Fortune Watch

Does your spouse or partner complain that you’re spending too much money? When your credit card bill arrives, are you surprised to you find that you charged more during the month than you thought? Does your closet contain lots of shoes or clothes that you almost never wear? Do you own every gadget known to man (or woman)? Do you come home from the mall with items you had no intention of buying? Do you spend money on things that you didn’t realize you needed until you saw them on display in the store?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you probably suffer from impulse spending. When people are unable to save money for the things that are really important to them, like a house, a new car, a vacation, or retirement, impulse spending is often the culprit. If you don’t have specific financial goals, it’s more difficult to resist spending money on items that don’t really have any meaning to you.

Once you’re already saving regularly towards your most important financial goals, you may want to have a fund to use specifically for occasionally spending money on unplanned items. Then you can indulge in occasional impulse spending without jeopardizing your financial future.

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Imagine, you need details of your last few transactions, but are stuck in a traffic jam on way to the bank. How you wish you could get the details on your mobile phone!

Well, you really can ‘bank’ on your mobile phone today, provided you have opted for the service from your bank. Just SMS (short message service) your bank’s customer service number and get the details in a few seconds – that’s how simple it can get, if you have a mobile phone, a personal identification number and a phone banking number from your bank. It’s the same with paying utility bills, transferring money to someone, whether in your home country or abroad, and making a purchase at a retail store.

Most banks already allow customers to make basic transactions over the phone. Banking might be getting a little easier than that. One of the largest banks, recently announced plans for a mobile banking service. To use the service, mobile users download an application to their cell phones, just like you would for a game or song, and use their cell phones to check balances, transfer funds, pay bills, or even find an ATM.

Having the ability to bank using a cell phone is an innovative idea, but will it make it easier for consumers to pay their bills? Perhaps. If your credit card payment is due today, this mobile banking service might allow you to pay it the second you remember it, rather than risk a late payment due to forgetfulness.

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Gone are the days of mid 50’s and 60’s when a family could survive upon a single income. Today the inflation and economic factors are such that survival on two incomes has become hand to mouth. Going by this trend we can very well imagine what the future holds for us. Two incomes certainly will not be enough. It’s best to prepare for the worst and expect the best instead of vice versa. Its best then to have multiple incomes flows into your finances than to have an insecure future. The concept and importance of extra income becomes all the more apparent.

People who have been well-to-do have always known and taken care of this. If one income dries up, one can always fall back upon the other streams of income, and if all go well you can only get richer, no harm in that. Ordinary and average living people have always been in a dilemma regarding this. Loss of one income really affects them adversely and it would take years of hard work before any normalcy returns. Not to mention, the rippling effects of financial distress that could cause a lot of heartburn and unwanted emotional disturbances.

Having diverse sources of income or extra income gives you a backup to fall back upon. If one source vanishes, you should not feel the difference. One should have enough time to reorganize and regroup, that’s it, and you are back on the happiness highway, safe and sound. The importance of extra income and extra sources of incomes is not lost on anyone today, therefore the want and rush.

Extra Income can be of two kinds – Linear and Residual.

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If you are like most people, you do not feel that you “deserve money”. The simple fact is that most people are broke. Most people are broke because they do not feel that they deserve money.

To be financially successful you must: save prodigiously, invest wisely, and act like an entrepreneur. If you don’t believe you are capable of financial success, figure out why.

OK, maybe now you are thinking, “I deserve money…right?” Well, here is the thing, if you have the thought that “It takes money to make money”, or “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer”, or “Money is the root to all evil”, then you do not deserve money…well, maybe not yet, but there is hope for you.

There are two sides to every coin, people can look at money as good or bad and often at times people look at money as bad to justify why they do not have any. I dont know, maybe someone with money or someone that was thinking of making money was with someone that did not have any and did not have any plans to make any. What they thought about having lots of money and they gave off one of the lame excuses as suggested in the previous paragraph.

Why do you deserve money? The answer is simple…because you deserve money! Look, making money is simply the result of exchanging your efforts or ideas for money.

