There is not a day that goes by where I don’t see someone promoting a fancy new online course, or an E-book that Guarantee’s to save you money. Do you know what they all have in common though?… you have to pay for them!

Seems a little counter-intuitive to me.

People are trying to SAVE more money, not SPEND more money! So it got me thinking. What handy little tip can I offer someone, which will save them money, but not require them to spend anything more? Then it came to me.

So today, I present to you the simplest, easiest and most effective way that you could use to save money. Everyone will be able to do it, and I GUARANTEE it will save you more than £1000!…. and the cherry on the cake is…… It won’t cost you a penny!

So here we go! Grab your phone, open up your banking app, and start scrolling through your transactions. What do you see a lot of?

Subscriptions!

It seems everything these days comes with a monthly subscription fee!

Disney +, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, ESPN +, Apple Music, Amazon Prime, Graze, Deezer, Youtube Premium, Gym memberships, the list just goes on and on and on.

We sign up to these services, use them for a little while, and then quite often, forget we even have them! The kicker is though, regardless of whether we use them or not, we are still paying for them!

You might be thinking, ‘Why would anyone pay for a service they don’t use?‘, and that would be a great question. The answer is quite simple though. Most subscription services are cheap, meaning most people see the cost as negligible, an amount so low that they won’t miss it when it leaves their bank account.

Companies know this, and they are using it to their advantage. They track the behaviour’s relating to subscriptions, and the data suggests that once people are signed up, the percentage of people who cancel is relatively small. This is why so many companies have moved into the subscription business model, it is a road to riches! The only thing they have to worry about is how to get people to sign up in the first place, which is why they price themselves so low, offer TONS of incentives up-front, and market the hell out of it!

Half price for the first year? ‘Yes Please!’

£50 gift card up-front… ‘Where do I sign?’

First 3 months free? ‘Hell yeah!’

These are the marketing tricks that have the masses subscribing in their droves! Companies are brainwashing people into believing that the service they are getting is so cheap, that they never even think of cancelling it!

So how do we change this way of thinking?

Easy.

For every subscription you have, forget about what it costs per month. Instead, look at what it will cost over a 10 year period.

Not convinced? Let me show you.

Let’s take Netflix as an example, as it seems EVERYONE has a subscription for that.

Netflix UK monthly Cost = £8.99 x 12 months = £107.88 x 10 years = £1078.80 

Netflix US monthly Cost = $12.99 x 12 months = $155.88 x 10 years = $1558.80

The 10 year cost of having a Netflix subscription is £1078.80 in the UK and $1558.80 in the US.

Cancel this today, and you will save yourself more than £$1000.

Do you see how easy this is?

The best thing about this is, Netflix is one the cheapest things you could subscribe to, if you can find a more expensive subscription to cancel, the savings will be even greater!

Up until late last year, I was paying £24.99 for a gym membership that was rarely used. I didn’t see the cost as a big deal, so I continued paying it, even in the months I didn’t use it. But then I came across this idea, thinking about the cost of something over a 10 year period, not its monthly cost, and my mindset shifted immediately.

Gym Membership cost = £24.99 x 12 months = £249.99 x 10 years = £2499.99!

As soon as I saw the gym membership at its 10 year cost, I immediately realised it had to go.

With one quick phone call, I saved myself £2499.99!

“So, what should I do once the subscription is cancelled ?”

GREAT question!

There is one really important thing that you MUST do once a subscription is cancelled. Set up an automated payment, for the exact same amount that you have saved from cancelling the monthly subscription, and have that money sent to your savings account or an investment account. By doing this, you will protect yourself from the effects of Lifestyle Inflation, and you will eliminate the temptation to spend your new found wealth on something else, maybe even another subscription! 

But that is not all. By sending the payments to an Investment/Savings account, you will also activate The Magic of the Compound Effect.

Let’s go back to the Netflix example to explain this in a little more detail.

Instead of paying Netflix £8.99 or $12.99 for the next 10 years, totalling £1078.80 or $1558.80, you will now send those payments to an account that earns you interest.

This is the game changer!

£8.99 sent to an Investment/Savings that averages a 5% interest rate over 10 years = £1402.37

$12.99 sent to an Investment/Savings that averages a 5% interest rate over 10 years = $2026.34

Can you see how powerful that is?

The £1078.80 that you would have paid to Netflix, has now turned into £1402.37, over the exact same period of time! And the $12.99 turns into $2026.34!

AMAZING!

Compound interest really is a wonder to behold, which is why it is so important to make sure that once you cancel a subscription, you set up the automatic payment to the savings account. If you don’t, you will miss out on the incredible benefits that come along with The Compound Effect, and you will be missing out on hundreds, if not thousands, of lost £’s and $’s over time.

So, now you know the simplest, easiest and most effective way to save money, I want to set you a challenge.

I challenge you to open your mobile banking app right now, scroll through the transactions, and note down all the subscriptions that you are currently signed up for. Then I want you to look down that list, choose one that you do not need anymore, and cancel it TODAY! … And don’t forget to set up the automatic payments afterwards!

Taking just 5 minutes of your time to complete this challenge will save you thousands. I would love for you to let me know down in the comments what subscription you chose to cancel, and how much it’s going to save you.

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Everyone wants a big fancy house that they can show off to their friends, they see it as a badge of honour, a trophy for all their hard work. But, what few people seem to realise are the downsides of owning a HUGE property.

