 Hey, what's up guys, Shane here. So today I'm gonna be talking about saving money, why it's so important, how I save nearly 70% of my income, and why it's so important that you do this as well. And I've noticed that a lot of videos on YouTube will tell you that it's very important to save your money, track your money, but then they just give you generic advice, or they tell you that you need to make a spreadsheet and spend 20 hours a week tracking every single cent that goes in and out of your bank account. So I decided to make a video that goes over the practical steps that I took to save nearly 70% of my income that don't take very much time and they're very easy to do. So first things first, why is saving money so important? Well, chances are right now you're living paycheck to paycheck. And the reason I know this is because I decided to read a bunch of boring studies that basically tell me that over half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck somewhere around 70%. Now the problem with living this way is that when an emergency comes up, you end up having to go into debt and borrow money in order to pay for it. And this is why the payday loan business in the United States is a $100 billion industry and the total credit card debt in the United States is over a trillion dollars. Now avoiding getting into debt is a very good reason to save, but an even better reason is if you have a job right now, chances are you're trading your time for money. And once you get enough money and you save up enough money, what you can do is you can flip this around and you can start trading your money for time and this will buy you freedom. And this freedom will allow you to do whatever you want. So maybe you want to retire early and just lay on the beach all day or maybe you want to travel the world. Maybe you don't ever want to retire and you just want to build a business that you love. The big point here is that you should start saving right away. So that way your money will start working for you and not against you and you can gain the freedom to do whatever you want. And then you won't have to worry about everything and I'm gonna show you how to do that right now. So the first and by far the most important thing you need to do is you need to get your mindset right. And you really want to understand the value of a dollar because for the average person watching this channel, $1 invested right now by the time you retire is going to be worth over $20. So whenever you're thinking about buying something you should imagine that thing in one hand and the money in the other hand. And this is especially important when you think about buying clothes. I mean, think about that $350 golden jacket that doesn't match with anything so you're probably only gonna wear it twice. Well, when you calculate it out that's gonna be $175 for each time that you wear it. And if you invested that money instead it would be worth over $7,000 by the time you retire. And I find that it's really useful to think of your money like little workers or little soldiers that kind of just work for you and then you send them out in the world to bring you back more money. And that's basically what you're doing whenever you invest your money because of the power of compound interest. Now the next mindset trick is whenever you're thinking about buying something if it's a small item, wait until the next day to buy it. And if it's a large item, wait at least a week before you decide to buy it. A lot of the time you'll have an emotion or an impulse that will make you wanna buy something but if you just wait until the next day that emotion is gone and then you just don't wanna buy it anymore. And if you still want it the next day you can go ahead and buy it or you can do what I do which is put it on a list of things that I want and then whenever I achieve a goal I will look at this list and I'll pick one thing and then I'll get that thing for myself. This is really useful for getting things done because you basically incentivize you doing things that are good for you with things that you naturally want anyways. Speaking of goals, it's very important that you have a clear vision or goal of where you want to be financially. Do you wanna retire by 40? Do you wanna retire by 60? Do you wanna be a millionaire? Do you wanna be a billionaire like Warren Buffett? It's very, very important and I can't emphasize this enough that you have a clear vision of where you want to go and it'll be kind of like a North Star that always leads you in the right direction. And without a clear vision or goal you'll probably just end up going in circles and not really get anywhere. Now you don't have to get crazy with this budgeting and become like a minimalist who lives in a van or someone who uses like one-ply toilet paper or anything like that but it is very important for you to keep a budget and this is gonna be my second tip. Now the first step to making a budget is to go ahead and track what you're spending and the easiest way to do this is to download an app like Mint. It takes about 15 minutes to set up. You just, you know, connect your credit cards and your debit cards to it and it automatically tracks all of your purchases. Once you do this, it will be extremely easy to see where your money is going and then you'll be able to cut back on certain expenses and you'll probably find that you have a subscription to like RuneScape or something that you haven't used in five years and you'll get rid of all those. Now realistically speaking, there's only about five essential needs that everybody has. And in no exact order, these are food, shelter, transportation, clothing and health. And you'll find that a lot of the non-essential items you can just completely cut out of your life, you just don't need them, you're basically just