How To Save $1,000 As A Spendaholic Entrepreneur (Acorns)

I have finally for the first time in my freaking life saved $1,000, and I am so stoked about it! I’ve had some really good years and some really bad years as an entrepreneur, but no matter how much money the business brought in, I never found myself saving it. It always went into a new investment and not the best kinds.

There are three main things that helped me to save. Two of three I stopped doing. One I started to do, and ALL are assumed you are making more than your bare minimum to pay bills, expenses, EAT, etc.. Also I’m not a financial advisor (blah blah). This just worked for me after a lifetime of failed attempts to save.

Stopped Re-Investing Every Cent (Unnecessarily)

As an entrepreneur or anyone who doesn’t have a structured, stable salary, times will be good, but that doesn’t mean they will always be good. Some months you may make $10,000, but next month you may make $2000. So (plug your name here), don’t invest in a $4000 computer on the month you make a killing because you want the newest & best one..

Spend your funds wisely or in fact don’t spend them at all. Invest them in the stock market. Or just let them collect dust somewhere before throwing them away on all of the shiny objects Apple has to offer. Damn you, Apple.

For me, when I got a rush of business, I felt unstoppable. I felt like it was the beginning of a money parade and everyone was going to throw money at me for the end of time because my business is the best business in the whole freakin’ universe!! My mind would immediately rush to all the things my business needs to propel itself forward to $20,000 a month. I was always thinking about the next phase of growth and for my business (real estate photography/youtube life), it looked like more and more equipment. The reality is I could have spent $100,000 on equipment and STILL bought more.

It would have been much smarter for me to just save my additional funds, keep my credit score high, and look for ways I can protect and expand my fiscal blueprint, not my cool, vibey studio.

What I’m saying to you is that it’s not worth your financial health to invest in new “tings” prematurely. Trust me on that one.

Stopped Outsourcing Every Single Thing To Subcontractors (don’t move too fast)

When I started to think about saving and why I particularly have struggled with it even as I made upwards of $15k in a month as a business, I couldn’t help but think about what has changed with my situation. I went from running a team of people to being a solopreneur. This changed everything.

I realized that much like equipment I invested into subcontractors etc. WAY WAY WAY too soon. I should have waited another 2 years minimum. This would have kept me VERY busy, yes but I would have been able to pocket SO much more money. My credit wouldn’t have been terrible. My savings would look great. I’d probably have learned more about stocks early on. Maybe I would have gotten in early on Bitcoin 😉

I remember the thought was to hire people to “free up my mind” and allow me to create more of the content I wanted to create. HA! I did that a little, but it wasn’t worth it for the amount of headache and stress the “team” was. Just. Not. Worth. It.

For me, I learned from these mistakes and hopefully I won’t make them again. Now, I’m so focused on becoming financially healthy that I may be a money minimalist before you know it. (Probably not though).

Started Using Acorns:

As you can probably tell, I haven’t always been the best with money. I tend to spend what I have, stay on the go, and live by the words “well, let’s just make more money”.

That’s why downloading Acorns really helped me out.

I’m not going to do a full in-depth review, but I did see that Logan Allec had a nice one here. I will just tell you the features that I found the most helpful.

Investing Your “Spare” Change

Every time I make a transaction. I have the “change” round up to the nearest dollar. That change is then invested into my acorns account. So I can just live my normal life and barely notice that I’m slowly having that change build up in my Acorns investment account.

Investing Weekly

I am able to invest as low as $5 weekly into my portfolio. Some weeks I upped this dramatically if I made more money, but kind of the like the spare change, I enjoy not having to think about transferring money. Just letting it slowly build up.

Putting Savings Aggressively In Stocks

I didn’t really notice much of difference, but I do like how Acorns allows you to choose the risk level of your portfolio from conservative to aggressive.

Of course, I chose aggressive, and I’ve been blessed with $1.30 in dividends and $22.93 of gains in the market.

A couple of other small notes:

• I also really like the invest projections section of Acorns, which shows how much you’ll save over the years if you keep up with the rate at which you have everything set.
• I haven’t set up Acorns LATER or Spend Smarter, but I will be looking more into them.
• They also have lots of rewards/coupons for big brands like Nike. I pay $1/mo for the lite plan. Definitely worth it.
• Another cool thing is that if you invite 3 friends to join and they join you can receive monetary gains so if you want to join, click my affiliate link here to help support your boy! You won’t regret it!

Saving money is really easy for some people, and REALLY hard for others. I feel like for the hustlers money comes and goes so much that it’s more difficult for us to just watch money sit in an account. So we spend it to try and grow. But take it from me, it’s good, better yet GREAT, to save some money until we have a solid emergency fund.

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