How To Prosper
One foot in front of the other. Keep on keeping on. Do the right thing.
What Is The Right Thing?
Sometimes doing the right thing is complicated and unclear. In other situations, doing the right thing is simple and obvious. Eat Your vegetables. Take care of your health. Avoid destructive activities. And grow your dividends.
While getting riches overnight is a fantasy dream, in reality it rarely happens that way. It’s like your health: no one “gets healthy” overnight. It’s a long steady process that allows up to nourish and sustain our health. Similarly, it is doing the right thing many times in many ways, big and small, that affords us the ability to attain our financial freedom.
Most people do not like personal austerity. I do not advise siting in the dark to avoid paying for light. So being appropriately frugal is what it takes. Like avoiding extremes of too profligate, or too parsimonious. Find your own middle way, It is easier that way.
I will admit, however, that examining my financial life has completely changed over time. Each time I looked closely, I found things I did not need, and found other things I allow myself. So financial comfort is not fixed in stone, nor so fluid that it changes daily. Take it slow and easy.
What’s First
Everything that has been said has already been said. It just sometimes sounds different. Automate what you can. What this means is to make priorities that benefit you.
Pay Yourself First
This is a common recommendation: Pay Yourself First. Simple to say, but what does it mean? It has been said that many people fall short of savings goals. They pay bills and try to save from what’s left. The advice is to automate, namely, set up with your bank to automatically deduct a certain amount from your paycheck and transfer into savings. Then pay bills from what’s left.
Of course this will mean estimating what your needs will be. Not so simple the first time, but it can be done. Start small, increase as you go along. This is a far superior method than trying to save after all bills are paid.
Why is paying yourself first so much better? Because you have changed your priorities. Your priority now is yourself and your financial well-being, not paying bills. Yes, paying bills is important, No one likes to be in arrears. That is why estimating financial needs is also important. But the change is to benefit your number one priority, to yourself, is groundbreaking and empowering. It is a great way to start taking control of your financial life.
Is anything new? Let me know here.
The 1701 painting of gooseberries is by Adriaen Coorte, from Middelburg, a wealthy maritime city in the southern part of the Netherlands. Courtesy Cleveland Museum of Art.
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