Friday, July 16, 2010

Why You Need To Stop Depending On You Job

It's a common notion around the world that having a job with good benefits is a good financial strategy. In fact, many even relate that if you are paid well, you are doing good financially.

The usual plan is to find a good company (with good pay and healthcare benefits), work hard, and move up the corporate ladder to more responsibility. And eventually it will take us to the golden retirement years and happiness.

The reality is many have followed this path, but only a few (about 2%) have really become wealthy. The fact of the matter is that a job merely supports the habits we have (like eating), but it rarely leads to real wealth.

Whether you agree with me or not, I strongly believe that a good financial plan must not only support our habits but our dream lifestyle as well. I've known many people (specially Pinoys), after just a few months of retirement they already start to have problems financially. And once they start to get sick because of their old age, they go back to depending to their family or the government for financial support. So if you want to get to the golden years of retirement, change your wrong financial belief about having a job.

No matter how much you love your job, expecting it to make you wealthy is like looking for gold in a salt mine. No matter how large your efforts will be, you still earn the same amount of salary at the end of each month.

Rather the answer is not to work harder but to work smarter. A job should be looked upon as a temporary inconvenience. It is a method of generating basic cash flow that will be enough for your living expenses, while you are setting up an autopilot business that will take you to financial freedom.

Thus, a job is necessary for while to put food on your table, but don't forget the bigger part of the equation which is making other sources of income. For me, I've already chosen my best option, and that is not to depend on a job but to create businesses that will create passive income (more on this in the future lessons).

Now change those wrong financial beliefs about a job, and further improve your financial life.


To our financial freedom......


Cheers!     
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Saturday, June 19, 2010

What Are False Finacial Beliefs

This month will be a special set of financial planning guide lessons. We will discuss how our false beliefs towards money will drag (even stop) our journey to financial freedom.

As we grew older we were all exposed to different kinds of influences. Influences from our families, friends, colleagues and specially the kind of media we patronize. Our core values and personal beliefs are define by this influences. These influences all aspects of our life, specially how use our money.

You see our brain is like a computer that stores all the experiences in our life. Slowly it creates a blue print of who we are based on all those experiences and influence. Slowly our brain is creating a computer program that we will be the basis of who we become.   

Again like a computer program, our brain also has a sort of "software". So it acts, thinks, talks, eats, cries, works, earns, even smells based on our personal "software". This personal is so hard wired into our being that we think it's who we are. There are even people that think their life is destined to be that way.

Since this a "software", it involves all aspects in our life specially how we handle money. It defines how we spend, invest, save and earn money. The good thing with this since it is a "software", it is something we can reformat and install and upgraded version. Specifically it is an acquired habit that we have develop through our past and present experiences.

On our next coming financial planning guide, I will help you to personally identify this false beliefs within yourself that ultimately robs you of achieving true financial freedom.  
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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

3 Main Reasons Why Most People Are Poor

This is now the formal start of my financial planning guide lessons. Since in our previous series of steps (for those who are new in my blog please click here and follow each step) we already talked about the necessary steps to take before actually planning your financial life.

You already have a dream life, a financial goal, and now it is time for the "apply lessons-fail-plan again-repeat until successful" part of financial planning.

Now let's talk about the three most common reasons why many people are poor.


1. Because most people do not really want to be rich.

Yup, you heard me right! We really do not want to be rich. I know many of you would react and say, "I have never heard a person say that he does not want to be rich". In fact if I ask you right now if you want to be financial free and be wealthy?

The common answer would be - OF COURSE!


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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Step 4 Present Your Financial Goal To God and Start Tithing


Today, I will let you on a secret that not many financial planning experts will tell you.

Let me start by giving you a brief history.

As a Christian, I have a very good relationship with the Lord and although some of you may disagree but I am proud to say He has fully blessed my financial life because we are good friends.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a preacher or a priest (although when I was young I wanted to be one) but I firmly believe that there is really a higher power out there that really loves us unconditionally. Because of that of love, he helps us cope with our problems, gives us great families who also love us unconditionally, he gives us a way in difficult situations, he makes us smile in simplest ways, and He gives us ENORMOUS WEALTH. 

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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Step 3 : Claim And Commit To Your Financial Goal

I know that this may seem as a "non-contributor" in a financial planning guide lesson but I want to clarify this issue and how it relates to our financial life.

We often relate financial freedom to having lots of money, or how much money a person earns, spends, his cars, etc..... So in a natural way, we relate wealth to the amount of money a person has in his bank account.
For most people, if you don't have a big house, don't drive a Jaguar, or don't have the latest cellphone then you are not rich.

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Saturday, April 3, 2010

Continuation of Step 2 - Taking A Financial Retreat

Today is an exciting week for all us since this week is also a week of reflection for the Holy Week. This week is where we look back into our life and evaluate our sins and be reconciled with our Father in heaven.

Although many would consider it as a Roman Catholic tradition but the importance of this day all leads to looking back on how our Father gave His only son Jesus (our savior and brother) so that we can all be save. Out here in the Philippines, specifically in Cebu City, I see Jesus' sacrifice as a sign of love and compassion and that's how we Pinoy's are living it especially on the Holy Week.

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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Step 2: Taking A Personal Retreat - "A Financial Retreat"

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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Step 1: How to Compute Your Net Worth

Now going back to the Steps of Setting our Financial Goal, we start with step 1 which is:
"How to compute your Net Worth"

I know a lot of people hate the subject of accounting (that includes my wife), but it is a necessity when it comes to taking control of our financial life. Although in this section we will discuss a few points in accounting but we will discuss it the simplest and practical way I can possibly explain.

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Sunday, March 14, 2010

Setting A Financial Goal

Based on our previous discussion (please click here for those who have not read it), we all belong to a financial stage and all the steps that we should be doing should take into consideration where we currently belong.
Again, the goal is financial freedom so I guess we all agree that, that is all our "end-state".

Now let's start with setting a Financial Goal.

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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Financial Life Stages

I have observed that our life is all about stages, and even in our finances we also have different stages.

A lot of financial planning guide books define it in many ways, but I like to make things simple. For me there are only four (4) stages in a person's financial life:

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Saturday, February 27, 2010

My Emotional Inspiration To Change My Financial Life

Hi everyone, welcome to my financial improvement blog.


To be honest with you, this is actually my personal “Financial blue print”. My life’s financial journey and all the many lessons, the tears, and especially the joy that I have experience in my financial life is written in this site.


A background on how my financial life was.


When I was young, my family has faced many financial rollercoaster. As a child, I would often hear my mother telling me “let’s go to your grandpa’s house, we will ask financial help from him for your school”. As a child I never really understand this, not until I reached my teens that I was fully acquainted with the many needs for money. Although within that period (my childhood years to my teens), my father was able to set-up a furniture export business that brings sudden wealth and thus changed our lives. We are able to fix our house, had foams as bed, had two automobiles, we dined in restaurants, had the toys I wanted, and etc. In short, we were living the life of the wealthy.


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