Let me tell you a story, once upon a time there was a hot shot who thought that he would have it all, if he worked harder, invested his money, he would have the money and lifestyle that he had dreamed of. Unfortunately in this case the more he earned the more he spent. The end of this sad little tale was he was flat broke. Yep earn more spend more, sadly that’s what lots of us do.
Earn More Spend More – A tale that matters
In that story the hot shot was me, (and yes I am being generous calling myself a hot shot), But the truth of that matter is, I worked my freaking arse off, all sorts of hours, I earned really good money, and I spent it as quick.
I would work 90 hours a week, for 3 months, then decided I deserved a break, would take a long weekend and spend up big, I would stay in 5 star hotels, eat the best food, drink the best whiskey, gamble. All the stuff that a 2 dollar millionaire would do. When my personal situation got bad, and I really needed to have some money behind me, it wasn’t there, I had spent it all.
Learn the lesson – Spend Less, Earn More
The moral to this story is no matter what you earn, it can be minimum wage, or a healthy six figure salary. LEARN TO SPEND LESS THEN WHAT YOU EARN. If you start this principle right now, and I mean right now, today this minute you will always be ok.
If you think about it, it’s why people go broke, businesses go broke, governments and countries go broke, we have GFC’s, recessions, depressions.
I could keep going on, but you get the message. Don’t worry it’s not all bad, earning money and managing it, is a skill. And it’s a skill that you can learn just like anything else.
Remember when you first learnt to ride a bike, I bet you fell off plenty of times, skinned your knees, maybe even cried a bit, and thought your will never learn how to ride your bike.
Well lots of people struggle the same way with increasing their income, or learning how to manage their income, plenty of people fail or fall over.
If that’s happened to you or is happening to you, don’t give up (crap advice I know). I have been there, I’ve made plenty and lost more, but I learned my lesson, improved on what I was doing and got on with it.
Get Back On The Bike
You can always earn more money, that’s pretty simple, get a new job which pays you more money, sell things on eBay, learn to blog, start a small business, earn money with a hobby, you get the idea.
Learning what to do with the money your earn is a lot harder, because that takes discipline. Discipline not to spend more then you earn, and that takes will power, which is where most people go wrong. It’s really about not spending that $5 to get that magazine, or that $20 on a bottle of wine with dinner.
What really matters – Earning more, Spending Less
When you get right down to it, there are some very basic fundamentals to increasing your income, and growing your wealth. They are really boring things, like budgeting, cash flow analysis, working hard, being a little creative. You know really boring crappy things, that people don’t like to think about or have to do.
I mean doing a weekly budget and sticking to it, is about the most boring thing I can think of doing. I would rather spend it as soon as I earn it and not give it a second thought. Which if you remember what I wrote about at the start of this, is what got me into trouble.
Take the first steps
Whatever way you want to go about it, you need to take small steps, and by that, I mean start small. If you are earning a good income, but find yourself broke. Then maybe you need to start with working out where you are spending your money.
If you already have a budget and know where every dollar goes, but are still on struggle street, then maybe you need to look at ways to increase your income, start a blog, trade currencies, sell things on eBay. All things I’ve tried.
The really good news is that if you are reading this, or finding other blogs like this, the you’ve already made the hardest decision, and that is to change. Changes you habits, change you knowledge, change your experiences, it’s the only way to do it.
