The following is a guest post from Martin of Studenomics, where he helps you have some fun while saving a buck or two. Please contact me if you would like to guest post on RFI. I will be over at Make Money Your Way talking about how to make money with your garden.
We all want to look great and have money in the bank. Nobody thinks about being broke and out of shape. Life just sort of happens. We get busy, we put our goals on the backburner, and we never grab control. Our jobs take most of our energy, we get into bad spending habits, and we find ourselves not happy with where we are. I don’t want this to happen to you.
This is why I wanted to write about the importance of building wealth and muscle at the same time. I also wanted to share just how easy it is. Anyone can do both. The goal isn’t to be a millionaire with no body fat. The goal is to improve a little each day.
What can help you build muscle and wealth at the same time?
Never miss a workout.
Richard Branson has gone on record to say that working out is responsible for his increase in productivity. Whenever anyone asks him about productivity, he tells them to workout.
If a billionaire has time to workout, what’s your excuse? Especially one that’s so much older than all of us.
You should never ever miss a workout. Consistency is key. You need to become better at building habits and committing to things. Once you start missing workouts, this can transcend into other areas of your life.
If you want to get extreme here on both ends, you can ditch a gym membership and treat the world as your gym. All that I suggest is that you create a workout plan that you will stick to. This alone, will help you feel better and be in control of your life.
Cook some of your meals.
If you’re like me (young and single), there’s no chance that you’re going to cook every single meal. It just won’t happen. This is why I suggest that you start off by cooking some of your meals. This will save you money and help you control what goes into your food.
I don’t want to get into conspiracy theories here, but the further away your meal is from your own kitchen, the less control you have over the food and the ingredients used. I want you to grab control of what you need.
You’ll also find that cooking provides you with a sense of clarity. When I’m mentally exhausted, I like to hit to the grocery store to load up on food. I then play some music, invite some friends, and get a nice meal going. Sadly, most of my meals are a chicken and broccoli recipe that I stole from an ex-girlfriend. One day, I’ll learn to cook something more exotic.
Be accountable for everything.
Please never ever blame anybody for your problems. It is all on you. You’re responsible for everything. Once you start feeling sorry for yourself or start blaming the world for your problems, you’ll lose control. It’s difficult to get that control back. Don’t lose it in the first place.
Your finances and your health are YOUR problem. Nobody will ever care about your health or your bank account as much as you do. Remember that.
Hold yourself accountable.
Improve a little every single day.
You won’t stop eating junk food overnight. You likely will never stop eating junk food. So don’t lie to yourself by thinking that you’re going to rid yourself of junk food forever.
This same theory also applies to your wealth. You will always have moments of weakness! I bought a laptop in Budapest without putting much thought into it.
We all spend money foolishly. We all eat junk food. The trick is to improve slowly.
It’s okay to plan cheat days. There are days where I don’t care about money at all. I put some extra money aside and I do whatever I want with it (usually buy beers). These are also coincidentally my cheat days where I eat whatever I want (pizza).
As long as you’re improving a little bit at a time, you’re on the right track.
That’s how you can build your wealth and muscles at the same time. I would love to answer any questions that you have on either topic.
Please don’t forget to check out my Life After College Course, where dozens of students have already started working towards paying off debt/building their income.
This post was featured on the Yazekie Carnival, Carnival of Money Pros, Bone Muscle, Personal Finance Carnival, Studenomics, thank you!
There is an iPhone app galled Gym-pact where you nominate how many days per week you will go to the gym and enter your credit card details – it bills you for every day you fail to meet your goal (using GPS tracking), distributing the funds amongst all of the users who reach their goal. I don’t think there is any significant money to made doing this, but it sure does provide an incentive to go if you are being billed every time you skip!
Wow. I have to check this out.
I really like the be accountable for everything. Whatever you control you should be accountable for it. Even if you dont get it done at least say it was your fault. Complete change cant happen over night but little by little you can get to where you want in wealth and getting in shape/building muscle.
It sure would motivate me!
Dang, that was supposed to go under Financial Independence above. Sorry!
That’s right Thomas. I believe in sharing the successes together and accepting the blame individually. It’s nobody else’s fault.
Consistently going to the gym is so important. Once you’re on a regular schedule it becomes much easier to keep up your routine, at least that’s what I’ve found over the past year or two.
