If you are like most people I know, you are watching the news, reading the news, listening to the news, and the news that is being broadcast is not that great. In fact it truly sucks. Yeah, it’s that bad. Now the real question you should be asking your self is “Am I going through these experiences or Am I growing through these experiences?”

This is a very important question because the challenge is that most people just go through life and they think that everything is happening to them. It’s hard to convince them of anything else, because they are just going through the tough times and just attempting to survive. You probably have heard someone close to you say how bad things are in their life or they seem to over react to some of the simplest of things. They seemed to have developed a paranoid complex.

How To Overcome Challenges

The first thing you have to do is know that things are NOT happening to you. Instead, you should understand that they are just happening. Fate hasn’t sought you out over any one else. You have to understand that their will be both feast and famine as you go through life. Some times the bad can arrive in the best of times for the rest of the world which can give you the idea that it has sought you out, but that is not the case.

The thing you should do is focus on what you can learn from the experience whether it is good or bad. How can you grow into a better person, better friend, better parent, better, spouse, better employee, better…you get the idea. Let me give you an example. There were times when it seemed no matter what I did on buying a house, I had stupid written all over my face. I would purchase a home only to be transferred in two years of less, many times having to take a loss on the home. It looked like I had no investment savvy when it came to real estate.

How Bad Could It Get?

Well it really got bad to the point that I had to empty out all of my life savings (6 years of consistent savings) just to get out of my house. The worse part about it was that shortly after closing on my home, the stocks I used to have in my savings almost doubled. Talk about a double whammy. Now I could have just gone through the experience and given up on buying a home or saving money for th future, but I used that and many other investing experiences to learn how to do it better the next time around.

How Can You Learn From Bad Experiences?

I used these types of experiences to become a better decision maker when it came to money. Yes, I still messed up and things didn’t always go the way you would like. I even got to the point of being flat broke with literally no money in the bank. However, through those life experiences, I saw the futility of debt, of having the best or newest thing, of thinking I had to have the fanciest house to be part of the “IN” crowd. I gained what you might call “common sense”.

In applying this commons sense, I was able to go from a point of desperation to one where I have no debt, I can save more in a month than most people would in a year. If something breaks, it’s no big deal; instead, it’s a minor inconvenience. I have cash to invest in a down market, so I can buy stocks really cheap. I don’t say this to brag, but just to illustrate that by using your experience to grow into a better, smarter person will give you great benefits than the person that just whines when things don’t do their way.

Life is too short to be worried about how to make the next payment. Learning to follow my debt reduction program has made a big difference in my family’s life and it can yours. It is free. Just go to our main page for Retirement Cures and request your copy. It’s my way of giving back so I can help others gain this freedom.

Until Next Time…

Wow! This week it seems that the Federal Government has shown that it can defy the laws of economics. They decided that the best way to deal with a recession was to borrow your way out of it. This is an interesting theory at best. The big question you have to ask your self is if a government can borrow its way out of a recession, then why would they let it happen in the first place?

Reality Check

Please do not follow the example set by our government. They don’t have to operate under the same rules as its citizens. It’s okay for them to borrow excessive money they don’t have and give it to people who are totally irresponsible in handling their money because they aren’t worried about how they are going to pay for it. If you or I invested in the same way, we would be called reckless and would end up in a worst financial situation than before.

What Happened To Being Responsible With Our Money?

This may sound like a rant and it is. Free enterprise is what made this country so great. In fact, it was out low tax base that caused many companies from other countries to want to do business here. There once was a day when people had to be responsible for their actions. If they started up a company and it didn’t succeed as they thought, the company went out of business. Those people took that opportunity to learn from their misfortune and in many cases would make another attempt to succeed. No one stepped in to bail out their bad business idea, bad business practices, etc. It was an ongoing process to learn and improve one self and their business abilities.

How Does This Apply To My Retirement Woes?

Quite simply you need to make sound investment decisions and set up consistent saving practices. In fact in today’s environment, there are a lot of great business investment opportunities both for starting your own as well as investing in ones that already exist. There are many stocks if you take the time to research that have a great dividend yield that would beat out any money market account as well as offer a great potential long term growth. These are sound companies that aren’t going to be bailed out, have good cash flow, and would probably be deemed unfavorable in today’s economy.

Many people focus too much on the news and think that the end is near or even worse that the government will be making their house payment and paying for the gas and groceries. Please! The real question you have to ask your self in this “perilous times” is what can you control. What can you do, today, right now to help your future be a little bit brighter. Well, here are a few suggestions.

