Happy Spring, Financial Enthusiast! If you are new here, welcome! If you are a member of the community, ask someone that wants to work on their finances to join this newsletter 💸. 

Spring can be a season of new beginnings, check out my business and start your financial journey TODAY!🌼

This newsletter will introduce Carolina’s $2 rule! 

There are two rules for 2 minutes in the productivity world. Allen’s 2 minute rule was first coined in his book Getting Things Done. Allen’s rule states, if an action takes less than two minutes as the Nike slogan says: “Just Do It”✅. Do not let that 2 minute activity occupy any space in your brain. In 2018, James Clear published Atomic Habits and introduced Clear’s 2 minute rule, which states in order to start and stick with a habit you have to lower the entry level to 2 minutes chunks⏱️. 

The January 2024 newsletter covered why you want to open a high yield savings account to host your emergency fund. If you haven’t done so yet, use my Ally referral code. The February 2024 newsletter covered why personal finances are the ultimate form of selfcare. Today, I introduce Carolina’s $2 rule! It goes like this: if you have $2 to use towards your personal finance, let's automate some $2 transfers. These transfers can go towards your emergency fund, debt, or investment accounts. 

Carolina’s $2 rule takes both Allen’s and Clear’s framework and combines them with your finances💸. Once you have an HYSA, setting an automatic transfer can take you less than 2 minutes.  I believe starting to work towards financial security does not have to be an insurmountable task, it can look like $2 automatic contributions. You can always edit that transaction to be a higher value or start with $5 instead of $2. It is the habit I want you to form, not so much the semantics. Suddenly, a vague resolution of “working on my finances” becomes, I am going to automate a $10 transfer to my emergency fund. See, SMART goals in action!

If you take a bird’s eye view of 2024, the first quarter of the year will be completed soon. With January resolutions fizzling away, you can use spring as a new beginning and let your personal finance garden bloom 🌱

🌱Join this newsletter and get a free copy of my toolkit, which covers the $2 rule on chapter 6.

🌱Sign up for one of my services. The main goal of my business is for graduate students to never pay for a service by working with Principal Investigators, Program Coordinators, Graduate School Offices, Training Grant/Fellowship Coordinators, Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committees, Professional Development Offices and any other staff to sponsor my services. 

🌱 If you are a student, make sure you introduce me via email (financeswithcarolina@gmail.com) to the appropriate staff and I can take the conversation from there!