Yesterday I was listening to a local radio station channel on my way to attend an appointment. The program is a discussion program that covers a weekly topic and interview with some of the experts for a discussion. This week their topic is Should we blame ourselves for not enough money?
Yesterday was the last day for this discussion and they covered another interesting topics that how to be rich and happy. According to the expert, most rich people are not happy as what we always imagine. Yes they might have a lot of money and they can own most of the things that they want. However, in fact they have lost something valuable that make them regret and unhappy. The expert gave a few examples on this issue which he collected through his professional. Yes, he is a counselor.
What it Takes To Be Rich and Happy?
According to the expert, we will happy only if we can fulfill the 5 categories of “needs”. Of course part of it is financial or money. So if you want to be rich and happy, then we must also fulfill another 4 “needs” listed below:
- Relationship – Besides money, we are also looking for love, cares and encouragements from our friends and families. While we are fighting for our goal to be rich, we need some supports or encouragements from people around us. After we succeed, we always look for someone to celebrate and share our success. This is our human nature of thinking. Don’t you agree that all of us need love from others to be happy? So if you are fighting for your goal, please don’t forget your love one and families. According to the counselor, most people will ignore their relationship with others and hence break it. This is also the main reason why some rich people are not happy because they lose their love one.
- Health – I always hear that “health is our biggest wealth”. I agree with this statement. So in order to be happy, we must own 2 kinds of “wealth”. One is money and another is our health. Please imagine that if your body is weak and sick, you will not have the power and mood to spend your money to get something you like. Instead, you always spend your money on medical treatment. Do you think you will happy if your life is like this? For example, I love travelling and I think most people will be the same like me. Travelling is an activity that needs both health and money. If I lost anyone of them, my life will be suffering and gloom. This is why health is very important for us.
- Emotional Mastery – I believe that our emotion is very important for us and it can affect anything in our life directly. Emotional Mastery means controlling our emotion. I always call this “increasing our EQ (Emotion intelligence)”. I found that by mastering our emotion, we can actually master other fields of our life too. For example, if we can master our emotion and stop being angry in certain time, we can actually avoid a lot of argument and save our relationship with people around us. If we can control our emotion and also others’ emotion, we can run our business very well and make lot of money. Or even for the most basic, we can control our emotion and be happy at anytime, anywhere that we want to. At this moment, you don’t really depend on money to be happy instead you can control your emotion and be happy.
- Time Freedom – We all love freedom, don’t you? People have different definition on time freedom. For me, time freedom means that you can have more choice to do something you like and love instead of follow a fix schedule. For example, the reason why I don’t like a job is because it controls my time. I just feel I’m lacking of choice and freedom on my time because I have to go to my office in certain time. Besides that it also disturbs my life too. So I agree with the counselor that if we own most of the money in the world but we don’t have time to do something that we enjoy and love, then we might suffer from our life.
Follow our Heart and Personal Intuition
I believe that our heart knew the best for us. Sometime it is good for us to follow our personal intuition. Our subconscious actually knew what is good and what is bad for us. So our personal intuition can be a good signal from our subconscious mind. So follow it and we can live happily.
How to Manage Money, Personal Development, Ways To Be Wealthy
Previously I shared with you how you can do a financial self-assessment so that you can know where you are now financially. This is the most important and basic step that everyone of us must take before we make any financial goal.
Through the financial self-assessment, you will find out your financial problems and hence set a goal and plan to overcome them. I think this is the main reason why we must set a financial goal. A financial goal must be a goal that can improve our finance level or solve our financial problem. It is hard to make a good financial goal without knowing what kind of problems you have right now If you haven’t do the financial self-assessment, you can read my post : Do you know where are you now Financially and find out the steps that you can do so.
Taking Control of Your Money by Setting a Financial Goal
Congratulation if you knew your current financial status. So let’s move on to set some goals and start taking control of your money. Below are some of the tips that I would like to show you on how to make a financial goal.
- Decide what you want. First you must decide what you want to achieve. Now you know your financial status and understand your financial problem. You should know what kind of financial problem and weakness that you want to cover. Just ask yourself what you want to improve and what kind of end results you want to achieve in next week, next month or end of the years. If you feel hard to make the decision, maybe you can read my article about the 6 financial levels. This article will tell you what kind of financial levels that available for you. So you can spend some time and then choose 1 that you want to achieve.
