What is the definition of a healthy life?

For me, it takes more than just a healthy body to have a healthy life. There are many things that we must take care in order to have a healthy life. For example, our personal finance. We can’t deny the impact of money on to our life and we must take care about it.

For our good health, we are advised to take more rest, eat more healthy food, do more exercise etc. We must take some healthy steps each day to ensure that we can have a healthy body. It is all about what we do every day that determine our future.

For the issue of money is same. There are a few things we must do from time to time to ensure we have a healthy finance. Without further ado, here are the 5 things that I recommend to you:

1. Take more notes. I have been listening so many time that my friends complain how they are struggling financially. They make so much of money but they still have financial headache. When I ask them in details, most of them will answer me they don’t even know how and where their money gone. This is a big problem for them. Since they don’t know how they spend their money, then how they can manage their money? So take more notes about how you spend your money every day. This will let you have a great overview on your cash flow.
2. Spend more wisely. Think before you spend so that you won’t worry after you spend. Before you buy anything, think properly. People usually buy things emotionally and they might spend too much money on something that is not really important for them. Ask yourself question like do I really need this thing? Is there any alternative for it? Should I buy at this price? Besides that you can also do some calculation so that you can find out how this spending can affect your future and life.
3. Read your statement. Each month we receive a lot of bills and statements in mail or email. I also know that not much of people will go through the bill. This is a bad habit. Even you are in great debt, you must read through the statements. This will let you understand how you spend your money and what kind of charges are taking money from you. So far I found that banks tend to charge some kind of “service” fee in our statement that we might not know. So if you don’t look at your statement, then how you are going to get rid of it?
4. Change the habits that consume our money. There are many things that we can skip and save money. For example, I never drink any coffee but plain water. In fact, drinking too much of coffee is not good for health. So why we must spend money for this habit? Drinking water is better and it is cheaper than a cup of coffee.
5. Read about Money. We must always read and touch things that we want to master in life. In fact, the issues of money is a huge knowledge and we can easily spend the rest of our time to study and master it. If you want to have a healthy body, you can read about books and taking care of your body. If you want a good financial future, then you must read about money. Personally I will encourage you to learn how to invest your money. No one can really help you when comes to investment even experts. Experts are only assisting you to plan and make decision and not really can help you to make money. So learn this skill yourself and it will pay off in future.

Above are the 5 tips that I think people should take to master their finance. Hope you enjoy it.

People with different level of income can achieve financial freedom as long as they know how to manage their money properly. But a matter of fact is that people with higher income can be financial free and achieve their financial goals faster. In fact, high income is a must for those who want to achieve financial freedom and retire earlier, like me.

I want to achieve financial freedom by the age of 30. So I must boost my cash flow speed to achieve this goal. First of all my income must be high and I must know how to manage the income to build more passive income assets. There are many options I can choose to generate high income but I never include MLMs in my plan even though they always promote the theory of financial freedom in their programs.

Multi-level Marketing

MLM is multi-level marketing and here is the definition from wikipedia:

Multi-level marketing (MLM), also known as Network Marketing, is a marketing strategy that compensates promoters of direct selling companies not only for product sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of others they introduced to the company. The products and company are usually marketed directly to consumers and potential business partners by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing.

The Reasons Why MLM is Not For Me

As you can see, the plan of MLM actually quite match the requirement of financial freedom. We can leverage on MLM to generate more passive income by introducing more “downline” or members. This is why many MLM companies use the terms of financial freedom to promote their programs to people because they are being promoted as a system to generate passive income.

However, no matter how good a MLM system or products are, I never have any interest in MLM. I even never think that I want to achieve my financial freedom through them. Anyway, more and more people are not feeling good with the words MLM.

