This snippet is from one of our previous episodes: Seven Steps to Make Money Simple Again.

“Pay yourself first” is one of the most repeated rules in personal finance. So why don’t we teach it?

It’s a question we get asked a lot… and it’s a fair one.

The idea is simple, it’s memorable, and for many people, it works. In fact, it’s the very system Ben used to save up for his first property at twenty-three.

But here’s the thing: we iterate, and we get better.

In this week’s Throwback Tuesday, Bryce and Ben unpack why the classic 10% rule might be leaving money on the table… and what happens when you flip the question from “how much should I save?” to “how much can I trap?”

The Problem with Only Saving a Percentage

Say you land a $1,000 pay rise. Under the pay yourself first rule, you tuck away 10% (that’s $100) and the remaining $900 flows into your everyday spending.

Which sounds fine. Until you notice what that $900 actually does.

It becomes a slightly fancier car. A slightly nicer holiday. A few more subscriptions you’ll never cancel. Not reckless spending — just lifestyle, quietly expanding to fill the space you’ve given it.

You’ve paid yourself first. But you’ve also given yourself permission to spend the other 90%.

What We Do Instead

Our MoneySMARTS system starts from a different place. Once your baseline living costs are set and running smoothly, that $1,000 pay rise doesn’t get split. It goes straight into your Primary Account, straight through to your savings bucket, and it stays there.

As Bryce puts it: you have paid yourself first… you’ve just paid yourself 100% of it instead of 10%.

And once it’s trapped, that money can be put to work.

Retiring debt faster. Building your deposit. Compounding towards your retirement number. Depending on your situation, you might be trapping 40, 50, 70 or even 100% of every future pay rise.

The point isn’t that “pay yourself first” is bad advice. It’s that you may be able to do better.

The “Cup Size” Problem

Bryce shares a concept he picked up from Bill Zheng that captures this perfectly.

Picture the start of your career. You’re earning $1,000 a week and your expenses are $900. You’ve got a $100 gap.

Fast forward a few years. You’re now on $1,500 a week — a genuinely significant jump. But your expenses have climbed to $1,400.

Same $100 gap. Same cup size.

You worked hard, you got promoted, you earned more — and your surplus didn’t move an inch. Every extra dollar found somewhere to go before you did.

The goal isn’t to never upgrade your life. Of course you might want the nicer car and the better home. The goal is to stop your expense line from tracking your income line dollar for dollar. Flatten the expense graph, widen the gap, and suddenly you’ve got surplus to actually do something with.

Trap It, Then Put It to Work

This is exactly why we build our case studies the way we do. We introduce you to a household — their income, their expenses, their real life — and then we run the scenarios. What if they used a debt snowball? What if they trapped an extra $100 of discretionary spending each month?

And then the one that matters most: what if they put that trapped money to work? How much more do they have at retirement? How much closer are they to financial peace?

Because trapping the surplus is only step one. What you do with it is where the story gets interesting.

Want to Make Money Simple Again?

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Start by choosing the pathway that best fits your goal.

Are you looking to build wealth? Eliminate your mortgage debt sooner? Save for a home deposit? Crush credit card debt?

Whatever your goal, there’s a framework to help you take the next step — whether you’re starting from scratch or you’ve been meaning to get your money organised for a while.

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