Saving money shouldn’t feel like a mystery or a one-time event. Whether you’re building your first $500 or trying to break a savings plateau, this episode will help you learn how to save on purpose.
In this episode, I walk you through my Magic 10 Method, a simple, repeatable process to help you save $10,000 with control, intention, and ease. We’ll explore what it means to treat saving as a skill, how to break out of the save-spend cycle, and how to stop leaving your financial peace to chance.
Whether you’re a new saver or someone trying to rebuild after dipping into your fund, this episode is your guide to becoming a consistent, confident saver.
Listen to learn how to build and maintain a five-figure savings account that doesn’t just sit pretty, but works for you.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
[00:48] Why saving is a skill, not a personality trait
[02:35] Introducing the Magic 10 Method
[06:09] The 6 phases of the savings continuum
[11:42] How to calculate your Magic 10 savings pace
[14:55] Real talk: $200/month is better than $0/month
[18:30] Option 1 vs. Option 2: Choose your savings strategy
[21:10] The #1 commitment you need to make today
Tune in now and learn how to use the Magic 10 Method to save $10K with ease, consistency, and confidence.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
If the Magic 10 method helped you rethink your savings strategy, be sure to check out Episode 180: 10 Money Date Questions to Build Financial Intimacy.
Transcript for “How to Save $10K on Repeat with the Magic 10 Strategy”
Intro: Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work everyday with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. Today I want to talk to you about a little process that I call Magic 10. And I want you to know that this episode is for you. If you are someone who wants to save money, but you don’t want to just do it randomly or just by accident, but you want to actually save money on purpose. You want a five figure savings account, or maybe you have a five figure savings account, but you want it to be a multiple five figure savings account and you want to know exactly how to create it. And even more than that, you want to know how to recreate it because saving is not just like a one-time event. I want you to know that learning how to save money is a skill. And once you learn the skill, it’s a skill you’ll always have.
I know that sometimes the fear of having money saved is what’s going to happen when I have to spend it. And you don’t have to fear that when you actually know that you can trust yourself as a saver. So this episode is for you, so definitely stay tuned in if this resonates with you. So first I want to introduce you to what the magic 10 process is. So the magic 10 process is a saving strategy, it’s a mindset, it’s a method, and it’s a commitment to yourself. At the core of this process is belief. And I want you to write down this belief. I want you to say it out loud. You can put it on a post-it note, put it in your notes app. Like I want you to be walking around and saying like, Keina is in my head, she gave me this thought.
So here’s a thought. I want to learn how to save $10,000 with control, intention, and ease. I’m going to say that again. I want to learn how to save $10,000 with control, intention, and ease. So I hope you’ve written that down. I hope you said it out loud because that’s what you want. I don’t want you to be thinking about how you feel like you should already know how to do this. I don’t want you to be thinking about, I don’t make enough money. I don’t want you to be thinking about, I’m so bad with money. I want you to understand that you are learning. You would never shame a child for learning. You would meet them with grace, you would meet them with kindness. And so I want you to meet yourself with grace and I want you to meet yourself with kindness because you’re going to learn the skill of saving and you’re going to learn how to do it with control, with intention and with ease.
And that simple belief is going to support you no matter where you’re starting in this journey. But sometimes we got to talk and we got to encourage ourselves because our mind is very, very powerful and it can overtake us and make us freeze, make us sit down on a curb and just not want to do anything. So maybe you are listening, you’re like, Keina, why is it the magic 10k, right? So I want to talk about the number $10,000 and I don’t even know where that number comes from honestly, I just feel like $10,000 is this mythical number that it’s like, ooh, if I have that much saved, I’ll feel a certain way. It feels like a lot of money. And if I could just get $10,000 in the bank, then I’d feel good. But let’s be really honest, $10,000 takes some time to save and it only takes a few minutes to spend and I can give you a personal account of what it feels like to spend a lot of time saving and then all of a sudden it disappears.
I feel like I spent my twenties saving $10,000 and then when I started working for myself, I was like, oh wait, wait, wait. That money is just, it’s disappearing. And so when it disappears, it increments a $5,000, $6,000, it can dwindle very quickly, it can be very humbling. And that process and that experience definitely clarified for me in spending what some would call a nest egg, I’m going to call it my side eye fund, is just realizing that although it took me the amount of time that it took me to save $10,000, what I wanted to know how to do was to recreate it. I wanted to know how to recreate it without doubting whether or not I could save that money. Again, I wanted to be able to save the money with confidence and I wanted to be able to save it whenever I wanted.
