Whenever I have the opportunity to speak to people about financial intelligence, which is quite often, I am amazed at how everyone wants to prosper financially. When I ask people who are sure they will become wealthy to raise up their hands, all hands fly up. A closer look however, quickly reveals that it’s all wishes. The hard cold reality is that most of the hands raised up don’t stand a chance without a radically different philosophy and paradigm.
If you are curious to know if you are insulated from the vital statistics that says that 99% of humanity will not achieve financial freedom, please answer the following questions sincerely. If you want to be one of the 1% and want to be a part of a move making the 1% stretch into 10%, simply follow the simple tips I will share after this brief survey.
1. What is your current financial net worth? When you add your assets together and subtract your debts what number does it give you? Please do not count cars, and household equipments as assets, they are not. In simple terms, assets are things you have that bring money to you, and liabilities are things you have that take away money from you. How much of what you have is cash, how much is liquid and how much is illiquid?
2. How many income streams do you currently have? How many sources of income do you have? What is your total monthly income?
3. How many of your income streams are active and how many are passive? Do you enjoy any passive income currently?
4. How many years from now do you desire to be financially free? Don’t be in a hurry to fix a small number, think deeply about this and set a target that is reasonable but stretches you a bit.
If you answer these questions, you will get a realistic picture of where you currently stand. It’s sad that many of us don’t ask ourselves these questions early enough. However long it has taken you to stumble on these thoughts and finally ask these questions, is only as significant as what you decide to do from this very moment.
Remember that you cannot solve a problem, thinking at the same level that you were thinking when you encountered the problem, the solution requires a change of thinking, a whole different paradigm. Many of us grew up with the goal of financial security, the truth is, moving from a financial security mindset to a financial freedom mindset is a major leap. Many of us for many years have been taught to sow, to give, to make sacrifices for our faith, the honest fact is that even though this is good, if you don’t have a store house there is nothing for even God to multiply. While we have celebrated people for how much they have or how much income they earn, we now need to shift away from how much income they earn to how much passive income they earn sustainably.
If you truly desire to become financially free, there are a lot of basic thoughts that need to change. The truth also is that you cannot do it on your own, you need to hire a coach, or submit yourself to mentorship. Here are a few tips that are working for me, and I have no doubts will work for you as well.
1. Money is discipline. It’s not how much comes into your hand at once that matters, it’s how much you discipline yourself to put away from yourself that counts. Develop money discipline. Break Parkinson’s law, ensure your expenses don’t rise up to meet your income.
2. Open an Escrow account with your partner, and get a 3rd party coach or mentor to hold all the keys to the account. This way no money leaves the account without the alignment of 3.
3. Form basic rules that allows you to see the money in the escrow as future funds, plan to run this for 10yrs without making alterations. Define basic rules for the types of investments you can engage these funds in. Here again you need an experienced mentor or a coach.
4. Set a goal to generate at least 5 streams of passive income.
5. Set a goal to play in the 5 vehicles for creating sustainable wealth – Real Estate, Paper Investments, Automated Businesses, Intellectual Property and Network Marketing.
6. Have a regularly sequenced meeting with great minds to measure and track progress. Better if meeting involves couples. Keep your balance sheet and update it monthly.
7. Use the power of leverage, tackle challenges and investments as a group, this makes the process faster.
8. Read up regularly about Finance, remember, you were not taught how to make money, grow money or earn passive income in school, reading enough books to equal your age is a good place to start. Read and Practice. Here are a few you could start with – Richest man in Babylon, Success Secrets by Adeolu Akinyemi, Science of Getting Rich, Think and Grow Rich (Norman Vincent Peale and the Black Edition), Rich Dad Poor Dad, 21st Century Business, It’s time for Network Marketing, e.t.c.
9. Play Cashflow 101 often, play with friends, play with mentors.
10. Be clear with yourself that your dream is on the bench until you become financially free, pursue financial freedom like it’s the prerequisite to your goals in life. True riches only get handed to you when you have demonstrated mastery with money.
11. Look for other people to share this with and be a coach to once your life begins to steer in the right direction. One of the great secrets of learning is that to truly own knowledge you must teach it. So, learn like a teacher.
12. Appreciate your teacher, mentor and coach. Make it worth their while, and expect others to do the same to you.
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