financial freedom Tag

Posts tagged 'financial freedom'

28 Easy Ways to Save Money When You Go Shopping

Shopping was a different experience in the past year. The changes the COVID-19 pandemic caused were good for some, because it was an opportunity to save money. But for others, it increased the shopping costs and left them spending more than ever before.

It’s important to understand that we shop to gain a feeling. Even when we buy food, we try to increase our feeling of variety. We could all survive perfectly well on potatoes or bread and butter all day, but that wouldn’t satisfy our need for variety.

I remember years ago I did juice cleanse, and the thing I missed the most was … chewing. I could get all the nutrients I needed from the juice, but it just didn’t give me the satisfaction of chewing.

Shopping for things we need is not the same as “going shopping”. The problem is that today, people are so stressed that even simple grocery shopping is no longer just buying what we need. Instead, it’s become stocking the cupboard with things we don’t need.

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Is Money a Curse or blessing? My New Book: The Will

Yay, I did it! My new book, The Will, was published in November 2019 and I am proud to the max.

In this post, I’ve decided to answer all the questions I got from Carol Grainger, who edited the book, about the book and the process of writing it, from the first time I told her about it until the last edit.

Stick around and enjoy the ride with me.

The Will is a fictional novel. I love the story medium to help readers take their own journey in answering the question of whether money is curse or a blessing.

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Family Wealth Fitness

Stacks of money of increasing height sprouting plants

Everybody wants their family to be happy, healthy and wealthy. Of course, if you are not born into wealth, you need to grow it with understanding, planning and lots of practice. In other words, increase your “family wealth fitness”.

Looking at how we build physical fitness is a great way to understand wealth creation. To be healthy, we need to be physically fit, and to be wealthy, we need to be financially fit.

Just like physical fitness sits on a scale, wealth fitness sits on a scale. The first stage in physical fitness is to have enough energy and strength to do your regular day-to-day activities and to enjoy your body. The second stage is to build enough stamina to handle sickness and unusual physical challenges well.

Financial fitness is the same. First, you build financial stability, so you can have what you want, manage the day-to-day financial needs easily and enjoy your life. Then, you can build a money buffer large enough to cover large purchases and unplanned expresses.

This post is part 10 of 10 in the series Happily Wealthy Family

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Make a List: 100 Reasons to Be Wealthy

Home, stacks of coins and a clock - that's how wealth is built

Everyone wants to be wealthy. We want it for our children and for ourselves. The problem with being wealthy is that if you are not born to wealth and know exactly what it means, you don’t know how to get there.

The Internet contains millions of websites, blogs, podcasts and videos of people who promise you that if you do what they’ve done, you will become wealthy. If they were so successful, everyone who visited their site would be wealthy by now. Sadly, the transition from not being wealthy to being wealthy is filled with obstacles.

To me, wealth is a sense of security. Real richness is mostly about things that you have and no one can take away from you. We can be rich in memories, rich in experiences, rich in love and rich in friendships, not just possessions.

This post is part 44 of 48 in the series Make a List

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You Can Change Your Life

Change is not easy and you can recognize the points that have changed your course in life only in hindsight. We call these points “quantum moments”. I have had many quantum moments in life and the ones that have steered me in the right direction included reading books, meeting inspiring people and attending empowering events. I contemplated each of them until I got to some realization that later became part of my being.

My biggest change in life was when I was 15 years old. I remember how before it, I dreamed every day of waking up to a different life. I said, “I wish…” and had millions of wishes. I hoped to be the Genie of the Lamp, but every morning realized I was not. I built up hopes and got up in the morning to realize they were just illusions that I had no power to fulfill.

You see, it is one thing to want and another thing to make it happen.

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Positive Beliefs about Money

Being wealthy is more than counting the money you have in your bank account. It is a mindset. In the last chapter of Happily Wealthy Family, I shared many of the negative beliefs we often have about money. By identifying these beliefs, you can do your best to replace them with positive beliefs about money.

Here is a list of 100 positive beliefs about money, wealth, investing and rich people. Reading them does not mean you automatically adopt them. Find the ones you do believe in and make sure to hang them up in a place you can read every day. If you find others you want to adopt, find a story, a situation, or a person you know that is proof that this belief is valid.

For example, I had a belief that you have to be born rich to be rich. I wanted to believe that everyone could be rich. I knew a guy (who was my dad’s boss) who was very wealthy but was born to a very very poor family. With the help of this story, I could adopt the belief “Everyone can be rich!”

This post is part 9 of 10 in the series Happily Wealthy Family

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How to Be Your Own Financial Planner

This weekend, we had some friends over for a barbeque with their kids. The place was full of lively conversation, food and games and time went by quickly.

Since the men had not seen one another for a few weeks, we did a round of updates and Wayne told us he was planning to change his line of work and become a financial planner. As soon as he mentioned the words “financial planner”, the rest of us changed facial expressions and posture and it was clear we all had strong feelings about this profession.

This was by no means personal, because we like Wayne a lot, but we had all been visited by a financial planner or two and had all chosen not to use them. From that starting point, we felt Wayne was starting “on the back foot” and was headed into difficult, unpleasant territory.

As we talked, some interesting points emerged, which I would like to share with you, because they can help you become your very own financial planner and stop looking for one, if you are.

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Rich Parent, Poor Parent

In many areas of life, we relive the same pattern over and over again, but we do not notice it. Just like riding a bike (the ultimate cliché about automatic habits), we pedal on, completely oblivious to each up and down movement.

Sometimes, circumstances make us take note of our patterns and we start thinking about them. Rarely, we change those ingrained ways of behavior and our life changes as a result, hopefully for the better.

Anthony Robbins compares human beings to thermostats. He says every person has a sense of where they feel comfortable and does many things subconsciously to stay in that place. Sure, everyone knows what would be better, but too good is also uncomfortable, because it does not fit our sense of identity and self worth.

So each of us lives within a certain range of “temperatures”. When it gets to “cold”, we take some action to “warm up”. When it gets to “hot”, we procrastinate for a while and even sabotage our previous efforts, until it is “nice and cozy” again.

One particular area in which this happens to us is our finances.

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Make a list: Beliefs about Money

Sign with "success" and "doubt" crossed out

Money is a big part of every success in life. Money is an enabler – the more money you have, the more successful you can be. For example, my son is very successful as a musician, no doubt due to his special talent, but without the money we spend to support his musical journey, he could have never reached this level of success.

This post is part 12 of 48 in the series Make a List

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Skills You Don’t Learn at School

Unfortunately, there are a lot of things we should have learned at school, because as a society, we cannot rely on parents to be able to do it by themselves. For example, we cannot expect all parents to teach their kids literacy and numeracy because not all of them know enough and out of those who do, not many are also good at teaching.

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