If you read this month’s plan, you know we’re going to be looking this week for a “Power Amount” that will help you with savings and also either debt payments or investments.

This Power Amount is the key to the entire plan!

Here’s why:

  1. With this bit of money, you’ll start increasing savings and either making debt payments or making investments.
  2. Without it, you’ll just be treading water, or possibly getting worse and worse.
  3. Therefore, you should work hard to make this Power Amount as much as you can — if you’re in debt, you might even make as many changes as possible to get this amount higher and higher. If you’re doing well, just make it as large as is comfortable.

Please note that the Power Amount is above the amount you’re supposed to be paying for your minimum debt payments, so don’t include those minimum payments. However, if you’re already putting money towards savings, or already paying debts above your minimum, you can include that savings or extra debt payment amount in your Power Amount.

So it’s important, and we want to make it as large an amount as we can … but where do we find it? Will it magically appear out of thin air? No. We’ll have to work to find it.

Let’s start by assuming that the Power Amount is $0 at the moment. That’s obviously not going to do us any good.

Here’s where to look for more:

This is just a start, but you get the idea. Take whatever money you can save (or make) from these and other sources, and add them to your Power Amount. So if you cut out the gym, and you’re paying $60 a month on that, your Power Amount is now $60. If you cut your cable subscription from $100 to $60, your Power Amount is now $100. If you start making $50 a week by giving music lessons, you now have a Power Amount of $300! And so on.

The bigger you can make your Power Amount, the faster you’ll increase your savings/investments and pay off debt, and the sooner you’ll get to Financial Awesomeness.

You don’t need to do this all today … get started, but work on it all week until you have an amount that seems decent to you. We’ll also be working on our savings/debt or savings/investment plan this week, but you can also be working on the Power Amount as we go through the week. Get started now!