Don’t wet your bed

I was reading an article over at Blueprint today, and It linked to a CNNMoney.com article about advice from some well known millionaires. It’s a great read and the best piece of advice I got out of it is not to wet my bed. Go read the article and you’ll see what I mean.

-Jared

The man who changed my life

If you havent heard of Robert Kyosaki by now, where the hell have you been? Some people think he’s a fraud, some say he’s a genius but weather you like him or not means nothing because he’s rich and you’re not. A little back story:

Back in 2003, I was 21 years old. At the time I was racking up debt like crazy due to my family having no clue about money, or financial education. I got a job working for a life insurance company for a short time and met a man named Raymond. Ray changed my life. While I was working for this company and by the way not making a single paycheck, I was apprentice to Ray. He was an older guy, maybe in his early 40’s at the most and was of some unanounced latin decent. He told me stories of his past involving making and losing businesses and money and jobs. From his stories I did’nt learn much, I was young and ignorant and did’nt pay them much mind, but what I did pay close attention to was what he was trying to teach me about money and my future. Long story short, he told me about this book he was reading and how it was changing how he thought about money. He’d been wrong all these years and reading this book taught him why.

After leaving the job I was in the library one day, maybe a year or so later, and I ran into the business and finance section in my wandering. I decided maybe it would a good read, so I looked for the book and took it home. That night my life changed. I couldnt belive how simlple the whole thing really was, but how we just blindly look past the obviouness of it all.

The book may be fact or fiction, it doesnt really matter, the point is that the lessons it teaches about personal finance and money management are real, and correct. It got me started on my quest and made me want to learn. For these reasons I suggest everyone read the book, at least once.

I never saw ray again.

Thanks buddy, I hope we meet again.

-Jared

New site

I just switched over from blogger to WordPress! I’m finding a lot more functionality and ease of use so far and plan to stick with it from this point on. It’s a fantastic program and I suggest it to all bloggers. I brought all of my old posts over from the old site and i’ll be adding new ones soon. Thanks and Happy fourth of July to all!

-Jared

Pay yourself first

   Maybe not first, but make sure to pay yourself at some point. With all the scrimping and saving and sacrifice that you will be doing in your quest for financial Independence, you can sometimes lose focus or feel deprived. That’s why you have to give yourself something nice once in a while, buy little something to make you happy here and there.

    As we speak, or more accurately I write, I’m sitting on my front porch with a bottle of wine, the sun and my new laptop computer that I bought two days ago. Now, I didn’t just go out on a whim and say I feel bad, I’m buying a computer to be happy, oh no. I decided a year ago to buy a new lappy. I scrimped and saved, not for the computer, but for the whole “financial Independence” thing. The laptop came as long awaited reward for hard work and smart decisions. I decided last month that if I reach a financial goal of “X”, I get “Y”(the computer) as a reward. Clearly, “X” was accomplished.

    Money does in fact buy happiness, to a point. In this case, great financial decisions bought a new laptop for your truly and the rewards for an education in Personal finance have began to roll in. Robert Kyosaki has a great way to explain this. The poor buy what they want first to make them happy. The rich plan for the expense, they make the money first, invest it and use the excess to buy what they want. In the end, they have the item they longed for, AND still have the money in hand. Not his words exactly, but close enough.

   If you had that one thing to work towards what would it be? And in what time frame do you want to achive the goal ?

Day one 3/25/08

I’ve been reading personal finance blogs for about a year now. After talking to a few people at a new job about Personal finance, I realize that most people have no idea what money is or how it functions in today’s world. In the spirit of helping others and spreading the flow of information both ways(to and from myself) I’ve decided to jump on board the Personal Finance blog train. Hopefully I can help some people clean up thier finances as the blogging community has helped me.