And that’s why I talk about savings being a skill. Because even if you have to dip into the savings, if you know that you have the skill of savings and you don’t have to fear dipping into it because you know you can replace it. So I’ve said it multiple times already, saving is a skill and that means that if we believe that saving money is a skill, you don’t have to naturally be good at it. You don’t just wake up one day and like, oh, I was born a saver, right? It means you don’t have to have a perfect track record with saving in the past. It means you can be a beginner, it means you can start small. If we think about saving as a skill, it really gives us permission to go through the process. And what you really need in order to save money is you need to have a strategy and you need to have a process. And that’s what the magic 10 is all about.
So as I was preparing for this episode, I’m a big writer and probably because I like my own handwriting, but no, I love to write and I also visualize thing. So I drew a line because I was thinking about like where are you, where do you want to be? What are the things you have to overcome? And saving money has a continuum and there are different places where you’re going to land at any one point in time and it can be really important to know where you are on the continuum where you’re starting. It can let you know, okay, these are the things I’m going to have to look out for. I might go, forward or backwards on this continuum. You can hop around on it.
So on the first part of this continuum; you might be someone who’s starting to save. So you might be building your first $500 or your first thousand dollars. And then the next part of this continuum is that you are going to need to watch out for dipping into your savings. So you’re going to need to stop dipping into savings. So you want to stop the cycle of saving and then spending it all back down, right? I want to say that all of these things on the continuum are very natural. You start to save, you first start to save and then you’re like, ooh, I’m like dipping into it. And I’m not saying dipping into it for like its intended purposes, you’re dipping into it because maybe you still got some fake math in your budget. And then number three on this continuum is getting comfortable using your savings.
So some people come to me and they already have started to save, maybe they don’t dip into their savings, but they have to actually get comfortable using their savings. So you’ve built the savings but now you’re scared to use it. And this could be for a number of different reasons. Maybe you got your savings from windfall of money, maybe your savings came from an inheritance or it came because of a severance package and so you might not have trust in your ability to save. So that’s where you are on this continuum, is like you’re not comfortable actually dipping into your savings. I think about my client Teviana as I’m talking about this because when she was deciding to work with me, she had money saved that was supposed to be intended for her to buy a home and she was going to dip into that savings to work with me.
And that did not feel comfortable for her. But the only reason it didn’t feel comfortable for her was because it was like the first time she had ever saved as much money as she’d saved. I believe it was maybe like $6,000, maybe it was a little bit more than that. It was the first time she’d ever saved that much money and she didn’t trust that she could actually rebuild her savings. So if I dip into this, like it is going to dry up my savings and then what’s next? So when I say getting comfortable using your savings, that’s what I mean by being on this continuum and it could be a number of different reasons that you’re not comfortable using your savings.
The next part of the continuum is knowing how to accelerate your savings. So you want to go from slow growth to intentional speed. Maybe you’re saving $100 a month right now, but we want to get to $500 a month or $1000 a month. So we want to be able to accelerate the speed in which you are growing your savings and then breaking savings plateaus is also in this continuum. So I have clients that come to me. I’m thinking of a particular client I worked with, I want to say last year we worked together, it doesn’t matter when we worked together, but I remember we set a goal for like March of this year that she would be over $30,000 in her savings account because she was having a plateau where she would get to a certain amount of money in her savings and then all of a sudden her money would just stop growing. So we were able to work through the mindset part of that.
But that’s also on a part of the saving continuum, is like you can get to a place where you have a plateau and you don’t exceed that plateau. So you have to investigate those reasons. And then the last one is being able to shift your savings goals on purpose. So there is going to come a time when you’re saving money and you’re going to need to shift your savings goals. It could be for life changes, maybe you’re having a baby, saving for a home, saving for a wedding. And so you want to be able to plan for life changes and you want your savings to support those shifts. So of course you can’t talk back to me right now, but just think about where are you on this? Are you starting to save? Are you trying to learn how to stop dipping into your savings account? Are you getting comfortable using your savings? Are you at a point where you’re accelerating your savings? Are you breaking savings plateaus or are you shifting your savings goals on purpose?