There are a many ways to make a million dollars and most of them are quite fun ways to make money and thats the key! If you are willing to learn how to have fun, make money and teach others to do the same, then it should end up being easy to make the money for you.

Start with this; how much money would you like to have, then ask yourself how much money do I currently deserve doing what I am doing now? If the answer is not 10-20 times more, then you are not doing the right thing to attain the amount that you would like to have. Time to change…

Change…is the word “change” scary to you? If it is, then you do not deserve money! Broke people are afraid of change. Change is natural and should be embraced by everyone. If we do not embrace change in our life then we are accepting where we are and probably will stay where we are. If you are happy with what you are making and like where you work, then go out and buy your boss a gift basket, sit down, be quiet and stop complaining about your finances.

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There are many blogs and websites about “Financial Freedom”. I’ve come to notice that each site author has a slightly different definition of what Financial Freedom really is. So, my goal here is to just lay out in plain sight what my own idea for Financial Freedom is, so I might have a better chance of getting there myself.

My idea of Financial Freedom is the ability to choose to do what you wish with your life, without the need to think about if there is enough money to do what you want. In order to break down what this really means, you’ve got to really understand what money itself is.

Money is basically what makes the world go round.

If you had enough income piling into your bank account to meet your basic necessities, such as food, a place to live and clothes, how would life be different?

Now, you may be saying “but I do have enough money to provide for the necessities.” And you may be correct. But, the real question I want to ask is, “How do you get that money?” Is the income you earn each month Linear (i.e., from working in a job or a self-employed business type setting), or is it non-linear, leveraged, and passive?

My friend Jonathan from SmartWealthyRich recently wrote a post Gotta Get Goals which I really liked.

My entire goal is to create a lifestyle that does not require my presence.

How beautiful an idea is that?

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A relationship is an important part in a person’s life, but it can be affected by many external factors. One of these hazardous factors is finance.

Many relationships find themselves at the mercy of life’s worst enemy, money. It is clear to see why personal finances can have the power to erode any relationship. When our finances become organized, we often become slaves of our own debt.

This causes an enormous amount of stress and sometimes depression. Finances can make a couple experience a sense of disconnection and anxiety, thereby replacing affection with constant screaming or yelling or just plain animosity towards each other.

Unorganized finances can also make people edgy, as they sit and plague the sub-conscious, making it hard to enjoy the pleasures of being together. The best thing a couple can do to improve the connection in their relationship is to tackle personal finances together. This means to help each other through the dark tunnel that debt or bankruptcy can create.

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Financial planning, something we all know we need to do, but always put off to the future. Financial planning is hard simply because it requires financial discipline, which is difficult to have in this consumer society. However, financial planning is very important because you want to retire one day, be financially stable in the event of an accident, or unexpected loss of a job. Regardless of when you begin, the basics remain the same.

Here are my top keys to getting ahead financially. Once you have made financial planning part of your routine, it won’t seem so difficult. But getting your financial planning started can be the most difficult thing. These tips will help motivate you to make financial planning one of your main goals.

No matter how much or how little you’re paid, you’ll never get ahead if you spend more than you earn. Often it’s easier to spend less than it is to earn more, and a little cost-cutting effort in a number of areas can result in big savings. One of the biggest factors fighting against financial planning is debt, especially credit card debt. If something starts off as a small debt it turns into a big one simply because you were not paying off the debt. Financial planning means you have a plan and paying off debt should be the first goal of your plan.

Another financial planning tip is to invest. Financial planning means you are saving for the future in many cases, so you will want to take money you earn today and invest in the stock market, in bonds or a mixture. Saving your money with the help of financial planning will help money grow all on its own.

A great financial planning tip is budgeting. You won’t be able to save unless you know what you spend. Make budgeting part of your financial planning and you will realize saving is not so hard. This is tough for people to understand and often what they resist most when they begin financial planning. Choose one area at a time and set a goal for incorporating it all into your lifestyle.

Welcome to FortuneWatch. This site is devoted to Sensible Personal Finance. Debt elimination, saving money and practical investing.