Free · Five pages

How To Save Your First $1,000

Five steps, one worksheet, and the reason your savings keeps resetting to the same number.

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Your savings account keeps resetting to the same number, and it is not because you lack discipline.

It is because the money is sitting at the same bank as your checking account, where moving it takes about four seconds and two taps. That is not a savings account. It is a checking account with a different label on it.

This is the fix, in five steps, on five pages you print and fill in with a pencil.

The five steps

1. Open a savings account at a different bankNot a second account at your bank. A different institution, so a transfer back takes one to three days instead of two taps.
2. Set one automatic transfer for the day after paydayNot payday itself. The morning after, when the big bills have cleared. Start at twenty-five dollars, or ten if that feels tight.
3. Audit your subscriptions, then raise the transfer the same dayCancel what you would not notice by Friday, then immediately raise the transfer by exactly what you cut. Cancelling on its own is not saving.
4. Sell one thing this weekNot the most valuable thing you own. The easiest one. The point was never the forty dollars.
5. Write down what counts as an emergency, and sign itUnexpected, necessary, and now. Decide it while nothing is wrong, because you will not decide it fairly at eleven at night.

And a worksheet

Page three is the one that does the work. Every account with your name on it, what it is for, what is in it today, and how many taps it takes to spend your savings. Ten minutes, and it will probably tell you something uncomfortable.

What it is not

• No stock picks
• No crypto
• No side hustle listicles
• No guy in a rented car explaining passive income
• No assumption that you have money left over at the end of the month