Similarities Between Losing Weight & Building Wealth

Interesting arti­cle about diet­ing that res­onates with me as I think about the Elephant’s Paycheck and help­ing peo­ple build wealth. You can total­ly under­stand the arti­cle by read­ing the first and last sen­tences:

Wondering what diet works best for weight loss? Just pick one and get on with it, says University of Massachusetts Medical School researcher Sherry Pagoto.

[…]

“The mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion is, ‘How do you get peo­ple to stick to a plan that helps them lose weight?’ ” she said.

I think the same advice could be said for build­ing wealth (sav­ing for retire­ment).

Doesn’t mat­ter what “sys­tem you use” just start doing it!

And, the key ques­tion is less about the “sys­tem” than it is about “get­ting peo­ple to stick with the sys­tem” they’ve cho­sen.

Personally, that’s one of the things I like about the Elephant’s Paycheck Blueprint. As an “invest­ing blue­print” it focus­es on safe­ty and fun as a way to moti­vate peo­ple to stick with the plan. At the end of the day, it’s that moti­va­tion that makes the dif­fer­ence.

For exam­ple, one of the things the blue­print focus­es on is mea­sur­ing pay rais­es. Who does­n’t like pay rais­es? Imagine get­ting a pay raise every month, and two some months? Simple, safe & effec­tive, all while using fun as a way to moti­vate you to stick with the pro­gram regard­less of whether the mar­ket is going up or down. Look at the chart at the top of the post, notice how the red line goes up and to the right, regard­less of what the mar­ket is doing at that par­tic­u­lar moment in time.

Change your per­spec­tive to the pay raise, set­up your port­fo­lio to get 15 or more pay rais­es a year, then sit back and watch how good it makes you feel.