Why do you think some people are more successful than others? I believe that personal success or failure goes hand in hand with mental attitude. I have yet to meet a successful individual who has a negative outlook on life.
A negative attitude will defeat you faster than anything else. Your mental attitude effects your facial expressions, how you walk, how you present yourself and the tone of your voice.
I recently read an article in Entrepreneur Magazine by Romanus Wolter where he says “A positive attitude enables you to believe your goals are achievable and to discover opportunities where others may not see them.”
Believe in yourself no matter what. There is negativity all around us. Build up your self-confidence with positive self talk that helps put you in a positive frame of mind. Be optimistic, that comes across to clients as self-confidence and encourages them to support your efforts. Self-doubt or hesitation is a deal breaker and will cause others to question your abilities. Always come across as strong and confident even if you don’t have all the answers. No one has all the answers but you can be confident in the fact that you know where to get the answers and that confidence will translate into success.
Be sure to read part 2 of PMA - Positive Mental Attitude
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Tags: PMA, Postive Attitude, Success
Becoming wealthy is not about the amount of money you make.
Stop laughing, it is true, as soon as you stop thinking you are going to gain wealth by making more then the quicker you will gain wealth.
You get rich from educating yourself. You must learn how to manage your money, discipline yourself with money, learn how to invest your money.
Education is the key in becoming wealthy. Now I can guarantee if you have a loser type thought process you just tuned out and probably left this page. That is why 90% of
Face it, we all want that pie in the sky idea of the “get rich quick” solution. One tenth of one percent of people stumble onto that quick solution. Of those that do “get rich quick” say the lottery winner, historically loose all there winnings within 5 to 10 years if not sooner because they were not educated in how to handle the money.
If you can’t manage $20,000 a year, how can you expect to know how to manage a win-fall of $500,000 a year? You just can’t. Also, if you “think” you know everything there is to know about money, you are lying to yourself. Nobody knows everything about any one topic. Sure, some of us are smarter about certain topics than others, but we all have room to learn regardless of the topic. As soon as you get arrogant about your knowledge on any one topic, that is a good sign that you are really ignorant and getting lazy.
So, if you are still reading then I owe it to you to give you some of my recommendations of ways to gain education about how to handle money and become wealthy. Now this is just a select few, and as I blog through the days and weeks ahead I will continually add more, it is a never ending list.
Of course, being a Dave Ramsey Certified Financial Counselor I am going to recommend Dave’s book The Total Money Makeover
- great book for the beginner who is in debt and needs an idea of where to start to learn how to get out of debt
Another great read is Larry Winget’s Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life I love this book, it is an in your face reality check. If the book makes you mad, great, that means you are reading it, and it is touching a nerve. It is all about some good old tough love, and I believe in tough love. You have to focuses on handling yourself, after all, you have to be able to handle yourself before you can begin to handle money.
Learn about money with the whole family by playing Cash Flow 101 by Robert Kiyosaki, he is the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad another great book on how to educate yourself on what money is. You have to learn how to think, if you say to yourself “I can’t afford it” you have just turned off your brain..it is a defeatist thought. Instead, focus on “how can I afford it” this get your mind’s creative juices flowing and opens your eyes to money making possibilities.
Education is worthless if you don’t put what you learn into practice. It is easy to become a lifetime student, reading and learning for years, but it won’t help you unless you get past the fear, get off the couch and put what you learn into practice. Make mistakes, learn from your mistakes and move forward
Tags: Income, Money, Money management
Most of my clients at one point or another ask me about investing. First, I tell them that legally, I can not advise as to what they should or shouldn’t invest in. However, I do offer some valuable, common sense advise.
First and foremost, never give your money to someone else and say “invest it for me and make me a lot of money.” You must always make sure you are educated and understand the risks of what your money is being invested in. You and you alone are responsible for giving the go ahead in any investment. You are the only one who really cares about your money. Giving someone else full control over your money voids your risk comfort level. With that said, it is not a bad idea to work with licensed investment professionals. But you must make sure you know who it is you are working with and what their qualifications are as well as their own portfolio. Again, do you want to invest with someone who is in debt and struggling financially or with someone who is debt free, and making good returns on their own investments?
Interview several different people, get recommendations from successful investors as to who is good and successful to work with. You should never choose an investment broker based on relationship, I hear this a lot, “oh, my brother-in-law is my broker” and when I ask how they made that choice, I usually get an answer something on the lines of “well, he asked, and I just couldn’t say no, he is family” or “he was just starting out and I wanted to help him out a little bit” then they go on to complain about how much money they have lost. Now, don’t get me wrong, if your brother-in-law has a proven success record then that is one thing….but then again, do you really want to mix money into family matters, not a recommendation I would make.
This is your money we are talking about, would you choose to be the first open heart patient of a doctor who was just out of med school and who had never performed the surgery before? Of course not. So why would you choose a investment broker based on relationship rather than experience and a proven track record? Interview many different people, don’t just pick the first one you come by.