And you might identify with like a couple of these. You might be like, Ooh, well Keina actually I need to get comfortable and I need to break a savings plateau, like it could be true that there are multiple things. Regardless of where you are, I just want you to be able to identify here’s where I am in this season. If you can identify where you are in this season, the beautiful part of that is that if you were to ask yourself those questions six months from now you can see how you shifted. You may like, oh goodness, I’ve stopped dipping into my savings account. Oh I’m like breaking a plateau and I actually did the thing that I said I was going to do.
So it’s really great, it’s a great opportunity for you to track what I call like a non-budget victory, to see yourself be able to shift along this continuum. So in order to shift along this continuum, you do need a saving strategy. And in particular for this episode today, I really want to talk to people that are starting to save or you are getting comfortable using your savings or you are breaking a savings plateau. So maybe you are starting to save, you’re getting comfortable using your savings or you’re breaking a plateau. So the magic 10 process can help you break a plateau. It can help you get comfortable using your savings because if you know that you always know how to save and you have a strategy for saving, you’re going to be able to use money in your account. If you are still like Keina, I’m just trying to get to the first 500 or $1000 then it’s going to help you start saving.
So people will ask me whether on Instagram, in my coaching container, one of the questions that people love to ask me is, Keina, how much should I be saving each month? And the honest answer is, it depends. But if I had to give you an answer and give you a north star, I generally would tell people I want you to save at least 10% of your take home pay and eventually I want you to get to 10% of your gross. So your gross is the amount before taxes and all of the deductions and your take home pay is your net. So after everything, and the reason that I like 10% as the north star is because when you are saving at that level, you’re giving yourself flexibility, you’re buying yourself options, you’re creating margins. So you can work less, you can pivot careers, you can handle life transition without falling into stress or to debt.
So imagine just throwing a number out there that you make $10,000 a month and if you are saving at least a thousand dollars of it, then that means you’re only living off of 9,000 and really you’re not even probably living off the full 9,000 if we think about your essential expenses. But when every single dollar is spoken for, it can make it very challenging when you need to pivot for a life transition, it can make it really challenging when you start to think about, ooh, there’s a career option that I want to take. But if we can get you to a place where you are saving comfortably, it makes you being able to have options a lot easier. And so that’s why the strategy of the magic 10 is the one that you need. So let’s actually get practical and I want to give you two approaches to implement the magic 10 in your life.
And remember the magic 10 is like creating a strategy for you to learn how to save $10,000 on repeat. So option one is for you to start with what you feel like you can save. Look, I’m letting you have some feelings. So how much do you feel like you can save every single month? Let’s say you feel like you can save $200 a month. So we’re going to start there and then we’re going to do the math. So if I’m saving $200 a month, I’m going to do $10,000 divided by 200 and I’m going to get 50. So it’s going to take me a little over four years to save $10,000. All you need to do is pause and ask yourself like how does that timeline feel? And if I know you, you might be inclined to think like, oh my goodness, Keina, that is too long, right? Or I think that that’s too long.
But here’s what I want you to know. Four years to save $10,000 is better than zero years because you gave up before you started and that $200 a month, that’s probably the least you’ll ever save per month. So it at least gets you started. It at least puts a strategy in place to say like every four years, I’m going to be able to save $10,000. What I know is going to happen over the course of those four years is that you’re going to get raises, you’re going to get bonuses, you’re going to get extra income. And so you’ll actually be able to increase the amount that you’re saving over time and you can always adjust. You could also, if you’re like, Keina, I don’t like the $200 a month, I don’t want it to take four years, let me actually try $500 a month. And so if I was doing $500 a month, well that’s going to take me 20 months to be able to save $10,000 and that’s less than two years.
So every two years you’ll be saving $10,000. So it’s allowing you to put in your, what do I feel like I can save if $10,000 is like the amount that I always want to be able to compound, I can now know like what my pace is to save $10,000. And you can have some meaning for that. Like I told you, I spent most of my twenties building a five figure savings account. But what I learned during that process was invaluable because saving money is a skill. And so if we can get you to the point where you’re saving consistently, that is going to compound quickly, especially when you take opportunities to increase your ability to save. So the first option I gave you was to start with a number that you think you can save per month, depending on your brain and what you like.
