The Stability Project
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Understanding Your Debt4 min read · 5 sections

Pay Yourself First

Flip the usual order of your money: save a small amount automatically before spending, instead of saving whatever's left over.

Section 1 of 5

The default way most of us try to save goes: get paid, cover the bills, live your life, and save whatever remains at the end of the month.

The trouble is that for most people, in most months, nothing remains — and not because of weakness. Spending naturally expands to fill available money (researchers call the income version of this "lifestyle creep"), and a month always finds a way to be unusual: a birthday, a car noise, a school fee. "Leftover" saving asks you to out-discipline that pattern twelve times a year, forever. It's a strategy that loses to ordinary life.

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