A crisis can strike at any time and it can bring damage to your personal finance structure. But, if you’ve built it on a solid platform with constant income sources, positive balance, money back-up funds, there will be a while before the external crisis will affect your personal budget.

The lack of interest towards personal finance matters is the first possible factor for an unstable situation that can lead to financial crush. The lack of interest is the lack of control; and as the old saying goes: “if you don’t control money, it will control you”

Lack of Control
People have systems of beliefs that prevent them from having a healthy financial behavior. They seem to forget that if you don’t help yourself, nobody will. Having a detailed structure of your personal finance is a great tool to avoid getting into trouble. But there are plenty amongst us who live in partial or complete denial, because they have a set of popular beliefs, that I think are wrong, like:

• If you work and you are honest, you should have enough money
• The government has the duty to help you
• Uncle Sam has to give you a job!
• If you lack money, you can always borrow
• You will work it out somehow!

This set of “values” inherited from our parents, heard from our neighbors and gleaned from our friends, creates a sensation of fake control over your personal finance. The fact that there aren’t so many out there who had severe issues caused by the lack of money make you believe that this will never happen to you too! After all, there are so many people out there, who have a much worse financial situation, right?

Honest Work
The economic reality in which we live in today is based on the cruel law of profit. The companies, whether they are private or national, follow a single purpose – to increase profits. As a consequence, they will try to minimize costs. A very important section of the costs consists of employees’ salaries. What happens today, when in many activity fields the salaries drop dead, is pretty eloquent for the situation that we all face. Therefore, honest labor hasn’t anything to do with economic calculation.

The Government Must Help Us
Huh? The Government has “the duty to survive”. It’s a system that wants to preserve its equilibrium state and will do whatever it takes to keep it that way. Even if we are being given the image of caring presidents and senators, truth is that their main task is to keep the monetary system active. And we are nothing else, but ordinary bricks in this giant wall.

In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. — Ronald Reagan

Uncle Sam Has to Give You a Job
The Government will give you a job only when he will have something to win out of this. This will be nothing more than a clever move to reduce the social tensions in order to balance the economic field. They don’t give us jobs because they love us but because they are helping the nation as a whole. On the other hand, not everybody will get a job. And you may or may not be the unfortunate one. Are you ready to face that situation? Is your financial level of education big enough so that you could start acting on your own?

You Can Always Borrow
First of all, who will give you money, if you don’t have any income sources? And, how long do you think you could leave out of loans; then take out more loans to pay the initial ones? Do you want to get in this never-ending debt circle? Don’t let this assumption affect your life and irreversibly mutilate it.

You Will Work It Out
You can do it once, twice… What happens if there are multiple crisis happening at the same time and all affecting your personal finances? Don’t let things get out of your control and treat your personal funds as seriously as you can. Be sure to check all your income sources as well as what you’re spending money on. Start having a disciplined financial behavior, by following these rules of thumbs:

• Make short, medium and long term plans for your personal finances
• Watch your cash flow closely (how much you earn; how much you spend
• The family’s budget
• Control your shopping desires and don’t let them convert into daily needs.

For this, you will need to be:

• Motivated
• Disciplined
• Persistent
• Responsible
• Realistic
• Strong

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“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”Jim Rohn, entrepreneur, motivational author

The education that we get in schools is more likely to prepare us for an employee type of life. Yes, it gives you a living, but it won’t make you rich.

If you want to succeed in your life, or in your career, it is advisable to rely upon the single solid and secure thing in your whole existence – yourself! By this I mean – You and Your knowledge. What there is inside yourself, what you know belongs to you and nobody can take that away. You can lose money, power, position, a job place, a business, but you will never lose the experience and the acquired know-how. Even better, you can always improve them.

That’s why it is good not to expect help from others or to get everything what you want when you want it. If there’s a support for you, that’s great, but don’t rely solely on that for solving your daily issues or for getting you a job. Everything that you need in order to succeed is within yourself. You are an intelligent person who knows what you wants, who has all the necessary tools for being successful.

You have to be your biggest investment. I’m not necessarily talking about money, but about time and energy. If you want to buy some self-improvement books or subscribe to some seminars and workshops, all these takes effort. It’s all up to you to say if it worth it or not. On the other hand, you can still be an employee, and learn from everything around you, so that someday you could make your own company.

The Internet. It has so much information in it that you just get lost in the woods if you’re not sure what you’re exactly looking for. Do you fancy having your own business and quitting your boring job? Then you have to be prepared to invest time in your own personal growth. What is it that you like? Do you know what your passions are?

The first step would be to realize what is it that you like to do the most. After that, you can try to gather all the information that you can get, at first, for free. Avoid all those “Learn how I made 50 000$ in one week!” proposals, as it will only shift you from your path. Let’s say you have a passion for training dogs. How will you make a product or business out of that?

