‘Tis the Season to Be Aware!

As the holidays quickly approach, I want to caution you to be extra aware as to how your spending often reflects and impacts your inner mood and perception of yourself. In several of my recent blogs, I have shared my thoughts regarding America’s obsession with financial obesity, one’s obsessive and self-sabotaging need to constantly overspend and remain financially unhealthy.

The holidays often affect one’s mood positively or negatively. It’s time to reflect upon all the great things that have been attracted into your life, as opposed to getting all caught up in the self-defeating negativity, that often results from dragging yourself down with the potentially false idea that there have been no significant changes this year.

The retailers and advertisers strategically time their can’t-resist offers, discounts and other attention-getting techniques during the holidays to exploit a person’s emotional outcomes. As a result, we often tend to become blinded by the supposed emotional gratification that comes with spending. Yet we also tend to neglect our focus on the needed fiscal responsibilities that, if not kept in check, could seriously derail one’s future success.

bookIn my book, Demystifying Success: Success Tools and Secrets they Don’t Teach You in High School, I dedicate a chapter of my book to explaining good savings habits, an important concept you need to start adopting from an early age. This skill helps you to become a better money manager, which will help you to constantly generate income and ultimately create new wealth opportunities for success.

Here’s an important concept to raise your awareness of, especially as you begin to plan your holiday shopping list: a good understanding between ‘good debt’ versus ‘bad debt’. Bad debt includes any form of debt that requires you to pay interest on any monies that you borrow from a lender in order to either purchase or acquire something that will never generate any possible revenue (profits) for you in the future. Good debt is when there are some times when it is okay to borrow money from a bank, investor or credit card company, but ONLY if you use this borrowed money to purchase things that will ultimately help you to generate more revenue (profits) in the future and restore the original amount borrowed plus any interest required to the lender. Most importantly, you need to learn from an early age that successful wealth creators acquire excellent money management skills in order to balance both types of debt and understand this distinction.

Within my chapter on Personal Finance, I also carefully explain the concept of FICO scores and how they may positively or negatively impact your future decisions and success. FICO stands for the Fair Isaac Company, named after the company that first created and computed this popular credit score. Banks and lending institutions rely on your FICO score as a way of determining how trustworthy you are in terms of managing your money and repaying your debts.

To end on a festive note this year, I highly suggest that you sit down and draft out a realistic budget for yourself before you begin indulging in your creative or last minute impulsive holiday shopping. Don’t get me wrong, being creative with your gift ideas can be both fun and inspiring, but you also need to keep your expectations and spending in check.  Too often, we carelessly choose gifts that we think others will want based upon unrealistic expectations or desired outcomes and we may go overboard. By taking the time to really sit down and carefully draft a manageable budget, you can still be creative. Simply choose something that you know the recipient would truly appreciate and enjoy (e.g. buying something fun that they would never think to buy for themselves or something that will be a nice reminder of you) that does not have to result in you spending a lot of money.

To help you get started, here are five questions to ask yourself before you decide to start spending your hard-earned cash or, even worse, incur any future unnecessary credit card debt and interest:

1. Why am I really buying this product or service?

2. How will I or the recipient use this product or service in the future?

3. How long do I plan to use this product or service before it becomes useless?

4. Does this purchase provide me with any immediate revenue-generating opportunities? And the hardest question of them all:

5. What would happen if I chose to wait another two to six months until I could truly afford to buy this purchase without using borrowed money (credit or loan)? If not, consider waiting, or to use an old cliché, “Sleep on it”.

Please remember, the financially obese are not broke; they are broken! Do not let fear or unfounded expectations prevent you from achieving the personal and financial success you desire.

I want to wish you a happy, healthy and successful holiday season.

Are You Broke Or Broken? Obstacles For Success

I often ask myself: for a country that prides itself on its technological and educational advancements, why are so many people in such personal and financial turmoil?

I have to imagine that if you are a young adult between the ages of 16 and 25, life must seem a little uncertain and scary to you right now. Just think, you are the first generation to grow up in the 21st century – the advent of a new technological era that actually allows you to carry out the majority of your consumer-related transactions from your SmartPhone, computer or tablet device from virtually anywhere in the world.

