How Saving Money on Toilet Paper Turned me into a Top Performing Investor...
When I first started trading, I had a basic salary, a couple hundred pounds of disposable income per month after rent. Which doesn't really get you too far in London :P
But at the same time, I had a burning desire to figure out trading and investing… so one day I might go and live in Club Tropicana… where drinks are free… :)
How could I develop the right mind-set and habits without any capital?
It's pretty difficult to think about investing when you have nothing to invest, when you're on a budget, the main thoughts going through your head are about things you can't buy… setting money aside for investments is a distant number 135 on the list….
What does this have to do with toilet paper?
The big paradigm shift that came for me was to think about my consumption decisions as if I were an investor. It started with toilet paper and snowballed into value stocks, commodities, crowdfunding, real estate and crypto.
The real 'cash, money makers'.
When you flip the script and start viewing day-to-day consumption decisions as having a return on investment you slowly start to develop an investors mindset. If I buy the standard branded toilet paper I'm spending £2 for four rolls, if instead I buy the supermarket basics for £2 I'm getting six rolls that are bigger so around 8 rolls equivalent.
Now, given that I'm going to be using toilet roll all year round I'm saving 50% on my toilet roll expenditure, which is a 100% return on 'investment'. All of a sudden I became a top performing investor netting 100% returns! Booyah! Instead of just accumulating this fantastic investment return to be used on buying 'stuff I don't need' at a later date I instead put it into a separate bank account… my 'investment fund'.
It became addictive seeing that fund grow over time, adding other commonly used items to the investment list and generally trying to see the best 'investment value' in any transaction. Now… that pool of funds never really grew big enough for me to retire in Club Tropicana, it did however instill in me an investors mentality. A burning desire to allocate my capital where I saw the highest return.
Investments are everywhere, value is everywhere, you just have to instill the right beliefs and strategies to take advantage of the opportunities.
You can train yourself to be a great investor without having any money to invest. Developing an investors 'mindset' is as simple as looking for a bargain and then subtracting that cost from what you'd normally pay and adding it to your investment returns fund.
After experiencing that amount grow and meticulously looking for deals and ways to increase it you'll be a few steps ahead of most people.
There's a reason why the greatest investor the worlds ever seen.. Warren Buffet… has lived in the same (relatively cheap) house for several decades…
How can you get started?
Firstly take a look at your average expenditure when you go to the supermarket, especially with bulk buy items like toilet paper, toiletries and staple foods and meat. To do this you need to track your expenditure. Some budgeting apps on your smartphone work well for this purpose and allow you to categorize expenditure. The one I use is called "Expense IQ". After you have a clear picture of what you spend, try looking for alternative products that offer a similar experience. For instance instead of buying 2 chicken breasts I'll buy 5 kilos. Making a 50-60%... Cash money return.
We aren't doing this to 'save' money… so we can spend more when we go to the club or shop for random clothes. No, these are investments! After I've gathered the data of my normal expenditure and found some great deals I'll subtract the difference and that will be my ROI (Return on investment).
If you're asking yourself why you'd even bother doing this… consider the depth you're going to find deals to maximize your 'investment' returns. Could that mentality help you find better investment deals in the future? When you're looking at stocks, buying a house or looking at the next ICO investment? …. Absolutely…
That mentality can then be leveraged to start investing larger sums and building an investment nest egg…
Some practical insights...
Instead of leaving you with a random abstract, pretty strange 'toilet paper' concept I'll point you in the right direction in the case that you want to invest a little per month. In the US I'd recommend https://www.betterment.com/ and the UK I'd recommend...
Both of these services collectively invest in a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds based on the risk level you choose, they charge less than 1% per year, you can get involved with a small initial deposit and then a top up of less than 100 $/£ per month. Given the other options at this price level the cost is negligible.
And it all starts with a bit of toilet roll…
All images from Pixabay
Well done! You have achieved a lot and Im proud of you! You will be soon living in Cuba or Tropicana and we will come and visit! I still have to post bikini pictures!! lol
Haha I completely forgot, DO IT lol
yep will do!
Yeah: that's how to start, tho' it's more of a grounding in personal finance. FYI, the finance writer Andrew Tobias pushed this theme 'way back when: buy the sales, buy in bulk, save. Since he wrote in the days when the marginal tax rate for a reasonably affluent person was around 50%, he called it "A Penny Saved Is Two Pennies Earned."
For sure, was only meant as the most basic grounding. I'll check him out :)
You'll find a lot that's familiar there.
Incidentally, the art of buying the sales is one aspect of prepping which hardly shows up on the prepper blogs. Prolly because it's not glamourous :)
Maybe a preppers mentality is inherently on a potential present catastrophe. Thinking far into the future (within our current way of life) may be too much to ask, on average...
That's prolly it,...
I now have a mental image of all the cupboards in your house full of toilet rolls. You open a door and 100 loo rolls fall out because you decided to buy a years worth.
Funny you should say that....
Peach coloured loo roll? Surely that is the expensive stuff!
I guess I've upgraded... toilet roll investing 101 has it's perks :)
Wonderful approach that I intend on using to begin investing in areas I'm learning about such as purchasing bitcoin, steem, steem power. Now if I could figure out a way to purchase more time! But in essence I think the same approach would work with time. The key is to track it and realize gains and then re-invest those gains toward the ultimate goal. The problem is at some point, the more gains you make, the harder it is to make gains - so that for instance , if you also attempted to reduce your waste of toilet paper, at some point you might consider using both sides of one sheet of toilet paper!
We're getting a little deep into the rabbit hole there :P
Ignoring time, which is much more difficult to stick into an analogy. It's really pretty simple, look for 'deals' in your day to day life, set that money aside, think of it as an 'investment' then.... once you have that (highly addictive) stash of funds..
Use the same mentality that allowed you to find those deals to find investment opportunities..
It really has to be a hobby at the start, was for me anyway, I mean the savings from toilet paper aren't entirely life changing :P But the mindset is incredibly valuable... :D
This is all very Mustachian ways of thinking! Good on You! ;)
Mustachian indeed :P
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I loved it!
"Its not saving, its an investment" - really nicely put, ashame I never viewed it like this until today!
PS In protection of the toilet paper god, I must say that better quality paper lasts longer, as (excuse my French), when you use it to do your deed, you use less paper =)