Make a website. After that, try to get into online communities that are already specialized on this. See what you could do to bring in some value. Put passion in what you’re doing and you will soon discover how thrilling it is to have a thing that belongs only to yourself, and was created by you. You don’t have any overdue task and you don’t have to be bullied anymore by scary deadlines.

Use the free time that you (still) have to learn how you could make a business out of the things you like, whether we’re talking about dog training or hand-made products. You don’t even realize how much you’ll win if you’ll decide to start investing in yourself. Take advantage of every situation that there is to enhance your skills.

I’m not saying that you should quit your day-job and start dreaming with your eyes open. Even more, if the company that you work for sends you for a specialization course, seminar, conference, team-building; any other event of this kind, you must use it to learn new things that will help you to add more value to your own persona. You don’t have to be passive or bored. This is a change to meet more people and to make a good impression on them.

Don’t forget that each and every information you acquire, the skills that you have; they are all yours, nobody can take them, nobody can steal them.

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To defeat an enemy, the first thing you need to do is to know him better. That is why you need to have a complete picture of your expenses. It is very important that documentation for every expense you make is as detailed as it gets, so that you could know: on what exactly did you spend the money and how you did this. Did your expense involve another fee that you could avoid or a payment that wasn’t necessary?

Financially speaking, the easiest scenario to cut your expenses is when they are high. Unfortunately, reducing your expenses when you live like a king can be thought of as a decrease in your living. That is why people with problems paying their loans are not willing to cut their expenses. They will simply go on with their life style. If the income will not increase, they will have to face the harsh reality of going to personal bankrupt and, eventually, they will have to quit their luxurious living.

That is why you need to know what you’re spending money on and more importantly, whether those things are really important to you. Don’t play around with these things, as you will get burnt. The majority of people is located between abundance and total lack of money. It’s easier to go bankrupt than to earn loads of money, that’s why you need to be careful with your expenses. Spend more as you earn more and maintain this ratio.

Ways to Reduces the Expenses

You have below a list that can help you reduce your expenses, even if you already know how to manage your funds. What you need to do is to :

• Reduce acquisition cost
• Make the product/service that you need (DIY)

Knowing these two basic principles, you will be able to try and apply new techniques, more diversified:

Reducing the price

• eliminate the intermediaries
• buy in bulk
• use discounts (savings, seasonal campaigns, last minute…)
• make a thorough selection of your products
• whenever you can, negotiate

Make the product/service that you need

• product making (in-house manufacturing, from canned food to dog house)
• making the service that you need  (from car washing in the backyard to cloth weaving )

There are people who were able to start a small business after they were imposed by life conditions to cut expenses. There are people who are selling hand made products; technique they learned when they had to quit the previous life style because it was too expensive. You don’t have to be ashamed by the choices you will have to make. It is better to prevent the problems than to face them.

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Laziness has been a plague for humanity from its beginning. In Christian mythology, laziness is one of the seven deadly sins. Those who were lured into its nets were threatened with hell’s fire.

Today, there are many businesses that exploit the collective indolence. See for yourself the ways in which laziness takes over and poisons our lives.

1. Not having a retirement fund
At 20 we don’t necessarily think about life’s “sunset” but old age can come quickly and you will need a fat bank account if you want to cover all your needs.

You could start by putting aside as little as $200 or $300 each month. Put them into a retirement fund or savings account. Use whatever pleases you, but start saving.

2. Not paying the credit card bills on time
Laziness overcomes any logic, especially when you have to take 5 minutes out of your time to pay your credit card bills. The later you pay, the bigger the interest will get. The single and most efficient solution is to pay your obligations on time.

3. Not looking for the best offer
You may think that a single deal will not save too much, but when you always look for a better price, you will sooner or later find that you can save quite a bit of money.

4. Not making a shopping list
This is a classical scenario in which laziness “attacks your budget”. If you’re not spending two minutes of your time to pencil out the shopping list, then most probably you will end up buying lots of useless things. Also, it is very important that you don’t shop when you are hungry. It makes you buy all the things that make you salivate.

5. Not selling the things you don’t need any more
You have a CD/tapes collection that you don’t listen anymore? Do you have lots of decorative objects which serve as surface for dust? You probably have a small fortune in your house but you don’t even know about it. Start selling on the Internet or, if you can, participate in a backyard sale.

6. Not taking advantage of sport centers offered by the employer
We can see that corporations are more and more interested towards their employees’ health. If your employer puts at your disposal such a wonderful opportunity, just take it and save money on a paid fitness center.

7. You are sleeping too much
If you’re sitting too much in bed you are losing both time and money. First of all, the time you’re losing could be converted into something that could yield, now or in the future. Reading a book is a much better solution than sleeping too much or wasting time. Secondly, you could have health problems if you’re sleeping too much or not having a right lifestyle.

8. Lack of moving
Be active! If you’re using public transportation, get off some stations before the final destinations and let your body move. As with #7, this is a good solution to avoid possible health problems which could harden your financial life even more. Always try to keep in shape.

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