I mean, most of the year, I was just making and making about $2,000 a month.

Then the last quarter of the year, things started to pick up.

And on average this year, I made $2,600 a month.

Not too bad for a boy with a dream, but not a crazy amount of money.

However, despite that, this past year, I have been able to save a little bit over $10,000.

Actually, when you factor in my investments, I have been able to increase my net worth by a little bit over $25,000 this past year.

And to be honest, I wasn't even trying to do that.

It sort of just happened by creating a basic money management system that is intentional, prevents overspending, and maximizes my saving rate.

And in this video, I want to share the 10 steps that I took to easily save $10,000 this past year on a low income.

And the first step is to create a goal that inspires you.

Now, in order to save $10,000 in a year, you first need to create a goal that inspires you to continue to save over a long period of time and create a goal that's not about the amount, but about what the amount represents.

Because if you know exactly what the money represents and how it'll improve your life, it's much easier to stay motivated to save money.

For example, my goal was never to save $10,000, but to make sure that my account was just increasing over time.

Because I love doing YouTube and I want to continue doing it full time.

And to me, an increasing balance represents more security, more stability, and more freedom to pursue my own endeavors.

Whereas a decreasing balance would mean the possibility of having to move on to something else.

This past year, I've been extremely motivated to save money because I have a deep understanding of why I'm saving and how saving money will improve my life.

And I just so happen to save $10,000 in the process.

Now, the second step I took was keep fixed expenses low.

Whenever you create a budget, the bulk of your budget consists of something called fixed expenses.

Which are expenses that are the same amount every month and are things like rent, your cell phone bill, insurance, and other services.

And even though I didn't make tons of money this year, the reason I was able to save so much is because my fixed expenses were extremely low.

For example, my rent was $700 a month, my cell phone bill was $15 a month, my car insurance was $85 a month, and my utilities were about $100 a month.

And even though I didn't make tons, because my fixed expenses were so low, I always had some money to save.

Whereas most people have such high fixed expenses that the only place they can find to save extra money is by cutting out a cup of coffee or a meal out.

When you keep your fixed expenses low, you open up a lot more money to increase your savings much quicker.

Now, the third step I took was keep track of variable expenses on a credit card.

Now, when creating a budget, after fixed expenses, the rest of your budget consists of something called variable expenses.

Which are expenses that are different amount each month and are things like groceries, gas, eating out, and entertainment.

And because these expenses are a different amount every single month, if you're not paying attention, they can quickly get out of control, make you overspend.

But one way I prevented overspending on my variable expenses was putting all the variable expenses on my credit card, like gas, groceries, and entertainment.

And this allowed me to see the full picture of my variable expenses and make it so easy to tell if I was overspending.

Because if for three months I spent $1,500 each month, in the fourth month I was spending $3,000, I could easily tell I was overspending this month and examine why.

And of course, I paid off the balance at the end of every month, so I didn't have to pay interest on it.

But keeping all my variable expenses on my credit card made it very easy to see how much I'm spending in this field and made my unpredictable expenses predictable.

And being able to predict these variable expenses made it much easier to create a better budget where I can save the maximum amount possible.

Now, the fourth step I took set a specific amount of money to consistently save each month.

All right, so I want to point out that the number one thing that allowed me to save $10,000 on a low income was making my budget as predictable as I possibly can, where I could know how much money I was spending month after month after month.

Because when you can predict how much money that you are spending each month, you can determine a specific amount of money that you can afford to set aside each month.

For example, I decided that I could set aside a minimum of $100 each month, regardless of how much I made.

In this past year, I have consistently saved this every month.

And this was just one piece that got me to $10,000.

However, obviously setting aside $100 a month isn't going to get you to $10,000 in a year.

And so the next piece or the next step I took to save more was see all extra money as excess.

So the next step that I took to save more money was having this predictable budget.

And any amount I made beyond that budget was viewed as excess that I saved.

My income is extremely variable.

So whenever I had a good month and I made more money, I just viewed it as excess and saved it.

For example, if my predictable budget was $2,000 a month and I made $2,200 one month, then that $200 was excess that I saved.

Or if I made $5,000 another month, then that $3,000 was excess that I saved.

Any time I made extra money or any extra money came in my life, I just viewed it as excess and saved it.

And I did that by taking the sixth step, always keep my checking account at $100.

So the way that I was able to save every single excess dollar in my life was to simply have a checking account and a savings account.

And if after I paid my bills, I had $800 in my checking, I would move $700 to my savings and keep $100 in my checking.

And by keeping my checking account always at $100, no more or no less, I was able to maximize how much I save and not let $1 be confused as spending money.

And I saved thousands of dollars by doing this.

Now, the next step I took to saving $10,000 was highly overestimating my taxes.

So as I said, the beginning of this video, if you averaged out my income throughout the year, I made about $2,600 after taxes.

However, I recently came to realize that I actually made a little bit more than that because I am self-employed.

I have to take my taxes out myself.

So every time I got paid, I always took out 30% for taxes and put it in my savings.

So before taxes, I made about $3,380.

And I took out 30% just to be on the safe side.

However, now that we're in tax season, I have realized that I highly overestimated my taxes because I was expecting to pay about $11,000 this year, but I really only needed to pay about $9,000, which is an extra $2,000 saved.

And in my opinion, whether you're self-employed or employed to the company, I think it's much better to overestimate your taxes rather than underestimate because one, you avoid a large bill at the end of the year, and two, you accidentally save a little bit more.

I saved an extra $2,000 just by accidentally overestimating my taxes.

Now, the eighth step that I took was being smart with taxes.

Now, another way that I was able to save some money on my taxes was just by being smart and keeping a very detailed record of every single expense that I had so I could write them off at the end of the year.

And these write-offs were able to lower my tax bill by about $1,000.

And I also chose to be smart and decided that I was not smart with my taxes and got a tax professional to do my taxes so I could get the maximum amount of write-offs.

And whether you're an employee or self-employed, it's important to be smart with your taxes and make sure that you're giving the government the least amount of money possible and make sure that you're not leaving any money on the table.

The government doesn't need any money.

They can just print their own money.

Now, the ninth step that I took was investing.

So this past year, I was able to save about $10,000.

But when you count my investments, I was able to save a little bit over $25,000.

And that's because a large amount of my money is invested in the stock market.

And this past year, the market has been performing really well.

I am not a financial advisor, but once you complete your emergency fund, you should consider investing your money in the market because it's such an easy way to grow your money over a long period of time.

I was able to make about $15,000 this past year through investing, but of course that is unrealized money and it could go up and down over time.

But the final way that I was able to save $10,000 was by having margin.

Now, a huge reason that I was able to save $10,000 on a low income this past year was because I didn't have to rely on that income.

I had something called margin, which is basically a buffer between you and being broke.

It's hard to save money when you don't have a lot of money.

It's hard to save money when you're constantly behind a living paycheck to paycheck.

But when you have margin, one, you're able to weather the low income months, two, avoid falling behind, and three, can focus on creating a sustainable path.

I wouldn't be able to save as much money as I did if I didn't have margin.

Every step that I mentioned would be a lot harder to do without having margin.

So save up your money, create a big nest egg.

And as you start to have more money in life, saving becomes much easier and much easier.

And with that, muchas gracias.

Que tenga un buen dia.

Nos vemos, chicos.