Everyone’s an expert on finance matters these days. There’s a dozen of advices available at our disposals. It’s littered all over the internet. They all echo the same thing. They give tips and tips and more tips to achieve financial literacy. Even when one stops looking, they give some more tips.
It can get frustrating after a while. Why is it that we know so much about how the stock market behaves, why we need a secondary income source and the essence of investment? Yet, we do not prosper. Our financial situation never seems to get any better.
Newsflash! No one can really sort out our financial status other than ourselves. What all these experts do not reveal to us is the fact that even before they made it big, they made one crucial change to their lives. They turned their lives around by changing their approach to money. It’s a mindset thing.
What we Know
There’s so much about finance that we’ve all come to learn through the years. Our interactions with money plus experiences from others have guided how we conduct most of our transactions.
Debt is a harmful thing to have. When we accrue too much debt, it may get to harm us in the long term. In addition, we should never take a loan to offset another loan, unless of course, it’s critically urgent. By taking more loans, we immerse ourselves deeper into debt. What was once a situation that could be salvaged by paying off one debtor suddenly becomes a case of two debtors. That situation can quickly snowball into a myriad of problems.
Saving is probably the smartest approach to ensuring survival. We were all at some point informed about the essence of saving during the elementary stages of life. Some of us even got piggy banks that we would stash coins and a couple of notes in order to make a purchase of items we valued. For those who got well adept at saving, we started banking young.
Time
As youngsters, most of us got some financial education. There were so many sources. It could have been the math books. After all, they did teach us about loans and compound interest. It could have been our parents and/or teachers. They did give us tips and rewards for excellence and jobs well done. It could have been those long summers working at a store somewhere in order to have some money…who knows.
Society and music have been shaped our thinking too, we’ve heard about the all so popular phrase, “Cash Rules Everything, Around Me (C.R.E.M.E).” It’s the way of the world, yet still, with the passage of time, a lot has changed.
What has Changed?
The world has changed, and so have our lives. Between school, work and family, we barely have enough time to ourselves. We find ourselves spending just for the sake of it. What’s more frustrating is we tend to pay for goods and services we could do without. Even the most financially conscious among us will admit to occasionally slipping up.
The advent of the internet and online shopping has been a boon for the companies and a bane to us. Of course, there are a couple of benefits of making online purchases. They are easily available to us. They offer great convenience. However, it has slowly led to the development of a laziness in how we conduct ourselves. Who wants to work hard enough to do something for ourselves when we can simply order it online? Well, the truth is, not that many people do.
What Next
If we know so much about finance, what’s really stopping us from achieving monumental success? Well, it really is us. All it takes is a little bit of application. In order to succeed, we need to ensure we have sufficient motivation to work hard at something. We need the inspiration to save. We need to be sufficiently motivated to invest. To meet up with clients on the go.
If motivation is lacking, find a way to get inspired. We should try out some tips whenever we’re feeling down. Inspiration can be sourced from music or even taking a shower. We can always try to work out much more often. In fact, working out has been found to offer great benefits to the mind, which is a sure way to think ahead of the competition.
Having a final goal will help us in being totally committed to achieving a sense of financial freedom. Ultimately, it all boils down to how badly we want to succeed. Talking about it is simply not good enough. We need to walk the talk.