Oh man. I wish my brother was consistent! He made me wake up before noon today to take him to the gym lol!
I absolutely love the idea of incremental improvement over time. I think if we try to do to much, to quickly, we burn out and just stop doing what we are doing. If we continue to chip away at things, we tend to see a life change that will stick over time.
This is a trap I fall into over and over again. I go 110% until I just can’t go anymore.
Yup. The goal shouldn’t be perfection. It’s to improve a little everyday. I wasn’t perfect with my diet this week, but I’ve been able to avoid pizza, which happens to be my main weakness.
Trying to improve just a little bit each day is a really great approach. You can’t change everything all at once. But you can focus all of your energy into improving one tiny thing and doing it repetitively day after day. Then once you master that, you move on to the next one. Good stuff here.
Being consistent matters a lot whether it is health management or wealth management. I liked the idea of improving a little every day. Yeah, it is very much true that we cannot cheat ourselves when we are tempted to eat those junk food or spend money without much thoughts. Improving daily can put you on the right track. Well said Martin and thanks for sharing your ideas
Like others have said, consistency is so key. That is what I still struggle with as my schedule is sort of crazy now that we work from home. If I don’t put it in my schedule, it’s likely not going to happen so I just have to make it a priority.
I like the idea of having the occasional cheat day when you continue with your healthy lifestyle routine. It is so important in my own life to schedule workouts so I follow through with them. I personally need structure in my own life or I’ll just be lazy.
Cheat days are awesome. I’m fixing to have an epic one on Saturday.
Richard Branson has time to workout because he can pay other people to take care of his menial daily tasks!
Health is just as important as wealth though if not more so. It’s all about developing the right habits, then workouts or eating healthy become a matter of routine.
Okay, fair point on Branson. However, he can easily make excuses for why he’s too busy to train and he doesn’t.
I agree, billionaires have time to work out because they can pay people to do things like make meals, clean the house, tend to the landscaping, do their shopping. You add all those things up and you can generally find some available time, I don’t care how rich and busy you are! 🙂
These are great tips. I started working out consistently almost a year ago and it’s one of the best things I do everyday. I enjoy it and it makes me feel better when I’m done.
When you pay attention to the details good things happen. One of the best sayings I heard in regard to this was ‘Success is doing all the little things well’. When you pay attention to the little stuff the big stuff always goes your way. Consequently, when you spend money and time without thinking, you don’t get anywhere you want because you’re getting nickel-and-dimed to death. That won’t get you where you want, it’s going to get the people whose business you’re supporting where they want. That’s fine for them, but we need to think and take care of us before we can help others.
I think it’s important to set achievable goals. I know it keeps me motivated 🙂 Working out also allows me to keep my sanity on most days. 🙂
Great article! The word that always comes to mind is inertia. Once you get on a roll with saving money, paying down debt, working out…it becomes a habit. But if you are all over the places with your consistency you lose that inertia. It took my YEARS to be continuous about budgeting. I started and stopped so many times, but one day it finally stuck, and now I have that inertia. The hardest part is just getting started, but like the Nike slogan, just do it!
Exercise keeps me sane. If I miss more than two days a week, I feel like the worst slob on the planet and don’t want to do anything. You can have time if you make time and it’s important to you.
Although budgeting is a top priority for me working out is an even bigger priority. Without good health you can have all the money in the world and none of it will matter. When your body is healthy, your mind is healthy and I’m able to get through my day much easier. Eating good food starts at home with planning and time. Saving time every day to cook a meal for optimal health and nutrition is worth it don’t you think? Thanks for sharing. Cheers Mr.CBB
Reminds me of the cliché, health is wealth. I have experienced it myself. Last Christmas when I was struggling with respiratory problems, I couldn’t focus on my work and few of my clients slipped out. I made it a point then that I’ll take charge of my health. Now I religiously work out and fortunately have some of my clients back on the board.
Cooking at home is a great way to stay in shape, eat healthier, and stay motivated about working out.
Your advice to improve a little every day is spot on. To me, life is a constant challenge to see how we can improve ourselves and the world each and every day.
If we can consistently meet this challenge, then we have lived a good life.
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Well, consistent workouts increase confidence and it will really help to build wealth. Anyway, thanks for an awesome article!!
This is an awesome post. We often want to use excuses for not paying attention to fitness, but it is so important to!