A Lesson From Weight Gain

If you’re older than 30 you probably remember a time when you weighed significantly less than you do now. There are exceptions to this of course (and good for you if you’re one of those!) but the fact remains that due to hormonal changes and especially due to a change in activity levels/ability to recover many people gain some weight after their teenage years. I myself can attest to weighing around 60 pounds more than I did when I graduated high school at several times. What happened?

I can tell you what didn’t happen. I wasn’t walking around super-skinny one day, decide to eat 60 pounds of ice-cream sandwich, and wake up with a belly and love-handles the next day. Nope. It took several years of moderate neglect. Day-after-day of eating maybe only slightly more than I needed achieved my weight gain. Over the course of just a few years I gained 60 pounds. It was easy because I just did a little every day and eventually, BOOM! I weighed a lot more!

Thankfully, this same principal works for saving and investing (it also works in reverse for weight loss). Save a little every month. Live on less than you make and save something. A little every month will add up to a little more every year. Years will go by and you’ll have a stack saved up and instead of compounding your weight by increasing your capacity for food, you’ll be compounding interest on your savings (if you’re investing like we teach). Don’t get overwhelmed and assume you need to be saving $10,000.00 a month in order to have some real money some day. The power of compounding can make your small contributions into something big over the right time period.

Whether gaining weight, losing it, or saving money; it’s your daily habits that have the biggest impact. Get those right and you can count on it working out well in the future.