Pay Yourself!

In my process to get healthier, I look not only at what I eat or how I workout, but also at other aspects of my life. It's important to have a healthy body, but with that, you really also need a healthy mind, and a healthy bank account sure doesn't hurt, either.

I am a huge fan of Alexa Von Tobel, author of the book Financially Fearless and the founder and CEO of the financial planning site, LearnVest. She has a weekly show on Sirius that helps people plan for their future by getting them in shape financially. I listen, a lot. Spending has always been an impulse reaction for me. The money always comes. But as I get older I realize that I get to choose how I want to handle that money. I invest it in amazing companies and craftsmen by buying their products and using their services, but I also want to start investing it in my life down the road.

The seed had been planted for a long time coming, but for me, actually doing big time saving hadn't happened.

And then, while listening to the morning show, Wake Up with Taylor, I heard an interview with Priya Milani co-founder of the company Stash Wealth. While the company is geared towards twenty- and thirty-something H.E.N.R.Y.s (High Earners Not Rich Yet), much of the advice certainly applies to late bloomers like me.

The take away from all that I've heard from both Stash and Von Tobel is to pay yourself first. Instead of paying the bills, allotting for groceries, gas, and then putting money into savings, you instead first put into savings and then live off the rest of that money. (Also, don't use credit cards unless you can (and do) pay them off at the end of the month.)

I did it! Yay me!

Today, I made the leap to open a savings account that was on the top of the Stash list of banks. It has the highest APY I could find. Ally and CapitolOne360 were the two favorites because they have really good APYs (in large part because they are online banks and don't need to pay brick and mortar fees).  I was nervous and excited as I named my account it's wish list name, and transferred a large sum of money into it. I am still just paying myself, right? It's my money, being invested in my future, into a savings plan that I can access at any time. But it felt big. Scary even. And then I thought about what that savings plan was being created for, and let out a huge sigh of relief. I did it. I invested in me.