There’s a pretty strong divide in the personal finance world between the spend lessers and the earn morers (spoiler alert: doing both usually has the best results).

I have a theory though that for almost everyone, personal finance starts with frugality.

Frugality is 100% in your control. Earning more can seem sort of impossible at first, but starting to clip coupons, setting up a budget, calling and cancelling cable – these are things you could start doing right now.

Here’s what happens when you start with frugality:

The Savings Dopamine Hit

The first time something you do has a result, you get that little buzz of savings excitement. It can help motivate you to do it again and again.

The Savings Habit

You like the buzz so much, you start working frugal tips into your regular habits. On Saturdays, we meal plan. On Sundays, we coupon for 20 minutes before going to the food store. On Thursdays, you call you negotiate a utility bill discount. None of these things take that much time, but the payoff adds up. Especially when you’re not making a lot.

Becoming a Savings Researcher

You start spending some free time researching other ways to save. You automate a lot of your savings options. You figure out what savings account has the highest interest rates. If you’ve got good credit and were usually a responsible spender anyway, you get into churning. At any rate, you’ve got definite opinions on your favorite personal finance blogs and you’ve probably watered down your soap to the last drop at least once.

The Savings Expert

After spending some time as a researcher, you become your own savings expert. You find you absolutely hate calling the utility company and the $10 a month savings isn’t worth it to you, but an hour of meal planning and 20 minutes of couponing a week is actually kind of Zen, so you don’t mind it. Maybe watering down the soap saves you almost nothing but is so mindless that you still do it anyway. Whatever the results, after spending a while floating in the sea of spend less, you know exactly what you want to take from it and what you want to leave behind.

Earning More Starts to Seem Possible

After spending a while mastering frugality, you start to realize the earn morers were probably onto something. Reading all those blogs has probably pointed you in the direction of a side hustle more than once and they probably seem a lot more achievable now. You should also have a little big of savings from all your frugal moves that you can use, if the side hustle that looks best to you has some start up costs.

Some people seem to come to side hustling very naturally, but personally, I found it required a little rewiring in my brain and becoming a spend lesser for a while first helped motivate me to broaden my income streams too.