The majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, but nobody really wants to be living paycheck to paycheck. If you are spending everything you make, or more than you make, that means you have nothing left over to invest or save for emergencies. It means you will have to use high-interest debt to cover unexpected expenses or big purchases. It means you are more stressed, which can affect not only your financial life but your emotional well-being, relationships, and more.
If you are one of the Americans living paycheck to paycheck, you probably know what you should do, and what order to do it in if you are familiar with the Financial Order of Operations. That doesn’t make it easy. I want to go back to the very basics of finance and lay out how you can get your financial life together in 2025. Financial Mutants, this article is probably not for you, but feel free to share it with anyone who won’t take it the wrong way.
1. Make a plan to spend less than you make.
The most basic step to being successful financially is spending less than you make. You must spend less than you make in order to save, invest, or pay off debt. If you are in a tough situation financially, it is much easier said than done. To spend less than you make, you have two options: decrease your spending or increase your income. There’s no right answer for everyone. You may not have any room left to decrease your spending, or it may not be possible for you to increase your income much, or you may need to both decrease your spending and increase your income to be successful.
If you don’t know if you can lower your expenses, or how much you could lower your expenses, I’d like you to open a spreadsheet (Google Sheets is a great free option) and enter in every single expense you had last month. Use the cell shading feature to color code the cells. You can use whatever colors you’d like, but I’d suggest using green to notate necessary expenses (rent or mortgage payment, gas, utilities, groceries, loan payments, etc.), yellow to notate non-essential expenses (dining out, fun money, etc.) and red to notate any “regretted” expenses (why did I spend money on that?).
How much could you save every month if you cut out all of the red spending? How much could you save if you cut out some of the yellow spending? If you don’t normally track your expenses, this experience could be eye-opening for you. You might realize that all you need to do to be successful financially is eliminate certain expenses. However, that may not be the case. Maybe you don’t have any expenses left to cut, or feel like expenses you could cut would cause more harm than good (let’s face it, not getting that weekly Starbucks isn’t going to solve all your financial problems).
If you feel like you don’t have any room to cut your expenses, or if solely cutting your expenses isn’t enough, the other way to spend less than you make is to increase your income. Increasing your income is more possible than ever, and it can take MANY different forms. Maybe for you it’s as simple as taking on extra hours at work, if you have the capacity. If you have marketable services you could consider taking on clients as a freelancer if your full-time job allows. Changing industries entirely may be necessary if you feel like you are in a dead-end career without the potential for growth. If you have extra time, there are plenty of side hustles out there that require little to no skill.
2. Rewire your brain to practice deferred gratification.
Everyone who is able to spend less than they make and invest for the future has one thing in common: the ability to practice deferred gratification. It comes naturally to some but for most of us it is very difficult to do. Our brain naturally wants gratification now. Saving for retirement is especially difficult because you don’t have to delay gratification for hours or days or even weeks or months, but years and likely decades. How in the world do you put money away and not touch it for decades when you have the option to enjoy that money now?
A great first step is to know what every dollar invested today could turn into by retirement. Sure, it doesn’t feel great investing $100 for retirement when you can instead spend that $100 today. But what if I told you the decision isn’t between $100 now and $100 in retirement? If you are 20 and invest $100 earning 10% for 45 years, until age 65, you would actually have $8,835. So the decision now is between spending $100 now or $8,835 at age 65. Even though our brains are wired to want gratification now, it’s pretty easy to see how much you can be rewarded by waiting.
It can still be really difficult for us to actually save that money instead of spending it. Sure, I might have $8,835 at 65, but what does that even look like? I know exactly what that $100 will get me today and how much I’ll enjoy it. A zero-based budgeting software such as YNAB can essentially help trick you into living below your means. The idea is that by giving every dollar a job and a purpose, you don’t feel like you have money left over every month. You may feel “broke” because you are utilizing every single dollar you make. Except instead of spending every single dollar you make, you are investing for retirement and saving for emergencies and other large expenses.
3. Start the Financial Order of Operations
Once you have a cash surplus every month and are spending less than you make, you are ready to tackle the Financial Order of Operations. Check out our ultimate guide to the FOO if you are unfamiliar with the steps or want to learn more about starting. The first step is to build a baseline emergency fund to cover your highest insurance deductible. Check all of your policies, like homeowners, car insurance, and health insurance, and use your new-found cash surplus to build enough to cover the most expensive deductible in a high-yield savings account.
Building this baseline protection from emergencies can keep you from going into debt to cover unexpected expenses. You are well on your way to being a regular Financial Mutant – before you know it you’ll be contributing to Roth IRAs, HSAs, and tracking your net worth every single year. The difficult part of the journey is already behind you – once you are living below your means and practicing deferred gratification, building wealth is surprisingly simple.