Here are the reasons why I think in this way:

• MLM System is too money oriented. I found that many MLM companies are too concentrating on making money. They are too promoting the concept of “money making” to people until they forget what is the real meaning of running a business. This let me feel that MLM is not selling any products but money making opportunity to people. MLM system is only a marketing system and the most important part is their products and contributions to the society. This is the main mission for a true business. However, what I found is they are just promoting their MLM system and carry out the message how much money we can make from their system. They should pay more attention on their products and services and not how much money their memebers can make.
• MLM products are too highly promoted. Well, everyone who joined MLM company is trying to make money and be a good sales person. Guess what, they are too highly promote their MLM system and products to people. They always claim their products are so different and rank no 1 in the market. I even met with some friends of mine promoting their MLM products exaggeratedly. After doing my research, I found that their products are having problems and some of them are being banned in different countries due to the side effects to consumers.
• The markup margin is too high. How people can make money from MLM company? Commission from different level! As the name indicated, mlm company has to pay commission to multiple level of people. Some of them even pay up to 5 level of people. So Can you imagine how much margin they have to markup on their products so that they can pay out so much of commissions so many levels of people? This make me doubt about their products… and I don’t wish people around me use this kind of “expensive” products because I want to make my commission.
• The Relationship for prospecting. How a new MLM marketer get started to promote their products and systems? Yes, through their relationship. They will introduce their companies to their relatives and families. they will hard selling to their friends and anyone who within their networks. Yes, we can leverage our network and relationship but I won’t leverage on them to make money especially by selling so called “business opportunity” and expensive products and services to them. I have been approached by several friends who are MLM marketers. For me, I really tired and lazy to answer their phone calls or meet with them because they always leverage on our relation to make money. I hate this process so I will never join any MLM companies for this purpose.
• Not Everyone can really Make “Big” Money. Yes, there are many people who is making money from MLM and in fact, some of them are even making big money from the MLM system. But not everyone can do this. Based on my observation, people who can make money, especially big money, are those consider as the pioneer of the MLM system. They are the first group of people who joined the system. I think I have no luck to get into a system at the early stage and MLM is not suitable for me.

Conclusion

MLM always emphasize that it is a business and everybody who joined the MLM system are business owners. I have different view on this. For me, the MLM companies are running the business and not the members. Everyone who joined their system are sales persons who are trying to recruit even more sales person.

Above are some of my points about MLM and I meant no offense by the remarks.

Before this, I have a wrong mindset about how we should work for our goal. I used to believe that we must work really hard and spend all our time to do something for our dreams and goals. Besides sleeping and eating, We must spend all our time and day to exchange for our goals. If not we would fail.

This mindset really gives me a lot of problems and holds me back from achieving what I really want. I am a person who cannot live without having some personal time to do what I love to or relax myself. In fact, I think many people is like me. This is why many people feel hard to achieve their goals. Since it is so hard to take action, no body will do it except they know the comfortable way to do so.

It can be Easy to Achieve Our Goals too

I like to enjoy my life by having a relax and grateful day. So I can’t work well if I have stress. I will give up if I know I have to spend all my time to do something for my goals without having my own personal time. Maybe I’m not motivated enough but don’t you think it will be nice to have a theory that can let us achieve our goal without sacrifice all of personal time?

This is why I really excited the time I found Richard Koch’s 80/20 rules and the book 4 hours work week. Actually both of them are teaching the theory to apply 80/20 rules in our time management so that we can achieve our goal and at the same time enjoy our life. With this theory, I can enjoy my day and also approaching my goal to achieve what I want. It really easy for me to follow this theory too!

The Theory of 80/20 Time Management Skills

The main theory in 80/20 rule in time management is spending 20% of your time to gain 80% of the results. All we have to do is spending 20% of our time to do whatever it takes to approach our goals and still be able to enjoy ourselves for rest of the time. We just need to spend 20% of our time for our goals and still have 80% of time to do whatever we want to!

