my life changed the most not when I saved my first $100,000 but my first $110,000 like really my life got so much better in a ton of different ways let me explain why $10,000 first off nothing magic happens when you go from 9,000 and it ticks over to 10,000 but something magic does kind of happen in your brain and also in a lot of circumstances in your life at least it did for me like $999,000 and $100,000 seems very very different and the same thing with 9,000 and 10,000 when you add a zero it just
feels like you've unlocked a next level in your life and I'm sure one day you know if I go from 9900 th what what am I saying and I'm sure someday if I move into a million Market it'll just seem like so much more even though it doesn't really change anything that being said $10,000 actually does change a lot of things for you gives you more freedom less stress opens up more possibilities can earn you more money can save you money and I'm going to explain all of that it keeps you in ouch and away
from boing what does that mean it means that like when you have an emergency in your life you have you know something happen to your car go to the emergency room whatever happens like random things happen all the time generally those things cuss somewhere between ouch and boing it's a quote from something I forget but that being said it doesn't put you into debt this is like your initial emergency fund this is the point where when I had an engine blow on my first Honda Civic I was able to get the car fix didn't really
impact me a lot it you know it obviously cost a lot of money but it wasn't like world ending it wasn't a huge deal if I had a sick day it wasn't a huge deal when negative things happen in my life and I know when you're like paycheck to paycheck at that point small things can ruin your life for like months if you only have $2,000 in the bank and you have a $5,000 emergency which happens to most people like once a year or something then that can literally ruin your finances for months it can
cause you stress it can like just put you into bad debt that takes a while to get out of so you actually get a lot of like peace of mind and actually your finances are better when you have around $10,000 which is more expensive than most you know emergencies that are going to come up for most people that keeps you in that outrange where H you know but it doesn't destroy your life you move from can I to should I A lot of times when you don't have a lot of money A lot of times
you look at things when you go to buy them whether it's you know a shirt a car a pair of shoes whatever it is you're like can I afford this thing and then you make a decision off of that and this kind of brings it to should I afford this thing and that's where for me a lot of things start to shift a little bit and even as I've progressed in my life I've seen most people who live paycheck to paycheck they just ask can I afford this thing and that's a a large reason why
they stay living paycheck to paycheck is because they never move on to the should I afford this thing like right now maybe I could afford to go out and buy a new car should I do that probably not generally a bad decision but this is the point where I was actually able to make some different decisions based on this question it was at this point where me and my wife started to travel a little bit because we realized that we could spend a few thousand we travel very cheaply to go on a trip and it
wouldn't ruin our finances it wouldn't really stress them that much and we asked would this amount of money and missing out on this amount of work bring us more more happiness than having this extra money in the bank instead of saying can we afford it can we scrape things together can we work extra and do it we just ask will this money make us more happy as Financial Security as paying for future bills or will it make us more happy spending on things that are enjoyable this was also when I first started to invest in
clothes that actually fit me because I have a really long torso and I've like never had clothes that fit me until literally this point in my life I also started investing in higher quality coffee like I would always get the cheapest coffee possible at Aldi and then I was like you know what I can afford it and it will make me more happy to spend an extra x amount per month to have coffee that I love cuz I drink my coffee black and I like it to taste good this is when I started investing into
things that just made me happy and made my life easier and weren't just can I afford this thing for the past few months I've been drinking Trade coffee which has been absolutely incredible and that's why I partnered with them and they're actually sponsoring this video trade is a specialty coffee market place that matches customers with the best coffee from Roasters all across America and as a bit of a coffee addict it's become kind of like my One-Stop shop for all things coffee you can test some of these out by checking out their coffee subscription so
right now they have one that's like best sellers you can taste some of their best sellers I've tried most of those they also have like light roast dark roast so whatever you're into they will recommend some for you and that's actually one of my favorite Parts about trade because I was getting coffee from other places before and you get like one or two options to choose from and here there's like hundreds of options and they're so good this one has notes of peanut and cashew brittle which is like this is absolutely amazing and every new
