Skipping a $5,000 raise costs you over $1 million in retirement savings. The speaker argues that obsessing over small expenses like coupons wastes energy compared to growing your income, which is a learnable skill like piano. Most people stay stuck because they never practice asking.
There's a limit to how much you can cut back, but your earning potential, that's actually unlimited. And I find that too many people waste their time cutting coupons, arguing over who's going to split this $12 appetizer. I only had one piece of lettuce, therefore I should pay 1/8 of $12. Stop it. The real progress is often made in focusing on increasing your earnings. And if you don't prioritize earning more, it's going to be really easy to nickel and dime yourself, stuck at the same salary while many of your peers move ahead. And the people I find in my comments who get resentful when I talk about earning more, they've actually never built the skill of earning more money. They're mad because somebody didn't come down from heaven and just give them a raise. Well, that's not how it works. If you want to increase your earnings, it is building a skill like learning to play piano or learning to speak Spanish. So think about it, that $5,000 raise you didn't ask for and didn't prepare for You lost out on over $1 million by the time you retire. That's money you can never get back.