There are a few rules and tips you must follow in order to have tremendous results from this theory. Well you are spending less time to do your works, so you must do the right things each time in your working hours so that you have the maximum results. Here are the tips:

1. Do Less But Gain More. You must be clear with your goal and understand that what kind of works can let you success. You must learn how to different what kind of works can let you approach your goal the most and concentrate on it. For example, if you want to make more money from your business. Then you have to know what kind of activities are profitable and concentrate on it. Maybe you can call your customers or send an offer emails to them. Just allocate 20% of your time mainly focus on these kind of activities and you can really make your money in the most relax way.
2. Every Little Counts. This is a work out theory for lazy man like me. It means that every day you just do a minor progress and you will have great results after doing it for quite some time. For example you want to write a book, so every day you can just write 1 page and contribute to the project. After 1 year of time, you will have 300 over pages on your hand and your book is ready.
3. Just do it. Usually we are worry too much before we take any actions. Our mind usually keep thinking whether what we are doing is working and worry what you will do is useless. Instead of wasting time to think about it why don’t you just do it. We only have 20% of time to do whatever we can for our projects. If you just use this limited time for thinking and worrying, then you will not going anywhere for years and just wasting your life. Just do it and be ready to change and modify your plan if you encounter any problems. At least you are taking action towards your goal and not wasting time in thinking. Thinking won’t help you to achieve anything from your life.

We must Work Consistently and Not Hard

As I said in my post , we must build the motivation so that we can take action consistently. Therefore we must think a way to let ourselves take action easily. When you can take action easily and accomplish your tasks, you will be motivated to take even more actions and increase the speed to succeed.  80/20 rules can help us and it can let us work in the way that is relax and happy. I would recommend this theory to anyone who wants to fight for your their dreams.

If you open up Google and search for the keyword - ways to get out of debt, you can find a lot of information teaching you how to do so. If you visit Amazon.com or any other book stores, you could find that there are actually many books about how to get out of debt. However, many people are still greatly in debt while there are so much of resources to help them. Something must be wrong here.

Personally, I went through some of sites and books. What I found is there are many great ways ready to help people to get out of debts. Many ways are working! However, it seems like not everyone can really benefit from them.

Getting out of Debt = Losing Weight

Today, I continue my daily evening jogging exercise routine in a local park. I saw a man was sitting on a chair under a tree. He is a big guy and can be considered obesity.

All of sudden, there was a thought came through my mind - I’m obesity and I can tell you that I’m quite fat. Before this I also like this man and spend my whole day siting in front of the computer without any exercising. But today, I’m different because I’m spending my time to exercise and I’m on my ways to lose weight. I can feel that I have been changing my lifestyle and habits so much for the past few months. I kept thinking and finally I found the key that make me changing and improving - motivation.

People actually know a lot of ways to get out debt, just like losing weight. But they fail to do it because they don’t take the necessary actions. Lack of motivation is the main reason why people never take action that they must to. Based on my experience, if they have the enough motivation, they will take action constantly and approach their goals. At that time, nothing will block them and they are definitely on the right track to success.

First, Build Up Your Motivation to Get out Of Debt

Getting out of debt is really like losing weight. There are many ways we can do it but only low percentage of people can make it and stick to it. Only those who have the motivation and take action has the chance to succeed.

For example, in order to get out of debt, first you must keep a journal on how you spend your money. This is a good way which can let you understand your spending habits and things that are taking your money away without your attention. You must keep this journal at least for 3 months to have a clear picture on your current financial status. So what you have to do is keep a small notepad with you. Every time you spend money, you must write down and keep a record.

Above is an example that I usually give to my friends who asked my financial advice. However most of them told me how troublesome it is to keep a journal or they are really lazy to do that. Guess what, they never improve their personal finance and until today they still have the same financial problems.

One of my favorite quote is “What We have today is the results from our past”. What you want in future, you must work hard and take action today. Taking action is the only way to change the future. You must do something to reduce your debt if not it will follow your forever.

But not everyone can take action constantly. Without enough motivation, we cannot take action or even feel lazy to do so. At that time, you will suffer and don’t want to take action anymore because you know it is a pain for you. Then you will give a lot of reasons why you can’t and how useless it is to do take the actions.

I know this because I been through all the process before. Therefore, I always try my best to search and build up my motivation before I take any action. Because I know by only have the enough motivation, we can take action without any blocking and this is the key to succeed.