coffee I try from them is is so so good and yes I do know that I talk about not spending money on subscriptions but if you're anything like me and you drink coffee consistently then that would be one of those subscriptions that make sense because um you're drinking it anyway so it doesn't really matter if it's on a subscription plan just because that's cheaper doesn't make it a bad thing and for me this has been super super fun cuz I just love experiencing new coffee and this is so so worth it for me I get
to try specialty coffees from all over the country they just show up up my door I can try a new one you know as often as I want and it's not like stale old cheap coffee because every coffee is roasted to order and it ships to you within 48 Hours honestly give trade a try and like you can transform the way that you experience coffee at home really up your game they're actually offering your first bag for free when you visit drink trade.com sgab and you subscribe and on top of that trade guarantees that you
will love your first bag and if you don't they will replace it for you so like what do you have to lose you're going to have amazing coffee or you're going to have amazing coffee so drink trade.com sgab first bag free when you subscribe absolutely great great stuff confidence booster the first time I saw $10,000 in my bank it felt like I had unlocked a new level it felt like all that that saving and and working extra inside households and all that stuff it had finally paid off and I had actually like done something and
it was literally just adding to zero but it's like a mental thing that's not really quantifiable it doesn't make sense but it just felt like I had more money especially when you look at like 50% of Americans have less than $500 in their savings account when I got to the point where I not only had enough money in my checking account to to live on but I also had $10,000 in a high interest savings account for emergencies I felt like I was good I felt like I could take risks I felt like I had actually
accomplished something and it ended up making my finances better in a few different ways for instance the power to say no to more money when you have a couple months worth of living expenses saved up like this you can actually say no to more money for me this meant that I could actually not work extra cuz before this I had a day job multiple part-time jobs I was doing you know YouTube and real estate and a bunch of different things and I realized that you know what it's okay for me to not work overtime to
take this weekend off to you know step down a little bit from one of these side hustles and while I still worked a lot it was because I was choosing to not because I have to and a lot of people they have to work over time they have to pick up extra stuff and when you don't have to do that and you can choose to do that it just feels so much better even if it's the same amount of work it just feels so so much better I would say it also helps with like Risk
taking because I was actually able to like I said earn a little bit less money but but also start investing into myself invest into starting businesses that didn't make me any money for years like YouTube I lost money for the first two plus years but I was able to take the risk I was able to SN money and time into something that didn't earn me anything for the chance that it could pay off into something into the future and most people don't have that option if you don't have that cushion you don't have the option
to work for no money to take a risk starting a business to invest into a course to go to a seminar to fly you know across the country for a job interview if you don't have the options to do that because you don't have enough money saved up then you could limit yourself in the future you could limit your earning potential and I know like 10K is not some magic number but it is around that that gives you like you know two to 3 months worth of living expenses depending on what they are and that
is where I think a lot of real Freedom starts to take place and it's kind of like these different steps where you have the step to 10K and then you have the steps to 100 and a million and each one happens a lot faster and this first 10K is definitely the hardest first 100K is definitely the hardest but as you move up the ladder to different and different levels you actually unlock more opportunities just because you have that money sitting in the bank because you can like afford to to fail more generally the worst case
scenario is a little less worst at that point you actually start to save faster studies show that individuals with an emergency Savings of $10,000 and more are able to save at a rate 30% faster than those with less now some of that could just be you know different circumstances now some of that could just be cuz you're earning more or whatever it is but for me once I had saved up that amount of money even though my earning didn't change it all I continue to save faster and faster and faster just because I kind of
saw the results that when I was saving money it was actually you know leading to some type of result and I could see the result in terms of an extra zero and I wasn't having any of those negative things the withdrawals the late fees any of those so actually get a lot of the the negative stuff stops happening to you as much the more money that you have that's why when people say money won't buy happiness or money doesn't fix all your problems no but it does fix all the problems that you can fix with
