10. You are not interested in money

You think that when you make enough money at work all your money related problems will take care of themselves

Actually the opposite is true – over 90% of people winning a multi million dollar lottery end up with less money just after 5 years of winning.

Getting rich takes effort and planning. If you are not interested in money then chances are that money is not interested in you.

9. You are afraid to lose your money

You are so afraid to lose your money that you keep it in an ordinary bank account with a terribly small interest rate. You are afraid to invest your money because you think that the risk of losing everything is too great.

By keeping your money on a savings account, it generates less interest than the inflation. This means that by keeping your money in a safe place you are actually losing it to inflation.

8. You invest in what you don’t know

After reading a story about a new high tech invention you decide to invest all your money into this startup company. If it’s high tech and complicated it must be a great invention, right?

Wrong!

Investing your money in what you don’t understand is the fastest way to losing everything. Something that looks like a good idea doesn’t have to be one. Stick to what you know and you will be able to keep yourself from the dumb ideas and go along with the great ones.

7. You hope that other people will take care of your money

You give professional money managers free will to take care of your money as they wish. Everyone wants to have more money so they will just end up making a lot of “necessary transactions” – of course you are the one paying the transaction fees.

Take care of your own money – always have the last say in what to invest and what to buy.

6. You want too much too fast

You want to get a lot of money fast and with little or no effort. This makes you go along with tens of get rich quick schemes that always end up losing money.  Your decisions are affected by the need to get a lot of money fast, which makes you take unnecessary and stupid risks.

You need to remember that there is no such thing as easy money.

5. You don’t have an emergency fund

You spend everything you make and don’t keep an emergency fund for unexpected things. If you are not covered by insurance an accident can set you back tens of thousands of dollars.

Without an emergency fund you would need to borrow to come up with the money. This also means that you will have to pay interest – not having an emergency fund can end up loosing you a lot of money.

4. Your goals suck

You don’t have any goals and even if you have one – its awful.

Just about every 10-year-old wants to be rich and famous but only a few will actually get there.
You need a goal that says what you want to achieve, how you are going to achieve it and by what time will it be achieved.

After coming up with a goal you will also need to make a plan on how to achieve it. You must be able to measure your progress at any point to get feedback on how you are doing.

3. You have bad habits

You smoke, drink and watch TV all day long. You spend money on the things that will never bring you anything back. In the long run you need to spend even more money on health in order to get back to your best drinking shape!

A bad and devastating habit can also be negative thinking. Research has shown that people who are more willing to keep their mind open and positive to new ideas are wealthier than pessimists.

2. You are impatient

You want to have everything now and are not willing to wait in order to buy it later. The concept of saving money for something you want to buy is not known to you – instead you use one of your many credit cards.

You probably haven’t heard that using a credit card makes other people rich (owners of credit companies) and keeps you poor.

1. You buy everything your neighbors and friends have

Trying to impress your neighbors and friends by buying all the stuff they have plus everything they would like to have? Don’t do it – spending money on things that you really have no need for is the number 1 reason why people have less money than they want to. Having a lot of things and having a lot of money are 2 things that contradict each other – you need to give money away in order to get stuff.

True wealth and money comes to those who are willing to wait – the 1000 dollars you choose not to spend on a new plasma TV with a giant screen can turn into 100 000 dollars in 20 years. Think of how much TV-s this money would get you then (as opposed to how much you would get when selling your TV after 20 years).

Here is a short video about the things that make us successful in life. The presenter Richard St. John made observations based on over 500 interviews with successful people.

8 things that make us successful

1. Passion

Do it for love not for the money. The money will always follow when you truly enjoy what you are doing.

2. Work

It’s all hard work. Nothing comes easily. But remember to have fun.

3. Good

Put yourself into something and get damn good at it.

Practice makes perfect.

4. Focus

Success is all about focusing yourself on one thing

5. Push

Push yourself. Physically, mentally. You have to push, push, push. When you are done pushing – push some more!

6. Serve

Serve others something of value – that’s how people really get rich.

7. Ideas

Have ideas and make them come true.

Listen, Observe, Be Curious, Ask Questions, Solve Problems, Make Connections – Ideas will follow.

8. Persist

Persistence is the number one reason that successful people are successful.