If I had a penny for every time somebody asked me why I don’t upgrade and move to a bigger house, I would be a fairly wealthy man. So today I thought I would go through my reasons why I choose to live in a smaller house, and why I think you should consider it too!

Here are 5 reasons why I believe it is better to own and live in a smaller property:

Lower prices

It’s an obvious one but smaller houses cost less. This is great for getting yourself onto the housing ladder, as you won’t need a big a deposit to get yourself going, and it also means that because the house costs less, you will be able to pay it off quicker too! WIN-WIN! Another benefit to having a smaller mortgage is it comes with smaller payments, reducing the financial strain on you every month, which in turn reduces the overall stress you have in your life. Don’t be fooled into maxing out your limit just because the bank says they will lend it to you. Remember, the bank wants you to spend as much as you can, it is in their best interests to have you indebted to them, however, it is in your best interests to be debt-free. Nobody wants to be living month to month, worrying about their job stability because they have a HUGE mortgage payment to make.

Choose a smaller house with a smaller mortgage, you won’t regret it.

Lower Bills

Speak to anyone who has a big house and one of the first things they will tell you is how much it costs to run. Small house’s don’t have this problem. One of the many benefits of having less space in the house is there is less air in it to heat, meaning it will get hotter much quicker, saving you A LOT of money every month.

As there is less house to maintain, there will be less money spent on maintenance. This is another great benefit of owning a small home, there is less to go wrong, and even if something does happen to go wrong, it will be a far smaller and less expensive problem to resolve.

Another great area to save will be on house insurance. There is less house to insure, and the overall cost of the house will be less too, compared to living in a large property, therefore the insurance will be low as it will be deemed low risk.

Smaller houses also come with lower property taxes. Both stamp duty and council tax will be much cheaper in a smaller, less expensive property compared to owning a much larger house. These are costs you simply cannot avoid, so in my experience its best to keep these as low as you can.

More Financial Opportunities

With lower prices, lower energy bills, lower insurance and lower taxes, there will be plenty of money left over to invest in other things! Small houses will take up far less of your income compared with if you lived in a much bigger house, therefore leaving you money left over every month to invest in other avenue’s. Everybody like’s to have choices in their life, and having spare money gives you the option to have many. Why not buy a second property and become a landlord? Always wanted to invest in the stock market?… Well, now you can! Maybe you just want to treat yourself at the end of the month. The choices are endless. Smaller houses allow you to have much more financial flexibility and stability, which is something everybody wishes they had a little bit more of.

Less Space = Less Stuff

In smaller houses, you don’t have the space for LOADS of stuff. Most people would see this as a negative and a reason to move, but I see this as a massive positive. Having less space actively encourages you not to buy things you don’t need, because you simply don’t have the space to put it in.

“Learn to live with less, so you can appreciate more”

Having less space means you have to change your mindset and learn to live more efficiently and be effective with every bit of space you have. Learning to adopt an efficient mindset has many advantages in your life, and practising the art of this everyday due to living in a smaller house, means you become a master of it very quickly. You won’t ever find a room in my house that is a ‘junk’ room or a place to hide things that I don’t need. If I don’t need something, then I don’t keep it. Simple.

Embrace Minimalism

There’s something not quite right about someone saying they live a ‘minimalist’ life whilst living in a gigantic 2500 square foot house. To me, the two just don’t go together. However, minimalism and living in a small house go hand in hand. When you live in a smaller house, minimalism will become your new best friend. You will use it to maximise every bit of space you have, which will save you money and also have you feeling better within yourself. Nothing calms the mind like being in a clutter-free room, where everything has it’s own place and everything within it is there because it has a purpose. Minimalism is proven to reduce stress and increase happiness. Embrace it.

“The richest man is not he who has the most, but he who needs the least”

So there you have my 5 reasons why I believe it is better to own and live in a smaller house. I think it is clear to see that bigger is not always better when it comes to property. Think long and hard before buying a large house, because it will undoubtedly become a costly decision.

Living small forces you to carefully consider the things you own and make choices about what you need, as well as what you don’t need. Although this might sound limiting, it’s actually quite liberating.

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Iconic quotes are big ideas, expressed in just a few simple words.

I have always found quotes to be a great source of both motivation and inspiration. I truly believe that what we think affects how we feel and the actions we take, therefore if we want to feel successful and produce successful actions, we must first think successful thoughts.

The Top 50 Motivational Money Quotes are full of wisdom and inspiration, all spoken by leaders in their respective fields. Use these quotes to motivate you on your journey to achieve your goals, overcome your fears, and to be successful, both in life and in business.

1. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. – Theodore Roosevelt
2. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. – Lao Tzu
3. If you’re happy to sit at your desk and not take any risk, you’ll be sitting at your desk for the next 20 years. – David Rubenstein
4. The Stock Market is designed to transfer money from the Active to the Patient. – Warren Buffett
5. Too many people spend money they earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people that they don’t like. – Will Rogers
6. Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning. – Robert Kiyosaki
7. I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. – Thomas Jefferson
8. The four most expensive words in the English language are, ‘This time it’s different.’ – Sir John Templeton
9. If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks. – John Bogle
10. When buying shares, ask yourself, would you buy the whole company? – Rene Rivkin
11. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
12. Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill
13. The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. – Vidal Sassoon
14. As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big. –Donald Trump
15. The secret to wealth is simple: Find a way to do more for others than anyone else does. Become more valuable. Do more. Give more. Be more. Serve more. ― Tony Robbins
16. If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to meet it! –Jonathan Winters
17. Screw it, Let’s do it! – Richard Branson
18. It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. – J. K Rowling
19. Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway. – John Wayne
20. A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. – David Brinkley
21. Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. – Albert Einstein
22. Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more. – Charles Caleb Colton
23. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. – Winston Churchill
24. If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough. – Vicki Robin
25. Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” – Joe Biden
26. The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind. – T.T. Munger
27. If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know & start charging for it. – Kim Garst
28. I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas A. Edison
29. It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for. – Robert Kiyosaki
30. The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. – Phillip Fisher
31. Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs. – Zig Ziglar
32. Every time you borrow money, you’re robbing your future self. – Nathan W. Morris
33. Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas. – Paul Samuelson
34. You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you. – Dave Ramsey
35. Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant. – P.T. Barnum
36. I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died. – Malcolm Forbes
37. How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case. – Robert G. Allen
38. Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying. That’s not just a catchy slogan. It’s the very essence of successful investing. – J. Paul Getty
39. Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. – Norman Vincent Peale
40. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. – Seneca
41. Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune. – Jim Rohn
42. A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore. -Yogi Berra
43. I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for ten years. – Warren Buffett
44. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. – Thomas Edison
45. I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy. – Warren Buffett
46. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. – Benjamin Franklin
47. A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart. – Jonathan Swift
48. If you’re saving, your succeeding – Steve Burkholder
49. Fortune sides with he who dares – Virgil
50. Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticise, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. – William A. Ward

Use these quotes to Motivate you in times of need, Inspire you in times of struggle, and to Guide you to the Success you deserve.

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As soon as I got my first job and started to earn my own money, back when I was just 16 years old, I set myself the goal of buying my own house.

This is something I’d always dreamed of achieving, and now that I had my own money coming in, the possibility of it happening seemed tantalising real. What my naive younger self hadn’t quite realised was, working part-time at McDonald’s probably wasn’t going to make the dream become a reality any time soon…

Nevertheless, I worked there for 2 years and saved as much money as I possibly could, and in the end, I bought the house of my dreams… in cash! 

I WISH!

In reality, I did work at Mcdonald’s for two years, and I did save as much money as I possibly could, but in the end, none of it went towards buying the dream house…

Like a lot of teenagers, I bought myself a car instead.

Maybe not the most sensible thing I could have done, but unlike many of my peers, I paid for it in cash and drove it around for the next 8 years, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to do after all.

Having splashed out on my new ride, it was back to square one in the savings department, which meant buying a house was just as far away as it had been 2 years ago. It wasn’t all bad news though, because at this point I transitioned into a full-time job and was finally earning the BIG MONEY!…… £12,000 per year!

Again, hindsight is a wonderful thing. At the time it really did feel like I was earning good money when I became an apprentice engineer and compared to the money I had been earning previously, it really was good money! But as I think we all know, £12,000 per year is still not enough to buy a house, so onward I went, up the salary ladder.

Fast forward three and a half years, my salary was now at a more healthy level of £25,300, and my partner was now working too, on a salary of £17,500. Over the three and a half year period, as we were both living at home with our parents, we were able to save A LOT of our income. So, by the end of 2015, we had both saved our goal of £20,000 each, meaning we had a £40,000 deposit for our first house together.

Now we were getting somewhere!

The search for our first house started in January of 2016 and ended just as swiftly as it began. After just 2 weeks of searching, we had found ourselves an idyllic new build development that had just what we wanted, a three-bed, semi-detached house for £174,000, under our budget of £200,000. We chose the plot we wanted off the site plans, paid a £500 deposit and sealed the deal!

Throughout the years of saving, whenever I transferred some more money into my savings account, I always used to say to myself ‘That’s another few bricks for the house’, but I never imagined that I’d be able to watch that house being built. But, over the next few months, we did have the pleasure of watching our house being built. It felt incredible to watch the foundations being laid, and then each layer of bricks as they slowly made their way up to the roof.

‘We got to watch our house being built’ is not something everyone is able to say, so we made sure that we made the most of the experience by visiting the site as much as we could. Below are a few shots from our visits.

The above photo was taken on one of the early visits to the site. Our house is the one on the right-hand side.

Not too long after we had a roof put on!

And it wasn’t too much longer after that when the windows went in.

Finally, the day came where all the paperwork was completed. The deposits were all transferred, along with all the fee’s that seem to appear out of nowhere, and it was finally made official.

We were homeowners!

On July 1st 2016, the dream became a reality. We were given the keys to our first home together. It was a fantastic day and one that I will never forget. Having the keys to our own house was proof to me that all the hard work to get to this point had been worth it, and that no matter how long it takes, as long as you keep making steps towards your end goal, eventually, it will materialise.

…

I am writing this post almost 4 years to the day that we got the keys to our house, and it seems crazy to write that because it only feels like yesterday that we moved in.

How time flies!

Since we bought the house 4 years ago, the value of it has increased to around £200,000, meaning in 4 years we have made approx £26,000! So not only has it been a great house to live in, but it’s also been a great investment too!

We recently remortgaged the house onto a lower interest rate and fixed it for 3 years. The goal we have our eyes firmly set on now is to clear the mortgage at the end of that 3 year period, meaning we will have only had the mortgage for a total of 7 years, not bad going if you ask me!

So, in just under 3 years from now, precisely 1080 days if we want to be exact, at the age of 30 years old, we will be Mortgage Free.

