3 ideas
Set up automatic transfers that fire the day after each paycheck lands, sending fixed percentages to retirement accounts, investment accounts and savings goals before you ever see the money in checking. Because the saving happens without any decision, it no longer depends on willpower.
Guilt-free spending is only safe once saving and investing are automated and fixed first. After that, you should cut ruthlessly on categories you don't care about and spend lavishly on the few things you genuinely value. Frugality means choosing where money goes, not minimising every expense.
Most actively managed funds and individual stock pickers underperform the market over time once fees are counted. Small differences in expense ratios compound into large losses over decades. For most people, buying broad, low-cost index funds or target-date funds and holding them automatically produces better returns than trying to beat the market.