The First Rule of Personal Finance

It's easier to save $100 ten times than $1,000 once.

I first tried to save money by started with the biggest expenses.  And I did save money, actually, but that well quickly ran out. For most people, the biggest monthly expenses like rent/mortgage, taxes, car payments are hard to control without draconian measures.

But all hope is not lost!  In my case, I discovered that 30% of my income was spent on "small ticket" items of less than $100 per month. Yet these expenses added up to more than $15,000 per year.

This leads me to my first rule of personal finance: it's easier to save $100 ten times than $1,000 once. 

Becoming wealthy, or even free of debt, isn't a matter of winning the lottery or picking the right stock. It's the result of the hundreds or thousands of small decisions that we make day by day, every month. Unfortunately, this probably sounds a lot like work; then again nothing worth doing was ever achieved without effort.