Pay Yourself First

How I Learned to Put Myself First in Line, Not Last

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

I had heard the advice for years, “Pay yourself first” as a savings mechanism. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

“If I don’t have enough money to pay all the bills, how on earth can I pay myself first?” I wondered. “Paying myself first seems greedy.” I declared.

I kept on this way until I finally, at last, changed course. I spent so many years scrambling to save, trying dozens of different ways to get ahead, with none of them working, until I finally did it — I paid myself first. And, you guessed it, it worked.

I know, I know, you are saying what I said, that it can’t be done. That there is simply not enough wiggle room. But there is.

Here’s how I started:

Every time I used my debit card to pay for groceries (or whatever), I took $5 cash out at the register.

It was that simple.

That $5 went into a jar that I considered truly, honestly, immovably untouchable. Seriously. I put it in this half-sized mason jar in my closet and acted like I was a huge failure if I even considered dipping into it for anything. I figured hey, you know what? I sometimes spend $5 on a fancy coffee at Starbucks, so how could I possibly not be able to spend an additional $5 on groceries or $5 at the…