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Today marks the one month anniversary of the Plan On Fire blog.

*Loud applause for many minutes*

Ok, let’s get back to reality.

A little over a month ago this blog was just a crazy idea in my head, and now a month later, it is a fully-fledged blog with readers and followers and everything!

So, I thought it would be a great idea to go over the first month’s stats and see how the blog performed, and just give a little insight into how things have gone for me personally.

Now, as I have very little experience of blogging, I had no real expectations as to what the first month would look like in terms of visitors to the blog. I assumed as it was a brand new blog, and I hadn’t told anyone I was doing this, that maybe I wouldn’t have many readers, and that it would take a long time to get any real traction. However, I was pleasantly surprised!

Check out the below graph.

As you can see, throughout the first couple of weeks the blog had just a couple of new readers a day. This may not seem like much to anyone else, but to me, I got really excited about this.

Why would anyone get excited about a few readers a day you ask?

To me, the idea that I could launch a blog and have ANYONE read it, let alone someone be interested in it and come back a second time, seemed like an almost impossible thought just a few months ago. But to see my first few posts starting to get readers and ‘Likes’ gave me the belief and encouragement that maybe I could do this, and that maybe I had a chance at succeeding.

After a couple of weeks went by, someone I was chatting to online mentioned to me about sharing my posts in some online groups, to help get my blog ‘out there’. I wasn’t too sure about this, as I thought it might be best to just try to attract people to the blog naturally, but I thought I’d give it a go anyway. To my surprise, once I shared a few of my posts on Facebook and Twitter, the blog had an incredible surge of new readers! At its peak, the blog received 101 visitors on July 4th, with over 419 page views in one single day. NOT BAD!

Things have definitely quietened down since then, and the blog is now averaging around 10-20 readers a day, which at such an early stage I think is pretty good! As I said before though, I started this blogging adventure with next to no knowledge or experience, so I don’t really know whether this is a good stage to be at after just one month, but I’ll take what I can get.

Below is a list of the top 10 countries where my page views came from in the first month.

I was amazed when I looked at the stats page to see how many countries my blog had managed to reach in just it’s first month. Readers from 29 different countries around the world, how amazing!

The first 30 days have been one hell of a learning curve, but one I have enjoyed immensely. A lot of people say that blogging isn’t easy, and now I know what they mean. Hours and hours are spent staring at a screen, trying to find the right words and the correct order to put them in, to get my point across in an effective way. I am not a professional writer and I am well aware that grammatically there are most likely many mistakes throughout my posts, but I am learning every day and over time I will improve.

The thing that has truly blown me away though over the past month, is undoubtedly the followers I have managed to gain. As I write this today, the blog has 46 followers, and I would like to thank each and every one of you for deciding to follow this blog. Before I started out writing a little over a month ago, I genuinely sat and wondered whether anyone would be bothered about what I had to say. It was a huge leap of faith to give it a go, and having people enjoy what I have produced over the last month and decide to follow the blog has given me so much inspiration to carry on, and has confirmed to me that starting this blog was the right thing to do.

I would like to take this time to say thank you to anyone who has visited my blog, read an article, Liked a post or left a comment. You have no idea how much this has meant to me. Without the support I have received over the past 30 days, I may well have given up by now, who knows. But seeing that there really are people out there that are reading the blog and interacting with my posts, has truly been an eye-opening experience, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the Plan On Fire blog!

As always, please feel free to Like, Share and Comment on this post, and most importantly, hit the Follow button so we can SMASH through that 50 follower mark and then it will be onwards and upwards to 100 followers!

Today I am writing about a slightly unusual event regarding Mr Money Mustache.

If you’re sat there wondering ‘Who the hell is that?’…. Where have you been?

Without doubt, Mr Money Mustache, A.K.A Pete Adeney, is by far the most well known online personality when it comes to blogging about Personal Finance. Arguably, he is the person who created the whole F.I.R.E (Financial Independence/Retire Early) movement and has been blogging for the last decade, building up a very loyal following along the way, a following that he playfully calls ‘The Mustachians’. With nearly 120K followers on Twitter, and his blog receiving MILLIONS of visitors every month, it is not hard to see why he is such a notable figure within the online community, and why when Mr Money Mustache speaks, people listen.

Well, just a few days ago, Mr Money Mustache found himself on the receiving end of A LOT of online backlash, after a tweet of his went Live. In the tweet, MMM made comment on the much-discussed topic of COVID-19, more specifically the topic of wearing masks.

(See Tweet below)

Having the sort of online presence that MMM has, means he has the power to influence people with what he says, and unfortunately, in this case, his followers did not take his remarks lightly. Due to the large number of followers he has on Twitter, it wasn’t long before the internet blew up, and Mr Money Mustache came under fire.

People were outraged.

They felt that he was making light of the terrible situation that we are all having to deal with during the on-going pandemic, and they thought he may even be suggesting COVID-19 was not a big issue.

Below are just a few replies Mr Money Mustache received regarding his Tweet.

As you can see from the tweets above, his followers did not take kindly to what he had said, and since the Tweet went Live, MMM has lost thousands of Twitter followers.

So, Did Mr Money Mustache cross the line?

Well at first glance, if you didn’t know who Mr Money Mustache was, and you just came across the Tweet online, I could see why people may take offence to it. In the current times we live in, COVID-19 is affecting millions of lives, and to date, more than half a million people have sadly passed away due to contracting the disease.

