For a part of my life working in NYC, I got everywhere on foot. Well, add in the occasional subway, but we all know how that experience can be in the summer. Where sweating on a hot summer day actually sounds like more fun than sweating in a subway car with someone else who is also sweating. Whew. I just had a flashback, and sorry, that is not why I brought you here today.
Anyway, back to the story, because when I say almost everywhere, I mean it. From client meeting to partnership meeting, from Wall St to Herald Square, out to the BK and up to Harlem, I felt like I was moving through the city like Storm, and the city was moving me through it all. Then one day that same city found a hungry walker at the local Whole Foods on 14th St, we all know the one. And on that day, I noticed the best thing someone like me could see in that crowded place. A microwave. Yes, I know you are just as excited to read that as I am to type it. It was like it was smiling at me and we had an instant connection, like my first robot love… ok ok, sorry, getting distracted again.
The important part about this, as I grabbed some lunch and sat down and did my calculations, was that this would be my last what-felt-like-$50 lunch meal. I had a plan, and someone was going to let me use that microwave. I did my inspecting, and it was clean, surprisingly. Also, this was over ten or more years ago, and maybe no one else noticed it, but I did. I assumed only employees had access to use it.
Then I asked the person behind the counter if I could use the microwave, and he was like, sure. And that was all I needed to hear in that moment, because when you’re building a business you get a lot of no’s, but this was my favorite yes.
And this, my Substack friends, was the whole revelation. Yes, that was it. Impressed? From then on, as I bounced all over the city like a ping pong ball, I carried my lunch with me, tucked myself into my favorite Whole Foods, ate good, planned meetings and calls, and how cute I thought I was with my lunch box.
These are the moments we often forget about on our journey, the parts no one really sees or knows about, because as true NYC people, we don’t always share the goods. Because then someone was going to try and shut down my microwave connection, and not on my watch. But I’m sharing now, even though it’s probably gone. This simple act of repetition became part of my story, my journey, my financial baseline.
This wasn’t, by any means, exciting or flashy, but it was one small, boring choice, repeated, that put real money back in my pocket and made my days healthier while it was at it. While that put me back at my foundation as I was also helping my clients, it paved the way for similar acts to occur. Cook more, eat out less, still walk the extra block, especially on those beautiful city days, instead of wasting good air and jumping in the subway when I felt lazy. See, none of these acts were dramatic, cool, or honestly worth sharing too much, but that’s the whole point. Small acts with money are what have the most meaningful compound effect.
And if you’re reading this and wondering why I didn’t just run back to my nice little office, I’ll assume you’ve never tried to squeeze every drop out of New York, running meeting to meeting to event. When you find a thing that works, especially in New York, you work it.
• • •
Listen, I can only tell you what I know and what I’ve observed over all of these years: small choices are the whole game.
For most of our lives we are taught that we need to wait for the big thing, the raise, the large windfall, whatever that means, and life does not work that way. We get opportunities and choices daily to make positive, compounding financial decisions. Those larger windfalls are also less likely to be the things that change your behavior. Am I right? Learning the skill instead of paying someone to do it for you: these are the things that set you up so that when the windfall comes, you are prepared.
None of this is a trend, and definitely not cool by today’s standards. But those small choices, made again and again, compound in exactly the way we keep hoping one big break will.
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Now, this whole thing didn’t start at that microwave. My journey to these small steps of discipline started at the beginning of my career, when I was living in North Carolina and got my first job in banking. I was, as the kids might say, “all the way in my eating-out bag” for basically every meal. Then I looked at my receipts, and inner me screamed. And I had to say, “Moe’s has to go.” (lol.) So Moe’s went, along with some other favorites. By my early twenties I’d cut fast food completely, which was game-changing for my mind and body.
The next thing I did was open up a second checking account. One that still exists for bills only. Every month, because most of my expenses don’t change, now or then, I total up those bills and move exactly that amount into it. It pays everything on autopilot and drains back to zero, so whatever is left is mine, for spending, fun, saving, my call. I know some people hate the word budget, and it has become so overused, but what we really need to focus on are our behaviors of discipline.
Then I moved back home to the Tristate, and forgot the muscle I had built up, until the microwave seemed to smack me right in the face in the middle of New York.
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The hard part, just like anything else, is more about getting back on track and protecting that part of you from outside influences.
And there is so much that exists now that didn’t back then, all of it fighting for your money. Give your phone more than a second and you’ll find a whole industry engineered to make you feel like if a package isn’t arriving at your doorstep, you are the problem. The countdowns, the “just a few left,” the “sale ends tonight.” Then somehow, by the next day, they’ve fully restocked, because the scarcity was never real.
So I started doing things myself, the same things I would tell my clients: mute it, unsubscribe, and unfollow. Trust me, they will be ok. Those brands are the ones making you reach for your wallet, or these days your phone wallet, which has been made so convenient for a reason. A few suggestions I have for you today:
Start small. I mean stupid small. Do the small hard thing first → kill one marketing email, mute that brand… try it.
Acknowledge your triggers. Honestly. Financial discipline only works when you are completely honest with yourself, which often is the hardest first step.
Now let’s be super honest, because not addressing my own FOMO at times would be a lie. I don’t always follow my own advice. We’re all working on it every day. What has changed for me is not letting somebody else’s life write my checks. We never really know what’s happening behind their curtain. Today everything is a highlight reel, and we have no idea what their actual plan is, but what I can say is that their financial plan is definitely not yours.
• • •
These compounding behaviors show up everywhere. You’re invited out with co-workers or friends and you only wanted the appetizer, or nothing, but somehow you feel obligated to buy the meal. It’s those little pressures that get multiplied over and over again. Could be shame, guilt, trying to fit in. There are so many reasons behind our financial behaviors, and we don’t actually address the root. So we fold into the obligation to avoid the discomfort. Now, either out loud or on paper, take a moment to pause and name that financial trigger.
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With the rising economic costs of what feels like everything, debt was always part of a lot of my clients’ stories, and even mine. And for a lot of us, it stops being just a number we see and becomes a crushing weight that feels like it might take us over. Figuring out how to pay it down can feel impossible, like everyone else is out living while you’re stuck inside doing math. I know that feeling from the inside. But getting out from under it starts small, same as everything else here.
• • •
I think about money now as a kind of time capsule. Often that looks like asking yourself the following questions:
What would your money say about you right now?
What do you want it to say?
Who do you want to benefit from it, and who do you want standing there when it’s finally opened?
These questions are important to better understanding yourself, while also giving yourself grace to figure it out. Because what we often fail to remember is that money is not abstract, and what you earn is yours, not the world’s. In some seasons it can be meant to grow, in some it might need to be still, and in others it is meant to be protected.
At the end of the day, your relationship with money doesn’t have to be born from hardship to be worth tending to. It just has to be yours.
• • •
These days, I do not ask to use the microwave, as that chapter has closed. However, the discipline that was created in the early part of my career shows up in a lot of areas of my life, and it’s amazing to witness the growth.
That time capsule was proof to myself that one small, unglamorous choice, made on repeat, is the most powerful financial tool you can own. It’s the small changes: the walks, the home-cooked meals, the turning of that outsourced job into a skill, and maybe into a business that now pays you. Best of all, it’s the pride you begin to have when you start to take back your financial power one small act at a time.
So, be proud of yourself, because it’s those little moments of proof that you’re moving in the right financial direction. And the more you do it, the easier the next habit change gets to make, so when the windfall comes, you’re ready for it.
Make your financial decisions stand for something. So they stand for YOU.
Thanks for reading.
Disrupting with Intention.
Dana L. Wilson
