David,
I recently listened to your audio of The Automatic Millionaire, I have seen you on Oprah, read Smart Women Finish Rich and am now reading Start Late Finish Rich. Each time I read or reread one of your books I learn something new. I wanted to share with you a couple of my successes along my path to financial freedom.
The latte factor was a biggy. It really hit home how the little things where adding up to be a big thing all combined. My husband and I dramatically reduced our dining out, switched gas stations to a lower cost one, and found several ongoing expenses that were “wants” and not “needs” that we could do without painlessly. Our living expenses have dropped dramatically leaving some income to invest. Before that I took your advice on raising my prices on services provided in my direct mail business. I did a 10% overall increase on services which was years overdue. I was afraid I would lose customers so I had left the pricing alone out of fear. Turns out not a single customer made a comment about the increased costs.
One last thing that I feel is so critical in your teaching is to make savings and investing automatic. Being self employeed it was difficult to stay on course when things would get tight so I would say I would do it next month, it was too easy to figure I could get to it later. When I decided to make it automatic it was just not an option to skip a month here or there and staying on track became so much easier. I am so grateful for the valuable teaching you and other financial advisors are sharing with folks like myself, I just hope that someday soon this will become a regular part of our children’s school education. It seems a shame to teach our children how to become productive working members in society without teaching them how to save, invest and stay out of debt in order to live a financially free lifestyle. Thanks for all your easy to understand and to the point help.