During your interview process, if you don’t 100% understand what the broker is telling you, or talking about, or if you don’t feel comfortable with them, then they are not the right choice. You must completely understand how they work, and how they will be bringing recommendations to you. Remember, it is your money, keep control of how it is invested and understand every step.
Never invest more than you are willing to loose. Lets face it, investing is risking, and risk varies depending on what you are investing in. You and only you know what your risk comfort level is. You are responsible for the investments that are made, take accountability for your choice. You can’t blame your broker if you just hand over money to him or her, and they make a bad choice and you loose it all. You can’t even blame them if you tell them what to invest in and then you loose it all. Bottom line is you and you alone are responsible for the choices you make in all aspects of your money, from spending to investing. If you make money you can pat yourself on the back, and if you loose money you have no one to blame but yourself because you and you alone made the choice as to what to invest in based on how you educated yourself. Take responsibility!
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So you are in debt and you want to know how you gain wealth. Well, hang on, I am going to tell you something very simple that people who are poor don’t do.
PAY YOURSELF FIRST!
Sorry I don’t mean to yell but it is true. In order to gain wealth you must pay yourself first.
Most people I say that to start giving me excuses as to why they can’t pay themselves first. “I don’t make enough”, “I have too many bills”….blah, blah, blah. These are nothing but excuses. Now…before you shut your mind off, take a risk and keep reading.
I know people who tell me, they can’t pay tithe much less pay themselves first before all the bills. With that thought process, you will never have enough. Now this is not a lecture about paying tithe or other charitable contributions, however, I do believe that 10% of your income is not yours in the first place so it is the right thing to do to give that 10% back right off the top.
Then, you must pay yourself. Think about it…the IRS automatically pulls their amount (also knows as taxes) right out of your check before you even get your hands on it right? Why do you think they do that? Because they know if they didn’t take it automatically, they most likely would never get their money.
Same thought process holds true for you. You should be having money pulled out of your check automatically and have it put into a retirement fund before you ever get your hands on it. That way, you begin to invest in yourself first…paying yourself first. Aren’t you worth it?
Now that means your check will be less than you are use to living on. You won’t have enough for bills, right? Want to know what will happen, your mind will start working in a creative way to figure out how to “make more” to compensate what is being pulled out so you can meet your bills. It will put a fire under you to spend less, and make more.
So how much should I save? Well, it is dependent of course on where you are in paying off your debt. But as a general rule, you should save one hour’s salary or wage per day. So if you make$20 per hour, you save $20 per day in a retirement fund, think about it, that comes out to be about 10% of your annual income. Again, this is just a base line as to where to start and again it is based on your current debt situation as debt needs to be paid off first after your pay yourself an emergency fund.
If you don’t start today….tomorrow will never come.
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Tags: financail growth, financial peace, Money, money managmenet, savings
Do I really need to engage with a money management coach in order to get out of debt?
Is a money management coach required to get out of debt, no it is not required for your to engage in the services of a money management coach to get out of debt.
With that said, most individuals and couples who are in financial distress are so close to the actually problem that if they could resolved it on their own, they would. When you are so overwhelmed with the situation at hand it many times is much easier to continue on with status quo instead of working together to resolve the problem. Most of my clients don’t even know where to begin.
Most of the information that a coach will teach you can be found in well written books such as Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover. Personally, I believe that Dave’s philosophy is the best as it totally focuses on never using credit again and always paying cash. When that is done, then there is no way to get into debt.
What a coach offers, is additional accountability that you don’t already have when going it alone. It is someone who will provide a third party objective view of your financial situation. It should be someone who has experienced debt first hand and has conquered the problem. Do you want to work with a coach in regard to getting out of debt if they are carrying debt of their own? I don’t think so.
A coach will provide you with recommendations as to where to begin to cut back from your preliminary budget and teach you how to work a budget each month. What a coach shouldn’t do is the work for you. How will you learn if someone else is paying your bills, or working with your creditors. That takes the responsibility off you as well as the accountability. If you don’t do the work yourself, learning and making mistakes along the way, you can’t expect to know how to never get into debt again. Sure, it will hurt, there will be sacrifice, but it will be well worth it in the long run as you will be learning new habits, change behavior and your mind set as it relates to money management along the way.
Now with all that is said, you will not always agree with what a coach recommends to you. Think about it, this is a life changing experience and change is many times a difficult pill to swallow, but if you are serious about getting out of debt, staying out of debt, building wealth and changing your family tree, working with a coach is a great first step forward.
Well, Kim, how on earth can I afford a money management coach if I can’t afford to pay my bills? This is one of my most popular questions. Simple answer is, how can you not afford it. What you are doing right now is obviously not working or you wouldn’t be in a debt situation. I have found that people in debt are more than willing to find money for a new TV, a dinner room table, or something fun and don’t begin to “claim poverty” until it comes to investing in a change for their future. Many times the reason for this is they really don’t want to change and use “I don’t have the money” as an excuse to continue on the path of living paycheck to paycheck. But if you really want to change and are tired of living in the cycle you are in now, you will find the money, just like you found it to get all the things you wanted in the past, it just depends on what your priorities are.
