The Only Way to Start Building Wealth is to Start by Saving
A guy named Charlie Munger said,
Your first hundred thousand is your hardest to save especially from a point of standing still and with no seed money.
Munger goes on to compare building wealth to being like a snowball that rolls downhill. I can concur with this quote and I will attest to the fact that for my husband and I saving our first $100,000 was the hardest. But, it has also gotten easier.
I am not trying to brag about this accomplishment but I want to reverse engineer this process and share a little bit more about my personal journey. The fact is the first $10,ooo you save is the hardest ten thousand to save. And, the first $1,000 you save is the hardest thousand you save. And, without a doubt, if you are broke, the first $100 dollars that you save is the hardest hundred dollars that you save.
So, is “the first $100K the hardest.” Yes! And, there’s reasons why this quote is pertinent specifically to building great wealth (that I will save to share for another day). BUT, I want to really break this down and talk about saving and how saving applies to building wealth in incremental steps that open up doors to new levels….and how ONE VERSE IN THE BIBLE changed everything for us when we applied it.
It probably took us about two to three years to save our first hundred thousand dollars —cash in the bank. We were able to save the second hundred thousand much faster and that took about a year. Most recently, one of the last contracts that we had with one of our business netted us about seventy five thousand dollars profit and that was in a two-week period. So, we went from taking 2-3 years to save a hundred thousand, to taking a year to save $100k to saving almost a $100k in two weeks. I am not trying to brag, I simply want to highlight the fact that the principle of acceleration applies all the way back to that first hundred dollars that you put in the bank or that you save and squirrel away.
Our Personal Struggle with Money
My husband and I have been married almost 11 years. When we met it was a whirlwind. We were engaged about eight days after we met and married two and a half months after that. But, that’s a story for another time. Suffice it to say we really struggled in the early years of our marriage because when we met we really had no income to speak of.
When I met my husband he was coming out of a really difficult season in his life: he’d gone through bankruptcy, lost his job, lost his real estate investment properties, and lost a renovation side business that he’d had for years. On top of all that he had also gone through a divorce and decided to move from South Jersey/Philadelphia, PA, on the east coast where he had grown up and lived his whole life to the west coast. So, he was just coming out of this as a new man and had decided to go into business as a General Contractor in Bend, Oregon (where we met).
I on the other hand, had been on the fast track of entrepreneurship and had sold a successful business in Prescott, Arizona before moving to Central Oregon. But, then I struggled and floundered for the next few years trying to build my new speaking and consulting business. I faced a few difficulties for a few years prior to meeting my husband, not the least of which was the sudden death of my father (who was dearly beloved and one of my best friends).
So we had no steady income and with our first two businesses struggling we decided to start a food cart. So, essentially, We were living hand to mouth and building three businesses out of the gate together. We had no regular income, nothing saved, and then on top of it my husband got terribly injured only a couple weeks after our honeymoon and couldn’t work for months. Then we joyfully got pregnant with our first child —but it also caused a lot of stress, anxiety, fear, and struggle.
Life was really difficult. We had no money. We were living on fumes upon fumes. It was stressful. There was anxiety. There was discord. We fought so much.
The Bible Verse that Changed Everything
It was about this time that I discovered that there were only two places in scripture that the Bible says that “God Commands a Blessing.” The first verse I knew well and had read many time. Psalms 133 says that God commands the Blessing on Unity:
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down on the edge of his garments. It is like the dew of Hermon, descending upon the mountains of Zion; For there the Lord commanded the blessing— Life forevermore.
But, the second verse is what stood out to me. I was stunned to read in Deuteronomy 28:8 these words:
The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
I was stunned because I realized that God COMMANDS THE BLESSING ON YOUR STOREHOUSE but we didn’t have a Storehouse. So in that moment I decided that we better get a Storehouse quickly!
It was a little over a year into our marriage when I discovered this truth. At first I had no idea what to do.. We had no money. That meant there was no money to save. We were constantly broke. We were constantly struggling. We were constantly stressed and fighting.
Your Biggest Problem is Your Greatest Opportunity
As I struggled to find a way to Save and “Build a Storehouse”, I realized that there was one issue that had been a pain point for years in my marriage. And, that was that my husband left coins behind him where ever he went: pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. After the first few times when it was funny it became so annoying.
