Finance categories make it simple to manage your cashflow and to keep more of your money for investing and for using toward securing financial freedom. Many clients who I speak to have tried budgeting and have set up finance categories which were far too complicated to keep up with when life started to get busy. In this article, I’ll be showing you four simple personal spending categories which you can use to achieve financial freedom starting right now. {Read More}
Feb
2013
Is your Cash Flow Adequate? – 5 Questions to Ask Yourself
Your cash flow is the financial energy that supports your standard of living; your purchase of goods and services; your children education; your retirement planning; your need and desire to care for love ones and others; and your overall financial security.
To maintain an adequate cash flow in your life, wise planning is required through the setting of long term goals followed by the objectives that will lead to successful accomplishment of these goals. Your adequacy of cash flow is then determined by what is needed to complete these objectives and ultimately reach your long-term goals. {Read More}
Jan
2013
Financial Freedom and the Power of Cash Purchasing
If you’re serious about building financial freedom, one of the most important decisions you can make it to stop using credit for paying expenses and for making purchases. In fact, in the four bucket system for managing your spending, category three is focused on laying up cash reserves for the sake of planning large purchases. Again, here are the four categories in the system: {Read More}
Jan
2013
Financial Freedom and Your Inner Compass
Most of the time, we think of achieving financial freedom by means of budgets and cashflow plans, investing knowledge and a WHOLE lot of motivation to making it work. However, few people consider the role of their personal beliefs when it comes to achieving a goal like getting out of debt of building wealth. Does this really make a difference or is it a bunch of new age rhetoric? The answer is that it makes more than just a difference… it can literally make or break your ability to succeed at achieving financial freedom. Here’s how that happens, and what you can do about it… {Read More}
Dec
2012
Trouble with Cash Flow? Here are 3 Solutions and Strategies for your Income
Personal cash flow strategies make a night and day difference in your capability to succeed at personal wealth building.
The problem is that the majority of the population uses only one of the many personal cash flow strategies, and by far the most ineffective…earning a steady paycheck from an employer. A few decades ago it might have thought I was crazy for saying this, but that is back when job security still equaled financial security.
These days, a steady paycheck is simply a means of trading hours for dollars and giving the majority of your time towards helping someone else build their dreams. So let us look at three simple personal cash flow strategies which will get you on the road towards personal wealth building. {Read More}
Nov
2012
The Quickest Route to Financial Freedom
Financial freedom can be a really long way away if you don’t know the quickest and easiest way to get there.
In this article, we’ll be talking about the quickest route to achieving financial freedom, but first, let’s talk about the slowest route: a shortcut. That’s right. Whenever you find yourself scrambling for a quick way to build financial freedom or for increasing personal wealth, you’re being counterproductive.
The answer to financial freedom does not start with making more money or creating passive cash flow or even building a solid net worth. {Read More}
Oct
2012
A Simple Cash Flow Strategy that You can Follow
Simple personal cash flow management beats out a complicated one every single time. You’ve probably met your share of people who have a lot of complicated knowledge about personal finance and all these ideas about how to achieve financial freedom, yet they’re broke or pretty close to it.
When you think about it, smart people often have a very difficult time using their knowledge to create real life results. Funny how that works, yes?
This is because simple personal cash flow strategies are a LOT more applicable to real life…especially when your commitment is tested. Let’s look at one simple personal cash flow management system that is proven successful.
The Four Buckets: A Simple Personal Cash Flow System
The four bucket personal cash flow system is so simple that once you get into the habit of using it, you can almost live off of it without having to refer to a written spending journal. It works like this: {Read More}
Sep
2012
How to Take Control of Your Spending and Your Life Now
If you’re like most people, you’ve been trying to build financial freedom for a while. Year after year, people promise that they’re going to get out of debt, start saving money, get on a budget and start investing…all those things never seem to get done because “life” gets in the way. Is there are way to put a stop to this and to start focusing your attention on building financial freedom?
There is, but it starts with doing something which the majority of us have a VERY hard time doing: taking proactive control of their spending.
What Causes Spending to Get Out of Control?
There are only two ways that your spending can get out of your control. The first is if your income simply isn’t enough to cover your regular expenses which are required for living. In this case, there’s no amount of discipline or planning that can help…you simply need to find a way to start earning more money. However, for most people, this is not the problem. The problem is the spending habits that are out of control and unchecked, cause you to look back and say: “I’ve got to get control of this.”
If this is the situation you’re in, you might be surprised to hear that the answer has nothing to do with money or with discipline. Instead, the cause of overspending is emotional, if it were based on logic; it would be much easier to tell yourself to simply stop. However, overspending gets out of control because our emotional desires get out of our control. The only way to correct this is to understand and to deal with the emotional dynamics which cause overspending…
What Causes Unbalanced Emotional Desires?
