As I heard somewhere or another: "Get the dollars right and the pennies will take care of themselves"
In case anyone is interested, the "war1025 guide to wealth accumulation":
1. Decide a reasonable checking account balance based on your pay frequency and expenses. (I get paid weekly, so I've found that $2,000 is a good number for me.)
2. Every week when you get paid, transfer any amount in excess of amount (1) into index funds.
3. The index funds are not to be added to and never withdrawn from. (I made an exception to this rule to buy our house)
(Obviously have the correct emergency funds to handle unexpected events. Also you may at times choose to instead transfer the money into savings to work towards some known upcoming expense.)
Anyways, maybe not that profound, but the memory has stuck. By sweating the cents, you get the dollars. And there’s another saying that is different from yours that I heard my dad say constantly: every penny counts.
For what it's worth, we have a family of five, my wife stays home, and I believe we currently save somewhere in the ballpark of 35% of our income. I think that counts as being pretty frugal compared to most of the people I know.
1. Initially, buy 3 month T-notes equal to your max credit limit.
2. At the end of the month, transfer the dollar amount of your current credit balance and pay off your card.
3. Top off your T-bills to maintain the max credit limit amount.
4. Profit!
You just scammed the credit card companies out of a month of interest! The strategy looks even better with cash back or airline miles or points or whatever.