The coins would fall out of his pockets in the couch, in the bathroom, in our bed, and in our truck. It seemed like anywhere he went he left one or two coins behind somewhere at some point in the day and sometimes he would leave three or four coins. I got so annoyed because he didn’t immediately turn around and pick up the coins even when I told him or he heard them drop. He seemed completely ignorant the trail he left behind. At first I thought he was just being lazy and inconsiderate. But, when he refused to pick up the coins that had dropped after I mentioned it or we fought about it I became certain he was being spiteful. Meanwhile he would always remind me of the debilitating back pain he had started to experience after his injury and that picking up dropped coins was just too painful and too much effort.
If we weren’t fighting about one thing we were fighting about something else. There wasn’t a lot of romance or joy in our new marriage when financial stress was choking the life out of us. Life was hard in so many ways. I don’t even know how to put it into words. My husband was dog tired from working (when he could finally work after his injury) and I was dog tired first from being pregnant and then from having a newborn baby and working with my husband to build three businesses.
Sleep was elusive for both of us….and stress makes sleep harder. The more you need sleep the harder it is to rest. And, I often had to remind myself through the years how powerfully dangerous sleeplessness was and is. It is one of the greatest strategies used by an enemy in war. Sleep deprivation in war is equivalent to torture. How often does our enemy (the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy) use sleep deprivation to weaken us and torture us?
I finally decided to embrace a maxim I had been living by for many years. Three or four years earlier I had coined the phrase,
Your Biggest Problem is Your Greatest Opportunity.
Those words had truly empowered me through many other difficult seasons. Finally being so disgruntled with this issue and the fact that everything else I had tried to get my husband to change (no pun intended) was not working. I just knew I had to go about a different route and I had come to the realization that if we were going to get out of the mess we were in then we needed to commit to saving.
My husband was doing what he could to get us out of the mess we were in. And, I decided that I was going to take this pain point in my marriage and make it our way out. So I started picking up his change. And, I squirreled that change away and I saved it. And, I saved it. And, I saved it. And, I saved it. Along the way I really tried to change my attitude. Instead of being angry or annoyed every time I picked up a coin he had left behind I prayed and blessed it and I prayed for him and blessed him in his work and business. I decided to be more positive and more encouraging in every way that I could.
Saving Pennies and Nickels Led to An Opportunity
Amazingly enough about 10 months later we had an opportunity to move a little old farmhouse. There was a lot of reasons the move would be a great choice for us namely the fact that we could save $400 a month in rent and save about 150 dollars a month in gas ($550/month in total). When we checked out the house we were given total favor and they were happy to rent to us and no one else. Then, the owner mentioned a deposit and asked for a very small amount, about $450 or so, less than one months rent.
My husband pulled me aside and was stricken by the fact that we had this incredible opportunity and we didn’t have a deposit. By then I had saved something like six hundred dollars. I had picked up about four hundred dollars in change that year. And, I had accelerated that savings because I’d been given some birthday money and some Christmas money by other family members and added that to what I was squirreling away. I looked at him and I told him that we did have the money and how much I had saved.
Suddenly the $600 that we had saved could be used for the $450 deposit and enable us to begin saving $550 a month every month moving forward. (I figured using our saving for the deposit was still like being “in the bank” and saved in one sense because we were going to get it back).
The Acceleration of Compound Effort
It was amazing! It took us about year to save $600 but then that savings unlocked a new level and allowed us to accelerate our ability to save and suddenly we could start saving almost $600 each month.
I don’t know what your situation is. You might be a single mom with a couple kids, you might be a married couple that’s struggling with financial debt or hospital bills, or you might be a widow struggling to make ends meet with inflation. I don’t know how tough things are for you, but, if you want to go to the next level there is an opportunity.
There is no other way to build wealth other than to start by saving.
You might not be ready to think about saving $100k, but are you ready to think about saving $10k or $1k. And, if you are not ready to focus on that then start by focusing on saving $100.
Start Now Where Ever You Are!
This is one of the principles for building wealth. There’s many others I’ll get into things like giving and investing and spending. But, this is key and if you have not begun to master this then start even if it’s with the pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. (If you’re in Canada you can save the Loonies and Toonies). Whatever changes there is in your part of the world wherever you are begin to save it. Pick it up on the street, pick it up after other people, and you’ll be amazed at the doors that can open even by doing that.
Do whatever it takes! Within reason of course! But, do whatever it takes to start to save and to build a “Storehouse” that God can Bless.