Here’s the video

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This is an overview page to a series of insights about money and how to get rich, that I have posted on FinancialJesus.com

It is important to know these rules for everyone interested in getting rich. The list is in reverse order – that way when I add a new insight it will appear on the top. Expect this list to grow over 100+ posts.

6. Understand your beliefs about money

Challenge yourself and the way you think and get rid of the money beliefs that are holding you back on achieving what you are truly capable of.

5. Most people are too lazy to be rich

Everyone can become rich but most people are too lazy. Becoming rich requires hard work and discipline. You might win the lottery but you should always work as if becoming rich is up to you. Statistically speaking – getting hit by lightning is more likely than winning the lottery

4. Share your goals

Sharing your goals with people you trust can be one of the most powerful ways to ensure that you get what you are out to achieve. Depending on your personality it can be a good idea to share your goals with positive or negative people.

3. Set goals

Setting and working relentlessly to achieve your goals is what separates the people who will become rich from the people who will stay poor. This post has some great tips on how to achieve what you want. For example people who write down their goals are in general 10 times wealthier than the people who don’t write down their goals.

2. What does being rich mean for you?

Being rich means different things for different people. Some people consider them rich when they can take care of themselves and their families. Some, when they have 1 million dollars. Defining the meaning of “I am rich” should be one of the first things everybody interested in becoming wealthy should do. After all, how will you know you have reached the destination when you don’t know what the destination is.

My personal definition of being rich is

“I am rich when I can do whatever I want to do whenever I want it!”

1. Anyone can make money

It is possible for everyone to make money. Money doesn’t care about the color of your skin or whether you are smart or stupid. Money has no feelings.

“If you think you can make money – you can. If you think you can’t – you can’t”

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While being a door-to-door salesman I learned what could perhaps be the most valuable lesson in my entire life:

Control the controllables

Focus on what you can control

Only focus on the things you can directly influence. For us, selling books, it meant 3 things – hours, demos, attitude.

I could control how many hours of work I did. The more hours I worked the more people I could show my books to. The more people I showed them to, the more people bought them. Simple!

I could control the number of sales presentations I made every day. I knew that the amount of money I made was directly influenced by the number of sale presentations I made. In order to make more money I had to show my stuff do more people. To do that I could work longer hours or do shorter presentations. Shortening my presentation time just 1 minute meant that I could do 2 more demonstrations each day. Now keep in mind that I worked for 72 days – that means 144 more sales presentations and 15 to 20 more customers during a summer. That’s a difference of a few thousand dollars. So next time you waste a minute think about that!

The last thing I could directly control was my attitude. I could not control if people who opened the door would swear at me, call the cops on me, or try to shoot me (yes, it happens) – the only thing I could do, was to control the way I reacted to whatever happened to me. When someone gives you the F word and slams the door on you for the first time in your life, it’s easy to stay positive. When it happens 30 times in a row, its a a lot more difficult. When you knock on the door you can never know what happens next – maybe someone just lost their job or a loved one and because of that pours his entire frustration on you. You can’t control that. The only thing you can control is how you react to it when that actually happens. You can let it get your mood down or you can decide to be happy – whatever it takes. It’s difficult at first but soon enough you start to take things impersonally. „This guy wasn’t screaming at me – he was probably screaming because he had a lousy day at work”.
So, in selling you can really only control 3 things – the hours you work, the sales presentations you make and the attitude you have. You can’t control whether someone buys your product – you can only influence it with your demonstration. When you do a superb presentation there is a bigger chance that the prospect will buy, but there is always a chance that he doesn’t need what you are selling.

Same principles work in all fields of life

When Michael Johnson ran the 200 meter world record – 19.32 seconds – he could not control whether he would win the race or not. The only thing he could do was to run as fast as he could and hope that he is faster than his competitors.

When Barack Obama runs for president, he can not control whether or not people vote for him. He can only control the way he gives speeches, talks to people and appears to the public. By doing these things superbly he influences people to vote for him, but he never directly controls them. He can only control himself.

Why FinancialJesus.com will be successful

When I started this blog 10 days ago I thought about the same thing I just wrote about – the things that make ordinary people failures and successes – the things that we control. I would really want this blog to succeed, have a lot of readers and eventually become my main source of income, but these are not the things I can directly control – I can only influence them through my actions.

Instead, I came up with a promise I can directly control – I will write 3 posts every workday until September 1st 2008. This is something I can truly control and it is my belief that having a lot of content is the best thing I could do for this blog in the long run!