throwing your money into a black hole. Now with the essential items, you'll find that you can really cut down on a lot of those expenses. And when I first started doing this a few years back, I was just amazed at how much money I was spending on food. I was spending over $1,000 a month and most of it was just like going out to expensive dinners with friends, eating Chipotle, Starbucks, in and out, all of that stuff that you really don't need. And I cut all of that out and now I spend about $300 a month on food. And so that means I have an extra $700 to invest and you can do the math there. Meal prepping by using a crock pot takes almost zero time, it's much cheaper and it's also healthier than just eating out all the time. Now this is just one example but honestly there are a lot of things that you can do this with. You just have to check your Mint app every single month and then just start cutting back or cutting down on expenses that you don't need. Now an example of cutting costs for shelter would be getting roommates. This can cut your costs in half or maybe even one third. An example of cutting costs with transportation is to not buy a new car. Instead buy a car that's five to 10 years that's already taken most of the hit of depreciation and it's gonna be much cheaper insurance, maintenance, et cetera, everything is gonna be much cheaper. If for clothing you can still look really good on a budget, just focus on classic pieces like black, white, you know, white shirt, blue jeans and then things that match really well with black and white. This will never go out of style and you can wear it just about all year round. Now the next thing you should do is automate everything. You know, you need to have a central bank account where money comes into and then every single month automatically money will get funneled either to a savings account or maybe an investment account and you just don't have to do anything, they do all the work for you. Now what I did is I started off with about 15% of my income and then I worked my way up to 50% and then after a while I was able to work my way up above 65% or so and that's where I feel comfortable and my personal goal is to retire around the age of 35 so saving 65 to 70% is where I'm aiming for and when you first start saving, it's a good idea to funnel all of your money into a savings account and then once you have enough saved to where it could cover all of your expenses for six months, then you wanna start putting all of your money into either an index fund, a Roth IRA, some type of investment account basically. Now automating things is obviously useful because you don't have to manually take the time to transfer money from account A to account B but the real magic here is it tricks your brain into thinking that you have less money than you actually have and because of this, a lot of those natural urges to buy stuff will just go away and the last tip that I have for you is to find things that make you happy that don't cost very much money and then do those things a lot and I know this sounds stupidly simple but let me explain. Our brains are so good at tricking us into thinking that doing certain things are good for us when they're actually really bad for us. Think about the bad relationship that you stayed in for too long. Think about all the times where you ate really bad food and then felt crappy afterwards. Think about all the times where you should have been studying when you have a test six hours later but for some reason you're watching videos on YouTube. Our brains trick us so it's extremely important for us to identify what actually makes us happy long term. Not things that make you happy for five seconds and then you feel like crap afterwards. And the key to discovering this is whenever you come across something like this you must, must, must write it down. Make a list of things on Google Docs or whatever you wanna use. Keep it on your phone at all times so you can access it very easily. So examples of this would be maybe like hiking, playing sports, hang out with friends, maybe if you're an adrenaline junkie, maybe you like to skydive or just do extreme sports, something like that. Whatever it is, identify it and then write it down and then do that thing a lot. So an example for me is I really love making videos and helping people out. I always love filmmaking. I've always loved watching films, video editing, that sort of thing and I like helping people. It makes me feel very fulfilled and so that's what I do. I make videos that help people. So putting this all together and summing things up you need to get your mindset right so that you understand the value of a dollar so that you can properly weigh the cost and benefit of all the purchases that you make. Then you need to get a simple app like Mint so that you can make a budget and then you need to run your finances kind of like a business so you just know what things you're actually spending your money on and what things are essential to your life. After you've done this, you want to automate everything so that your money is automatically going into either a savings account or an investment account. That way you don't even see the money every month and your brain thinks that you don't have any. And the last thing you wanna do in order to avoid boredom which generally leads to you spending more money is to find things to do with your free time that make you happy and then do those things a lot. And usually these things won't cost very much money because the best things in life are free. Thanks for watching the video. If you made it this far, don't forget to smash the like button, subscribe, comment, hit the notification bell, all that good stuff. I work really hard on these videos and I appreciate all the feedback you give me. So until next time, bye for now.