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Since I left college and started out into the "adult world", I've always spent less than I made, the rest going to savings or investments toward retirement. I accomplish this by "paying myself first". If I have already saved the money as my first priority, I can't spend it on things like rent or groceries. So my financial choices are forced to be more conservative by design.
Example: I forget what the max limit to IRAs were at the time (say $5k/yr) but for my first job I set up auto contributions each month and mentally took a $5k/yr salary "cut" for that job. Every time I got a raise, I made sure that at least a portion of that raise went to increasing my savings rate and attempted to avoid lifestyle creep.
Thanks to my savings, I've been able to handle some emergencies in cash vs having to utilize debt to cover the expenses. It really is a snowball. I started out small, now my savings is significant compared to my income.
I attribute a lot of my "pay yourself first" approach to reading The Automatic Millionaire, Expanded and Updated: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich early on.