What Can You Do?

Never say “can’t”, especially in the context of, “can’t afford it”. Instead say, “How can I…?” It’s never about the money. It’s about what money can or cannot do for you. Understand why money is an issue in your life, either positively or negatively, and what is really important beyond the dollars and cents.

Why? It’s amazing to me how many times and ways we stop ourselves before we even start.  I spoke with someone the other day who was looking for work in her field. She started off saying she couldn’t live where she was living because the jobs did not give her enough income. We talked and replaced her “couldn’t afford it” reality with “how can she earn the dollars she needs working in her field so she can live where she wants”.

The Importance of Giving

Giving is as important as saving. Even if you think you don’t have enough money to give, we all have people and causes that are important to us. Allocating an amount of money from every earned dollar for giving – as well as saving– needs to be established immediately even if you don’t know how it will work with your current cash flow or income situation. You can decide to hold off with the gift or  save the money only for a short while until it’s needed (like the end of the month), but if you wait until you have $100,000 in order to give $10,000, it won’t happen. You must set aside $1 from the $10 earned to develop the habit.

When do you start saving and giving? Developing wealthy habits doesn’t happen overnight. Start with your children: when they earn $10, put aside $1 towards long-term savings and $1 that they can use for giving. For yourself, start the next time you earn any money. Transfer 10% into savings and withdraw 10% for giving. If you get to the end of the month and you need some for your already – established expenses, transfer what you need from savings and if necessary deposit the “giving money” back into your account. After a while, you will have established the habit of allocating money and you’ll eventually find that you don’t need all of what you have set aside for your current expenses, and it will indeed be money you have saved and are able to give away.

Your Ideal Lifestyle

Your ideal lifestyle must have a dollar figure attached to it. It’s not okay to say, “I want to be rich” or “I want to be comfortable” or “I want to own a house” or “I want to travel”, etc. Your ideal lifestyle must have a price tag in a monthly amount. If you want to live in a certain house, how much will it cost to own and maintain? How much would you need to set aside for annual holidays, for someone to clean your house, for you to drive the car you want, to wear the clothes you like to wear, to give money away, to do the things you like to do, etc.

How? Start shopping – not to buy – but to do research, to become informed. Go to open houses, visit travel agents, sit in cars, look in stores you wouldn’t normally shop in, research charities, go online, talk to people, go places, write notes, keep files, and do what any informed buyer would do. If you have an idea to take a year off with your family and live in a foreign land, then find out the cost. Find out who and how you’ll have things looked after at home, where you’ll go, where you’ll live, and all the prices if you were to do it today. Even if you think you won’t live out your vision for five to ten years, you can find out the costs today then update your figures later, or learn to apply financial math calculations to project likely increases. You need to know the price of your dream, of your desired lifestyle, of your life outside of your current working and income situation otherwise, you’re giving up control and working with “averages” at best. Is your life just average, or is your life unique and personal? This is not a hard step unless you make it about lack, regret, fear, and self pity. This is about making it happen. Without this step, even if you won a lottery, you wouldn’t know how to use the money. Enjoy this process. It’s far easier than living a life of “coulda, shoulda and woulda”.

Planning Your Ideal Budget

Developing a budget does not mean adding up the total income you have to work with each month, then allocating funds within that level. The definition is: “planned expenditures and a program for financing them.” Figure out what you want to spend each month in order to live the life you desire while maintaining your true priorities, then look for ways to fund this budget.

Why? You might not know how you’ll earn the income that you’d like for your ideal budget when you first make it, but you’ll also never find out if you don’t start asking. Your option is to continue to scrimp and deny yourself the lifestyle you’d like to live and end up looking back on your life with regret. You might also find that when you make your ideal budget, it isn’t really as far off as you had imagined before you put it on paper in black and white.

Change Your Thinking

Look for ways to do something rather than ways not to do something. For example, rather than looking for ways to decrease spending, first look for ways to earn the money. This is more inspiring and will often result in the reduction of spending. Thinking positively and having a “bigger” goal produces a bigger purpose which will likely end up in a shift in spending anyway.

How? Rather than looking at the situation and saying “can’t because,” or “if only,” or “…but…” keep asking, “Who? What? When? Where? How?”. Keep asking and asking. As soon as you say “can’t”, you stop looking for answers.

Life Insurance is For You Too… A Guaranteed Investment?

Life insurance is not just for your survivors when you die. It can be a phenomenal planning tool with great benefits for you while you’re alive. To benefit, however, you will need to plan ahead and be open to seeing beyond the premium payments and the death benefit to the opportunities the insurance can provide you today (peace of mind and living benefits, to name just two).

Why should you really add an additional expense to insure something that might not happen? One often overlooked benefit is simply the peace of mind that you get to take the steps needed to move you forward in your financial planning. If you know you are covered if things get really bad, or some unexpected situation comes up, you have more confidence to invest more, to start a business, to change your income and to enjoy your life.

Doing the Impossible

If a situation seems impossible, ask yourself if anyone has ever done anything similar before. If so, find someone or someplace to help you find out how they did it. Often people will say they are too old, too young, too broke, too tired, or too busy to do something they really want or need to do. Look harder. If you think you can, you will; if you think you can’t, you won’t. Maybe there are other ways of accomplishing the task at hand besides the ones you have already tried or heard of. If it’s that important, keep asking until you find the answers you need.

Why? Quite simply, even if a task or situation has never been done before to the best of your knowledge, does that mean you abandon the idea? That’s your choice, but history has proven over and over again that human ingenuity and perseverance are key components to creating anything new. If you want something different, find successful people to associate with. They don’t necessarily have to have done exactly what you’ve done before, but they will have had experiences of setting goals and reaching them, which is invaluable support if you are intending to make changes to your financial situation. Creating new associations is like making new friends: you don’t have to lose the old friends; you just have to be willing to go places, and do things where you are likely to at least hear the conversations of people who are already experiencing the sort of lifestyle you desire.

Practice Positive Thinking

With practice, you can learn to take some typical financial concepts and see them as positive, rather than negative. For example, we are taught to set aside money for an “emergency” fund implying some sort of disaster could be looming around the corner. Instead, call it an “opportunity” fund and you can see that the same money could be used to take advantage of investment opportunities, “once in a lifetime” experiences or to support you through a rough time financially with more calm. You can also use the “opportunity fund” to take time to find new work if your existing employment ended, or to do repairs or renovations to your home if needed.

What other common situations are there like this example? How about “bad debt” replaced with the belief that the benefit of the purchase has already been realized? Is it “risk” or “opportunity,” “spending” or “investing in your lifestyle”? These might not resonate with your experience, but the idea is to become aware of the way you speak and to think more positively about common financial situations. There is more than one way to see everything.