For the international audience, tipid means being frugal in Filipino. Tipid tips is a popular expression that captures the many small ways we can save on common expenses.
I’m not going to waste your time with a long intro. Tipid tips fall short because of a mindset gap that fails to address the root causes of the problem.
If your goals are centered on tipid tips, you’re bound to a life of mediocrity. Read on to learn how to approach the issue with a mindset shift.
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Where tipid tips shine
Tipid tips absolutely have their place! There’s value in searching for travel tips, recipe tips, Meralco/Veco/Paleco (utilities) tipid tips, atbp (etc.). When niching down like this, tipid tips allow us to save on expenses where we normally wouldn’t have had.
Tipid tips are also arguably necessary for financial freedom. They can certainly make our journeys to financial freedom easier. But tipid tips alone are NOT sufficient for financial freedom.
I feel like it’s worth repeating: Tipid tips are necessary but not sufficient in making your way to financial freedom.
Where tipid tips fail
Tipid tips fall short as a means of achieving what I describe as the truest and best sense of financial freedom. That is retiring early and having the choice to do whatever, whenever, wherever, with whomever.
It’s especially bad when your way of thinking is focused on tipid tips, rather than going beyond it. “If I am able to save, then I am set” is an avenue to having small-minded goals.
This mindset fails on 2 major points.
Scarcity mentality
When you have being matipid as a goal, it unconsciously creates a scarcity mindset. We treat money as a scarce resource. And as a scarce resource, we’d rather keep it to ourselves than let go.
This frugal mindset approach fails because it blocks us from having the courage to pursue businesses or investments.
As a matter of fact, money is an abundant resource and the actual challenge is how we can get a slice of the pie! If you think about the trillions in circulation, there’s plenty of money for everyone if you can find a way to address a need.
In businesses and investments, we have to learn to let go of our attachment to money. Money is a tool, not the goal. But because of the scarcity mentality, we attach a higher-than-necessary risk score to businesses and investments and fail to take action.
The truth is the rich focus on building income.
Not enough horsepower
Saving your way to financial freedom is futile. Even if you save in a high-interest account (e.g., digital banks, time deposits, etc.), you end up with way less than if you had a successful business or have accumulated a portfolio of properties.
(Related: Monthly savings will NOT lead to financial freedom)
Even for individuals with high salaries, retiring early will leave you falling short. (And if you don’t retire early and remain tied to a job, then that’s not true freedom in the best sense.) To maintain the same lifestyle and achieve true freedom, you’ll either have to invest or start a business.
The point is, savings aren’t enough to build wealth and achieve the truest and best sense of financial freedom. And a hyperfocused mind that’s set on tipid tips is blocked off from focusing on bigger goals.
Financial education is not the answer
Having the right mindset precedes financial education. We either have the knowledge to save, or a quick Google search will teach you the basics, but knowledge without action is meaningless. I love this quote from Derek Sivers:
If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.
We know what it takes to make money, and we know what we need to do for perfect abs, but that information is meaningless without action.
Again, knowledge without action is meaningless. Deciding to take action is the key. Besides, there’s nothing really complicated with saving money. It’s essentially being aware every time you take your wallet out, or whatever the equivalent of incurring expenses is nowadays.
There are no special tricks. And having this mindset boils down to EQ, not IQ.
10X your tipid tips
That said, I understand budgeting is something a lot of us struggle with. (The Kakeibo Japanese budgeting technique might help a bit, but remember it’s still a mindset-over-system approach.)
Wealth building should be our goal, not just being matipid. Saving should really be something that’s automatic, rather than our purpose. The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone epitomizes this “aiming for the moon or landing among the stars” strategy.
If you aim for a goal that’s 10 times larger than what it was, work 10 times as hard as you first intended to, but you end up missing the new goal, you’ll probably still end in a better place. Aim to 10x your goals and actions. Maybe you’ll find tipid tips become mere checkpoints to what the true goal is.
Accountability partners
If you’re still struggling with having a change in mindset, an accountability partner might help. Have a regular schedule with your accountability partner and check on each other’s situations. Studies show that having peer support leads to greater success in achieving goals.
In a Fast Company article entitled “Change or Die,” a study on patients with severe medical conditions was conducted. These patients required a change in lifestyle in order to live. In 12 months, 90% of the patients had reverted back to their old lifestyles and imminent death.
There was a group though that had much higher success — a group where patients were involved in regular peer support sessions. This successful group had a success rate of nearly 80%. The groups not involved in peer support had a success rate of 10%.
(This is a Fast Company article, but I first read about the study in Brian P. Moran’s The 12-Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others Do in 12 Months.)
It’s still a choice
Despite peer support groups or financial literacy sessions, in the end, it’s still about YOU making a choice. It’s your decision to fix your budgeting struggles, no one else can do that for you. There’s no way to sugar-coat it. It’s your responsibility so stop blaming others for your choices.
I said it before and I’ll say it again. Having a monthly saving goal is not sufficient for financial freedom. We need to go beyond tipid tips to achieve our bigger goals. Focusing just on tipid tips falls short because it doesn’t address the need for a mindset shift.
Tipid tips aren’t bad by themselves. But they’re lacking as a primary focus. To achieve bigger goals, we need to go beyond frugality and raise our benchmarks. Rather than having minds focused on frugality, let’s have minds focused on wealth-building.
What’s your take on tipid tips? Leave a comment below and let me know.
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