6 FOUNDATIONAL HABITS FOR WEALTH BUILDING

Let's get one thing clear: While money may not be of ultimate importance, it still ranks up there with oxygen in giving you life. Hence, the need for you to handle money with intelligence and intention. With that in mind, let's look at the six foundation habits that will help ease your financial pressures as we round up our course on finance management.

1. Develop a Positive Attitude about Money.
Attitude is important when it comes to money. In fact, attitude is the driving force in your subconscious mind. Attitude shapes your self-talk and ultimately your financial reality. If you constantly say to yourself, "I'm broke, I'm broke", your subconscious mind hears these negative words and sets up your actions to be consistent with the message. If instead it hears, "I'm building wealth, I'm building wealth", it sets up your actions to become a wealth builder. These messages are sent to your brain and are heard as absolute truth whether they are true or not. So, if you want to be wealthy you must constantly engage in positive self-talk.


2. Develop a Written Plan.
Discovery have shown that people with a balanced goal program for their finances earned more than twice as much money and were healthier. Here's why: People who know where they're going and have a plan of action to get there don't lust over immediate gratification. They have bigger objectives in mind. If there is a secret it is this: Without objectives we won't know what to do; without deadline we won't know when to do it; without priorities we won't know what to do first.


3. Live Below Your Means and Live From a Budget.
The opposite of the above headline can create tremendous financial pressure on any one of us. In fact, most wealth builders say that, living below your means and living from a budget is the number strategy for financial freedom. Their motto is, " Spend less than you make, and know where you spend it". Here's a simple rule to doing this: Write down where every unit of your money goes for one month. At the end of the month, determine how much you didn't have to spend. Then the next month, don't spend it. Invest it.


4. Pay Yourself First.
The idea of paying yourself first is a way to develop the regular discipline of making your money make money for you by avoiding to live paycheck to paycheck. If you're serious about building wealth you must begin to make some serious lifestyle adjustments to help you free some money for yourself to invest.

5. Don't be a Gambler
If you gamble with your investment you will probably never become a wealth builder. The similarity between a gambler and an investor is that they both take risk. It is risky to invest in a particular stock; it is also risky to gamble with your money. But there is also a difference between the two strategies. When you invest, you are in command, when you gamble you abdicate control to another being and you can not control the deck.


6. Start Now.
The cost of waiting is far too high for most people. Procrastination is to prolong your arrival at a higher level of personal financial freedom. Do yourself a favour, do something in the next thirty minutes to break through the self-imposed dam that as kept you in the check for too long. Go to the bank, open a new money-market account and a savings account. Start an automatic investment program. Do something; do anything to move yourself from where you are to where you want to be. If you do not do this now, tomorrow you will be where you are today. Start now!

Excerpts from: "Wealth Strategies- 91/2 Steps to Achieving Physical, Financial, and Spiritual Abundance" by Todd Duncan.