However, if you know Mr Money Mustache like I would assume his followers would, then I personally would find it hard to find any sort of offence or insensitivity in what he stated. As someone who has followed the MMM blog for many years, it is quite clear that Pete Adeney is a principled man, and believes that people should take care of themselves when it comes to their own health and well-being.

Statistics have shown that someone who lives a healthy lifestyle has a drastically reduced chance of falling ill, and in this instance, Pete is advocating for everyone to live a healthy lifestyle because according to statistics, that is the best thing you can do to help yourself avoid or recover from COVID-19. Therefore, if you read the tweet again with this point of view in mind, I think its fair to say that he is not trying to offend anyone or play down the situation, he is just trying to use his influence to remind people that they are not powerless in this scenario and that they can have an impact on their own health and increase their own chances of avoiding the virus.

Mr Money Mustache later replied to an individual on his Twitter Timeline to help clarify his thoughts and confirmed that he did not mean for people to take what he had said as an ‘anti-mask’ approach, rather he meant it as a ‘don’t forget the BIG things too’ approach.

Somewhere along the line, people seem to have forgotten what Mr Money Mustache stands for, and mixed him in with the many other ‘influencers’ that they find on their Twitter Timelines.

Personally, I believe what Mr Money Mustache said came from a good place, and he did not mean to upset or offend anyone.

But what do you think?

Did Mr Money Mustache Cross the Line?

Or was what he said simply taken out of context?

***UPDATE***

Since my post went Live, Mr Money Mustache has been featured on the ‘Earn & Invest Podcast’ where he discusses the controversial tweet in more detail. If your interested, you can listen to the podcast through the link below.

123. Mr. Money Mustache On COVID (and the Notorious Tweet)

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Everybody wants more money.

No matter who you work for or what job your in, I’d bet that you feel you’re underpaid and over-worked. Am I right? Well, that is the same position I found myself in around a year ago in mid-2019.

I’d been working at the same telecoms company for 8 years, the last 5 of those in the same position as a Network Planner. I’d worked my way up from the entry-level position, to one of the most senior members of the team, but if you compared my salary to that of my colleagues, you would never have known. For the last 5 years, I’d received small incremental pay rise’s, just as everyone else had who performed well throughout the year, and I was happy in my job so it was never of much of concern up to that point.

However, in 2019 we started to see members of the team leave to competitor companies, for substantially more money than what we were being paid for the same job role. This sent alarm bells ringing in my head. I started to wonder, were my former colleagues who had left been over-paid to entice them to join the competitor company? Or was the salary offered by competitors the true value of my role, and I was simply being underpaid for what I do? After conducting some research and inquiring at many other companies for the same or similar role, I realised it was only the company I worked for who were under-paying for the job I do, everywhere else paid the same or similar money to that of which my former colleagues had left for.

This left me with just two options, and a decision to make.

1.  Leave and move to one of the competitor companies.

OR

2.  Stay, knowing that I’m being underpaid, but valuing the fact that I do enjoy my job and the people I work with, and it comes with great benefits too.

But then I had a brainwave, maybe there was a third option.

Could it be possible to stay where I am, but get the higher salary that my colleagues had been chasing at the other companies? Who knows, but I thought it was worth a shot. After all, what did I have to lose? If it didn’t work out, I’d still have the same two options I had before.

So, I put together a plan of action. I pulled together all the documentation that proved I was, without doubt, one of if not THE top performer within the team. I also put together the information I had showing that the salaries the competitor companies were offering were substantially higher than what I was currently being paid. Next, I scheduled a meeting with my manager to go over what I had put together, to explain how undervalued I felt, and to try and come to some agreement on a salary increase.

To say that was a waste of time is an understatement.

I was basically told in more or less the same words, ‘We don’t have the budget, so if you’re not happy, there’s the door’.

I walked out of that meeting disappointed. In hindsight I was naive, but at the time I really felt like I had a case. I hoped they would review the situation and come to an amicable solution, a solution where they agree to increase my salary, maybe not to the same as the competitors, but at least bridge the gap. I had tried my best but to no avail, and the decision to move on seemed highly likely at that point.

Yet, just as all hope seemed lost, I heard whisperings. These whisperings were of one of the newest members of our team, who had joined us from a competitor no more than 6 months previously. He came with little knowledge or experience in the job role, which is why I offered to personally coach him through his first few months while he got up to speed. However, the whisperings I heard were that he had agreed on a salary, when he came over from his previous company, of just over £4000 pounds MORE than what I was currently being paid.

I was stunned.

Not through any fault of the new guy, I don’t blame him for negotiating the highest salary he could get whilst applying for a new job. If I were in his shoes I’d have done the same. I was stunned because in the meeting I had only just had with my manager, I was told that there was no budget to allow for salaries higher than what I was already on, and it was also made quite clear that I was paid ‘fairly’ for my knowledge and experience within the team…

I knew I had to address the situation, I needed to speak to the new guy about what I had heard, and get clarification on whether this was true or not. It turns out he was more than willing to share his side of things, and he was actually surprised to learn that I was paid less than him. He had been told upon accepting the role that his salary reflected his position within the team and that there was plenty of scope to move up the ladder if he performed well within the role. Incredible! Not only had they given him MORE money upfront, but they had also offered him incentives upon him gaining experience… EXPERIENCE I ALREADY HAVE!

