I consistently see people ineffectively using their time and attention when it comes to money by thinking about small amounts of money, obsessing about $1, $5, $10, $20, even $100. What I've done that's helped me make millions of dollars online, and to feel consistently very wealthy, and to bring incredible opportunities to me, is I start my money thinking from one rule: if it's worth my time and attention, it has to be at least $1,000. I'm not even going to bother thinking about whether this $20 went here or that $100 went there. It's literally not worth my time.
Your time and attention are the scarcest things you have
If you look at your time and attention as the most scarce resources you have, then when you spend your time and attention, the way you're going to get that back will be based on where you spend it. You can think about somebody like Elon Musk. It's probably not worth him thinking about something that's less than $100 million. It's not even worth his time and attention to look at a problem that's worth less than $100 million in his companies.
Now, I'd say the average day-to-day person doesn't even have $1,000 or $2,000 saved up in their bank. What I see when I talk to average day-to-day people is that their time and attention are invested in tiny amounts of money. I used to be the same way when I hardly had any money. And while right now I technically have a negative net worth, I have like $100,000 in credit, I have a $2,700-a-month house all to myself, I have investments, and I have all the money I need. I'm a bit leveraged, but I'm also focusing on how do I make over $100,000 this year? What do I need to do for that? How do I set up business systems that'll make at least $1,000 a month? How do I get my YouTube to make at least $1,000 a month and add revenue within the first few months? I start off my thinking at least at four figures, where I see so many people, like I used to do, piss their time and energy away.
The receipts, the parking, and the Entrepreneur Social Club
For example, I used to go through and keep every receipt from every restaurant and make sure that I never got overcharged by the waitstaff artificially increasing my tip. That's so crazy. Yes, I've heard of cases where that's happened, but it's rare. That's an example of money so small you shouldn't even be thinking about it.
I heard people in the Entrepreneur Social Club last night just going back and forth on these tiny amounts of money. They were talking about parking, like, oh, it's $20 to park downtown. That's too small of an amount of money. I don't care if it's $20 to park downtown. That is an amount of money that is not worth my time and attention. If I go to park somewhere, I don't care hardly at all whether it's $2 or $20 or $100. Now, if it's $100, I might think about it a little more, especially if I'm going to go park there 10 times and that adds up to $1,000. Or if I was going to park somewhere once a week, every week, for $20, and that would add up to $1,000, then yes.
So it does make sense that if you're dumping $20 a day into something and that adds up to $6,000 a year, then yes, that's worth thinking about in the bigger picture. That's where you can get into stopping some of your bad habits. People were talking to me last night about going out to eat, like, oh, what are your favorite restaurants? I'm like, I don't go out to eat that much, because it costs thousands of dollars a year to go out to eat, and I can go to the grocery store and drop $200 and have fantastic food all week for myself and my children. When I go out to eat, everything costs at least $50 or $100 for one single meal, and often the food has a bunch of extra stuff in it. When I think in terms of, well, I'm going to save thousands of dollars a year by minimizing going out to eat, by generally most weeks not going out to eat even once — that level of thinking is the bigger amount.
And then, when I do go out to eat, I don't check my receipts. I always tip at least 25%, and if the bill is smaller, I may just tip like $20 on a $20 bill. It might cost $20, and I'll just drop a $20 tip, because those are such small amounts of money it doesn't matter. This is the same reason I'll give $20 to almost anyone who asks for help — the amount is too small to crowd my mind with.
The wallet analogy
Let me give you a clear analogy with your wallet. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous, and people often put a dollar or two in the basket. I don't usually put anything in the basket, and sometimes people, knowing that I'm sober 12 years and that I go to those meetings all the time, are like, why aren't you putting anything in the basket? I say, I only carry 20s. Right now, I have forty $20 bills in my wallet. That's $800 I have in my wallet. Some people at that meeting also have 40 bills in their wallet, but they have $40 in their wallet, because they've got forty $1 bills. They sit there and drop a dollar in the basket at every AA meeting, and they only have $40. I'm rolling around with $800 in my wallet. I'm ready if I need to drop $800 on something in cash; I've got it. I'm thinking, yeah, you can have whatever you like — water on me, hummus on ice. We can drink water all night, baby. You can have whatever you like.
You want to look at that wallet analogy alongside your thinking. If you crowd your mind with cheap thoughts, if you crowd your mind obsessing over $20 here and $50 there, you'll rationalize that it adds up. But what really happens is you'll miss bigger opportunities to look at larger amounts of money. If you want more of how I think through life and money like this, I keep that going in my Life playlist.
Look for the bigger opportunities instead
I look at: how can I make myself a millionaire? Where are the opportunities for me to make a million dollars? For instance, I saw the ICP price at $2.22 today, and when I looked it up, I'm like, nice. In my experience I can drop a couple thousand dollars on a thousand ICP, and I believe I'll probably make a thousand to $10,000 off of that purchase over time. That's one little action I can take that I believe will make me a thousand-plus dollars. This is my own thinking and what's worked for me, not financial advice for you — but the point stands: the more you crowd your attention and time with all these little things, trying to nickel-and-dime, the more you miss opportunities where you could take $2,000 and turn it into $20,000.
You could make a video that brings somebody into jerrybanfield.com who signs up for $49 a month, who then also pays for some additional one-on-one calls beyond the free ones, and turns into one customer that's brought in thousands of dollars of value. They brought that in because I give tens of thousands of dollars of value in my videos, in my coaching, in my community, in being able to direct message me with questions and ask my AI, and so on. It's the same mindset shift I talk about when I explain how I became a self-made millionaire twice: when you think bigger, you get bigger opportunities. But most people are stuck thinking small.
That's why I do my videos — to help you think bigger and get bigger opportunities. And the best way I can help you do that is this: when you join me, you get in my inner circle, you talk to me, you're able to direct message me, and you can post and connect with other people in the community. That will be the best thing you can do to help you think bigger.