Budgeting is one of the best ways to be poor for the rest of your life! But also, if you ever get a handle on your money, you’re definitely going to stay poor for the rest of your life.
Rather than spending the majority of your time cutting back, and limiting the quality of your life, in the name of a better future, one day someday, you can use mindful cash management.
Instead of being a miser, you can choose to be mindful, instead of delaying gratification until the day you die, you can create an infrastructure to prepare for the future while enjoying life along the way.
This my friend is called living wealthy, a lot of the time when you’re doing these crazy budgeting tips, you have to stop and ask yourself.
“I wonder what it feels like living in the financial prison that I’ve built for my life.” Now that might really hit you hard.
Because this is shrinking thinking, a lot of people think that they are going to shrink their way to wealth.
Well, guess what… There is a better way, there’s a different way, and it’s a much more enjoyable way, and you’ll end up wealthier as well.
This is called mindful cash management, the main pillars come down to seven things, these seven things are the ways that you can not only liberate your mind, but you can improve your money in your financial situation.
So, what’s the first one? It’s so basic and simple, but never disregard it, It’s too…
1. Pay Yourself First
George Samuel Clason wrote a book back in the 1920s, called The Richest Man in Babylon.
He said, you should pay yourself first, that was the entire summary of the book.
How do you do that? Easy! You automatically sweep money into an account, if you’re putting money into your personal checking, have a certain percentage automatically be saved.
It can be a checking, savings, or money market, it’s not about the return on the money, it’s the return of the money.
But you want to make sure it’s not commingled, if you can automatically save, then you’ll have the opportunity in the future to deliberately invest.
Many people say that they’re saving money, but they put it into a retirement plan that they can’t touch, without penalties, in investments that are very volatile and go up and down in value, what I’m looking for is stability, security, and accessibility of the money.
This is about building a peace of mind fund, what I mean by peace of mind fund, is your mindset matters.
If you feel more abundant, if you think more abundant, and if you have cash on hand, so if there’s a financial cash flow crunch.
If there’s is a situation where there’s a health challenge, or time that you want to spend with your family because of some issue that’s going on, you’ve got some staying power.
You want to build that up to at least 6 months of personal expenses liquid, now, I know that might seem like a lot of money, and for those that are living paycheck-to-paycheck, or even going in the red.
I’m going to give you more insight as we go throughout this blog, but I want to make sure you know why first.
Peace of mind is because you’re your greatest asset, and if you’ve got the basics taken care of.
You can become more productive because, there’s less stress, less scarcity, and as I said, it’s called staying power.
It just means that you can handle a lot of the curve balls life throws at you, because we’re all in store for financial surprises.
By simply having 6 months of your personal expenses set aside, you can handle a lot of those without the turmoil, or without being completely derailed.
So, what’s the second thing? This is about…
2. Investing In Yourself
This is about creating conditions of abundance, allowing you to be a better trader of value, and expanding your means.
In mindful cash management, we’re looking at you and saying, how can you make more money? However, with budgeting, it’s about how can you save more money?
That’s a more infinite game of value for others, of delivering that value, serving others, and solving problems.
If the only problem you’re solving is how you could budget, how you can set money aside, and how you can scrimp, save, and sacrifice.
That limiting thinking is reductionist, reduction is not the way to wealth, production is the way.
The questions I ask in investing yourself are, where do you add the most value, and how can you develop those skills to the fullest?
Those skills that allow you to serve and solve those problems, this is about being able to make more money, because you are your greatest asset, not anything else!
The third is you’ve got to…
3. Learn How To Manage Your Risk
There’s a lot of people that don’t manage their risk, they invest in very speculative things, they hope that it’s going to work out.
They hear about a hot stock pick on r/WallStreetBets – Reddit, or they hear about some crypto thing that’s going on, or some scheme where someone’s made a bunch of money, and they try to jump in, and sometimes it’s the wrong time, or it’s not even something they understand.
That’s part of managing your risk, it’s also about setting up the proper insurance structure, where you’re ensuring the catastrophic things with insurance companies in an efficient way, and taking care of the inconsequential things on your own.
So, you’re getting more bang for your insurance buck, but then you don’t have something, devastating when something comes up, you have the right corporate structure if you own a business.
Because if you don’t own a business, you have a higher likelihood of being audited, and you have unlimited liability on you personally.
And even having estate planning structures, estate planning can say what you want to have happen to your money after you’re gone, they can save on taxes, you can create liability protection when other people try to invade it.
And most importantly, it can protect the money from your heirs, so they’re not spoiled by a bunch of cash that they weren’t expecting.
The best way to do this is to focus on your education, that’s how you’re going to mitigate risk, what can you do to understand what you’re investing in?
Reading these blogs, increasing your financial IQ, building the right team around you, what are the ways that you can do true due diligence?
You can even use collateral when you’re investing as the banks do, when you go get a mortgage, they’re looking at the home as collateral, you can protect the downside.
There are even ways that when the market dips, if it dips too much, you don’t have to participate in the whole downside that’s called a trailing stop loss.
And most of all, protect your mindset, this could be how you get up and start your day by investing in yourself.
Body 💪
Mind 🧠
And
Spirit 👻
Or
Exercise 🎽
Education 🏫
And
Enlightenment ✨
What are the things that create conditions of abundance because it’s not the noise of the world and the busyness, and the problems of the world that you should start your day with.
You should start your day investing in the right situation for you, like your health, because health is part of your wealth, in your education, so you know more and that you can make better decisions and choices.
And then on the enlightenment side, that’s more about making sure you either pray or meditate or, have gratitude so that you put yourself in the right mindset to be more productive, remember, invest in yourself, and you are your greatest asset.
