B is for Budgeting

Definition of Budgeting: generally refers to creating a plan of all planned expenses and incomes.

I know some people who hate the dreaded ‘B’ word but budgeting is actually a wealth secret because if you don’t know where you are now how can you plan how to get where you want to be? If I asked you to tell me how to get to New York you’d probably ask where are you starting from since your instructions would be very different if I was travelling from London or from Sydney.

So budgeting is a way of knowing where you are now financially by listing ALL your expenses and all your income. I stress the ALLyour expenses because most people know their income but they don’t know ALL their expenses. So I mean even including the coffee you may buy at the local coffee shop or the magazines you buy when going into a shop – everything. It’sonly when you are aware of your income and all your expenses that you can make choices about how you spend your money.

Some people do jobs they don’t particularly like but still have no real idea where their money goes. If you’ve worked hard for your money (or even if you haven’t), you want to make choices that suit you and your goals. I would say that part of your budget could include what you want for your life since knowing why you are doing something can help if times get tough.

So list all your income and expenses. I like to use a spreadsheet but you can use pen and paper or whatever you prefer. I know you may have it in your head but put it all down where you can see it. That’s when you can go through everything and really choose where you want to spend your money. If you choose to spend x amount on a magazine every week as long as you realize that’s your choice then that’s okay.

You can create categories for your expenses such as rent (or mortgage), groceries, bills etc. Some people simply use categories or essential and non-essential. If you are paid in cash you can set up jars or envelopes and split out your wages when you get paid. If you are paid into a bank account you can have a separate account for your essential payments (just be careful with bank fees).

Attracting wealth is not about focusing on what you don’t have but focusing on what you could have. If you have created a tight budget know that it’s for now and not forever. Remember that part of a budget is income so if your income is not as great as you would like think how could you earn extra money? What skills do you have? What hobbies do you have? Think about ways you could use your skills and hobbies to create products or services for other people. People pay to have their problems solved so what problems can you solve? What would your wealth success look like to you? Be open to new ideas.

Remember the last article on abundance - there are enormous rivers of money flowing around the world. How would you like yours to be delivered to you?

Wealth Quote: “There are plenty of ways to get ahead. The first is so basic I’m almost embarrassed to say it: spend less than you earn.” Paul Clitheroe

A is for abundance

Definition of Abundance: an extremely plentiful or oversufficient supply, affluence, wealth, the opposite of scarcity.

Now we know that’s not particularly easy to think about abundance and attracting wealth when you’re trying hard to make ends meet but thinking about lack rather than abundance helps keep you broke.

There is an abundance of money in this world. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the stock market and see how many shares are being bought and sold on the New York Stock Exchange – on average about 1.6 billion shares a day. That’s a lot of money.

Think back to times on your life when you really needed something, maybe money or something else, and it came to you. Remember that feeling and focus on it. For us when we have really, really needed money it’s always turned up. Now we could receive that money through a mistake at a bank (our mistake not the banks), some unexpected work or us going out to find new clients. Money turning up doesn’t mean that you sit around and wait for something to happen. You still have to take action. Jerry Clarke says that by thought you ask for something and by action it is received.

Think about some of the actions that you’ve taken and how they would have been different, if you hadn’t been worried about money. A lot of the time we are so focused on scarcity (the opposite of abundance) that we don’t even notice that we are focused on lack. A lot of people when they look at a menu at a good restaurant look at the prices to decide what they want as well as looking at the food on offer. We are changing our wants and our desires to suit our thinking that life isn’t abundant. That’s when we are truly unhappy – when we settle for something we don’t want.

Attracting wealth starts in your thinking. Move your thinking from lack to abundance and it will show up in your life. If you are in a bad financial situation right now first start by knowing and believing that it’s temporary. That is a wealth secret. If you think that are broke but you’re not poor then you’ll find a way to prove that you’re not poor. If you believe that you’re poor then the battle for wealth success is already over regardless of what you do.

Know that you always have options.

Forgive yourself for any actions that you see at present as mistakes. Over time those actions (or inactions) that you think were mistakes may be opportunities leading you to somewhere else.

You simply have to change your thinking from “I can’t afford” to “How can I afford…?” By saying “I can’t….” the brain stops working on a solution but by saying “How can I afford?” then the brain sets to work.

Abundance is all around us. There are enormous quantities of money flowing around the world. How would you like yours delivered to you?

Wealth quote: "People with a scarcity mentality tend to see everything in terms of win-lose. There is only so much; and if someone else has it, that means there will be less for me. The more principle-centered we become, the more we develop an abundance mentality, the more we are genuinely happy for the successes, well-being, achievements, recognition, and good fortune of other people. We believe their success adds to...rather than detracts from...our lives.” ~ Stephen R. Covey

Over the coming weeks we are going through the simple skills and knowledge required for attracting wealth and keeping it. Although this isn’t a personal finance course as such we believe it does contain necessary ingredients for attracting wealth.

If you participate it will help you create good money habits and choices to put you in control. So many people do not make conscious decisions about their money and this is often what causes the financial problems no matter the economy is doing around them.

Feel free to contact us or comment about the articles since we welcome feedback.

If you feel that you want to take this further we offer a personal finance course and coaching.

