Finance Roll

The world is so fast that there are days when the person who says it can't be done is interrupted by the person who is doing it - Anon

Isn't it strange that for some reason, self improvement, self education and financial management have been spilt apart and gone into seemingly different directions, when, in reality, they are all but one?

We need self education to sort our finances out - the financial management part of the equation involves us making far reaching, hard changes to our lives, attitudes and beliefs, leading to Self Improvement & more Self Education. It's a vicious (in the nice, ongoing, sense of the word) circle that keeps on going, intertwining, mixing and using all three components of the same solution.

People who are not in the circle - the zone - who have no motivation to change their lives, accept and settle for being average, without questioning their beliefs or motives. Why accept being average, when accepting financial and life security takes exactly the same amount of effort. Why, and what is it, that makes most people comfortable with hardship in their lives when it could be so much better for both themselves and their families as well as the rest of the world in general.

Why aren't people committed to making a difference to their lives for the better, enhancing the world they - and the rest of us - live in?

Especially when it's so simple to start?

All it takes is a piece of paper, a note book and a pen. On the piece of paper, list your goals. Write as if you have millions in the bank, and health, marriage, age and status doesn't matter. Write as if you could not fail.

What would you aim for if you knew you could not fail?

Turn that same piece of paper over, and on the clean side, take your single, most important goal, the one that would make the most difference to you if it were achieved today. Under that goal, list every single thing, every way, every solution, you can think of to use to achieve that one, single goal.

With the notebook, make a daily log of everything you spend - every single penny. Analyse your record at the end of the first month, cut out your unnecessary expenditure. That gives you an effective payrise. Out of your new payrise, invest part of it in yourself - your education, your self improvement. If you don't invest in yourself, how can you expect anyone else to?

Put some more of that payrise towards the monthly installments on your smallest bill. Pay that bills monthly installment and the overpayment from your new payrise together, every month, until it's clear. Then, put the same installment and overpayment from that bill onto your next smallest bill's monthly installment, and carry on every month until that bills cleared, and carry it on and on to your other bills, creating a snowball effect, slowly starting to roll, until it becomes an unstoppable force in it's own right. Aim to pay that mortgage off in 13 years, not 25.

Review your daily cash log every month. Eliminate all waste. Try and give yourself as many payrises as you can. One soft drink a day costing 50pence equates to £182.50 a year nett, £224.48 before stoppages. Simple and easy to do, isn't it?

Start looking for opportunities to earn more cash. Second or part time jobs. Start a small internet business, concentrating on building up a residual income that comes in - bigger and bigger every month - even when you don't work on it after a period of time. Aim to work once, and get paid from that work for ever. Stop trading your time - your life - for an hourly wage. Concentrate on filtering your extra income into building up assets that will earn you cash for as long as you own them. Property. Web Pages. Businesses. All Prime examples of how you - and anyone - can better spend their time instead of slaving for an hourly rate.

It's simple to start. A piece of paper, a notebook, and a pen.

Plans on paper are a good starting point, but left as they are, they are just dreams. Dreams don't come true very often. Turning your dreams into goals requires only three basic things - the ABC of life - Action, Belief, Committment.

Work to start achieving your goals the very day you write your list out. Take A ction, save money, start that web site, get that second job.Taking A ction naturally confirms your c ommittment to your goals and your b elief in yourself. One feeds into the other, creating one giant, unstoppable achievement machine - you. Prove to yourself constantly that you're taking ac tion - review your goals often, start saving some your extra income. Start at 1 per cent for a couple of months as you concentrate on clearing your monthly installments.

Put these savings into a separate deposit account -