So here's my point: If you've been sitting on the fence waiting for the perfect opportunity to buy something, you're there right now. Go get it fast! And here's another important thing: If you haven't owned a home in three years or more, or, if you have never owned a home, you could get a $7500 tax credit if you buy a home in this calendar year. Quit listening to the doom and gloom “nay sayers” and their stupid agenda, and go do yourself a favor.

Keep this I mind: You are in charge of your own personal finances. We make financial decisions according to the information we have available to us. Sometimes that information isn’t always the most accurate, and we make unwise decisions because of it. There’s no one to blame here, it’s just the way it is. Unfortunately, we don’t realize those unwise decisions until years later when we’re hitting our forties and wake up because the coffee smell has permeated our brains. Then you realize that you can blame no one but yourself for ending up broke. And believe me, this experience is no fun.

So how do we keep ourselves from ending up broke in our forties? Start doing things right in our younger years. Develop more than one income source, and make sure that if the income from your job goes away, you could still handle things until your income is coming in a gain. How do we do this? By saving our money before we need it. It’s very simple really. We should have at least one month’s income available to us today. Keep it in some type of interest bearing account that we can get to when we need it right now. We also need an account equal to about one year’s salary, so that when our salary does go away, because we got sick, injured, or lost our job entirely. And here’s the part I like about this losing the job thingy: Now you have enough in the bank to go find the job you want, not the one you have to settle for because you need the money. You can make a good situation out of a bad one and land on your feet because you handled your finances with wise, sound, good decisions processes that set you up for success.

Not a bad way to live your life actually. Expect the unexpected. Plan for it and be ready when it comes. Then when the economy goes south on us, you don’t have to participate.

Wishing you the best,

Ed

In my former profession as a Crisis Counselor, I had countless people in my office that had fallen short of the goals and dreams they had set for themselves. They woke up one day to find that not only had they not achieved their childhood dreams, they were so far gone they had to look up to see something way out of reach.

Even today I talk to people who thought they would have been much further along in life than they are. I find it interesting that they all seem to have the same thing in common: lack written goals, both financial and personal. Without such written goals, we have actually decided we would allow life to dictate what we get. This basically amounts to nothing in the overall picture of things, and way less than we hoped for.

There is a certain exercise we must go through in order to achieve our goals and dreams in life. It’s such an easy thing to do, yet it requires much thought and teamwork from the entire family unit: setting goals. We then must review those same goals in a timely manner to make sure we’re on track to get to where we planned, in the time we allotted to do so. They must be written, time sensitive, and broken down into small achievable items. My friend Todd Duncan calls this “Chunk down.” This is the manner in which we take complete control over our personal economy. We make a goal, we write it down, and we measure our progress as we go.

Setting goals and measuring them in a timely manner can propel you beyond even your wildest dreams. We all have financial dreams, professional dreams and dreams for our family and loved ones. Without proper goal setting and planning these are only pipe dreams, and we’re at the mercy of what life will allow us to have. Then we end up in my old office talking to some person who is struggling with the same issues.

Take charge of your life today by sitting down with your spouse or significant other and making some goals. Write them down and put a date on it as to when that goal will be achieved. Then list each item it’s going to take in order to get there and who is responsible for that item. Financial success comes from proper planning and the discipline to follow through. You can do it and I believe in you.