How to Start Saving Money One Dollar at a Time

The following podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Remember to seek competent tax legal and investment advice that is unique to your personal situation. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Pink Bunny Podcast. I'm your host, Jerry Williams, and we talk about all things related to money from a queer perspective. And today, what I'm going to talk about is I think one of the most important strategies that you should have really nailed down. And what I'm talking about is a savings strategy that you do consistently and regularly, and it's just a no-brainer to you because it just runs in the background. You don't even give it a second thought. And the reason I'm talking about this is because recently I read an article, and I think you may have heard this before, but it still really stood out to me that 40% of Americans do not even have$500 to their name. And what's worse than that is over 50% of women do not have$500 to their name. Now, I could definitely hear you say, well, Jerry, there's so many reasons why, you know, I got divorced, I'm single, I've got all the kids, I have all the expenses, on and on and on. I 100% understand. Okay. I was raised by a single mom. She had four kids, and we did not have money. Okay. It just was not something that I was able to go to my mom and say, can I have this? I want to buy this. No, no, not when we're using food stamps to buy food and we are living on government cheese. So, no, I do understand. I do understand when you're struggling. And if you haven't, speaking of struggling, you should go to my single and struggling series and listen to those episodes because what they really do is show you how to get organized, gain control, and move yourself out of this paycheck by paycheck cycle. It's on pinkmoney.com. Go there and listen to it. However, what I'm talking about here is let's build a strategy to get us to that$500 level. And what I suggest, I strongly suggest, is that we do a dollar a day strategy. Now that may seem completely ridiculous to you, but I'm telling you that it works. I've used it myself, and I can tell you that it works. I started a strategy like this when I started to buy into some crypto because crypto is still very foreign to me. And I'm going to write about it in my blog so you can kind of get updated on where I'm at. But because I was a little intimidated by it, and that's funny, right? Because I'm an investment professional and I've been doing this for over 20 years. You know, I've got the education, training, and experience. However, when something is unknown and foreign to you, I don't suggest you dive into it, you know, just whole hog. No. You want to go into it steady and conservatively and cautiously because you need to really develop that understanding of what it is. I started out with a dollar a day, and it got me now. What is this? Three months later? Four months later, I'll say, let's just say four months. I forgot exactly a time frame. Doesn't matter. And now this account is at$1,000. And I'm just gonna let it go and keep going. I'm gonna figure out what I'm gonna do for my next strategy. But anyway, my point here is that dollar a day just didn't get to a thousand dollars like that. There was a purpose and a strategy, and I made it happen. Now, I don't have kids, so I probably don't have the life that you help you have, and that is okay. I will say though that you're not gonna miss a dollar. You're not. And if you're not working, then of course you're not gonna be able to put anything in there. But if you do have a job or you have some type of income, you should be able to carve out one dollar a day. Now, if you say that just is not possible. So if that's not possible for some unknown reason, something's definitely wrong in your life. You're overspending on something, your car, eating out, on food, on clothes, whatever it is, something's going wrong, and you need to figure out what that is and get your arms around it. Because you should not be living paycheck by paycheck and be broke all the time. This it's not happening. You're an adult, this is what adults do. They manage their money wisely. And women in particular are usually very, very good at that. So if you're listening and you're a woman and you don't have this skill set, we're gonna get you there. Okay. You are definitely gonna learn this and you're gonna put it into practice. And again, this is gonna be second nature to you, and you're you're gonna do this the rest of your life. So, where do we start? We always start at the beginning. That's always a very good place to start. Go find an account somewhere where you can set up an automatic investment into your bank account and let it draw one dollar a day. A dollar a day. The reason why is because we're not gonna miss that buck and we're gonna watch it grow. We're gonna do a dollar over seven days, and what do we have? Seven dollars. Yay! Over two weeks, we have twice that much, and then we go on and on and on and on. So the reason I'm telling you to do a dollar a day is because we're working on building a muscle. Just like if you go to the gym, you're not gonna start lifting, you know, 100-pound weights. I mean, what's the point? You're gonna hurt yourself and you're not gonna be able to do it. You might do it once, but that is far cry from I can consistently do this every day. No, probably not. And again, there's no reason to do that because you're not gonna get the definition that you're looking for by just lifting once. We're not gonna get to our ultimate goal. In this case, I'm gonna say$500. We're not gonna get there just by dumping a lump sum of money into our bank account and go, there, I did it. Because most likely what's gonna happen, something's gonna come along, car breaks down, whatever it is, kids need this, whatever it is, emergency happen, blah, blah, blah. And then you're gonna reach in and there and pull that$500 out. And there, where are you? Nowhere. We're back to square one. But if you do the dollar a