One of the primary things which causes our emotions to be out of balance is unhappiness with what we do for a living. If you dislike what you’re doing for 40 to 50 hours a week or if you feel no sense of fulfillment in it, you’re emotional drives will cause you to seek that happiness and fulfillment elsewhere. This might be in the purchase of a new TV or an expensive vacation every month or 77 pairs of new designer shoes in the closet. While there’s nothing wrong with these things, if buying them is causing you to overspend, then something needs to be done.
Many people could even afford to take a pay cut and do something which they enjoy more simply because of the money they would save on overspending. Another cause of the emotions getting out of balance is lack of exercise and activity.
Everyone knows that it’s harder to focus and to discipline yourself when you’re tired, and inactivity or lack of exercise will certainly cause your energy level to drop. What other areas of your life might be causing you to indulge in overspending.
Take an honest look at these and work on getting them corrected. When you do, the money problems will usually take care of themselves.
There is more…Click here to receive your free ebook on Personal Wealth Building and learn more…
Aug
2012
How to Stop Being Broke and Start Building Financial Freedom
If you’re broke and struggling financially, it might be easy to assume that financial freedom is eons away. However, you CAN turn your financial life around quickly with the right plan. And what is a better time to get started in learning how to manage money than right now? If this interests you, and you’re looking for a way out of the financial crunch that you’re in, here are three things you can start doing right away to make it happen.
How to Slam the Brakes on Being Broke
If you’re broke now, you’ll probably always be unless something drastically change in your life. There’s never going to be a perfect time. You have to slam on the brakes right now and get things turned in the right direction. The first step is to start setting aside money for reserves, or for investments, or for paying extra on your debts. Do this BEFORE you pay ANY of your expenses. This way your financial goals will be taken care of because you made them a priority.
Maybe you can only put 2% of what you’re making into paying extra on your debt or to reserve for emergencies. Just do it, and don’t despise small beginnings.
Second, Get Some Accountability
It’s impossible to overestimate the benefit of having someone in your life to hold your feet to the fire when it comes to getting your financial life in order. Who do you know that you can trust to not accept your excuses, and who you can trust to hold you accountable to invest, reserve or pay off debts BEFORE you start paying your expenses? Call this person right now and ask for their help. Remember, going from broke to financial freedom takes drastic changes, and you’ll have a lot more success if you ask for help.
Finally, Get Yourself on a Written Plan
One of the primary reasons people fail at anything is lack of clearly defined goals. This is why it’s crucial that you decide exactly what financial freedom will look like. In other words, how much money will you have set aside for reserves? How much maximum debt (if any) will you have? What will your monthly income be? Most importantly, what type of a lifestyle do you want and how much will it require you to make on a weekly basis?
The more clearly defined your goal for achieving financial freedom is, the easier it will be to develop and to stick with your plan on how to manage money and achieve what you want. Remember, the best time to start is right now, and now you have three simple tools for making it happen.
Before you spend any more money, download this FREE report on how to manage money. Discover the simplest way to achieve financial freedom through the use of Powerspending.
Aug
2012
You Have More Money Than You Think For Achieving Financial Freedom
People seeking financial freedom often assume they need more money to get the results that they want. However, just about everyone has more money than they realize, the problem is the way they’re managing it. One thing you’ll find that makes all the difference between people who are broke and people who are well off is that well off people get more value out of the money that they have.
Let’s look at a few ways that you can PROVE to yourself that you have more money than you think for achieving financial freedom and for building wealth…
The 90 Day Cashflow Management Test
If you have no written plan for managing your cashflow, you owe it to yourself to try out this simple plan for at least 90 days. I assure you that this will be more than long enough to make you a believer. It’s called the four bucket personal cashflow system:
1. Invest the first 10% of your income
2. Give the second 10% of your income to a charitable cause
3. Lay aside 10% of your income for future cash purchases
4. Pay your expenses with the remaining 70% of your income
Of course, the initial response to this is that you can’t pay your bills with only 70% of what you’re making. This is what leads people into the trap of thinking: “I’ll start investing once I make more money.” The problem is that if you’re in the habit of spending everything that you make now, you’ll keep that habit even when you start making more money. Just think about a time in your life when you were making LESS money than you were right now…how were you still getting by?
You were finding a way, because you had no other option. In the same way, setting aside the first 30% of your income to invest, to give and to save puts you back in a position where you HAVE TO live on just 70%, and you’d be amazed at how easy this becomes once you make that commitment.
What Will Happen During the 90 Days?