- Which Problem to solve first. I suggest that your first target should be those problems and weakness that you have found from the self assessment test. If you found that you are paying too much of debts, then getting out of debt should be your first choice. If you are having a negative balance at the end of each month, then you have to control your expenses and make it back to positive. Or if you found that you are suffering from the high mortgage payment or car loans repayment, then you should consider whether you change your car and house or look for second options to drop down the payments.
- Make a plan. You need a plan to succeed in anything. Now you know what you want and select the financial levels you are targeting at. Then you also know your current problems and etc. So with this 2 important information, you can start compiling a plan to solve your financial problems and move forwards to your goal. For example, I want to achieve financial freedom for my life. Then before achieving it, I have to pass 2 levels – financial security and comfortable. Of course, if you are in debt, then you have to make your balance break even first before those 2 financial levels. In financial security, we are looking for “security protection” on our finance. So in this level, we must prepare our savings, emergency funds and last but not least, good money management system that will prevent us from the financial disaster. After that, we will look for business and investment opportunities to build up our financial comfortable level. In financial comfortable, we are living comfortably with excessive cash from business, investment and our job. So with this money we can start building our asset empire and achieve financial freedom. This is just an overlook on my plan to achieve financial freedom.
- Take 1 action at a time. Please make your plan simple and take 1 action at a time. People always fail because they always try to take a big step at a time. In most cases, this will make you feel overwhelmed and stop taking action. I have this experience before too. In order to solve this problem, I found that making a plan is a good solution. In my plan, I always list down what I want, what is my current strength and weakness and finally write and list down the small steps 1 by 1 in my plan. After that I just follow my plan and I will achieve what I want. The power of a plan with some small steps is it can let you feel easy. Once you feel it easy, your mind will be clear and you will take action easily.
Last But Not Least …..
Please set a financial goal that you strongly believe that you can achieve. You will be lack of motivation if you set a financial goal that is too high for you. For example, if you set a goal to be a millionaire in next year. If you believe it then this is a good goal for you. But if you are not, it will block you instead of motivating you and move forward. So please set a financial goal according to your ability which you believe you can make it.
Good Luck
Harrison Loke
A dreamer who chases a Goal
Achieve Financial Freedom, Achieve Financial Freedom Through A Job, Financial Goal Setting Tips, How to Manage Money
Living Debt Free seems to be a dream life for many people. However, for certain people, this dream is beyond their ability to achieve. If you dream to be debt free but you still keep receiving the bills from your creditors each month, you are not alone.
Before this I wrote a post about why people are in debt and I wish people will understand why they are in debt after reading the post. By understanding the reasons, they will change and improve. However, lately I found that this is not enough. There are a group of people who know the why, the steps and also the facts to get out of debt but in reality they are still in debt.
Don’t you think it is strange that people who know everything about debt free but they are still in debt. I believe the process of being debt free is just like getting your weight under control. Everyone wants to have a good looking and healthy body but there are still people who are over-weight. This is because it takes “something” to achieve it and this what I want to discuss over here today.
Besides a Dream of Living Debt Free, What else are needed?
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How to Manage Money, Steps to Get Out of Debt
Get Out Of Debt
Another update on my weekly interesting reads from me. In fact, this is a consistence post that I will make first day of each week. This is a conclusion about some sites that I StumbleUpon and also some carnival that I participated last week. I have to say it again that the main purpose that I write this kind of post is because I want to share with some interesting sites that I came across that might help you and I to achieve our goals. I hope you love my works and really enjoy it. 
Sites that I added to StumbleUpon Last Week
PS : If you have a stumbleupon account, please feel free to contact me there.
Carnival that my Blog participated last week
My blog participated in a few blog carnivals last week:
That’s all for this post. Do you love what I’m sharing here?
PS : If you have a StumbleUpon account, please feel free to contact me there.
Weelky Interesting Reads
Year 2008 is around the corner and we are now in the busy December. We are busy in December because we have to prepare for the Christmas Day and also the New Year Celebration. Some of us might busy for the year-end holiday. A lot of shopping and planning have to be done within this month.
Besides shopping and holiday planning, there is actually a process that we cannot miss out. It is Goal Setting for the coming up 2008. You can set any goals for 2008 but I would like to remind you to set a financial goal for yourself so that you can take some serious actions for your personal finance.
Don’t know what to set? Don’t worry, in order to assist you on this, I have categorized the top 5 financial goals that you can set for your life. Here they are:
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Achieve Financial Freedom, Achieve Financial Freedom Through A Job, How to Manage Money, Ways To Be Wealthy