money which is a lot of your problems so like having more money can make you happier because you have less bad stuff that can happen to you it obviously is not the it's not the answer to anything it won't make you happy as a person but it can make a lot of problems go away which is really nice and it actually leads to like being healthier at this point I started investing not into only things like I talked about that you know made me a little happier or we're a little more enjoyable or clothes that
fit better but also into my health I got a more expensive gym membership that I was more likely to go to cuz it's like 30 seconds from my house I started eating healthier food and actually investing into better quality foods that might cost a little bit more but make me feel better every single day I was able to you know Alexa stop even like buying a quality mattress we used to have the cheapest ones and now we are actually able to get a more expensive mattress and sleep better every single night all of these things
that if you don't have extra money you might be less likely to invest into your health cuz there's no immediate Roi on that you can't really see a tangible difference until you scale out and you realize like oh I haven't been to the doctor in 10 years because I really you know invest a lot into taking care of my health Maybe I should go to the doctor at some point and I guess that would be investing into my health but I feel amazing and a lot of that is because I you know spend more money
and time and mental focus actually taking care of myself and not just you know surviving and doing the cheapest thing possible all the time now I want to talk about a couple of rules that helped me save that first 10K and then also maintain it and continue to grow it the 101 rule so this pretty much just states that for every $10 that you earn you can spend one of those dollars on yourself and this is pretty opposite to what a lot of other other people teach and yet not opposite to what a lot of
people do so most people will say the first thing that you should cut out to save money and like get your first ink is like no coffees no enjoying yourself no going out to dinner stop going to the movies all that type of stuff but it turns out entertainment and like spending on yourself is generally about 5% of most people's budget it's actually not going to make a huge difference it can be important to do for a time but maybe only for a year or two while you're making progress towards whatever your goal is but
in general if you can actually spend a little bit more on yourself and have that be not the first thing to go but instead of focusing on higher things like maybe moving or you know getting an older car earning more money things like that a lot of those will make more of an impact than cutting out the things that bring you the most enjoyment and happiness and and stuff like that and like stress relief in your life cutting out coffee should not be I I feel like I'm stressing this point a lot it shouldn't be
anything that gets mentioned anywhere along the process never give up coffee I think I have an addiction but pretty much you can gamify this in a few different ways but you can use it that way and you know that you spend 10% of your inome on things that you enjoy or like me I personally donate 10% of it or you can use it as a way to reward yourself so if you save $100 you take $10 and you put it in a slushy fund that designated for nothing but expensive coffee and pizza might not live
long but you really enjoy your life or you can put that towards travel or whatever and that kind of incentivizes you to really pay yourself first and invest into your future like every $1,000 that you invest into the stock market you're put into your savings account you get to take $100 and go and enjoy yourself and that makes that enjoyment completely guilt-free cuz you know that you have taken care of your future first and that way you can enjoy this whole process of saving money you can gamify this you can gamify earning more and saving
more because you get to you know spend more on things that you enjoy maybe travel more whatever it is and you never have to feel bad about that and that's one of the things I love about you know saving more money and having that emergency fund is when you do go you know spend money on stuff or or you have to travel somewhere or whatever well for other people it might be like you know kind of stressful and I have to worry about it and like do I have money for this is it like whatever
for you if you have 3 months worth of living expenses saved up then it's not really a huge deal and you can just ask like do I want to actually do this or should I actually do this and if you decide to you can do it guilt-free because you know that you took that out of that 10% and not out of like your future you didn't steal from yourself you know investing wise you still have the emergency fund you know that you're on the right track and you can spend that money guilt-free on things you
can enjoy you can enjoy that coffee and not have to worry about it and that's a pretty good feeling now if you want to see how to save 10K fast you can click on this video right here very very good and it's a step-by-step process of of things and and other things yeah