How to have the motivation?

The key to achieve what you want is motivation and we must focus on this to prepare ourselves. Except we have enough motivation, if not it is useless for us to read 1000 ways of getting out of debt.

I lost total of 30 pounds in the last 3 months and I only can do this after I have enough motivation to keep diet and exercising. So today let me share with you some of the tips that I discovered from my success in weight losing which can be used to achieve any goal. Today, I’m still using it to keep myself motivated:

1. Getting started with small goal. Usually before we get started in anything, we are advised to set a goal. After setting the goal, then we must take actions and approach our goals constantly. But people usually make a mistake here - focusing on a goal that is too big for them pto get started.

For example, Mr. A has $30K total of debts and he wishes to pay them off within 1 year of time. In the first month, Mr. A manages to pay $1000 for his debts but at the same time he is worried too.

He wants to pay off his $30K in 1 year of time so average he has to pay $2500 every month. But in the first month he only pay $1000 which is lower than his goal. So guess what, his confidence level drops! If he doesn’t do anything after this, his will lose his motivation and give up.

From the example above, Mr. A makes the mistake of focusing his mind to pay $2500 in every month. This is the first time he try to pay down his debts and don’t you agree that high possibility that he might not be able to pay $2500 in first month? It is too risky for Mr. A to focus on a goal that is so high because if he just fail the first time, he might lose all his motivation and confidence.

Therefore, I usually set a big goal but split it into multiple small goal. I even make a tiny and simple goal in my first month of weight losing - just jog 300m per day. It is that simple and I can finish it everyday. Along the way, I gain my motivation and confidence. Then only I raise my goal. The theory is same in getting out of debt. Mr. A can get started by focusing to save more money to pay off his debt. Maybe $10 per day. This goal is much more easier than keep focusing to pay off $2500 in first month. Start small, accomplish it and gain confidence is the key here.

We are human and we like to feel the sense of success, happiness, fulfillment and any other positive emotions. We don’t like to feel hard and uncertainty. Therefore we will give up if we can’t feel the sense of success while keep telling our mind how hard it is to take action. So we must learn how to make ourselves feel good right after taking every action. The most effective way is accomplish those tiny goals.

I used to be fat and heavy since I was a child. I know obesity is not good for my body and life. But I still keep eating and never do my exercise. Yeah, maybe there are times for me to take action but I stop everytime I encounter the first obstacle in the process. But this time I’m different. I managed to lose 30 pounds for the past 2 months by exercising and diet control. I never took any pills or weight loss courses. I just do more exercise and control the food that I eat.

This is not easy for me especially in the starting stage. But today I feel that it is easy. Therefore I learn my lesson that we must gain enough motivation then only we have the momentum to move on and carry out our plan to achieve something.

Getting out of debt is same. If we have the motivation, it is easy and achievable for us to get out of it. In fact, we can easily go deeper and deeper if our motivation is low due to the lack of self-control.

You cannot go deeper in debt anymore. Quickly motivate yourself and stand up to fight it. What you do today is for the future. Good Luck.

PS: This Post was featured in Carnival Of Personal Finance #200

We are currently having the greatest recession time in our history. There are so much of things we must do right now to reduce the damaging effect on our wealth and future. But there are things we must do too to prepare for the next recession.

Prevention is better than cure and this theory is really good. You and I already knew how it feels in recession period and what are the side effects that can damage our dreams, retirement plans etc. So we must do something to prepare for the next recession so that we won’t have such a tough time again.

Recession will happen again

History tells us that recession can happen again and again. In fact, it is part of the economy cycle that we can not avoid. We cannot do anything but have to prepare ourselves and our assets for the next recession. At least we must prepare our business, retirement funds, personal finance, income and any other financial products for this great event in future.

What is Important In Recession?

