Everyone wants financial freedom, but achieving it requires building the right habits. Unfortunately, there are several misconceptions about how habits are formed, including the popular 21 day myth. Building a lasting habit doesn’t follow a fixed timeline. What matters most is finding a way to stay consistent. The good news is that there may be a shortcut. So the real question is, how do you stay consistent when trying to build a new habit, such as budgeting or planning for financial freedom?
At the beginning of the year, three people close to me, Lotana, Jessica, and Mike, made New Year’s resolutions, just like many others. Lotana resolved to read 20 books by the end of the year. Nine months later, she’s on a 276 day reading streak and is now on her fifteenth book. Some of those books are about 400 pages long. When I asked her how she did it, she said, “I just read a few pages every day. Nothing more.”
Jessica, on the other hand, has enrolled in swimming programs several times but is yet to reach her swimming goal. When I asked her what the challenge was, she admitted that she hadn’t put in any extra learning time beyond the training hours. Unlike Lotana, who made reading part of her daily routine, Jessica had relied primarily on her scheduled swimming lessons. She hadn’t yet developed a consistent practice routine outside those sessions.
Lastly, Mike, who had resolved to start gardening, recently shared pictures of the first tomato harvest from his home garden. He said they wouldn’t be buying tomatoes for the next two weeks. Impressive! I told him, “Mike, it must feel really exciting to be able to grow your own food”. He said, “It’s so easy, really. The plants grow themselves. They just need water every day.”
What did Lotana and Mike have in common? Neither tried to accomplish everything at once. They simply focused on doing the small actions they could repeat every day. That’s the shortcut. It’s not about building habits faster. It’s about making consistency easier. Don’t allow yourself to be discouraged by the complexity of the entire journey. Focus instead on the current moment only. Every day, Lotana read just a few pages. Every day, Mike spent a few minutes watering his plants. Days turn into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years of building the desired habit.
The same principle is true for building better financial habits. You don’t have to figure out your entire financial future today. You don’t need to become an expert at budgeting overnight. Start by understanding where your money goes. Make a simple budget for the month. Review your spending regularly. Set aside what you can afford to save, even if the amount seems small. The goal isn’t to transform your finances in a single day. It’s to make better financial decisions consistently, one day at a time. Financial freedom isn’t built by one extraordinary financial decision. It’s built through ordinary decisions repeated consistently over time.
#saldovista #quickbudget #buildwealth #financialfreedom