The fourth thing is about…
4. Plugging The Leaks
How do you plug the leaks? Well, it begins with increasing your financial IQ, so you have an overall savvy, on how can you save on taxes?
If you’re getting a refund from the government, that means you give them an interest-free loan.
Maybe you change your exemptions, or maybe you learn about the things that you can do if you’re a business owner to save on tax, or how can you save on interest?
There are many blogs, videos, and resources, on how you can save on interest by structuring your loans properly, by taking underperforming assets to pay off higher interest rate loans.
So, you have a guaranteed return and improved cash flow, it might be renegotiating on your interest rates, or getting a better credit score, so that you could refinance or restructure.
There are other places where you can plug leaks, like finding where there are non-performing fees or unnecessary commissions if you have any investments out there.
That could be just fees for legal and admin fees, or retirement plan fees, that there are lower-cost providers, that don’t lower your overall performance because it’s simply the structure within it.
Also look for duplicate coverages, or costs within your insurance, because if you have low deductibles, you might have higher premiums.
And maybe increasing deductibles means you pay less, and use it for bigger amounts of insurance that cover more catastrophic things.
This is really about keeping more of what you make without painful budgeting, it’s about being efficient, not just scrimping.
The fifth thing, (And this is a real game-changer,) is to create…
5. Economic Independence
Economic independence is a state where you have enough recurring revenue from assets, or even from a business, that doesn’t require daily involvement, what I would call entrepreneurial income to cover basic expenses.
When your basic expenses in life are taken care of, you get to choose what you work on a daily basis, and you can swing for the fences in your vision and your life.
This is critical because when people don’t have economic independence, they get into survival mode.
Survival becomes very selfish, and then we get into the restriction of budgeting because you’re just trying to make ends meet, but this is about how to do it most effectively, and most efficiently in a game-changing way.
The stability of economic independence greatly reduces stress, and ultimately improves relationships with loved ones, because a lot of the reasons why people list for divorce is because of money problems.
So, what’s the sixth thing you can do here? It’s to…
6. Build Your Team.
Most of the game is won when the right team is picked, don’t try to do everything yourself, utilize experts.
I’m not saying completely rely on experts or relegate to experts where you just hand it over and hope they take care of you, you can’t delegate your legacy, or your financial responsibility.
But you can leverage other people’s expertise, a simple and quick way you can leverage expertise, is by grabbing a copy of my brand-new book Skills. Scale. Sustainability.
If you’re trying to build your economic independence this is the place you need to go to, I take the principles from the most successful and ultra uber-wealthy people around the globe, and strip it down to a simple framework you can read.
If you own a copy of this book today, you will discover the virtually unknown secrets to making tremendous strides in your life and business…once and for all.
👇 👇 👇
I’m doing just fine, you buying the book is not going to be a huge game-changer for me, but, I think it could be for your life, so give it a shot!
The seventh thing is…
7. To Become A Better Investor.
You have an investor DNA, it’s your competencies, it’s the things that drive you, it’s your values, and when you focus on the things that make sense, you start to understand risk isn’t in the investment, the risk is in the investor.
What kind of investor are you? If you could focus on just a few things that make sense to you, what kind of investor would you be?
Are you good at real estate? Are you good with stocks and bonds? Are tax liens something you want to study and immerse yourself in? Is buying a business something that makes sense for you?
If you think that there’s some magic product out there, unfortunately, there isn’t, if there were a magic product, we would all own it.
Or there would be a massive line that you would never get in front of, because the truth is, there is no magic product.
It’s about you being a better investor, you have to understand that the game of money and finance isn’t about simply cutting back and eliminating.
And it’s also not just about throwing your money away for 30 years, hoping that compound interest or some brilliant investment advisor is going to magically save you.
If you want to reduce your risk, if you want to improve your return, it’s really about how you invest and start to invest in the things that you know and understand and ignore the rest.
You don’t have to know everything there is out there in the financial world, just figure out a few things and dial it in.
Sure, you got to build your foundation, absolutely, you got to build risk reduction and risk management strategies.
And if you’re not going to take the time to do that, just pay off your loans, at least you know that’s a guaranteed return, and it’s going to put you in a better situation.
Build up your liquidity, and then look at my book Skills. Scale. Sustainability, because if you’re not going to pay enough attention to it.
Then I really worry about people that invest in the stock market, and they think that’s going to work out for them in the long haul.
Because companies go out of business, there are downturns for extended periods of time, and then unfortunately people’s mindset goes down with it.
And all of a sudden, they become less productive, bitter, or they become frustrated, as they come close to retirement and it didn’t perform how they wanted it to, so mindful cash management is the way.
We’ve covered 7 pieces here, you see budgeting is a great way to be poor for the rest of your life.
But, if you never pay attention to how you handle your money, you’re definitely going to stay poor for the rest of your life.
So, what’s the deal? You create freedom with mindful cash management, use these steps (+ My book) to remove the shackles of budgeting.
And then instead with your time, you can start thinking about how you can be more productive, how you can create more value.
As you create more value, and you eliminate budgeting, (As long as you’re making more money than you spend).
Now you don’t have to put off a vacation, you don’t have to wait to launch that business or product.
If you have a message that you want to share, but you haven’t had the time, well, budgeting has this thinking, that we don’t have the money or time because it’s all about elimination.
Today, I want you to focus on creation, someday is now today, it’s time to expand your means, it’s time to create value, it’s time to take control over your financial destiny, to mindful cash management, and living a life that you love.
Now you have the knowledge to transform your thoughts into profits, and build the life that you love.
If you’re looking for more on this topic, check out my book, I made something called the “Business Pyramid Of How To Create Wealth.”
You get to uncover how the current idea about how to make wealth is completely backward, and, how you can start your investments off on the very best path.
I’ll see you there 😊
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