra cash.  Now, I’m not a complete killjoy; no doubt getting a raise is something to celebrate (heck, pop open some cheap champagne if you like), but let’s be smart about it…what you do with it, is where you can separate yourself from everybody else.

When you think about it…pay raises are sneaky little buggers…they result in a slow and steady rise in income, which nearly always leads to what has been called…(insert drum-roll here)…“lifestyle creep”.   For your convenience, I’ve provided a lovely definition here:

Definition: “Lifestyle Creep”

“A situation where people’s lifestyle or standard of living improves as their income rises.  As “lifestyle creep” occurs, and more money is spent on lifestyle, former luxuries are now considered necessities.”

— courtesy of Investopedia.com

In other words, when you make more money, you spend more money.  If you’re anything like I was, no matter how much I made over the years, I managed to spend it…all.   I never had “extra” money; I was yet another victim of “lifestyle creep.”  My pay would go up, and the spending would follow soon after, without even trying.   The thing about small incremental pay raises is that, individually, they’re not enough to be life-changing.  But my point is that while it may not seem like enough to bother saving it, it’s also not enough that you should really miss it, either.

The days of just letting your money and your finances happen TO you, are OVER.  You need to be in the driver seat, in control of your finances, fully conscious and acting with intention.

So where do we go from here?  It’s time to be strategic about our pay raises.  These are bright, shiny opportunities for us to make a difference in our financial situation, for the better.  Trust me, you won’t even miss these little increases to your paycheck.  JUST. TRUST. ME.  To do this, we’ll let the good ‘ol Direct Deposit* system work to our advantage.

* I realize not everyone has direct deposit at their disposal, but this was written with the assumption that you do.  If you don’t have direct deposit available at your employer, you’ll just need to be all the more diligent about tucking your money away with the same method I describe, but manually.  

Let’s get started…

1.   Determine what your monthly net (take-home) pay is.  For this example, let’s use $4,000.

2.   Determine what your monthly expenses are.  Add up your bills, groceries, gas and a modest (but satisfying) amount of spending money, and set that number aside.  For this example, I’m going to use $3,000 as the monthly expenses.

3.   Next, divide your monthly expenses amount by the number of paychecks you receive in a month.  I get paid twice a month, so I will divide $3,000 monthly expenses by 2, to get…$1,500 of expenses per paycheck.

4.   Now I have the FIXED AMOUNT that I will have sent to my CHECKING ACCOUNT……$1,500.   Perform the calculation yourself, and enter that amount on your direct deposit form with your checking account information.

5.   Next, direct the REMAINDER of your paycheck into your SAVINGS ACCOUNT.   Once you’ve entered your savings account information, there should be a checkbox that says “Remainder”, or something similar, where you indicate that you want the rest of your paycheck sent to your savings account.  Now turn in the form to your HR department. 

6.   One last step.  Please now engage in the acrobatic leaps I described in our daydream earlier (ill-fitting khakis are optional), because you just made a huge step forward in managing your finances.  You have made a conscious decision to make your spending and expenses a fixed amount, and allow your savings account to grow right along with your future raises.  Here’s a virtual high-five in the air, because you have managed to do what a majority of working people don’t.  (And yet they wonder…year after year, raise after raise, why they still feel broke).

You will be amazed how quickly the balance in your savings account grows.  Then, year after year, with every pay raise, you’ll smile with glee as you see that beautiful little pile of extra cash deposited into your savings account without you lifting a finger.  The fact is, humans are emotional creatures; the more we put our finances on auto-pilot, the less damage we can do.

So I’ll leave you with this…get up out of your cubicle (I know you’re reading this at work…you naughty little thing) and contact your HR department.  Start the process…avoid “lifestyle creep” by fixing your expenses and allowing your pay increases to be escorted straight to your savings account.  This LITTLE change will reap you HUGE rewards.