Slow and Steady Wins the Race
Now that the holidays are over, the gyms are packed, the New Year’s diet begins, and budgeting apps are plentiful to try and start the year off on the right foot. I took about 10 days off from the gym to give my body a rest and enjoy the holidays, which was filled with travel, poor but delicious eating, and a bunch of unnecessary spending on presents, beer exchanges, you name it. Like many others, I set a bunch of goals, got back on my routine, and hit the gym full force on January 1.
With a mild hangover, I hit some inclined treadmill sprints at the same interval pace that I was doing prior to my holiday binge and felt my heart beat in my eyeballs. As I lay on the floor about half way through my workout, I realized that I needed to ease my way back into my routine so that I could hopefully get back to the shape I was in 10 days ago.
The thing I love about sports, is that almost any situation can be related to everyday life. As we are on our quest for a healthy lifestyle, it is important to implement habits at a slow and steady pace, a principle that I adopted from Darren Hardy’s book, “The Compound Effect”. If you jump in head first like I did on the treadmill, you are going to want to throw up and never work out again. The same can be said about your household finances. Budgeting, cutting unnecessary expenses, saving, investing, etc., are all things that we want to do, but when it comes time to implement all of them at once, it often looks like the treadmill on full blast with a 15 incline.
It is important to approach any of your 2018 goals with a slow and steady type mentality. When it comes to budgeting and cutting costs, realize what changes you would like to make and then create a plan to make them. Don’t try and overhaul your lifestyle in one night; instead, implement them over a 4-6 week period and then add on to it by making another change. By easing into it, you create habits that aren’t all that different from your normal lifestyle, however, the compound effect of these changes overtime will yield drastic results.
Saving and investing can be looked at in the same manner. If your goal is to save money for a house, child’s education, or retirement, you don’t have to make lump sum contributions to an investment account to do so. In fact most financial advisors will tell you to “dollar cost average”, which means buying investments with the same dollar amount on a scheduled consistent basis over time. Putting away as little as $100 a month throughout an extended period of time can prove to grow into a nice little nest egg by the time you need it.
Additionally, you can apply the same rules to the types of investments that you buy. Most people might not recognize that popular financial apps load their advertising for the first of the year, hoping to attract people that want to start the year off right and get rich quick. While some investment strategies can yield huge results, the same could be said with the roulette wheel at the local casino. I won’t tell you that you can’t use aggressive investments strategies and make some money, but the volatility and risk associated with them are on the same level as betting on red or black.
The slow and steady way of investing is often boring and doesn’t give you the rush of hitting it big, but when you look at your account after 5-10 years, you will say “$100 a month turned into that?!” Start slow and make saving/investing a habit so that you can reach your goals and live a life free of financial anxiety.