Before we take any actions, first we must know our target and goal. These are the things that are very important for everyone of us to survive in recession period:

• Cash. Cash is king in recession. Nowadays most of us are living in credit. We buy things through credit cards, get loans for college, house, cars etc. However, this is very dangerous if we don’t know how to manage our credit properly. Credit is useless in recession. In fact, less and less businesses are willing to give credit out during recession. Therefore a new phenomena will appear where cash becomes king again. This is why I will strongly suggest you to always prepare some cash for emergency period like recession.

• Income sources. In my previous post , I mentioned that there are nothing really secure forever, even our jobs. This is what I learn from this recession. Great layoff happens in recession and most of the businesses are slowing down. Our income might loss in this period. This is a big problem because our life are on risk if we lose the income. This is also why there are so many people having emotion problems during this recession period. Therefore we must know and figure out a way to protect our income source or  have multiple income source that can support our life even in the hardest time in our life.

• Basic Assets protection. Besides cash, there are something that we need to survive. For example, our houses. We must prepare ourselves to keep our houses and pass through the recession period. As you can see, great foreclosure happens in this recession and this has told us that something is not right. Maybe most people tends to buy a house that they cannot afford due to high commitment or maybe they are not preparing any emergency fund to pay the installment just in case they lost they income sources in recession. So we must learn the lesson and only buy the assets that we can afford. Besides that we allocate some extra cash ready to support our valuable assets during recession.

Now we know what is important and we must focus on those 3 things above. In fact, our preparations are most likely focusing on them.

How to Prepare for the Next Recession?

There are 5 steps you take and repeat again and again to prepare for the next recession:

1. Setup your saving and emergency funds. As I said, cash is king. So we must prepare some cash as the foundation for our personal finance. First you must know how much you really need to survive. You can know this by carrying out a budget for at least 3 months. Then you will know how much you really need to survive. My suggestion will be save up 6-24 months of emergency funds is the best foundation for financial security purpose. This is because it really takes time for our economy to come out from recession. The more you have in emergency fund, the more financial security you can have.
2. Live below your means and Only Buy Things that You can Afford. One of the common mindset that I found among the people around me is that they tends to spend every penny that they have on hands. People like to do their calculation using 100% of their income. They never leave a room and space for their finance. This is why they have financial problems. In order to have a good financial future, we must learn how to live below our means and ONLY buy things that we can afford using the less credit! Along the way, the more money you can make, the more income your have, you can raise your standard and also the quality of your life. But before you build up the financial security, you are not encouraged to raise your standard of life. Yes I know it is not nice to stay below your means but this is the sacrifice you have to make for a good future. You suffer now but in future you are can enjoy your life for a long time.
3. Reduce Your Debts Burden. Debts are burdens, risks and bombs for our life. It only safe as long as you have money to pay it. But what happen if you lose your income during recession? This will be a big problem for your life. Therefore, you are advised to reduce your debt burdens so that your life is not risky. Anyway, if you can buy according to your ability and using the less credit, then you are quite safe and stable in your finance.
4. Build multiple income sources. Don’t put all your eggs into 1 basket. This is the advice that we usually hear when comes to investment. But this theory also can be applied in our income. This is because nothing is really secure during recession especially our job security. We must learn and work hard to build multiple income sources. First, this can let us generate more money at the faster speed so that we can build a stronger financial foundation. Second, we can have multiple income during recession and have more security for our income. Some of the incomes that I recommend you should learn and build besides your job are business income, passive income, residual income and investment income.
5. Increase your financial literacy. Recession is a good time to gain more wealth and make more money. However, this only can happen if you know how to manage your money and leverage the power of your money. This is all about increasing your financial literacy. From today, you can spend a little bit of time, maybe 20minutes per day to read something about finance. It can be a book, a magazine or study the news. This is the most direct and easy way to increase your financial literacy.

Reminder for You

There are many ways to prepare your finance for the next recession. However, it will be useless if you don’t take action and follow the plan. What I usually worry is people will go back to their old spending habit when the economy is alive again. If you don’t learn the lesson and take the action, you will suffer again in the next recession. So we must always remind ourselves and get ready for the future! Remember, the foundation of personal finance is very important as it can greatly affect our life and future.

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