Wealth quote: “In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.” ~ Tony Robbins

Financial spread betting offers a way to speculate on the movements of the money markets without actually buying or selling anything.Instead, the real-time financial markets provide an unpredictable – or in financial parlance, volatile – set of values that rise and fall constantly and thus provide the basis for a bet. Short term speculation on the values of assets listed on the stock exchange can realise a profit for those involved in trading, with perhaps the most understandable type of profitable activity being to buy an asset at one price, and then sell this asset at a higher price when the value increases – in financial parlance, this is called taking a ‘long’ position. However, it is also possible in stock market trading to make money by predicting that the value of an asset will fall, and the process that allows profit from such a prediction is called short selling. Short selling is possible in traditional trading (buying and selling stock), and also through financial spread betting.

In both traditional trading and spread betting, there are two different values for an asset. One is the price at which you can buy stock, called the ‘offer’ price. The other is the price the market will pay if you sell stock, and is called the ‘bid’ price, sometimes known as the ‘ask’ price. In financial spread betting, the bid and offer prices are artificial, and set by the spread betting company. The difference between the two prices is called the spread, and while these are set by spread betting companies such as Trade Fair, it is the real time market value of the asset when you close your position (conclude the bet) that determines the outcome of the wager. Visit the Trade Fair website to find out more about spread betting.

In spread betting, when you take a long position and ‘buy’ stock, you will win a profit if the value of the stock exceeds the offer price when you close your position. The difference between the offer price you bought at and the value of the asset when you close your position is multiplied by your stake, determining how much you win. For example, you ‘buy’ Global Corp stock at an offer price of 4002 with a £10 stake, and when you close your position (finish the bet) the value has risen to 4020, realising a profit of £180.

When you take a short position (short selling), the bet starts at the bid or ask price (lower than the real-time market value). The mechanism for short selling in actual trading in more complicated than the simple buying involved in taking a long position. However, for the purposes of spread betting, all you need to know is that you’ll win a profit if the value of the asset falls below the bid price when you close your position. Obviously, the higher your stake, the more you’ll win if the value of the stock moves in your favour. For example, you go short on Global Corp, at a bid price of 3998 with a £20 stake. When you close your position, the stock market value of Global Corp has fallen to 3920, realising you a profit of 78 multiplied by £20, which is £1560.

However, as with all bets, you can lose as well as win – and with spread betting, losses are multiplied just the same as wins. This means that you can lose much more than your initial stake if the value of the asset you are betting on moves the opposite way to your prediction, just as can you win much more than your stake if you prediction is correct.

 

You can read some testimonials about Karen and Adrian on the testimonial page. If you would like Karen and Adrian to run a workshop for your business or organisation in please contact them through the contact us form with details of your requirements.

 

While putting this website and others together we realised that affordable websites are required by small or home based businesses or even individuals. It amazed us the prices that were being charged for simple websites and some of the them weren't even that good! So to fill this need we have a website development service that you can find out more about at KLJ Universal Pty Ltd website development or you can fill in the form below and we'll send you some details.

What makes KLJ website development different?

• We use free Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Joomla and WordPress - yes they are free
• Your website will be easy to manage and thereby keep costs low
• You can have free templates or have a custom made template by us which can include your existing logos and graphics
• We create the website that YOU want and not what a web developer thinks you should have
• We can advise and implement basic search engine optimisation strategies to get your ranked higher in search engines such as google
• We supply FULL documentation for your website so you know how to update and add to YOUR OWN website
• If you want some help after the website is delivered you simply contact us and we'll help you out
• We are small business owners ourselves and we know that costs are important when you are going online and having a simple and effective website is important too.
• Any questions? Simply get in touch.

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As some of you know I spent some time recently in the remote Fijian village of Waibogi on a project for Rotary. I’m still thinking about what lessons I can learn from the culture and people there.

One thing that has really struck me on my return is how much ‘stuff’ we have here. The people lived simple lives and I’m not suggesting that in the modern world I could live on as little money as they do – I would need money simply to pay my internet service provider to write this! In fact I think that they are still learning about money management since they’ve never really had much money to manage until recent years. However I do wonder whether we need all the stuff that we acquire over the years.

Do we really need to spend the money on all this stuff?
I know this idea wouldn’t go done well in the USA since there they need to encourage people to spend because their economy is built on people spending money and getting into debt. I don’t know what would happen there is everyone became experts on money management. And I’m not saying don’t spend money on stuff I’m simply suggesting thinking about it a little more before you do. It could be part of your money management so that you spend money only on stuff that you really, really want. As part of my money management if I see some stuff that I want I will think about it overnight and if I still want the next day I’ll go back and buy it. Most of things that would be impulse buys I don’t go back and buy. We all have so much stuff around us already and I’m as guilty as anyone. I have a wardrobe full of clothes that I hardly wear – some because I don’t like them anymore and some because they don’t fit me anymore. So I’m thinking about getting rid of lots of my stuff either to charity shops or maybe selling the stuff on an auction website. I will add that I bought a lot of this stuff before I put my overnight thinking money management rule into place since I certainly wouldn’t have bought that bright green two piece suit if I had thought about it overnight!

If I get rid of all that stuff what would I put in its place? Maybe I would simply leave it as space. I do think that we accumulate stuff to fit the space that we live in. When I lived on my own in a smallish flat I didn’t have as much stuff since I didn’t have the space for it. Now that I live somewhere much bigger we seem to spread out to fill that space too.

What stuff do you have that you could get rid of?

We are re-vamping our course Successful Personal Finance and we want to include the stuff that YOU want to know. There is loads of stuff that we could put in it but we want it tailored to our customers.

So what are your most important money worries?
What would make a big difference in your life?
How would you like to receive information from us?

Tell us what you want from us and we’ll do our very best to deliver it.
You can either reply via the comment form or use the contact us form to let us know what you want.

Don’t be shy – this is your turn to let us know how we can help you.