With this new information, I felt I had one last shot at getting the increase I deserved. If it didn’t work out this time, that would be it, I would hand in my notice and move on to pastures new, after all, I’d already had offers from other competitor companies, so it was quite clear that if my skills and experience were not valued here, I could take them elsewhere.

That evening, I formed a plan of action. I drafted a formal dispute to send off to the HR department and scheduled in a meeting with my manager for the following day, to inform them of the process I was about to initiate.

The following day, we had the meeting. At the back of mind I had hoped that as soon as I mentioned the dispute would be raised with HR, some sort of counter-offer or solution would be brought to the table, to prevent it from going that far. However, it went just as I thought it would. There was very little discussion, my dispute was accepted and I was told someone would be in touch regarding the next step of the process.

Yet again, the feeling of disappointment swelled inside me. I had given my manager multiple chances to prove to me that I was a valued member of the team and not just a number on a spreadsheet. It seemed I had no other avenues to pursue, maybe it really was time to leave.

But what happened next did NOT go as I thought it would. To this day I am still trying to get my head around the events that took place next.

No more than an hour later, I received a call. I had only ever seen this person’s name on a higher management position tree, and now they were on the other end of the phone. The person stated he had heard what was happening and wanted to contact me directly. He assured me that I had nothing more to worry about and that my salary would be taken care of. He stressed I was a highly valued individual within the department and integral to the team, and that he was sorry things had got this far. He finished the conversation by stating I would receive a letter in the post in the coming days, which he hoped I would find satisfactory.

Did that just happen?

Sure enough, within a couple of days my letter came, and in it came my 20% pay increase with immediate effect. Not only that, but I would also receive back pay for the previous 6 months. Needless to say, I stayed with the company and am still there to this day.

When I look back on this period of time, I am glad I did what I did, not simply because I managed to gain a pay increase, but because I fought for what was right. For a long time, I had blindly gone to work day after day, being underpaid and under-appreciated for a job I was over-achieving in. If I’m totally honest, I probably got myself into the situation by not speaking up at certain times and raising the issue earlier. I knew I was being underpaid and had been for a long time, but it just never seemed like the right moment to bring it up.

However, somewhere along the line I gained the courage I needed to face the issue head-on, and ultimately got what I deserved. In hindsight, I wish I had done something about it sooner, but maybe things happen for a reason. Either way,  I think it is important to know your worth, and not just settle for what someone else tells you your worth. We all deserve to go to work and be paid fairly for the work that we do, not taken advantage of because we are young, naive or inexperienced.

So there you have it, that is the story of how I gained a 20% pay increase WITHOUT a promotion.

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For the majority of us, mortgage’s are a burden we all must bear if we want to eventually own the home that we live in. For the average person, a mortgage lasts for 25 years, although this average is increasing all the time, and in the past 10 years, people choosing to take a mortgage for between 30-35 years has more than doubled. For many, they simply accept that they will have the mortgage for the amount of time they agreed, they pay just the minimum amount required month after month and forget about it for the most part. The problem with this approach is, by not actively managing your mortgage, and by just paying the minimum amount for the full term, you will find after a short period of time that your interest rate increases, meaning your monthly payments increase, and the real kicker is… you will find yourself paying a third of the value of the house in interest alone.

Here is an example: (I’ll use round numbers just to make it easier)

Let’s say you want to purchase a house for £300,000, and you put down a £50K deposit which is around 17% of the purchase price. This means your LTV, Loan To Value, would be 83%. The remaining £250,000 would be taken as a mortgage from the bank, who offer you a 3% interest rate to pay it back over 25 years. As the graph below shows, your payments would be £1186 a month, which are made up of both capital and interest, and assuming you make those payments for the 25-year term, you would end up paying back to the bank £355,658 in total. Of that total figure, £105,658 of it is interest, which is more than a third of the property’s value. 

According to a study conducted by L&C Mortgage’s, approximately 36% of all UK mortgage’s are currently on a Standard Variable Rate, SVR for short, meaning they have let their fixed interest deal expire and have moved to the bank’s ‘Standard Rate’. This SVR percentage is typically much higher, around the 4% mark, meaning anyone who is sat on this is over-paying every month. If we take the 3% example above, but increase the interest rate to 4%, what you get is the graph below.

As you can see, the monthly payment has increased to £1320, and the total you will pay back to the bank has increased by more than £40K to £395,878. This shows just how powerful an extra 1% can be, and also how detrimental it can be in your goal of eventually paying off the mortgage.

If you think paying this amount of interest is crazy, then your absolutely right! But what can you do about it?

The answer is, you can re-mortgage, otherwise known as Mortgage Refinancing.

When you first take out your mortgage, it will be on a short term deal, typically 2-3 years. What you must not do is let that deal expire. BEFORE the deal ends, you need to start searching around and start the process of Mortgage Refinancing. This is a very similar process to comparing car insurance, your checking with other companies to see who will give you the best deal. In this case, you’re checking all the other banks to compare mortgage interest rates, to find out if they will give you a better deal than what you currently have with the bank that you currently hold your mortgage with. Similar to car insurance, you can complete these checks yourself with relative ease. Some people like to use a mortgage broker which is somebody who will complete the checks on your behalf, but beware that some will charge a fee, so make sure to enquire about fees upfront before using their services.

