How do you save when you earn little?

If your income is so small you can barely survive, this is what you will do. Start small.

Yes, start small. I know you have been waiting for a magical formula that will save you millions. There is nothing like that. It is that simple yet hard. The weekly or monthly amount you save however small does not matter as long as it is consistently maintained.

One of the mistakes people make about savings is that if the money is not significant enough, they will not save. This means that they will have to wait till they start earning so well to make room for that significant money. The biggest problem with this is that you never know when you will start earning enough. Years can be wasted without saving anything.

Savings can be likened to a drop of water. No matter how small it drips, it has the ability to fill a bucket giving time. So is savings. Even if it is five hundred or one thousand naira you can be able to squeeze out, be diligent with it. Soon enough you will have a reasonable sum that will enable you to invest in something tangible.

Save! Save! and Save! Be unrepentant about it. It is going to take a miracle for you to be financially free if you do not save. If you wait till you start earning millions before you develop a habit of saving, wealth and financial freedom will continue to elude you because you do not have one of the basic ingredients to wealth – savings.

Yes, your income will rise, because at some point you will be promoted in your place of work or your business will get better. But true wealth, the one that can afford you almost anything will never come.

The world’s richest men and women are people who have a good habit of savings. They did not wait till they started making millions before they began to save. They simply worked hard, saved and invested their savings in profitable businesses. They repeated the cycle over and over again and gradually they became wealthy and of course financially free. If you want something, it is a good practice to learn from those who have been there before. In all the biographies and autobiographies of men of wealth that I have read and in all the writings of how the world biggest fortunes were accumulated, I have not seen one that underplayed the importance of savings. They did it, and so can you.