Please feel free to look around our site and invest in a 30-minute call if you are ready to change your financial life.
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Tags: coach, financial help, financial success, Money management
Should I get a debt consolidation loan?
This is a question I am asked a lot during my coaching sessions, and today we will look at the answer to that question.
The debt management process begins by taking an inventory (know as a preliminary budget) of your current financial situation. You must first know exactly what you have coming in (income), and where is it going as it is leaving your account (outgo) before you can make an educated decision about a consolidation loan. I find that most of my clients have no idea where their money is going which makes them think they can’t afford their current payments. Nine times out of ten, this is not the case.
First, you must sit down (if married you must do this together) and write down your exactly what you spend each month, and I mean down to the penny. How much is your rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance, gas for the cars, eating out, entertainment, etc. Everything you spend money on should be written down, and I mean everything even those dollars you feed into the soda machine everyday has to be accounted for.
From there some tough decisions must be made. You see, money management is not about math, it is about behavior. Let me repeat that, money management is about behavior. When I work with a client, on average, I find between $500 and $700 that is being mis-managed or spent without a plan each month. Let’s split the difference, an extra $600 a month is $7200 a year, that can pay off a good chunk of debt don’t you think?
How do you find mis-spent money like that? It is all about putting your spending on paper (or in a computer program) so you can see it written down. Most of the time it is in the eating out and entertainment funds. Think about it, if you are spending $350 a month eating out each month and another $200 going to the movies or other entertainment, that is $550 a month that you can re-allocate to paying towards debt. It is much smarter to do that, adjust your behavior a little, than just cop out by consolidating bills so you can continue to play and get what you want “now” instead of saving for it.
Debt consolidation loans do lower your monthly payments by combining all debt into one payment (which many times is associated with security such as your house, i.e. second mortgage) but what a debt consolidation loan doesn’t do is teach you discipline to start living within your means. If you don’t learn that lesson, and change your spending habits you will actually charge up additional debt on top of the debt consolidation. Your cards will have no balances on them because you moved all those dollars over to the new loan. The average person has more debt within two years of consolidation than they did prior to consolidating. Why, because the spending behavior was not changed, then what, a third mortgage? At some point in this behavior pattern you will have no more to mortgage and something will be foreclosed or repossessed….not good.
Debt consolidation is a band aid fix of lowering monthly payments to give you more money to spend without a plan each month, not teach you how to manage your money and pay off debt. Rather than doing that, I recommend actually fixing the problem which is your spending behavior. Sometimes you can do it alone, many times you need the assistance of a professional, either way, debt consolidation loans is not the answer to solving a cash flow problem.
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Tags: consolidation loan, credit, Money
In yesterday’s blog I mentioned the importance of shredding all credit and loan offers with a cross cut shredder rather than just throwing those offers in the trash. Why is this so important? To protect your identity. For that matter, I go one step further and shred anything that has my name and/or address on it.
Credit and loan offers hold enough information for some unscrupulous person to use in a way that could damage your personal identity if found in the trash or improperly discarded.
Now I am not going to go through the specific details of how this could occur, that wouldn’t be wise as I would be helping out the bad guys. Here we want to protect you from the bad guys.
Now we all know the basics of protecting your identity. Shredding documents that contain personal information. Plus, you should never tell anyone your social security number, credit card number, or even the small little three digit code on the back of your credit card, that you have not determined is a valid representative of the account in question. All account and personal information should be kept as confidential as possible. I don’t tell anyone or even “verify” to anyone that information over the phone unless I have initiated the call myself and know who I am talking to.
So how do you protect your identity beyond that? Well start by opting out of credit offers as we discussed on Friday. Check your credit reports every year, you can do this by going to www.annualcreditreport.com which is a free service. Place a fraud alert at the credit bureaus every 90 days, this will prevent any new accounts from being open and require any new charges from occurring without your prior approval.
Now if you are like me, you probably have other more pressing priorities happening in your life that you are focusing on, such as your family, work, house repairs, car maintenance, etc., so even I will miss a 90 day mark in placing the fraud alerts at the credit bureaus or forget to pull a credit report. What I did instead is sign up for identity protection. I am so pleased with how easy it is, and how I no longer have to worry about it that I placed a link for LifeLock 
on our main page. Not only will they do all the above, but if after subscribing with them you find yourself in the situation of dealing with identity theft, they will do the leg work for you in clearing it up. This leg work could take hours upon hours of your time, police reports must be filed, letters must be written, all this on top of all your other worries, who has time to deal with that hassle? Not me.
Identity protection is like insurance plus. Not only to they step in after the fact (insurance) but they are also maintaining you on the front end (the plus part), by opting out for you, placing the fraud alerts, etc.
So yes, even though I could do all the leg work that LifeLock does myself, I think it is well worth the small cost to have them do it for me and give me peace of mind and one less thing to worry about.
Tags: , credit, identity theft, loans, Money, protection
