Success in 12 Months: It’s Money, Honey!
Welcome back to the “Success in 12 Months” blog series!
You ROCK! Another Big Win for the books!
You should mark this moment as a win. You are part of the top 5% that make it through to Month 11 of this series. Enjoy your success for a moment.
Okay–back to work!
Now we enter Month 11, and what can be a fairly emotional topic for people. Hopefully it’s not the case for you, but even if it is, we’re going to deal with it.
What is it?
I don’t care where you’re at in your financial world right now. Maybe you’re extremely financially successful or you’re really struggling. It never hurts to revisit the concepts, to revisit the principles that you know you should be doing here.
With this month, we want to take some time to really allow you to focus on this area of your life and look for opportunities for improvement. It never hurts to improve.
Not everybody counts money or getting rich as a really important, big goal for their life. Having said that, money does matter. You simply cannot ignore the fact that we live in a society that generally rewards good financial acumen.
Even if money isn’t your end goal, it’s an important building block for most of your other goals.
Right now, you’re working towards some major objectives. You wouldn’t have started this program if you weren’t. Ask yourself the question, even if you’re not the money type where money is not really all that important to you, “Can money help me achieve my goals?”
Maybe your help is to help more people. Would having an abundance of money let you do more of that or less of that?
Even if you don’t consider personally becoming a millionaire or wealthy a huge priority, having more access to money, having a better control over your financial situation will only benefit you and the things you’re trying to build.
The problem is, a lot of people would rather hide their hand in the sand and not face the financial situation.
But the key to improving any aspect of our lives, whether it’s health, fitness, relationships, money or anything else, is understanding it, looking at the problem and then developing a plan to deal with it effectively so that you can move your results in the direction that you want to go.
We’re going to start by implementing some ideas that will help you with your finances.
Your Weekly Action Step: Is Your Money on Track?
A few basic steps can really help you diagnose any financial issues. I said at the beginning that you may be financially well off right now or you might be struggling.
If you’re financially well off, can you improve? You know the answer is yes. So you want to look at it not necessarily as financial issues but as room for improvement.
If you’re on the other end of the scale and you do have financial issues, then a few basic steps that we’re going to be talking about here will actually help you address this problem, and you can do it with some very basic tools and concepts.
This week, start a spreadsheet and track all of your expenses.
That seems very, very basic, you’ve probably heard this lesson before, but let me ask you a very profound question. Have you done it?
If you have done it, have you done it recently? I’m sure your expenses have changed in the last six months. If you haven’t done this exercise in the last little while, now is the time to do it again.
Maybe you started spending a bit more money in a certain area that you just haven’t really realized and it’s costing you more than you want it to.
This will allow you to become consciously aware of where that money is going. This basic spreadsheet will really be an eye-opener for you if you haven’t done it before, and even if you have, always a great exercise to revisit.
So, for this week, just track every penny spent. Don’t forget the gum you buy when paying for gas; the coffee purchased every morning on the way to the office.
At the end of the week you’ll be surprised how much the small stuff subtracts from your wallet.
And if you don’t have a spreadsheet program, just write down your spending at the end of each day. If it’s easier, track expenses as you buy something using a paper notepad or use your smartphone recording or not app.
Don’t put off this week’s assignment as the rest of the month builds off this week!
