Friday Planning

Today I would like to write a little about planning. When buildling their budgets for the day, month and or year, most people fail to do what I believe is most important in the process. What works for me is planning out the whole year month by month. It is no excuse to forget about an upcoming bill. You should be aware of all expenses at all times. Also, you can come up with all the reasons in the world why you couldn't stick with a plan/budget, however at the end of they day the question is did you achieve financial success or not. Nobody cares why you missed the mark. You have to be tough and taking a passive approach to planning is bogus. If want to be serious about accumulating wealth, then you must approach it seriously. Those who come up with all these strategies to "stick with you plans" never make it. I have seen it a million times. The only way is to GET SERIOUS and do it. There is no excuse good enough to stop you from reaching your goals. There are too many examples of people before you who have achieved so much more while having started with so much less. They too had bad luck looming over them it seemed, then they took charge of their own lives and meraculously the bad luck dissappeared. So take out a pen and some paper (or in my case an excel file) and start building.

Now if you are going to get serious then this is what I do and I grow my net worth each and every month by more than most people save in years. I started with the dates of each bill due and then added the dates of all sources of income. This allows me to see what is coming in and what will go out everyday, month and for the entire year. If you build it on excel it is easy to make changes as things come up. Using a checkbook balancing system is not good enough. All that does is tell you how much you have or need in your account. It doesn't show you what will happen two or three weeks down the road if you spend an additional $50.00 on dinner when you only have $50.00 in your budget for that dinner. Build a template that has your monthly budgeted amounts built into it like (http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=ps2vTf2JHNzRYmT60MBGdCg)
My method is no different from what every successful bussiness does (obviously with some variation) and if you run your household like a successful business, you will become wealthy.
Start with that and I will add more about what I do in time.

Have a productive day,

Jake Blake