I used to be very fit. Like annoyingly, intense with seemingly-boundless-energy kind of fit. And people who were not card-carrying members of the fitness freak club would constantly ask me about it. Why was I so fit? How do you ride your bike for 100 miles in a day? What's your secret?

The answer was generally always the same. There is no secret. You have to eat well and move your body often. It's that simple. It's not glamorous by any means. Often times there is nothing glamorous about the slow, disciplined efforts required to achieve your goals. It's pretty boring, actually. 

Does that make achievement ironic? Achievement is celebrated and romanticized; it's sexy. But in order to achieve anything, the work that goes into it is certainly not romantic. It's consistently not fucking up over time. Really, that's it. I know you've heard this before, so I won't prattle on much longer.

The same concept applies to saving money. There are logistical "hacks" that you can apply that make it "easier" to save money. The tried and true move is to set up an automatic savings transfer that directly pulls money from your bank account to your savings account. And to make sure your savings account is set up at a bank that your checking account isn't at. So you can't readily and easily access your savings account. See? Easy.

The hard part is keeping it in the savings account. How you do that is so simple, but not easy. It's not glamorous by any means. It involves being resourceful and creative and not letting your consumption create unsustainable habits. It's changing your mind to change your habits, just like any other achievement.