You may be thinking, why would another bank offer me a better deal? Well, over the 2-3 years that you have had your current deal, you have been making payments to pay off the mortgage, reducing the amount you owe to the bank. This will mean your LTV, Loan-to-Value has decreased, which is one of the key things bank’s look at when determining the interest rate they will offer you. Therefore, by the time you come to refinance your mortgage, you should be able to get at least the same interest rate or better. In the case of the latter, when you can get yourself a lower interest rate, the effect this can have on the overall total to pay back to the bank can be INCREDIBLE.

Let’s take the first example from above, where you started with a £250,000 mortgage at 3% over 25 years, with monthly payments set at £1186 and a total to pay back £355,658.

If you could refinance this mortgage down to 2%, the monthly payments would fall to £1060, immediately saving you £126 a month. The total to pay back falls to £317,891, meaning you would save yourself a WHOPPING £37,767 in interest.

THIS IS THE MAGIC OF MORTGAGE REFINANCING.

The beauty of this is ANYONE can do it!

Anyone who currently has a mortgage can re-mortgage their home, and with a relatively small amount of effort involved, the impact refinancing can have not only on your mortgage but on your overall financial situation, cannot be underestimated.

Don’t forget, this is NOT a one time only thing. Mortgage deals typically only last between 2-3 years, therefore you should be looking to repeat the process of refinancing many many times over the course of the mortgage term.

Do not be that someone who lets their mortgage deal expire and transfer over to a Standard Variable Rate. Be the one that actively manages their mortgage and gets the VERY BEST deal available to them. If your reading this right now and you are not sure what’s happening with your mortgage, NOW is the time to do something about it. Don’t let your mortgage control you, get in the driving seat and take control of IT.

The savings to be made are huge, and with 36% of all UK mortgage’s currently sat on an SVR, there is a MASSIVE amount of people out there who could be cashing in right now.

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At some point in your life, you have to decide to stop chasing things.

People are constantly chasing more money, a promotion at work, a bigger house, a better car, more followers on Instagram etc. They never know when to stop. But for those of us on the path to FIRE, it is absolutely crucial that you know when to stop, and the only way to know this is to define your version of ‘Enough’. Even more crucial, once you reach your version of Enough, you must pull the trigger and retire. Don’t carry on chasing more, more, more. Any day spent in work after you have reached your Enough figure is a day that you cannot get back. It will be a day wasted, and all for the sake of having more.

But how do you know when you have reached the point of Enough, the point where you are ready to retire and never look back. 

Well, this all comes down to defining your own version of Enough.

If you do not define your own version of ‘Enough’, you will be forever cursed to chase more. But to be able to finally stop and decide its time to retire, you first need to know what your own finish line looks like. Maybe your finish line is one million, maybe its five million, or maybe it’s just a few hundred thousand. It could be any of these figures because there is no guide on what is ‘Enough’, ultimately that has to be decided by you and you alone. 

So, how do we define Enough?

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things”

First, you must understand your goals. Your goals need to be something that excites you and that you are passionate about, there is no sense living a life without passion. The journey to achieve your goal needs to be exciting and something that you are going to enjoy, or else you simply won’t stick to your goal, you will find some excuse to veer off and lose sight of what you were aiming for. Your goal also needs to be something that you honestly believe within yourself is achievable. For me, my main goal is to be Financially Independent, meaning I have enough money saved up, or enough passive income, that I no longer need to work. 

You also need to commit to making daily choices that help you achieve your goal. They may be small and seem insignificant at the time, but don’t forget the power of The Compound Effect, even the smallest savings can have a HUGE impact on your savings over a long period of time.

Defining Enough is different for everyone. Friends, family and peers will all have their own idea of what they consider enough, but that doesn’t have to be what you consider Enough. Learn to live life on your own terms, not how friends, family and society tells you to. 

“Never give up what you want most, for what you want today”

As you make your way towards your end goal, there will be many forks in the road, times where you could decide to walk away and lose faith in what you have been working towards. In these times, try not to lose sight of what is truly important. You set your goal in the first place because deep down you knew that it is what you truly desired for your life, so stay strong and keep putting one foot in front on the other. There will be no greater pay off than when you can finally say you have reached Enough.

To reach Enough, you must learn the art of Delayed Gratification, without this you will not be able to achieve the goals you have set. 

*Delayed Gratification is the process of resisting the temptation of an immediate reward, in preference for a greater reward later down the line.

An example of Delayed Gratification is the well known ‘Marshmallow Test’ …

The Marshmallow Test

A researcher and a child are sat together in a room. The researcher hands a child one single marshmallow and tells the child the following.

‘This is your Marshmallow, you can do with it what you like. If you would like to eat it right now, then feel free to and enjoy it. However, I have to leave the room just for a little while and when I come back, if you still have the marshmallow with you, then I’m going to give you another marshmallow, so you will have two!’

The principle behind this experiment is to find out whether the child can understand the benefits of Delayed Gratification. It has been proven that if a child can understand and implement the process of Delayed Gratification, their chances of success in later life are greatly increased. This is because deep down they understand the principle of saving something today, as it will lead to having more in the future.

This same test is taking place in every single person’s life on a daily basis, and the majority of people in our society choose to eat their marshmallow right away, rather than save it and get another one later down the line. We live in a society that promotes phrases such as ‘You only live once’, which actively encourages people to spend everything they have today and not think about their future, ultimately setting everyone up for a life of unhappiness. If you can master the art of Delayed Gratification and implement it effectively with the goal you are working towards, you will set yourself up for a life of wealth and happiness.

