Last week, I came across a short paragraph about how a spiritual leader, Dalai Lama, thinks about our current economic crisis. Personally I quite agree with what he said about our economy. Here are some of the points that you might interest in:

1. Our greed caused today’s global economic crisis. I totally agree with his words on this. We are living in the world where most people are so greedy and materialistic. We have too much things to buy and enjoy until we put a great honor on our money. The demands on money are increasing until everybody is so keen about it. This make a lot of people use improper ways to make more money until the collapse of the economy system.

2. The importance of transparent. People are worry about our economy because most of us didn’t prepare well for this. In fact, I believe there are many so called economy experts should know about this global economic crisis earlier than everyone of us. They should give some warning to the public and let people prepare for this crisis. However, the transparency on this method is not really clear and most people never know about this until the last minute. This is why so many people are suffering from this economic crisis.

3. The obsession with money. Sometime it is really funny how we should deal with our “money”. Money is important because we need it to survive. But if we become too obsession with money, we will suffer. So we must find a balance point where we will not too obsessive with money until we lost the direction to have a happy life.

4. The Buddhist approach to deal with economic crisis. Things happen because of some reasons. This is something that we called karma. We have been destroying all the economy system in the last decade, now it is time for us to deal with the crisis(results). Nothing we can do right now except learning how to accept the fact and the lesson so that we will not repeat the same mistake in future.

If you follow my post about why we must retire as early as we can, you will know that there are a few benefits for us to retire early. So today, let’s discuss what kind of steps that we can take every day so that we can have a wealthy early retirement:

1. Save More Money. The key to retire early and wealthy is investment. It is about how we invest and grow our money so that we can retire early. This is why the first step we must take is save more money and let us have more money to invest.
2. Delay your gratification. In order to save more money, you have to delay your gratification and stop buying things that not really necessary or something that is expensive. I know this is the hardest part for us to do as we are facing so much of temptation today. But if you have a goal to retire early, this is a must. We only delay and buy later after we are wealthy and rich.
3. Build more income sources. One of the greatest way to save more money is have multiple sources of income. The more income you have, the more money you can save each month. This will greatly help you to boost the growing speed of your early retirement fund.
4. Reduce Debt and Accumulate wealth. Debt is dangerous if we don’t know how to handle it. So my advice is we must try our best to be debt free and let our finance back to the starting point of 0. After that we can fully concentrate on wealth accumulation by investing money and buying assets.
5. Take more risks in investment. Depends on your current age and income, if you are young and have multiple sources of income, then you should try to invest in those high return investments. Of course the risks are higher. My advice is you only can do this after you are debt free and have plenty of extra money on hands. Please make sure your life will not be ruined just in case your investment fails.
6. Buy VS Rent Your House? If you come to the age to buy your first house, you must think properly whether you should buy it or rent it. There are many factors involves in this decision. In most cases, house is the greatest asset because we will spend most our money in this asset. But it is also something that may affect our plan to retire early. So think properly before making decision.

Yes, it is not that easy to retire early as you have to sacrifice so much of things and have a life that is so different from others. Just like me, I always have different mindset in money when I talk to my friends. This is because I have different financial goal. No matter what you goal is, as long as you know what you are doing and what you want, then you are on the right track to achieve what you want.

One of the reason people is unhappy in their living is because lack of money and the feeling of security for their finance.

Today, we need money to settle a lot of things and problems. Basic needs such as food, clothes, houses, medicines are consuming money. We need money to survive. Therefore in order to feel the sense of real security in life, we must have some money left behind which give the sense of security to us

We all love to live in a life that full of security. No body like to have the challenges in their finance all the time. We need security to feel the peace. So achieving financial security is the basic goal that everyone of us should have. Besides that, before you start any investment, you are advised to cover all your basic needs and achieve financial security. This will not put you or your family in hot water just in case you lost money in investments.

What Is Financial Security?

My Personal definition for financial security is a level of personal finance where you don’t have to worry that you are not enough money just in case anything happen in your life. You have the true security for your life because you have all the necessary money ready to cover whatever unpredictable circumstances happen in your life. Besides that there are also no loopholes in your finance that might let you down such as debt or persona loan.

Therefore based on this definition, I have listed some of the requirements that we must have in order to achieve financial security.

1. Emergency Funds. Ok, it is very important to have an emergency funds ready for you and your family. Just in case anything happen, you have money to settle your problems. For example, if you lose your job, this money can let you to cover all your basic expenses while you can continue to look for a new job. Build up this emergency funds even you are in debt. If you are in debt, you can build up 1-2 months of emergency funds. After that you can continue to pay your debt. 1-2 months of emergency funds are better than none.
2. Become debt Free. Debt is dangerous and risky if we don’t know how to manage it properly. Therefore, I always encourage people to be debt free. There are good debt and bad debt tough. But if you don’t know how to handle your debts, you are advised to pay down the debt first. Debt is just like termites which can eat up the support of your finance. It can ruin and make your life fall down if you don’t handle it properly. So become debt free first and clear all the bad debts.
3. Saving Account. It can really give you the sense of peace and security to see that there are money left in your saving account. It is really nice to see this amount of money keep increasing. Saving account is a must because it is a fund for us to move our personal finance to the next stage. Maybe you want to start your business, maybe you want to invest or even save it for your children education. Well, this is very important for you to get into the next level of personal finance, Financial Comfortable.
4. Insurance. Life is hard to be predicted. There are things that might happen and affect our normal life. So we must buy the insurance to cover all this unpredictable things. Personally, I think an insurance that can cover death, medicines and illnesses is important for us. A life insurance is a must for everyone of us.
5. Maximize Your IRA Potential. Even though we have different financial goal to hit but we cannot forget our retirement. We should build the nest of our retirement from time to time. So spend sometime to manage your IRA and maximize its potential so that your retirement is under a protection.

