A Couple Hundred

Recently, I encountered someone who had claimed to have been doing all the right things and had been able to save a couple hundred dollars each month. He said he brought his lunch to work, drove his 1992 paid off car, and stopped indulging in Starbucks coffee among other things to save. Yet, that couple hundred he saved was not enough.

My comment to him was this:

A couple hundred is a lot more than many people can save in a year...or a lifetime. To me, it seems you're doing pretty well, especially if you're good at not spending the money you have saved. The road to wealth is not always a fast and easy one.

It seems many people still have this idea that if they endure the simple life for just a couple of months they’ll be rolling in extra cash in no time. They look at the road to financial freedom like a drive thru: You order the life you want to have and right around the corner it is handed to you in a bag with minimal effort. They don’t understand that what they are embarking on is a way of living that will change their life, one that requires a great investment of time and a reshaping of one’s attitudes toward money and what it means.

Wealth is also relative. Cumulative fines in the amount of $48,000 would mean little for an NFL player, but for a working class individual, it would mean a lot. People forget that the value of a dollar differs sometimes depending on who is doing the spending. Savings is no different. Being able to save a couple hundred dollars each month means a lot when you look at it from the right perspective.

The man I spoke of here was clearly hoping to get rich overnight. He is still learning that the decision to become financially free means not getting upset about being able to save only a couple hundred every month when he would really like to save twice that much or his whole check. It’s a matter of learning to open up to his own abundance.

The man I described here is living a life of prosperity, but because he is so focused on all the things he has given up, he does not realize it. Do you suppose money and abundance will want to stay with an individual who does not appreciate it? A couple hundred is pretty nice.