What to remember

Whatever you do, control the controllables and you will be successful. There is no point to complain about the things you can’t change. Instead – change the things you can!

PS! Thanks to Adam Primero for a great idea to give yourself promises instead of setting goals. It feels a lot more powerful!

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This is INSIGHT 4 from a set of rules about how to get rich

Don’t brag about what you haven’t done yet

After you have defined what does being rich mean and how rich you want to be I bet you feel like bragging – “I will have 2 million dollars by 2013″.

Sure it feels good to say something like this but for other people it sounds the same as saying “One day I’ll be rich and famous”.

I have a few friends who like to talk a lot about the things they will start doing. It’s nice to know what your friends are doing but when the same person comes out with a way to get rich for the 10th time in a month I can’t help but say to myself “Yeah, sure you’ll do it”. Don’t be the “Yeah, sure” guy.

Share your goals (but not too much)

Sharing your goals with friends is a good thing as long as you don’t take it over the limit. It’s easy to “deny” the promises that you have made to yourself but sharing goals with friends help to keep you accountable. If you know that you are going to meet the friend to whom you talked about opening your own business you can be sure that he will ask you how it’s going with that. Doesn’t it feel bad to tell him that you haven’t done anything to get started? I know it does!

Choose who you share your goals with

Share your goals with positive people. If you see others approving your idea it will give you extra strength to make it come true. Negative people on the other hand – they’re a bunch of whiners

Letting a negative friend in your goals can be a bad thing. Negative people have a tendency to find reasons why you can’t do something instead of finding reasons why you should do it. Depending on the negative person and yourself – it can have a bad effect on achieving your goals

Find a skeptic

I know what I just said about negative people, but I want you to forget about it for a minute

The following paragraph is only true for a special kind of people and you have to read it to find out if you’re one of them.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Find a negative person
2. Tell him what you are going to do
3. He will say you can’t do it
4. Do it anyway – prove him wrong!

I have been a door-to-door salesman(selling educational books) in the US for two summers and have talked to more than 5000 thousand families about education. Working 6 days a week and 13.5 hours a day is the most difficult thing I have ever done.

One thing I found out is that when the going gets tough the things you thought that will motivate you rarely do. That is why the Southwestern Company I worked for suggested us to find a skeptic – someone who will not believe in you. Thinking about the fact that when you don’t achieve your goals your skeptic can say “I told you so” can be a gift from heaven that keeps you going. Bare in mind that this might or might not work – everyone is different.

For more advice on achieving your wildest dreams come back tomorrow! You can sign up to my full feed RSS or subscribe via email.

What’s your goal? Share it in the comments!

This is RULE 3 from a set of rules about how to get rich.

After defining the meaning of being rich, it is important to set some goals. How is it that you are to become rich? When will you be rich? These are some of the questions that having goals will answer.

Setting Goals

Setting goals is not as difficult as it can sound. After all, we do it all the time without even realizing.
Driving to work in the morning is a good example of setting and achieving goals.

In this case the goal can be “Being at work at 8 o’clock“. In order to achieve that goal you have to have an estimate on what time should you start going and what road you are going to take. This goal also hints about what you are going to do after its achieved – work!

It’s exactly the same with getting rich. You need to know when you are there – the definition of being rich and the date you are going to achieve it. An action plan similar to the road to work, on how you are going to make it, and what will you do when you get there!

A goal should be simple

A goal should not be something that’s difficult to understand. A simple goal could be “I will have 5 million dollars on my 41st birthday”.

Setting goals for friends, family and strangers is easy but unfortunately for a goal to work it has to be set by yourself. It can take days to come up with a goal like the one above.

Things to remember

A goal should have a date associated to it. Anyone can say that they will be rich and famous one day but that’s just a dream. The difference between dreams and goals is that goals have dates associated with them.

A good goal is measurable. That way you will know how much separates you from achieving it.

Write your goal down. That way can’t back off. In 1953, researchers made a survey on Yale’s graduating seniors about writing their goals down. Only 3% had written down their goals, 14% of graduates had goals but they had not written them down and 83% had no specific personal or business goals.

10 years later they made a second study among the same people. Here’s what came out:

• The 14% who had goals but didn’t write them down were earning on average twice as much as the 83% who had no goals at all.
• The 3% percent who had written down their goals were making 10 times more than the other 97% put together.

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