Savings Tricks From Normal People Who Are Sitting on Millions

Carl Jensen, the writer behind the blog 1500 Days to Freedom, has a net worth that is the source of considerable consternation for many of his neighbors, who note his modest home and thrifty ways. However, Jensen puts his net worth at about $4.3 million, including approximately $4 million in investments.

“The best story about our situation is that a neighbor once told another neighbor that she thought we were poor because she saw me working on my car,” Jensen said.

So how has Jensen managed to save that much money?

One big decision that Jensen cites as playing a crucial role was opting for a more modest home despite that it was significantly less impressive than where he had been living.

“We sold our $400,000, 4,500-square-foot home and moved to a Fannie Mae foreclosure that set us back $176,000,” said Jensen. “Our family thought we were a bit crazy. The first home had four bedrooms and four bathrooms and was beautiful. The foreclosure had two bedrooms and one bathroom and was neglected and infested with ants. However, we went from a $250,000 mortgage and $3,500 in property taxes to a $136,000 mortgage and under $1,500 in taxes. We took our time fixing up the foreclosure and in the meantime invested all of the extra money.”

Jensen also found that sticking with his 2003 Honda Element has been a major factor. It might have 200,000 miles on it, but it’s completely paid off.

In addition to the major decisions about his car and rightsizing his house to fit a more aggressive timeline for his savings and investing goals, Jensen has worked hard to build good habits into his lifestyle, including walking and biking as often as possible. Not only does he save money, but it’s also had positive effects in other parts of his life as well.

“I’ve lost 25 pounds,” said Jensen. “I’m no longer overweight and my high blood pressure is gone. Long term, my spending on healthcare is going to be much less because I now have time to take care of myself.”

B.F., who preferred to be identified by her initials to maintain her privacy, has managed to build up her savings to over $1 million without the sort of high-powered executive gig that many might assume is necessary to get to that point.

Instead, she relied on some very simple approaches to life that allowed her to keep saving, investing and letting her money work for her. So what was B.F.’s approach when it came to the question of how to save more money fast?

More than anything else, B.F. stresses just how effectively she and her partner have managed to keep their costs low over the years, freeing up more of their money to invest.

“When I was 28, I had some money to invest and visited an investment broker,” said B.F. “After looking at our income (it was low) and our expenses (they were even lower), he was SHOCKED. He couldn’t believe how economically we lived. My husband and I live well below our means, now and in the past. We have simple tastes, drive old cars and eat in — a lot.”

But that commitment to avoiding unnecessary spending wasn’t just about skipping meals out. She also made some much larger decisions about keeping her cost of living low enough to allow her to keep saving even while she took time off.

“Our daughter was born in San Diego, and we made a difficult decision,” B.F. said. “Due to the expensive cost of living, we decided to raise her in the Midwest. That way, we could live on one income and I could stop working for a few years to concentrate on parenthood.”

The other piece of B.F.’s path to financial freedom lies in taking a decidedly boring approach to investing. Instead of chasing better returns, she and her husband were happy to just match market returns with their investments, as long as it meant avoiding fees.

“The best investments are low-fee index mutual funds and ETFs,” said B.F. “Because the fees are low, more of your money goes into the actual investment, not the fund manager’s pocket. Today, I manage our own investments and also invest in low-fee robo-advisors like M1 Finance, Ellevest and Betterment.”

That focus on matching market returns while minimizing fees is one that B.F. shares with many investing experts, and she didn’t need any additional strategies to grow her nest egg past the $1 million mark.

“Very few individuals or professional fund managers beat the average returns of the S&P 500 stock market index. …I’m proud to have matched market returns,” said B.F.

John Rampton has been building companies for his entire career. “I’m an entrepreneur,” he said. “I’ve always been an entrepreneur.”

However, if you’re thinking Rampton’s message about the path to reaching $1 million in savings is going to be about how to spot a great startup based on its pitch deck or how to impress venture capitalists enough to secure funding, you would be wrong. When he recounts the crucial steps in his path to savings success, it’s actually the nitty-gritty details of his daily life that he focuses on.

When Rampton was a young professional, he enjoyed driving his gorgeous BMW X5 and eating at fine-dining establishments as part of his efforts to “be the man.” However, that wasn’t leaving him a lot of room in his budget for anything else.

“I read that I need to have six months to a year in savings before I quit my job,” Rampton said. “But no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to save enough money to do that. I was saving $200, $300, $400 a month, and that just wasn’t adding up quick enough.”

So, faced with the need to make changes before he would have the freedom he wanted in his career, he realized he would have to make the painful decision to make a change.

“I sold my car,” Rampton said. “I found a Ford Focus online and I bought it. It was $2,700. It didn’t have any hubcaps, the gas cap was missing, it had 60,000 miles on it, but it ran just fine. All of a sudden, my insurance went from $120 a month to liability only for $32 a month. And gas, I was spending $300 commuting to and from work; all of a sudden it went [to] $60. And then, I had no car payment. So, just my car alone, I was able to start saving $1,100 a month.”

Of course, it wasn’t just finding over $1,000 a month in savings by pruning back his lifestyle. Rampton came to realize that building a strong foundation in his financial life meant having the freedom to pursue more opportunities in his professional life.

“Over the next six months, I started taking that money and investing it in myself,” he said. “I invested in buying a website that was making $1,000 a month. And I invested my time and energy into taking it to $4,000 a month. So all of a sudden I was saving $1,500 a month — at least — and over the next year and a half, two years, I started making three times outside of work what I was inside of work because I was able to invest in myself.”

But what really sticks with Rampton is how focusing on getting the smaller details of his money had a ripple effect into the bigger decisions.

“A million dollars doesn’t just happen,” Rampton said. “I don’t have that type of savings in my account because I did some monumental thing, or bet my life on stock or a specific company. It was more the incremental changes I made day over day and then investing those small little incremental things in myself. They gave me options. And when you have options, you’ll start having a lot of options.”

Clearly, getting to $1 million is going to take quite some time if you try to get there through the most reliable route with regular saving and tax-advantaged retirement accounts. However, as these stories illustrate, getting your financial house in order and saving regularly can also create a number of other opportunities for you and your family that can lead to even more success.

While every person’s situation is different and a certain amount of luck and/or privilege did help these people reach their goals, it’s worth noting that what they do all have in common is a commitment to cutting expenses and emphasizing saving. And that’s advice that’s good whether you’re grinding out a minimum wage existence or are settled with a great job and a hefty savings account to back you up.

Photo Disclaimer: Please note photos are for illustrative purposes only. As a result, some of the photos might not reflect the people listed in this article.