You Deserve to Be Paid

You deserve to pay yourself first and it is the most important element of building wealth.  I hear all the time about how difficult it is to save and invest money. We all succumb to the temptations of the material world. On top of that we have very sophisticated marketers who have studied in detail what we like and how to get us to buy stuff. I am always on the lookout at the “buy now” traps.  Here are two common ones I saw recently:

• Candy and magazines near the grocery checkout – These little items like mints, candy bars, and the latest celeb news all beg for you to just take some and put in your cart. When you consider that one magazine now is close to $10 and a year’s subscription is only a little more than that, it smells rip off —but we do it anyway.
• Water bottles and chocolates near the Macys clothing checkout- How observant of them! Of course a couple of hours of trying on clothes can make you thirsty and tired.  Nowadays, we all don’t travel with water bottles in our purses so at $2 a bottle, that’s over 50% of what you can buy it for in the grocery store, we add it to our clothing purchase.

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. It is easy to say, “Oh, it is only a dollar extra”. But those dollars add up to maybe $50 or more a year.  Over 5 years, you could have accumulated $310 even if you put it in the bank at 1%- not bad.  That’s called compound interest and it is one of the secrets of building wealth. So don’t be tempted by all those overpriced extras that are so easy to buy. Pay yourself first and bank that for your future. Your secure financial future starts with paying yourself first right now.