When it comes to making big changes in your life – saving money, decluttering, following your dreams – we often think of bold moves, things like winning the lottery or having a television show film your clutter in return for having an expert clean it up for you.
In reality, though, success is made up of a series of very small steps.
We’ve often talked about strategies we’ve used to save money for our big trip. But today we’re going to get really specific and practical to show you what we mean.
We’ve previously figured that we need $100 a day to travel around the world. Thinking in the smallest number possible makes it easy for us to make the everyday decisions that add up to enough money for us to travel around the world.
Let’s start with haircare. Yes, haircare.
Warren’s haircuts cost $20/month. When we first started saving, we had 25 months before our departure date. By buying his own clippers ($50) and cutting his own hair, he was able to put $450 into the travel budget. That’s 4-1/2 days on the road.
I started coloring my hair at home with L’Oreal, which saved $70 every 6 weeks, a total of $1260 for our trip. That’s almost 13 days on the road.
This one small piece of our budget – haircare – will give us 17 days on our trip! Neither of us sacrificed a great deal (we both still got our hair done), but we made a significant impact on our budget.
It is this step and dozens of other small steps that have helped us save enough money to travel around the world.
Now, I’m not advocating that everyone give up professional haircare services. But I do know that there are areas in your life that you can rework, improvise, or completely cut out in order to save money for your dreams.
We all have different desires – we still have wine in the budget even though it could save us more money not to – but the trick is to find out what doesn’t really matter so much and start making changes there.
If Small is the new Big, what is your number? And what small step can you take today to reach it?
Related Reading:
How We Saved Enough Money to Change our Lives (and How You Can, Too!)
Necessary and Unnecessary Expenses
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About Betsy
What an excellent way of thinking about financial goals in small, achievable goals! Thank you so much. Although we have no travel plans, I think your way of looking at this will really help us towards our own financial goals.
Who would have thought something as basic as haircare could reap such savings? We’re going to write about more of our specific money-saving and decluttering efforts and can’t wait to hear what you guys have to add to it.
Indeed, success comes with little steps. I have a big goal for myself and everyday I do my best to make an effort–no matter small–to take me closer to success. With every change I make every day, one brick is added to my castle.
I like that visual of building a castle, Walter. Another way of thinking is that you can’t get to the big stuff without working out the little stuff first. Imagine running a marathon without ever having jogged around the block first!