How old will you be 10 years from now? 30? 40? 50? Let’s say 10 years from now you’ll be 50. That would mean you’re 40 now - 40 and poor and struggling to make money the same way you were struggling to make money at 30, the same way you were struggling to make money at 20. Doesn’t feel like decades have passed without bull returns? It doesn’t usually feel like much time is passing when you’re stuck in a rut. When things aren’t changing much it’s harder to appreciate the reality that time doesn’t stay unchanged along with your circumstances.

So here you are at 40 having the same financial picture as when you were 20, still wishing you had money, still wondering how to turn a few dollars into a few thousand dollars and starting to feel hopeless. But let’s imagine for the sake of making a point that when you were 20 you started saving a dollar per day. A dollar is not a lot of money. As poor as you and I are we can probably find a dollar lying around somewhere every day if we needed to find one. There are times while doing laundry that as many as $30 get retrieved from pockets, but that’s for another post about lacking respect for money. The point here is, most of us can afford to put away a dollar per day. “Put away” doesn’t mean put it in a lock box where you can access it when you’re short of cigarette money, although you could certainly do that, but you won’t be growing your money in the sense of multiplying what you put away. You’ll just be saving it in a lock box in your house and accumulating more of it as you save. By “put away” what is meant is to put your money in an account where it earns a monetary return.

So imagine if you were putting away a dollar per day every day since you were 20. By age 30 you would have $3,650 in an account somewhere collecting interest. By age 40 you would have $7,300 collecting interest. Without doing more than saving a dollar per day you could have made your money grow. And even if you were saving your money in a lock box under your bed and not touching it, your $7,300 could have served as a down-payment on investment property or a home for yourself if you didn’t own a home and were looking to buy one.

Most of us spend more than $1 per day on things we don’t need that fill a momentary impulse. If you kept tabs on the money you spend every day, at the end of the year you’d probably be shocked to realize you’re spending $500 - $1000 per year on things you didn’t need to buy. At $1000 per year, you’d have $20,000 in your lock box by now, or better yet in an account that is collecting interest. $20,000 is not a lot of money, admittedly, but it’s surely a whole lot more money than $0.

So what are you waiting for? Think it’s too late because you’re 40 already and 20 years from now you’ll be 60? Well 20 years from now you might find yourself age 60 right where you are now at age 40, where you were at age 30 and 20. Why is it impossible? Look at you now? Did you think 40 was going to find you still struggling financially, still with no money on the bank?

There are two things you should tell yourself right now:

1. There’s no time like the present

2. It’s better late than never

It’s time to stop being nonchalant and irresponsible with your money. To grow anything you first need to plant a seed. So let’s plant a seed and start growing some money the sure way.

Do you believe that earning more money will help you attain financial success? Truth is yes, but only if you know just what to do with your money. There’s a large possibility that your financial struggle doesn’t cease to exist just because you earn more money. It’s more about how you manage your money that makes the real difference. Very often you may get a pay hike, bonuses, incentives, cash certificates, return on investments, dividends from stocks and many more cash boons but at the end of the day you are again left with no money.

It isn’t so much about earning more money but how you handle your money is the important question. What do you do with that extra money? Save it in the piggy bank so you can use it on a rainy day, or go and buy the latest gadget that you have been eying for a while. Most people fit in this category. However there are those who know just what to do with their money. Every time a little money comes in, they invest it. It’s the best thing to do, just pretend the extra money did not come along. Quite simply you were managing rather well without the money all these months so why should it be any different now. As soon as you get extra cash, invest it safely and have the money work for you. You can save it at the bank or invest in stocks if you’re already keen in the share market.

You can even start putting your money to back small time investors and businessmen and get a return on your capital. Truth is if you are patient you’ll actually see money grow. Your small investment will start giving you dividends and you can choose to reinvest that money or simply use that money to meet your fancies rather than waste the capital. Whenever there’s a chance of receiving additional finances think of ways of putting that money away. Every dollar that you put away is every dollar saved. And if you got into the habit of saving now, then there’s no need to wait for a pay hike anymore because your little investments will start getting in more and more money for you. Your financial success is dependent on how much money you can save rather than how much you can earn.