We have a limited amount of willpower in a day. The more effort you spend forcing yourself into new behaviors, the quicker you deplete your willpower, and the more likely something is to fall by the wayside.

So if you want to maximize the change in your life, make changes that require less effort or which perpetuate themselves.

When it comes to healthier eating, it’s better to not buy the cookies rather than avoid eating them every time you enter the kitchen.

When it comes to saving money, it’s better to automatically route it into a savings/investing/retirement account than to create savings after you’ve finished spending money.

Sometimes those changes are by accident, and you see if inertia can keep you going.

Changing Work Schedule

A year go, with Rogue Three a few months old, my wife was looking for a change in her work schedule.

With three young boys, ages 0, 2, and 7, her often gone from 7a-6p, and my rotating/fluctuating ER schedule, we needed some relief (her more than me given the demands of new motherhood).

Uncertain if her job would create a part-time role, the possibility of her leaving the workforce was a reality.  I decided we should contribute the max to her 401k as quickly as possible in case she stopped working.

So I dramatically increased her payroll deductions to the 401k; she was able to work out a part-time schedule, but by then the 401k was maxed out for the year.

At that point we were receiving the “full-value” of her part-time paycheck with essentially no deductions — just taxes.

The New Year and New Choices

When her first paycheck was deposited in mid-January, I noticed a problem.  They forgot to pay her.

Well, they did pay her, but it was about 75% less than her final check of 2017.  Turns out, that was roughly equal to the 75% I had set for her 401k contributions 10 months prior.  I never changed the payroll deduction back to spread it over the entire year.

This left a few choices:

1. Change the 401k contribution percentage to even out over the year
2. Spend less
3. Earn more

I told my wife I wanted a challenge — leave her 401k maxed out and adjust to the reduced paycheck.  Even spread out her remaining paychecks would be still be noticeably lower than what they had been, since her income had dropped

I wanted to see if we could accommodate the missing paychecks, and just keep saving her paychecks even after the 401k contributions completed.

We currently save income in retirement accounts, 529 college savings accounts, and by building home equity building through the mortgage.  That money isn’t meant to be used anytime soon.

The goal with saving more is to give flexibility short and long-term for other opportunities.

That could be making it less financially painful to go to Disney World, continuing to give my wife (or me) job flexibility, or pursuing income generating opportunities (such as real estate, though that’s not something we’re actively planning).

Extra savings would thus go directly into a savings account to be used short-term, or invested in a taxable account (or real estate?) for medium or longer term goals.

Ultimately, money is really just a synonym for opportunity.  In and of itself it doesn’t bring happiness or satisfaction.

Option 2 — Spend Less

While I can try to pretend my wife has no income and save the money, we still have the expenses of two working parents.

Childcare, commuting, higher grocery/shopping costs (less time to identify bargains), etc.  Our budget and cash flow are based on having both incomes, part of which goes to subsidizing us working.

Daycare and the mortgage are our two largest expenses.  Daycare will cut in half in 2019 (and stop in 2022), but that doesn’t help us right now.

So that really leaves spending less in discretionary areas.  We’re not doing so well in this area thus far.

We had already purchased my wife a new smartphone before we discovered the paycheck change — her prior one was 3-years old, without functioning GPS, and with a 1-hour battery life, so this was hard to avoid.

We also had our first skiing trip planned as part of me attending (and speaking on a panel) at a medical CME conference.  Skiing is an expensive hobby when you are complete newbies, renting everything, and going to nice resorts.

Our baller minivan was overdue for new tires and maintenance — driving the family around in balding tires wasn’t an option.

So we can trim smaller amounts here and there, and better plan some big-ticket items, but some occasional large expenses are going to happen.  Some by necessity (repairing a car) and some by choice (vacation).

The goal isn’t to completely deprive us by refusing to spend — also my wife won’t let me get away with that.

Option 3 — Earn More

So this is really the best option for now, though the goal is to combine it with option 2.  I’m doing this in several ways

• First two ways are by paying myself back
• • I pre-paid a lot of expenses for the CME conference.  I submitted all the conference receipts to my job and will receive a check back, using my CME funds from my job, that will cover some expenses.
• • We set aside money each month in an online savings account for our periodic, large bills (such as car insurance).  That account had a surplus so I was able to “pay” our regular checking account back some from there.
• We have money going into an HSA — I’ve avoided touching that this year because once it’s pulled out it can never go back. Using this would also be paying ourselves back.
• • We keep enough in HSA money cash to cover our deductible, so at some point we will likely use some of this.  I’ve already made progress towards the deductible by breaking my finger and incurring some bills.
• • With Rogue Two’s asthma medicine costing roughly a zillion dollars, we’re going to hit our deductible every year we’re on the HDHP, no matter what else we do.
• The blog has generated a tiny bit of income in 2018, so that is going towards this as well.  It’s far from lucrative, and I’m  looking to expand in this area (ideas and sponsors welcome).
• I’m part of a huge team working with our university/healthcare system on implementing our new electronic health record — at some point this year I’ll theoretically get paid extra for a fraction of that effort, but it may not be until July (after the EHR is implemented).
• I’ve worked a couple extra shifts in the ED, and will continue to do so (I already do them sporadically).  These extra shifts have to be balanced against my existing work/family obligations and the need to have free time.
• • Piling on a bunch more shifts isn’t a long-term solution, but a dollar made hustling while I am young(ish) will mean several dollars for my future self/family, giving us more flexibility later on.

End Result

My wife gave me explicit instructions  2 months ago “not to freak out,” as I sometimes get cash flow paranoia.  This is an excellent exercise for me because of my personality, but also a good exercise for anyone who wants to save more.  Force yourself to save, pretend the money isn’t there — because it isn’t — and see what changes you can make.

At the time of publication we’re a few paychecks away from filling up her 401k.  The goal will be to keep automatically saving a portion of those deposits elsewhere, though saving all of it may not be feasible.

While the goal here is to pretend we’re living on one-income so we can save the rest, in reality we’re still a two-career family, which means some things can’t be eliminated or easily reduced.

Long term the answer is two-fold: earn more via my “day job” — I’m due to enter the university promotion process sometime this year — and other revenue streams (the blog or real-estate or one of the many things other people do), and spend less on big fixed costs (daycare and mortgage, which only feel like they will never end but eventually will disappear).

None of these things will happen quickly, nor are all figured out.  In a few months I’ll post an update and we can see if this experiment is working.

Read the 6-month follow-up here.