“The ability to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success”

Finally, for those that have set their goals and are now on the path to Financial Independence, I hope it brings you everything you hoped for and more. I too hope that one day I will have enough money saved so that I can pursue my passions and live every day to its fullest, however I choose.

For those still unsure what their goal may be, a great place to start is to ask yourself one question…

‘How do I define Enough?’

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There is very little in life more powerful than the Mind.

It can lead you to the levels of success that many could only ever dream of, or it can shackle you to the deepest depths of despair.

The mind is, without doubt, the greatest tool you have at your disposal, but it can also be your greatest weakness that you carry with you everywhere you go. What many do not realise is that your mindset is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It works along the same lines as The Law Of Attraction, meaning we all have the ability to attract whatever we want into our lives, good or bad, we simply need to focus on it using the mind, and it will eventually manifest itself into our reality.  This philosophy can be incredibly powerful for the optimist, who only focuses their mind on positivity and gratitude, however, it can have devastating effects on the pessimist, who has negative and defeatist thoughts constantly flowing through their mind.

Once you learn to control your mind and sculpt the thoughts within it, everything will feel as though it is within your reach. Wealth and success are directly linked to the mindset of the individual, therefore if you are someone who is trying to take control of your finance’s, and striving to achieve the end goal of Financial Independence, you must first learn to master the mind.

“Be the master of your mind, and the mentor of your thoughts”

There are two types of mindset’s that almost everyone will fall into:

Scarcity – This mindset is built around negativity, self-sabotage and fear. The fear of failure, the fear of missing out, the fear that you will never have enough. A person with this mindset will often say ‘I have no choice’ and believes life happens TO them.

OR

Abundance – This mindset has you in the driver’s seat. It is built around empowerment, positivity, appreciating what you already have and being hopeful for what may come along in the future. A person with this mindset believes life happens FOR them.

If you were honest with yourself, which category would you fall into right now?

Let’s take a closer look at the Scarcity mindset. This is the person who tells themselves ‘I could never do that’, ‘I could never be that successful’, ‘I could never afford that’. With thoughts of this nature, they will find themselves never being able to do anything. If a person tells themselves ‘I could never afford that’, then guess what, they won’t ever be able to afford it. Mentally they have already lost that battle. They have already decided they can’t afford it, therefore make no effort to try to change the end result, meaning ultimately they end up not being about to afford it. Is this because they are afraid of the hard work it may take to be able to get themselves into the position of being able to afford the item? Or is it because they are scared that they might put a lot of effort into trying to afford the item, only to get halfway and fail?

The scarcity mindset breeds a lot of negative traits. Common traits that are easily visible are a lack of belief, narrow mindedness, being judgemental and being jealous of someone else’s achievements. People with this mindset are always looking at what they haven’t got as appose to what they have got. They will always look at a successful person and think ‘What lottery did they win?’, or ‘What get rich quick scheme did they use?’, rather than try to understand the hard work and effort that went into that individual’s success.

“The Mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible Master”

Another common trait is a lack of responsibility when it comes to their own failings. Have you ever heard someone who hasn’t got much money say ‘My family have never had much money’ ? or ‘I’v never been good with money’. This may be true, but it is also an excuse that the person is telling themselves to justify why they haven’t got much money at this point in their life. It’s not their fault they don’t have any money, it’s because their family has never had any money, or that nobody ever took the time to teach them how to manage their money properly. This way of thinking is simply a way of passing the blame for their own failings onto someone else, rather than accepting responsibility and taking action to rectify them.

However, as you may have guessed, the Abundance mindset is the complete opposite of everything detailed above.

“Master your mind and re-create your reality”

A person with the Abundance mindset will never tell themselves ‘I’ll never be able to afford that’ … instead, they will ask themselves ‘What do I need to do to be able to afford that?’. Rather than tell themselves ‘I could never be that successful’, they simply say ‘I wonder what I need to do to be that successful’ and they then take the necessary steps to find out and develop themselves further.

It is a subtle change of perspective, but MASSIVE in its ability to initiate action and create an on-going, positive ripple effect.

Instead of being feeling bitter and jealous about everything they don’t have, a person with the Abundance mindset will be grateful for everything that they do have.

No more dwelling on past failures, the abundance mindset will have them concentrating on growth and all the success that is to come in their future.

Instead of focusing on what is going wrong in their life, they will focus on what is going right.

They are aware that the only person that is responsible for everything they have and don’t have, is themselves, so if they feel something isn’t going quite right in their life, they know that only themselves can initiate the positive change needed to rectify the issue.

Rather than feeling like they have no choice in who they are, what they do or where they are in their life, this mindset will have them feeling like the possibilities for their life are limitless, and that the world truly is their oyster.

Can you see how powerful this thought process can be? Once you switch over into the Abundance mindset, there really can be no limits to what is possible. You will begin to visualise everything you want to achieve, and it will all start coming to fruition. Once you change the way you think about things, you start to feel different, more positive, energised and hopeful. These feelings allow you to take huge, meaningful actions towards achieving your goals, with a fearless attitude because failure is no longer an option. Finally, the results will be everything you hoped for and more, you will exude confidence and a sense of freedom that others will aspire to.

Remember, the way you Think affects how you Feel, and how you Feel affects the Actions you take, and the Actions you take directly affect the Results you end up with.

Ultimately, the chain of reactions that lead to the results, all stem from the way you Think. Therefore, if you want different results, you must learn to think differently.

“Master the mind, and you will master life itself”

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