The constant struggle in life is to not only make enough to survive, but to continue to save and grow your wealth for the future. If you are looking for some safe, tried and true methods to build up your wealth read this!
Whole Hearted Way suggests…
I have been a big fan of these 7 steps to build wealth since I have been a Certified Financial Planner for over 26 years and have used them successfully with clients. You won’t find any get rich quick to make up your losses fast schemes here. You will find common sense, everyday action items that you can take to make a wealth building strategy for yourself and your family. Remember, it isn’t how much you earn but how much you keep. These steps will start with strong foundations which are steps 1 though step 3. Ignore these and you risk messing up the rest of your efforts. Like building a house, you need a strong financial foundation that will lay the groundwork for attracting and building wealth over a lifetime. Here are the 7 steps:
1. Get an estate plan. Okay you may be single with no family and you say you don’t need an estate plan. Not true. Make a holographic will and just give everything to your favorite charity. Do you have kids and an extended family? This is all the more reason to have a good estate plan. The basics would be a will, power of attorney for health care (or medical directive), and a power of attorney for financial care. Have a large estate? Then you can add things like a revocable living trust, charitable trusts, etc.
Don’t get an estate plan and then don’t be surprised when the ex-wife inherits everything because your spouse didn’t change the beneficiary designations or the will. I have seen it happen too many times.
2. Manage Your Cash Flow. I don’t care if it is just a checkbook. You need to know how much is coming in and how much is going out before you can save or even think about investing. Pretending you know or just ball parking numbers doesn’t work. You can add and subtract -so figure it out. Why? Because you can’t save, invest for your future, or try to reduce your taxes if you don’t know where your money is going. With all the great tools out there such as Mint, and Quicken, there is no excuse not to be tracking your cash flow.
3. Risk Management. This means that as you grow your net worth, you also manage the risks that can destroy it along the way. That means health, life, auto, home insurance and so on. Think you can’t afford it? Think again. What would happen if you got cancer and didn’t have health insurance? It wouldn’t be pretty when all that you have worked hard for is wiped out because you didn’t want to pay health insurance premiums.
Of course, we all can’t afford to insure against everything so you pick and choose your battles. This means managing your risks with a combination of self insuring (no insurance and high risk), or partial insuring (small amount of insurance and high deductible), or being fully insured (100% coverage by insurance). Pick a plan that is suited to you, what risk you are willing to take and what you can afford.
Now that you have the top 3 covered, it’s time for the fun stuff.
4. Financial Goals. That’s right you need a goal. Without one you are shooting in the dark and that is scary in these economic times. Remember that these goals are just a starting point. They aren’t set in stone. It could be to retire at 50 or to fund the kids’ college education or to make that trip around the world. Whatever it is, make sure it is SMART- specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Setting up goals like to quit work at 55 when you are 40 and only have $100,000 saved would not make the cut.
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