In Jack Miller’s CashFlow Concepts book, he discusses how to get from where you are now to where you want to be financially. It’s really a “head game” because you have to believe you can succeed first, then learn how (that’s where CashFlowDepot comes in), then create a plan, then execute your plan. You can achieve your financial objectives if you believe you can. This article will help you learn how:
Whether we fail or succeed, we first do it conceptually. Ultimately, thinking people work to fulfill their expectations of themselves rather than merely for money.
Think of life as a journey that extends from birth to death. Both the start and finish of the trip are clearly marked. Everyone starts at one point and proceeds toward the other. The only thing we don’t know is the route we’re going to take. Planning this trip to make it as enjoyable and entertaining as possible is the challenge that all truly successful people must ultimately meet.
When you set out to acquire your first dollar your financial life starts. Your investment life begins the day that you use the first dollar that is surplus to your economic needs to buy something to produce income or profit at some point in the future. Both your financial and investment lives end when your last dollar has been spent, lost, strayed, stolen, taxed away, gifted, or bequeathed to someone or something.
In the final analysis, the way in which you use your assets to bridge the gap between your first and last dollars is the key to how successful you’ll be, not only in financial terms, but in the degree to which life is rewarding to you, your family, and those who ultimately benefit from what you achieve.
Reaching goals almost always involves making enough money to be able to devote time to non-financial pursuits. This process can’t be done from a lofty perch in some ivory tower. You’ve got to plan
your financial life and pursue the goals you set just as vigorously as you plan your family life.
There’s nothing new or revolutionary about these hints. They’ve worked in one form or another since the dawn of time. If one studies the lives of successful people, one sees certain similar ingredients: self-discipline, desire, commitment, honor, purpose, challenge, self-sacrifice, study, and persistence. And why not? All of these are controlled by the individual, not society. Thus the seeds of success lie within each of us. I-low can we fail?
If you can think of your goals as true North, then all you’ve got to do is to keep your efforts aimed in that direction. To this, you’ve got to map out a plan which will not only reveal the direction in which your efforts should take you, but the terrain over which you’ll have to travel and the speed with which you’ll have to travel to meet your financial objectives.
There are two basic approaches to this. You can either decrease spending for current lifestyle and increase investment for future lifestyle, or you can increase your current earnings and profits so as to be able to fund both your preferred current lifestyle as well as to increase investments to support your future lifestyle after you quit producing income personally. The range of activities that can be devoted to you overall plan can be divided into two parts:
1. Active enterprise in which you earn financial remuneration as a result of your personal efforts or of those you employ for that purpose.
2. Speculation or investment in passive enterprise in which money is earned by assets that are managed to produce income and gain at the time they are sold.
Practically speaking, you’ll probably wind up with a combination of the two approaches. In doing so, you’ll soon discover a simple truth:
1. The more deals you become involved in, the more experience you’ll gain.
2. The more experience you gain, the greater expertise you’ll acquire.
3. The more expertise you can bring to bear, the better deals you can close faster.
4. The faster you can close good deals, the more profit you’ll make.
5. The more profit you make with each transaction, the less time that will be required to build assets and income.
6. The more assets you have, the easier it will be to make money, and the better current lifestyle you’ll attain, with more future financial security.
7. But the first step is to decide how far you want to climb.
Great advice!
One of the fastest and easiest ways to accomplish your financial goals is with OPTIONS. My next article will discuss how to use Options.