day, again, that is amount that amount of money you're not gonna miss. And if you do it regularly and consistently, then you're building that muscle. You're building that savings muscle, and that's what we're really trying to do. If, let's say, this is foreign to you because maybe your former partner took care of all this, maybe your husband did all this, your wife did all this, you know, dad did all this. Well, now it's your turn. Your turn to get into the driver's seat and take control of your money and learn the basics of what it takes to get yourself in the game and organize yourself and begin to develop the habits and behaviors that you need to learn and put in place to be successful. That's what we're doing. We're here to empower you, educate you, and enlighten you. Those are the pillars of this Pink Bunny podcast. This is what I strive to do all the time because I have the knowledge, the background experience, etc., but I want you to have that same understanding. And it's difficult sometimes to approach people when you really feel like I am so embarrassed about my situation. I don't know who to turn to, I don't know how to get myself out of it. I I've read this, I've read that, blah, blah. But no one is really there to hold your hand. I'm here to extend that helping hand to you. And I'm telling you, this is the way to do it. Now, I'm gonna put a series of episodes together, like my single and struggling series, that step you through some of the very basics. And the reason I'm doing this is because even myself, I have to sometimes remember that everybody doesn't have the same knowledge that I have. And that is perfectly okay. Sometimes you are listening to this, you know, in the dark, and you're crying because you're like, yes, that is me. Well, good. I hope it resonates with you because I want you to be successful. And again, this is how you do it. So we're starting at the beginning, which is the very best place to start, and we're opening an account with an institution online or how wherever, I suggest you do it online so you can link up your bank account and then set up a recurring deposit of one dollar. It's gonna yank it out of your bank account, your credit union, wherever, and it's gonna drop it into a savings account for you. That's what we're here to achieve. Now, setting it up automatically, I don't know your financial situation, I don't know how and when you get paid or what your income is like, but you need to figure that out so that you could do maybe it is seven dollars a week on every Wednesday. I don't like that, but maybe you that's how it has to be. But I suggest you look for an institution, and I'm just gonna throw this out because I know that they do it this way. Whether there's others, I'm quite sure there are, but like PayPal, you can set up a savings account and they will enable you to drop in just a dollar a day. So do it with whomever you want. But I'm just telling you, you need to set up that strategy to drop in that amount of money. Maybe it's two dollars a day, maybe it's three dollars, but you don't want to overextend yourself. We're just really starting to develop the habit and change our behavior and learn to save. Because again, you have that dollar a day for seven days, seven bucks, two weeks, twice as much, and then we go on and on and on. And we're not gonna stop. We're not going to stop until we reach our$500 goal. Now, does that mean we stop altogether? No, right? That just means we've hit our goal. If your goal is to lose, let's say, 50 pounds, whatever, you know, you can lose 10 pounds and be proud of yourself, but have you hit the 50? No. So we pat ourselves on the back, but then we continue that same behavior, and that's what we're doing here. We need to consistently build this up, and we don't want to rate it, and we want it at an amount that again, we're not gonna miss. We're not, but again, this is really not so much how much we save, it is that we are saving, we're doing it, and we're just becoming used to it. It is a part of our world, and it's going to always be there, and we're not gonna stop it. So I don't want to belabor the point. I hope that you get it and you understand it, but this is how you start taking control over your life. This is how you start building that financial foundation, that emergency fund, that three to six months worth of living expenses. We have to start somewhere, and we're starting right here. We're starting right here, now, today, and we're setting that account up. Whatever institution you find that allow you that allows you to drop in small amounts of money on a regular and consistent basis, that's what we're after. That's what we're gonna do. So set that up, pat yourself on the back, and then it really, really, really want you to watch it and don't touch it. Because you're going to be proud of yourself and you're going to encourage yourself by watching that amount of money grow. And it is going to 100% grow. There's no way it cannot grow until you reach in there and take it out, right? We're not investing it. We're not in putting, we're not putting this in stocks or bonds or mutual, none of that. Okay. We are simply building a plain old everyday savings account. I suggest it's FDIC insured, meaning if the bank goes belly up, you get your money back from the government up to$250,000. There's other caveats to that, but I'll leave it at that. Anyway, you can find all kinds of accounts online, all kinds of ways to save. You need to do this because it's the best way to get yourself started. It's not going to be painful, and you're going to be glad that you did it. And again, this is a strategy you're going to use for the rest of your life. So I think I'm going to leave it there. And I want you again to listen to this series, learn from this series, and empower yourself to do the best things to make yourself successful. I want you to be successful, and I know you can do it. And if you need a helping hand, I'm the one extending that hand to you to help you get you where you need to go. Have a great day.