If you do decide to work this simple 90 plan towards achieving financial freedom, you’ll find that your confidence and peace of mind will rise. You’ll start to feel more in control of your financial life and this new sense of control will cause the majority of your money worries to disappear. So try the four bucket personal cashflow system and enjoy getting on your way to financial freedom.
Before you spend any more money, download this FREE personal wealth building report. Discover the simplest way to achieve financial freedom through the use of Powerspending.
Jul
2012
How to Manage Money So You Can Start Building Wealth
Learning how to manage money is the prerequisite to building wealth. This might sound simple, but how many times have you tried to skip the step of living off of a written budget, developing a set of expense categories to live off of and all those other “boring” money habits and tried to go right for the step of building wealth? It has been said that there are a millions ways to make a million dollars, and this is true.
However, none of them will work unless you first start managing what you already have. Let’s look at a simple plan which can help you accomplish this…
A Simple Plan for Controlling Your Cash Flow
Many times, the reason we have a hard time developing and living by a budget is that we over-complicate our budget with pages of expense categories. Instead of trying to live off of that kind of detailed plan, try these four simple expense categories:
1. Investment of 10% of your income
2. Giving of 10% of your income
3. Reserving of 10% of your income (for making cash purchases instead of credit)
4. Paying expenses with the remaining 70%
As you can see, this plan is simple and to the point. Now all you have to do is set aside ONE day every month to allocate your monthly earnings into these categories. This will help you learn how to manage money without having to focus all your energy on monitoring your budget, filling in spreadsheets and trying to balance your spending categories.
Instead, you take one day out of the month to pay all your expenses (you can place all your cash in envelopes for things like food shopping) and to make your investments, your charitable giving and set aside your cash reserves. You can also use this day to assess your financial situation on a monthly basis and make sure you’re on track to achieving your long-term plan.
Getting Started With Wealth Building
Once you get control of your cash flow using the above system, you’ll discover that you have more money to use for building wealth than you originally thought. Your next step will be to get rid of as many things as you can which are causing a negative cash flow. This means paying off your debts. After all, if you have debt which is costing you an 18% interest rate, there’s no point in making an investment which is only earning you 15%.
Learn to manage your money and get rid of the debt first, and building wealth will come much easier.
Before you spend any more money, download this FREE report on how to manage money. Discover the simplest way to achieve financial freedom through the use of Powerspending.
Jul
2012
How to Manage Your Money When You Don’t Have a Lot of It
A common question people have is how to manage money when they don’t have a lot of it to manage. Let’s face it, having a cash trickle instead of a cash flow can be frustrating and it can be tempting to simply tell yourself that you’ll start managing your money better when you have more money coming in. However, it’s also true that if you aren’t managing your money well when you don’t have a lot of it you probably won’t manage it well when you do have a lot.
In this article will be looking at some simple strategies which you can use to learn how to manage your money better when you don’t have a lot of it to manage…
Knowing How to Manage Money Better Starts With Your Attitude
If you’ve already heard that you have to change your attitude about money in order to gain financial freedom, you might be rolling your eyes right now. However, this is probably the most important piece of advice when it comes to turning your financial life around. How well you manage your money has nothing to do with how much money you have, just ask all the millionaires who are up to their eyeballs in debt.
Many of these “wealthy” people are just one financial disaster way from bankruptcy…which in reality isn’t much better than being broke and living paycheck to paycheck. If you don’t have a lot of money to manage, just manage what you have and stay focused on the habits you’re creating rather than the financial results you’re creating. For example, it might not be very encouraging to know you’re only setting aside $10 a week.
However, as you’re developing the habit of setting aside money while you don’t have much of it, you’re setting the stage for the money habits which will follow you the rest of your life. You’ll also find that the more responsible you are with the money you have now the more opportunities you have to earn in the future. Just think about the parable of the talents which is taught by Jesus of Nazareth.
This is more than just a spiritual lesson, and anyone who has acquired financial freedom by building good financial habits will tell you this. Once you learn how to manage your money well, you’ll also gain a lot more confidence and a feeling of control simply because you are taking control of your habits. Again, you can commit to reserving only $10 a week.
Just remember that the purpose of managing your money well when you don’t have a lot is building good money habits and that’s one of the most valuable investments you can make in your future.
Before you spend any more money, download this FREE report on how to manage money. Discover the simplest way to achieve financial freedom through the use of Powerspending.
Frederick W. James MD is both a seeker and teacher of balance. Keeping in mind the understanding, “There is always something to learn,” Dr. James knows life, like finance, is a balancing act that needs constant attention. This is the foundational thought of his behavioral philosophy that secured his wealth and guarantees it for others. After years of preparation, the career cardiologist created wealth to benefit his family and others. Now, this innovative system of responsible spending is available to all through his financial coaching program and book, Spend, Don’t Save.
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