Yet, despite all of the major advancements and perceived conveniences created by these new technologies, many of your generation have either personally experienced or know someone close to you whose parents have either lost their jobs (due to downsizing or outsourcing), could not afford to send you or your friends to college due to unforeseen financial hardship, or, even worse, had to lose their homes or apartments due to unprecedented bank foreclosures.

I believe the underlying reason why so many adults between the ages of 40 and 60 are in such economic chaos is because they suffer from what I call financial obesity: one’s obsessive and self-sabotaging need to constantly overspend and remain financially unhealthy. Like over-eaters, the financially obese allow fear to prevent them from achieving their personal and financial success they desire. They simply cannot get out of their own way. They are not broke; they are broken!

One of my favorite quotes is by motivational speaker, Les Brown, who says, “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”

If you are someone who feels broken, you are not alone. Most well-established men and women by their own desire and determination have managed to overcome their own prior childhood struggles and self-defeating fears because they chose to shift their unhealthy attitudes and learned perspectives as they manifested their desired outcomes.

As I discuss in my new book, Demystifying Success: Success Tools and Secrets They Don’t Teach You in High School, the first thing I would suggest is that you honestly acknowledge the poor or unfounded information that you received from your parents, teachers, friends, and others in your past. They probably meant well, but they were most likely either projecting or inadvertently passing forward generational misinformation that they received at an early age as well.

Secondly, you need to self-reflect and assess how your parents, teachers, friends and most importantly, your own early life experiences have impacted your own “learned” negative fears and emotions. Unless you learn to how manage these challenges early on, they will become even more habit-forming as you get older.

The good news is the effects of your early programming are reversible if you choose to remove those negative obstacles by managing your fears and taking the necessary action steps to accomplish your goals and fix your long-term outlook for success.

Motivational speaker and salesman Zig Ziglar was absolutely correct when he said, “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”

 

 

 

Sliding Doors for Success

Did you ever have that feeling of disappointment when you really set your mind to doing or achieving something and it did not turn out quite the way you planned? You sat down and drew out all the action steps necessary to achieve your desired goals; you studied or learned a new skill; you spoke to others you believed were the right people that could help you get what you had been looking forward to for months and then wham; nothing.

My Dad used to refer to this unfortunate universal outcome as Man Plans; God Laughs.  Despite all your well-intentioned efforts, things don’t always turn out as you planned, but was that really by accident?

There was a 1998 movie called Sliding Doors with actress Gwyneth Paltrow that looked at one day in time and examined several possible outcomes based upon a series of different events. If this had not happened at that exact moment, then this would not have occurred, and on and on.  We all have experienced those moments at some time in our lives and it’s enough to make you crazy. But there may be some truth to all of this.

Disappointment, or more importantly negative emotions, that results from unpopular outcomes may simply be nothing more than a sliding door moment in your life ahead of something better in the near future. Although our immediate instinct is to get angry or upset at ourselves or others, maybe we just need to take that same moment to ask ourselves if that outcome was really something that we truly needed or wanted.

Rather than shutting ourselves off from other possible opportunities that may lie in our path, we could take this opportunity to pat ourselves on the back for attempting something that we thought we wanted. All the time and effort that we put in to learning something new or networking was not wasted because even though we did not accomplish our immediate goal, we did put other things into motion whether we realized it or not…and who knows what new opportunities will lie ahead as a result of those efforts?

As my friend Andrea Squibb recently reminded me when I got frustrated because things did not work out exactly as I planned, although it was nerve wracking for me, I still have my plan and I did take the necessary time to think things through. Although I did not get the immediate response that I wanted, I should still give things time to play out before I give in to my disappointment.

She also reminded me that some unexpected positive things have also recently happened to me, thanks to my good friend Jennifer Wilkov, and that I was on the right path. This was a great lesson for me to keep my eye on the positives and let the other stuff go.

I will plan to continue my efforts toward accomplishing those intended goals, but I will also remember to take the time to appreciate and accept things that may also come my way simply by keeping my eyes and ears open for unexpected detours.

Some great takeaways:

  • Don’t stay too focused on a desired outcome if it prevents you from experiencing or seeing other opportunities that lie right in front of you.
  • Keep things in perspective; “Rome wasn’t built in a day” as they say. Temper your expectations accordingly.
  • Most importantly, success is awarded to those that always follow their hearts and continue to practice patience and persistence.