David Bach

They paid themselves first first.

I do.

And I hear it now, Mike, more probably than ever, right?

You know, 20 years ago, I would talk about this idea that, look, if you could save $5 a day, and I called it the latte factor.

And it's a metaphor for how we spend small amounts of money on little things, like literally going to Starbucks and having a coffee every morning.

You know, that used to cost $3.50.

And now if you go to Starbucks, you could easily spend $10 at a quick stop in the morning at Starbucks.

And people would say to me, I've got a job, but I can't use my 401k plan.

I can't afford to pay myself first.

And they would literally be telling me this as they're holding a brand new iPhone and they're sipping their coffee out of a Starbucks cup of coffee.

And I'd say, look, I'm not trying to get you to give everything up.

You don't even have to give up your coffee.

But what if we could get you to start by saving $5 a day or $10 a day?

and i and i would teach people the miracle of compound interest which i still do because the the miracle compound interest is small amounts of money can add up to a fortune over your lifetime a person who starts saving ten dollars a day and invests it in the stock market in a boring index fund like an s p 500 fund

over 30 years can have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings in fact specifically over 40 years they can have 948 000 worth of savings in their retirement account and

That got a lot of people to realize, well, look, not everyone wants to give up their coffee, Mike, but a lot of people realized, you know, he's right.

I do have $5 or $10 a day.

And today I would tell you, like, look, you might even want it to be a little bit more.

You might want to be saving $20 a day.

I talk about what it takes to blow $10,000 a year, which was my most viral post I've ever put out.