It is really hard to live in a life that full of stress and worries about not enough money. Financial security is a stage that we must achieve for the peace of life and happiness. So please set a goal to achieve financial security as fast as possible. Good luck.

When I was a child, my parents taught me that we should donate and help other people. At that time I can do this very easy. Just take out the money from my pocket and put into the donation box. Well it is not really my money, it is my parents’ money.

But when I grow up and start to manage my own money, I found that sometime it is not easy for us to make the donation, especially in the form of money. There are many facotrs you might have to consider before you can put the money into the donation box. So here are some of the question that you might consider:

1. How much you can donate? Maybe you have started your own budget and living under its control. So you must consider how much you should donate so that it won’t affect your budget.
2. Should I donate now or later? Maybe you are lack of money and you are waiting for the next paycheck. So it can be hard for you to decide whether you should donate your money now o … later?
3. Which organization you should donate? Nowadays there are many charity organizations appear in the market. Do you have any favorite organization that you like to donate? What you should do when other charity organizations approach you?
4. What you can get in returns? Well, we have to accept the fact that there are some people are looking for returns after making the donation. Maybe the good name or the returns in Karma. But I think this is not really a donation anymore for this group of people. It sound like some kind of advertising and investing. To be honest, I hate this kind of people.
5. Can your love one accept that you make the donation? To be honest, not everyone is acknowledge the fact of donation. I saw this case before where a couple argue because of donation. So you might consider whether you should donate even though your love one objects on this case.
6. Can you sacrifice? Again, you know you want to use the money to buy something you want to. All in sudden, someone approach you and ask for the donation. But if you donate the money, you will be not enough money to buy what you want. Will you continue the donation?

God always tell us to love and help each other. It is very easy for God to do this but it can be hard for us on the hands. There are so much of things we have to consider before we can lend out our hands to help others. Anyway, it all about your heart to make your own decision whether you should donate. There are no “right” or “wrong” for this question.

So when someone hold a box and asking you to donate some money, will you do it?

With all the questions have to be considered, sometime I can feel that it is not easy to make a donation.

Photo Taken By Daquella manera

Today counting on one income source is very risky. One of the fact that I learn from current recession is that nothing is really secure even our jobs. People look for a job because of its security. But it is not as secure as what we used to think like. As you can see, if anything happens in our economy, our jobs will be affected as downsizing happens in many companies. Although we can recession-proof our jobs but for long term solution, we must know how to have more income sources. It is too risky for us to depends on 1 income source.

Just like investing and retirement planning, we must diversify our income source so that our income will not 100% collapse just in case anything happens.

The Benefits to Have Multiple Income Sources

Having more income is really a big advantage for us. With more money,

1. We can pay down our debt faster. We can use the money to pay down the credit card debt, mortgage, personal loan etc. This will let us to be debt free faster and easier.
2. We can have more money to invest. With more money, you can have more choices for your investment plan. You can invest in those high yield investment or even invest more money to build up for your wealth. With this extra money, you can take more risks to have more returns too.
3. Save more money faster. You can put all the money into your saving account to save money. You can save for your children college fund or even your retirement fund. You can also build up your emergency fund too.

In good time, extra income sources simply let us have more money to invest and build our wealth, in bad time, we have multiple income sources to support our life. This is why I always say that multiple income sources are essential for everyone of us.

What Are The Important Requirements To Have Multiple Income Sources

Currently, we are making money because we are providing some kind of value to others. People are paying money to exchange for our values. It can be services, products, knowledge or time.

So if you want to have multiple income sources, you can:

• Provide Multiple Values. Maybe you are knowledgeable in different area. Then you can provide different values to different kind of people. For example, you can repair computers as your job, get a freelance programming jobs at night time and provide computer tutorials to children at weekend. This can let you have multiple income sources.
• Provide The Same Value in multiple ways. This is slightly different from above. You know nothing but only your expertise. So you can concentrate on your expertise and provide your value in multiple ways. For example, you are good in cooking. So you can work as a chef in local restaurant, then you can write and sell some cooking recipes, you can also build a site that about cooking and earn money from the internet. All the ways are build around the same expertise but in different ways to provide the value.

Personally I prefer the way #2 to make more money. By focusing on 1 expertise, you can really improve and become an expert on a particular field. So you can provide even more value to people and make more money because you are an expert. Besides that it is also easier to control 1 knowledge rather than different knowledge. Just like what people said, 1 knife that can cut is better than 100 knife that is blunt.