Stop Watching The News

Most news broadcasts are based on negativity and many times mis-information. How many newscasters actually know how a good business functions? They cannot be an expert in all the topics that they report and many times they misunderstand what is being told to them. In the few times I have been interviewed by the news media, they have misquoted what I said and taken the words and used them to report on the story that wanted people to hear. So if you want to avoid being puked on every day, turn it off. You will brighten your day.

Take Time To Read or Listen To Good Books

Instead of filling your mind with all the crap the news media dumps on you, fill your mind with things that are uplifting and motivating for you to take action and start down the right path. I guarantee that the only way you will have a better situation in life is if you take control by learning new things and then applying them in your life. Since money may be tight, go to the local library and you may be amazed at the volumes of information that is free and available to you. There are whole sections on investing, starting a business, building strong relationships with others, etc. that can make your life more enjoyable. There are free audios and videos you can check out that you can use to fill your mind with good ideas that can make a difference in your life.

Take Time To Help Others Less Fortunate

Even though we may think everything is going down the tubes, another good way to change all of that is to invest in others. Join a local organization that helps under privileged children, spend time in an elderly care center reading or just brightening someone’s day. Help clean out someone’s yard that is not able to do so. While many times this may not cost you much financially, it is one of the best investments you could have that will help turn your life around as well as some one else’s. And who knows, if enough of us did this, it must might be the best stimulus package available in our country.

Go make a difference. You’ll be glad you did.

Until Next Time…

First of all, Happy Valentine’s Day. Hope you have taken time to let someone you care about know it today. It usually doesn’t always have to be a big ordeal. Just a quick phone call or letter can make a big difference in some one else’s life.

Setting Up A Personal Budget

Last time we were discussing what’s the best way to save for retirement. Part of that training showed you the power of automatic withdrawals to savings. This week, the topic will build on the other. To be able to save for retirement in the first place, you got to know where you money is going. Just as you would in a business, you have to keep track of what comes in and where it goes out. Unfortunately, you can’t run your finances like the Federal Government and just spend your way out of your problems. (Note: This never has worked and to think it will ignores all principles of finance. Kind of like saying if I step off of a taller building, I won’t fall to the ground this time.)

Developing Your Balance Sheet

Ready to develop the You, Inc. balance sheet? Here goes. Start with all you income streams. For most of us, this is very simple. You have one, maybe two, depending on how many jobs you are working or if your spouse is working. This goes on the income side of the balance sheet.

Next comes the expenses. These are the tough ones, because if you haven’t done one before it might seem a little overwhelming. Actually it is quite simple. Here’s what you do. Carry a piece of paper with you through out the week and write down every thing you spend money on including the use of your credit cards. Do this consistently for 4 weeks or for the whole month depending on whether you are paid every two weeks or once/twice a month.

Expenses Can Be Shocking

Once you complete you tracking process, list everything out and set up various categories which make sense to you. Remember, this is your money and your own You, Inc. Typical categories might be food, utilities, gasoline, clothing, car payments, house payments or rent, credit card payments, credit card purchases, amount put in savings, etc.

Totaling Your Balance Sheet

List Income first and below that list the various categories of expenses second. The subtract all of your expenses from your income and see if you have a positive or negative number. If it is positive, you can at least say you are already headed in the right direction. However, if this number is negative, you may have some challenges ahead and some immediate action is required.

Correcting A Negative Balance Sheet

How can you right the ship and get your balance sheet showing positive? The answer is easy but not always simple. The answer is to cut your expenses. Review what you are spending your money on and look for the easy things first. The easy things are things like how often are you eating out instead of taking your lunch to work. Could you take your own coffee from home and not spend it on a high priced cup at a local coffee shop? Instead of buying soft drinks from the vending machine, maybe you could buy a 2 liter off brand for half the price of a smaller vended one? One of the easiest yet hardest ones would be to leave your credit cards at home in a safe place and not carry it with you. That way it will require you to have to make an extra trip before making a purchase giving you time to think about your purchase to see if it is something you really need or just want out of convenience.

Taking swift action in many of these areas could save you any where from $5 to $10 a day. That totals to $150 to $300 a month. This is newly found money not to run out and buy more stuff, but to help you work with making your balance sheet even more positive. Remember that the more positive your balance sheet is, the better your retirement can be if you follow the simple approaches to creating an automated saving system.

Hope this issue of Retirement Cures has helped. To learn even more details on this whole process, you can get the free retirement savings plan from our main web page.

Until Next Time….