How to master financial success in your life

The rules for achieving financial success are simple. 

More importantly, following these rules are vital to obtain your financial independence.

The rules are:

• We have heard it before, spend less than you earn, and then invest the difference. To do this you need to follow a budget, whereby every cent is being accounted for. This key to financial success has been so for centuries, as you can read in the book The Richest man in Babylon by Classon where this principle has been in operation for over 2000 years.  You can be an uneducated person working at an average job on an average wage, but if you could save $100 month from the age of 20 to 65 and let it accumulate, you will be worth millions of dollars. That’s $25wk, less than $4 a day the cost of a coffee.  Do you do that? If not why not?

If you are in a relationship, where you combine your income the biggest challenge may be to agree on these principles. Discussions should be had.

•   Next is to save 10% of every dollar you earn. It will be easier if you develop this habit from the start of your working life. Take ten percent off the top of your salary and live on the other 90%. 

 Most people do not do this. They spend most of what they earn and if there is anything left over they throw it in the bank temporarily, and then they pull it back out and spend it on something else. They look at their bank account and see that they have some money saved and decide to spend it. I have seen this to be true so often with many of my clients in the bank, when I worked there.

• You need to decide in advance to prefer financial independence to status. When I look at the habits of the financially successful, I have seen that the mark of the self-made millionaire is that they are not concerned with impressing the “neighbours” or keeping up with the “Jones’s” They are more concerned with financial independence than looking good on the outside, at least until they become wealthy. Is financial independence number 1 to you? Or is it 3, 4 or 10?  If it is number one then be willing to make the sacrifice and stick to it.

Financial independence is a choice. What do you want? There is no right or wrong answer, not everyone wants the same thing from life, but we would all love to have enough money to not to have to stress about it, so how far are you willing to go and what do you want to achieve?

• Last rule for achieving financial independence is once you put your money away, never touch it. This is very important. Many people make the mistake of thinking they are saving money so they can have it, like it was their fun money. When they decide they want to go on a trip, buy a car or a lounge suite they go and get the money they saved. Don’t! If you want to spend money on those sorts of things you need to open up a separate savings account. The money you save is for your financial security for when you are no longer earning an income. So work out how much you need, and how and where you will invest it.  Once you put money away for this, you then resolve never to touch it. It is to go in and never to go out. You will find once you allow yourself to touch it once, you will find an opportunity to continually be dipping into it.  

So the keys to financial independence are to pay yourself first by saving 10 percent of everything you earn, buy used things of good quality rather than buying new, and once you put money away, NEVER, touch it. Put it away and let it accumulate until it can enable you to leverage whatever you want in life, or have it for your retirement years or have it for purchasing assets to live off when you no longer wish to work.

If you need any help with this then do give me a call.  Whether it’s to financially become more educated on how to manage your money, what loop holes to watch out for, how to save, or if you are willing to change and are needing to form some good habits and change your existing mind-sets that are not helping you to get ahead and so be able to manage your money to save. Call me.