For most of us, caring for our finances is not an easy task! Easy availability of credit, high interest rates and a lack of understanding basic financial principals causing us to fall into bad money habits, which end up leaving the majority of us living deep in debt and way beyond our means. To better understand our money habits, we have to look past our personal biases about money. To some, the pursuit of money is regarded as a drawback…that it’s wrong or bad, or at best it’s a necessary evil! It’s not until we change how we view money that we can change our money habits. In all truth, money is neither good nor bad. Money is a tool and like any other tool, if we don’t use a tool the right way, it can make the job harder. But, if we do use the tool in the right way, it will make the job much easier. So, just like handling a tool the right way to get the best results, handling our money the right way will also give us the best results when it comes to our financial health.
The level of debt that nearly most of us have is in direct proportion to our earnings and this is precisely where our comfort levels lie – not so much debt to keep us awake every night, but enough to appreciate life and our hobbies to our maximum level of income. That’s where the majority of us are walking on a tightrope – and if we don’t change our path, we’re going to wind up coming up short in our financial goals. This is when we need to make sure that we have more money coming in than is going out. Our earnings MUST be greater than all of our expenses. Once we find ourselves at the point of realizing that we’re living above our means, we have two strategies to work with that can get us back on track. One strategy is to reduce our expenses as much as we possibly can and the other is to increase our income.
Increasing our income doesn’t have to be a significant increase. We don’t need to get too caught up in how much we’re able to increase our income at this point, but more about using that extra income toward paying off debt or putting it toward savings or investing goals. There are so many different ways to increase your income from picking up part time work to selling products or services online. Get resourceful…..get creative, the main thing is to find the niche that works for you and with your lifestyle. An extra $20, $30 or $50 per month may not seem like much, but when we take that little bit extra and consistently put it toward paying off that credit card balance or into that savings account, we’ll start to see how that small amount will make a big impact over time. Of course, the more we’re able to increase our income the quicker we reach our goals. But, regardless of how much or how little we’re able to increase our income, the greatest impact will come from instilling the good money habits we acquire from implementing the strategy of increasing our income, which will serve us well throughout our journey to financial freedom!
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