When we were newlyweds, I remember everything costing so much. New tires. Furniture. Paying my husband’s car insurance when he was under 25. Rent. Wanting to travel to see family. All of it just seemed so expensive, and we were fresh out of college with really not much extra income.
Through that time, I was trying to figure out what this whole budgeting thing meant. I had always been taught to not put money on credit cards, to live below your means, but what did that actually mean, and what could I actually control? I felt simultaenously rich (since I actually had a job) and also poor because it still wasn’t much.
This post is, if I was going to do it again, the boring habits I would put in place to get to your first million dollars.
You might be reading this as a new college student or newlywed, young in your twenties. You might be reading this in your mid-thirties, mid-forties, or mid-fifties. I don’t know what season of life you’re in, but no matter which season, these boring habits can go a long way and can be applied to whatever stage of life you’re in.
As always, I’m not your financial advisor. These are simply things I’ve learned along the way from listening to various podcasts and applying them in my own life. They are what helped us achieve Coast FI (coast financial independence) and allowed us to continue to multiply our money and build the life that we want over the years. They are not in any particular order, so read them all and take your next best step!
Boring Money Habits That Build Wealth: Simple Steps to Your First Million
1. Automate Your Savings
I had all sorts of automatic transactions going out of my account, so in the beginning, I was constantly checking how much money did we actually have in our account, how much in savings.
What I learned is every dollar counts and can be multiplied in some manner in a savings account. When the money sits in a checking account, it’s not being used as well as it could be.
The first thing I want you to do is automate savings in some form or manner. Automatically put it into a savings account. Set up an automatic transfer to your 401(k) or to an IRA. Whatever that looks like for you, try to automate it, because automating it makes it one less decision you have to make. It also makes it more difficult for you to dip into savings money that you have set aside for other important things, and it just removes one opportunity for human error to make sure that you are saving regularly.
One of the best benefits of automating savings is the idea of dollar cost averaging. Basically, when you invest regularly at intervals, the investments over time are going to give you the best returns on average compared to trying to time the market.
Dollar Cost Averaging Example:
Let’s say you have $12,000 to invest over the course of a year, assuming a 7% annualized return:
Scenario 1: Lump Sum at Start of Year
• Invest $12,000 on January 1st
• Value after 1 year: $12,840
Scenario 2: Monthly Investments (Dollar Cost Averaging)
• Invest $1,000 per month for 12 months
• Value after 1 year: Approximately $12,462
Scenario 3: Lump Sum at End of Year
• Invest $12,000 on December 31st
• Value after 1 year: $12,000
While the lump sum at the beginning technically yields the highest return in a steadily rising market, dollar cost averaging through monthly automation has a crucial advantage: it removes the temptation to time the market and ensures you actually invest consistently, regardless of market conditions. Most importantly, it makes saving automatic and effortless.
2. Start a Roth IRA Early
I am a proponent of Roth IRAs, especially when you are younger, because the longer that the funds are in there, the more they can grow with compound interest and the less you pay in taxes on your earnings. $1,000 put in now is better than $1,000 later, just with how it’s going to grow and compound on itself.
The Power of Starting Early:
Example: $1,000 invested at age 25 vs. age 35 (assuming 7% annualized return)
- Invest $1,000 at age 25, value at age 50 (25 years): $5,427
- Invest $1,000 at age 35, value at age 50 (15 years): $2,759
That’s nearly double the money, just by starting 10 years earlier. That extra decade of compound interest is worth $2,668 on just a single $1,000 investment.
If you can’t do anything else, I recommend maxing your Roth in the beginning. It varies from year to year, but right now the contribution limit is $7,000 for 2025 (and I believe it remains $7,000 for 2026, though you should verify current limits). If you can max that every year for you and your spouse, you’re going to be a long way towards preparing for retirement.
What Maxing Your Roth Early Really Means:
If you max out your Roth IRA at $7,000 per year for the first 10 years of marriage (ages 25-34), then never contribute again, by the time you are 65, assuming a 7% annualized return, you would have approximately $533,000 in your account. That’s from just $70,000 in contributions over 10 years, and then letting compound interest do the rest of the work for 31 years.
Now, if you have a 401(k) or TSP, I definitely recommend matching whatever your employer matches first, up to the percentage they offer. That is money that your company owes you, and that’s free money that you’re not putting in yourself. But after that, I would say max the Roth IRA.
Related Post: 2026 Simple Budget Template Pritnable FREE
Don’t Forget to Actually Invest the Money
One more thing about Roth IRAs: don’t forget that just because you transfer the money doesn’t mean that it is invested. Do yourself a favor. Do your research on mutual funds. The general recommended ones in the FI community are VTSAX for Vanguard or FZROX for Fidelity because of the low fees and broad index fund exposure. If you only start there, that is a great place to start—simple and secure.
You can also talk to a financial advisor, of course, or look at advice for building a simple portfolio that goes across different sectors. You can do as much or as little research as you want. What I’m hoping to do is introduce some small things and changes that you could make to simplify your finances.
3. Use High-Yield Savings Accounts
I didn’t realize for the longest time that, okay for real, you cannot make any interest in your checking account. That 0.01%, that one penny (which they don’t even print anymore), is not going to make a difference for you.
Put your extra money in a high-yield savings account, either at a different bank so it’s harder to get to, or when you open up a brokerage account, put it in a money market account and earn something that beats inflation if possible. Look for 3.5%, 4%, or 5%.
Find the best option that you can to allow your money to grow and to be working for you rather than against you.
