We all have our own personal reasons to take the road less traveled, which is becoming an entrepreneur. This road will have twists and turns and push you to your limit. Part of becoming an entrepreneur for many individuals involves putting in their life savings to follow their dreams.
As soon as you take your first step, you’ll realize that the hardest part is getting started. Many companies will try to stay as lean as possible, which means paying yourself the bare minimum in order to stay afloat. Life as an entrepreneur is a path that only a few people will dare to take. It’s a high risk venture where MOST companies WILL fail.
As an entrepreneur myself, living frugal was essential to my survival. I had to give up a lot of things I once enjoyed. Here are some quick tips on how you can live frugal as an entrepreneur:
- Give up the luxury – One of the first things I did was to sell my car in order to have some sort of savings fund. Best decision of my life. No more gas, no more insurance, and most importantly, no more parking tickets! I realized it wasn’t a necessity since the city I lived in had great public transportation. It was tough for the first few weeks, but it got easier as time went by. I’m not telling you to sell your car, but my advice would be to carefully analyze your needs vs wants. The same goes with any social outings. Your friends might want to go out to bars on the weekends, but sometimes you’ll just have to say no. One step back, two steps forwards right?
- Don’t cancel your gym membership – When we’re talking about living frugal, most people would tell you to cut all your unnecessary expenses. We can probably make a fair argument that your cable service will fall into this category; however, I would strongly advise against canceling your gym membership. Working 70-80 hours a week as an entrepreneur will push you to your breaking point. I can’t stress enough how important it is to get your daily exercise. Getting out of your office for a quick run will clear your head and allow you to think more clearly.
- Organize your finances – If you have monthly obligations such as a mortgage, credit card, student loan, or an auto loan, make sure you know exactly how much is going out the door each month. Nothing can be more stressful than having to think about your business and dealing with high monthly payments. If you have outstanding credit card balances with payments that might not be manageable, call your creditors immediately and ask for an internal program to reduce your payments.
- Learn to cook – Not only will this help you attract more women, but it will help save you tons of money every month. Eating out twice a day can cost you over $400/month. Learning to cook at home and buying ingredients that you can reuse for other meals is the trick. I’m in no way an executive chef, but learning to cook your own meals will go a long way.
- Every penny counts – When you’re living on a budget, you’ll become more conscience about every single penny you spend. Instead of buying brand name merchandises, I switched over to generic brands. I also had to remove everything that made me want to make impulse buying decisions (daily deal sites, travel newsletters, etc).
The hardest part about being an entrepreneur and living on a budget is the lifestyle change that you’ll endure. Instead of being able to have the freedom to buy anything you want, go on a vacation, and have a wild night at the bars with your friends, you’ll have to kiss all that goodbye. Sometimes you might have to remind yourself why you chose this road. One of the best things of being an entrepreneur is being able to look back and tell yourself that you accomplished what most people could only dream of.
Authior Bio: Kevin is one of the founders of SpringCoin and a certified credit counselor with the NACCC. SpringCoin helps consumers lower their monthly payments while helping them establish healthy spending habits. Previously, Kevin started his own affiliate company for one of the largest debt settlement companies but later lost faith in the industry after seeing poor results, lack of transparency, and lack of long-term financial impact. He spent the later part of his year fighting against these debt settlement companies to set things right with his clients.
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