I am a big fan of small changes. Small changes are great because they are exactly that, small! Big changes takes a lot of effort and because of that, we often give up on them, long before they even have a chance of making something of themselves.
Small changes have a greater chance of becoming something bigger because they require less of an effort and are easier to oversee and that is why they have a higher probability of succeeding. Most of us, including myself, have an idea of what we want to change and we want that to change right now! We start out with great enthusiasm but quite fast we see that it is too much and what do we do then? We give up on it all together!
I have a million of examples like these from my own life, most have something to do with diets or sports 🙂 I am trying once and again but apparently the steps are too large and I think I would have a much higher chance of success if I would make the changes smaller and more long-lasting.
Concerning our finances I have had better results as the steps have been smaller; small cuts at the supermarket, less eating out and altogether more focus on where we can cut our costs. Although these changes have been hard, because they are relatively small and doesn’t take a huge effort, we are seeing that these things are slowly turning into habits, and that is the stage where the changes have the greatest chance of staying put!
A friend told me about this site that illustrates something he calls the “Latte Factor”. The idea is to show how a relative small amount of money daily is a quite big sum of money, over time. Let’s say that every day I buy a cup of coffee on my way to work. Instead of doing that I now decide to put the money away. What the site shows is how a daily saving of only NIS 12 (USD 3) even with a really small interest rate of 2% turns into a sum of close to NIS 47,200 (USD 12,200) after 10 years!
The coffee is just an example, but think about the impact that an even higher sum could have. Do you have an idea of what could be your “Latte Factor”?
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