The Good News is that Habits are Hard to Change

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you know how tough it is to change your behaviour. You are used to grabbing some fast food on your way home from work. You commonly drink 2 litres of Coke daily while your doctor proclaims you are pre-diabetic. Trying to stop doing these and many other things that have become habits is difficult, if not impossible.

But here is a trick that works. Pick one year as a timeline. Set the goal to replace one can of Coke daily with a lemonade drink you make from scratch sweetened with honey. You still drink almost the same amount of Coke per day except that one time when you drink something else. After one year, it will become a new habit. So, you then set a goal to replace one other can of Coke and so on. It may take 5 years to replace drinking coke most of the time, but you still drink it when you feel like it, just not so much. You aren’t denying yourself anything just creating a new habit.

It's the same with weight loss. Set the goal to reduce your weight by one pound this year. Weigh yourself and keep that goal in mind.  You might start by walking an extra 5 minutes a day to help you lose that one pound. After one year, that 5-minute walk will become a habit. Or you might try one healthy dinner every week or month. Instead of red meat or fast food once a month you make some soup or eat a vegetable stir fry. You start to create a new habit.

What is important to create new habits is to do it gradually and point yourself in the right direction if you will. You don’t suddenly stop or change anything. You gently tweak your habits to introduce new, easier-to-adopt ones.

With investing it’s the same thing. Start by taking $10 or $25 dollars from your bank account and placing it into a savings account for investing. If you can do that say each time you receive funds from work or other sources, you are starting a new habit. Stick with that amount for at least one year and then see if you can increase that amount. Over time, as you invest those funds, you will become more and more confident in your success with money.

The amount taken doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are starting to build new habits, a bit at a time, over at least a year to create a new habit of saving.

These new habits will also be impossible or very difficult to change, and that’s the idea in the first place.

Remember a very little bit each time is all you need. 

Listen to my free podcast, Invest Like a Honeybee, wherever you get your podcasts.