When I ask you, “How did you save so much money?” your answer tells me a lot about you. Because, when you respond, “I really don’t know, to tell you the truth, just hard work and saving like crazy,” I know it’s not what you did to save money, but what you didn’t do.
Yes, you had to work. How else were you going to put food on the table? And yes, it would have been easier to do nothing. But that’s not how you roll. Yes, winning the lottery would have made things easier for sure.
But, most of you made your money slowly, year after year, and it never got easy. After a while, you realized you had some MONEY—yes! And then it got fun—which made doing hard things easier. Success has a way of doing that. Showing up to work day after day, like compound interest, turns into exponential growth, which can make dreams come true.
Getting back to making money. What you didn’t do was spend it frivolously (well, maybe sometimes). You took care of your MONEY because it took care of your family. You saved until it hurt, and you provided your children with an opportunity to chart their own way forward.
One problem with making money slowly is that it’s so damn hard to imagine what it would be like to have to START ALL OVER. Oooof. That would hurt, wouldn’t it? What would it feel like to lose it all? That feeling grabs hold more than we’d care to admit. You want to avoid that despair at all costs.
That feeling of despair allows inertia to take hold. You get stuck in these ruts of not deploying your savings effectively. Money, to you, is not a status symbol. It’s not a gift. You earned it, and your life as you know it depends on it. You just want to make sure you can continue living your dream.
Action Line: Remember, dreams do come true. You’re living proof that: “A spirit with a vision, is a dream with a mission.” — Mission, Rush
Originally posted on Your Survival Guy.
