Budget - Know where your money goes and find the leftovers

Budget is a word that sends people running for the hills believing that it will make them live a life on tighter cashflow than they already do. This is not the case. Let's look at it as finding money that was previously wasted or mis-spent. The aim to to identify where each dollar goes from one pay to another over a month. Hopefully there is extra funds that can be extracted and siphoned off to savings accounts. Maybe there is money being paid on fees or interest charges that can be consolidated or paid off easily?

A good measure is to do a monthly personal profit and loss and watch growth patterns occur (map out your income streams, your expenses, assets and liabilities). Grab our FREE Money Tracker spreadsheet here. 

 

 

Savings Accounts - Rid the bank fees. 

Find a virtual account that allows you access to your funds from any banks ATM and pays you interest or reward amounts with no fees. 

- Trading account – income account to handle income and expenses, including loan repayments – 60% **Salary Sacrifice to 15% tax – already deducted before you receive nett pay

- Treasure Chest Savings Account – 20%  Other incomes received - Investment property income, nest egg funds, deposits, bulk expenses – only on major expenses that have to be paid.

- Treasure Chest Investment Account – 10% This is your risk account – splurge on tax lotto’s, clothing, doodads, casino, shares, what-ever you wish to splurge on, etc. Any winnings or sold items get invested back in this account. The plan is to open yourself up to accepting a chance gain or when purchased items no longer have a use, they can be resold and reinvested here.

- Treasure Chest Holiday Account –10% (this can be for holidays, weddings, education, etc. – the bigger long term expenses

- Termed Account (Another Bank fee free)– Initial $2,000, compound interest (cannot touch)

- Wealth Growth Fund Account (Super / Roth Fund) – Salary sacrifice to 15% your gross wages contribute to Super Fund (deducted from your wage before you receive it)

 

 

Loyalty Deals - find the discounts in memberships.

Large companies trying to win your repeat business so offer great discounts on shopping, surveys, bring a friend promotions, competitions, etc. It stands to reason that if you put a little time into benefiting their business, you can expect cheaper items or rewards. You can be amazed how much you can earn from these deals.

 

Debts and Leveraging - when to pay off and when to pay minimum repayments. We all can have debt in any stages of our lives. The key is to know whether it is good manageable debt or bad drowning debt. Good deal is a loan or credit card debt that will allow equity or cashflow to occur that improves your bottom line. Bad debt is where the debt item loses value over time and just costs to keep. It can also be if caught up in a bad interest rate that is not allowing you to live well or a negatively geared house that is adding value but drags your finances down to cripple your life and the time you value.

 

All bad debts should be researched to find the lowest interest rate, longest term with early pay off avenues. These debts should be tried to be paid off first. The good debts should be maintained at minimal repayments until bad debts are taken care of. Exceptions to these guidelines is if you are implementing a strategy of manufacturing growth on property that will enable faster or more funds to rid crushing bad debts sooner. 

In a loan situation, your credit card/s maximum value has already been calculated as a debt whether it is paid off monthly or not. It makes sense to utilise the cashflow still available to you in paying down bad debts or investing in good debts rather than lowering the credit card balance. Naturally, each circumstance is different and types of personalities will dictate the outcome here, but if you are smart with money, do not go overboard in credit card purchases or have a high limit, it would make sense to utilise this strategy. 

 

Pay yourself first - this is a practice not widely used by the everyday person, but very well known by the rich. If you consider that you have done all the effort why does it not stand to reason that you wait for pay and only spend on fun activities if there is money left after the bills...? The ideal notion is you have the best taxation structure set up (trust or company) where you will pay with pretaxed dollars that you pay yourself first in, then bills are left to remaining funds. But the catch is when you pay yourself first, it is still split into the savings account method so you always show growth.

 

Create Cashflow - Rent out space, equipment, time.  

Wow what a concept, we all have something that can be done here. Rent out a room, rent out a garage of storage space, allow a sign on your fence, hire a caravan/camper trailer, hire a mower, rent your time - cleaning, fixing something, gardening, dog walking and feeding, being a personal virtual assistant, whatever - there is cash to be made. Obviously, you will need to look into council rules and insurances to tweak our idea's to fit with them.

 

Start an investment - sometimes we just need to start somewhere. Define your mix of investments that you can work with. Whether it be reallocating your mix in superannuation, starting with safer term deposits, bonds that compound the interest or learning more about riskier stocks and CFD options trading, online marketing promotions, property, buy and sell physical products, etc. Investing is the fast track to making wealth depending on the level of risks you want to take (and should take - wealthy people will often offset their high risk ventures with low set guaranteed ventures so winning is always possible), it can also be the painful road of monetary loss. But choosing your advisors, watching that they utilise their own money too in deals and have affluent clients can be handy to start with. Education and understanding is the key, otherwise it is just a punt.

 

Opportunity in referring products you endorse - Affiliate marketing

To advance cashflow with Internet Marketing knowing the amount of people utilising the internet is growing year after year is a growing ideal. The pie of available money is huge! Why not be apart of that too. The plan is to find a platform (like JVZoo, iPro, most high profile folk will have a product they want affiliates to promote for them)  that allows a good percentage of return (usually up to 50%) when a product of theirs that is listed as sold. Ethically, it should be of a product that you like and can personally endorse. People will see right through you if try to trick them. Next is to create a following via social media and tempt them with a opt-in page where they will subscribe to your email list for a freebie offer or valued content. The money is in the list. The list can be emailed building trust and providing great value and content. This warms a listee to a possible promotion sale and future sales, also builds quality in any online business (asset) you are building.

But the big money is in creating e-books or information courses that actually solves a problem for buyers and offers a solution to them. You then have affiliate marketers working for you and the exponential results of turnover can be massive.  

 

Stop with the excuses - stop the road blocks

 At times we let our circumstances govern how we act or whether we can see ourselves improving. You are responsible for you. The game of life is just that...a game - it has rules, consequences, highs and lows. There is never failing, only learning and making you wiser of the tricks and knowingly of preparation or precaution required. So stop the self criticism, the disadvantaged victim story, find out what you are good at, know your why you want to see change in your circumstances and set a plan in motion. As long as you start something, the momentum of action takers seems to post opportunity along your path and promise of a better life for trying. 

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Get Educated - open your mind to what is possible

 Getting education on ventures you are participating in or interested in makes good financial sense. Plenty of mentors that have been there before you can show a path through the unknown and literally save you time and dollars for costly mistakes. Finance and building wealth does not have to be complicated, but rather systematic should be the key word. Design Your Wealth Foundations is a program to teach you the principles of wealth utilised by the Rich and Strategies to grow your wealth exponentially. Not only does it feature the Money Management Plan, it also nurtures ways how to have a killer mindset. Never will self doubt stop you in your tracks again. Collected and reapplied knowledge from some of the great mentors like Robert Kiyosaki, Garrett Gunderson, Bob Proctor, Loral Langemeire, Mark Rolton, Dymphna Boholt, Scott Harris, Tony Robbins, Aaron Sansoni and many more.