This is the opposite effect of using credit cards. With credit cards, you spend money, you gain interest, and you end up paying more for an item than the original price.
But you do need to try to find something that beats inflation and definitely beats the 0.01% that your checking account is most likely giving you. Even savings accounts with most traditional banks do not provide much of an interest payment. All they do is provide another account to put the money in, which again is still better than nothing, but it’s not helping your money work for you.
Find yourself a high-yield savings account or money-market account to put your money to work.
4. Keep Your Investing Strategy Simple
Again, I kind of already talked about investing in mutual funds or an ETF like VTI—simple, small payments every paycheck into a savings account.
Once you have an emergency fund in place (start with $1,000), start sending that money over to other savings goals continuously so you can take advantage of both time value of money and compound interest.
Time Value of Money Example:
Would you rather have $10,000 today or $10,000 in five years? The answer should always be today, because that $10,000 today, invested at 7% annual return, would be worth $14,026 in five years. That’s $4,026 you’d miss out on by waiting.
This is why it’s so important to start investing as early as possible, even with small amounts.
5. Live Below Your Means: Start Sinking Funds for “Unexpected” Expenses
These are the categories that I was so grateful that I started saving for once I learned about saving for categories.
Some people call them sinking funds. Some people do it in an envelope system. However you want to do it—I personally use YNAB and I have for 10+ years—these are the quote-unquote “unexpected” expenses that surprise us every year and cause us to have to put money on our credit cards even though we could totally plan for them!
Related Post: How to manage a budget at home for stay at home moms
Car Maintenance and Tires
The first big one is car maintenance. I remember the first time that I needed tires. I remember the first time that my 7 year-old Escape needed to have the transmission fixed. I was a bit sticker-shocked by the price, but right afterwards, I felt this immense amount of relief that we had been putting aside money for car maintenance every month, because we knew eventually we were going to have to have maintenance on our car.
It is inevitable to have car maintenance if you own a car – not an emergency – plan for it accordingly. Start saving for it now Even as little as $20 per month can help.
This savings includes tires. Know how much tires cost, and then you can divide up the cost monthly.
Tires are going to cost four at $200 apiece? I’m going to save up X amount of dollars every month for this many months in order to pay for tires, which in general you need to replace every 40,000-60,000 miles depending on your driving.
Christmas Gifts
Another big one, which is kind of a fun one (which is why it also gets blown so much), is Christmas gifts. Every year, we know Christmas is coming at the same time. Why not set aside a small amount each month to help pay for Christmas gifts so that come December, you have a goal in mind for how much you’re going to spend, and also it won’t feel so heavy coming out of your account for that one month? You will have been saving and setting aside money the entire time for that.
Other Essential Sinking Fund Categories:
- Car registration – Break it out into monthly smaller payments
- Car insurance or homeowners insurance (if you pay every 6 months) – Again, break it into monthly amounts and set it aside
- Vacation funds – These tend to be a little bit bigger, but it’s all about the intentionality of spreading it out and living below your means so that you can make your money work for you, not the other way around
This stuff is the great stuff to just send into a savings account automatically every paycheck, because you know eventually you will need it. And, if a true emergency comes up, you have funds set aside to pay in cash rather than having to automatically use credit – it’s a great buffer for the emergencies until you start building more wealth.
6. Take Advantage of Free Money and Rewards
This is a big one: take advantage of the free stuff!
For one, I’m a believer in just being outside, enjoying God’s creation, taking walks in your neighborhood. You can do that relatively cheaply almost wherever you go. But even beyond that, you can also research credit card points and cashback and opportunities like that.
I love Nerdwallet and The Points Guy for information. I am not the expert – but there are experts out there. Get informed (that is free too!)
Rakuten and Honey are ways to get cashback even when you’re already shopping on a site. You just install a little browser extension and it’ll give you cashback. It’s free to sign-up for both. Also, if you sign-up for Rakuten we each get a bonus just for using it the first few months!
You can sign up for certain credit cards that will give you travel points if you’re a big traveler. The only difference is that you are going to be putting money on a credit card instead of on your debit card. You have to pay it off every month so you don’t rack up that interest. I only recommend this for those who have enough discipline in place to not run up a credit card balance.
But this is a great strategy to start multiplying your funds while you’re waiting for other funds to grow. We’ve paid for flights and trips and stays multiple times throughout our marriage, for us and for our kids, just by approaching this strategy.
Even things like fuel points at your local grocery store. We buy gift cards for things like Amazon, Chipotle, places we know we go—Chick-fil-A—and we get the fuel points for this when they do the 4x fuel points, and then we save money on gas when we buy it from Kroger.
All these things add up. Start with one and go from there, but take advantage of the free things in your life wherever you can.
Why Boring Works
Money can be so related to your emotions, your self-worth, your feelings of success or failure. Many people use it for a dopamine hit, for buying something, for emotional regulation. There are so many things related to money.
The more that you can create habits around money that limit your opportunity to go outside of your goals, the higher chance that you’ll be moving step by step in the right direction towards your goal. It might not seem like much in the beginning, but just taking these small steps will get you on the right path to success, whatever your goals are.
These boring habits work because they:
- Remove emotion from financial decisions
- Create consistency through automation
- Take advantage of time and compound interest
- Prevent lifestyle inflation
- Build wealth slowly but surely
Of course, these are not the all-encompassing steps you can take, but if you take these steps, they will be huge progress towards maximizing your chances of reaching $1 million or whatever your financial goals may be.
What boring financial habits have worked for you? I’d love to hear what’s helping you build wealth in the comments below.