I can also give you the option. Magic 10 has the option to start with a goal. So maybe you want to save $10,000 in three years, like that feels really good, if you knew that you could save $10,000 every three years. So you do the math, $10,000 divided by three, it’s about $3,334 a year. And so that means that you’re basically saving $278 a month. And you would break that up by paycheck. You put it into your plan, you could ask yourself like, does this feel doable? Would it be too tight? Is it going to be too easy? And you can adjust based off of your answers to that question. But going through this process is going to give you clarity. You’re also going to be able to own what you’re doing. And let’s say once again that you go with this three year plan, if you save $10,000 every three years, in nine years you’re going to have $30,000 and $278 guys, we spend that on DoorDash, we spend that on eating out.
You never want to discredit how small of an amount you feel like you’re saving. Yes, my goal is for you to get to 10% of your net income over time. But when I use this like magic 10 process with clients that are working with me as they’re paying off debt and they’re saving at the same time, it’s beautiful because like we’re building a cushion for them so that they can pay down debt and not have to go back into debt. But then they can decide after they pay down their debt that they can become more aggressive savers. They can work more towards that 10% of their net income. They can also think about like, over the course of these five years, right now what I’m making is probably the least amount that I’m going to make and so I know I’m going to have opportunities.
But magic 10 allows you to put a strategy in place and then believe in your ability to be a saver. And so one of the things I mentioned that if you want to be more or less aggressive, you get to decide in terms of how quickly you want $10,000 to compound in your account. So you get to decide, okay, I got a bonus. Do I want us put that towards my five figure savings account? If I pay off a credit card, how do I want to redirect some of that money to savings? Do I want to actually focus more on debt first? Okay, well I’m going to save a little bit slower, but I’m still going to save. This isn’t about having like a perfect plan, but it’s a plan that actually includes you and it includes your motivation style. And for me as a coach, my thing is for you to have sustainability over time and for you to be able to continue to show up as a saver because once you show up as a saver, you’re always going to be a saver. You’re just always going to be a saver. It’s going to be the thing that you do.
And after you’ve gone through and you’ve decided like, do I want to do option one? Do I want to do option two? Make a commitment to yourself. Tell yourself I’m committing to save blank per month for my magic 10 goal. Put it somewhere on a screensaver on your phone, a notes app, a post-it note, whatever that may be but let yourself know, this is the process that I’m committing to. And I mean, that’s it. That’s the magic 10. I want $10,000 to be something that is easy, intentional, and controllable. So this is how you’re going to start becoming someone who knows how to save $10,000 with control, intention, and ease. It’s really, really that simple. So if this episode resonated with you, I want you to do two things for me.
One, I want you to share it with your friend who’s also trying to get serious about savings. It’s so important guys, for us to talk about money with our friends and sharing a money podcast episode is an easy way to start talking about money with your friends. You can be like, Ooh, like what do you want me to hold you accountable to? Or what resonated with you? Sometimes we think that we have to talk about how much money we make or how much debt we’re in, but sometimes we just need to talk about real things that are going on. Like, girl, did you see the price of eggs at the grocery store? And we need, like, we can start there. I was joking with one of my clients and I told her, I said it sounds like you and your friends were both out and y’all shouldn’t have been spending money.
Y’all both should have been at home. Like you need to be the friend that could be like, girl, we need to go sit down because our credit cards and our debit cards, they got a little smoke coming in because we’ve been using them too much like that. That’s the kind of friend that I want that knows we don’t need to be out here spending any more money. We need to go sit down. That’s very important that you have those type of people in your life. And it can be as simple as, let me share this podcast episode with some of my friend circle so you can start having those money conversations. Look, I’ll talk about money for you guys, and then y’all just debrief on it.
And then next, the thing that I would tell you to do is if this resonated with you, apply and work with me. Like this is what we do inside coaching. We’re going to put in a magic 10 strategy for you. We’re going to build your three money bucket system. We’re going to get rid of fake math. We are really going to build a sustainable system that’s going to impact your life, that’s going to feel like, I’m not feeling like I got to, okay, it’s the end of the month or when’s my next payday. Like nobody is trying to live like that. That is not freedom. You are not working 40 hours a week, you’re not making six figures to have that type of lifestyle. So stop leaving savings to chance, implement your magic 10 number and until next time, have a great week.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
