What do you think?

Have you noticed how some people seem to have everything they need to be successful: right knowledge, good looks, family connections and starting capital and yet they fail miserably? While others who do not seem to be that smart or that outgoing become successful against all the odds? The true reason behind success and material wealth is not the resources that you have; it is the way you think, talk and act!

Usually after talking with a person for 15 minutes you can already tell if they will achieve the great heights of turning money-making into a never-ending struggle.

Poor people generally talk about:

• Their problems and all the injustices ever done to them
• Discuss banal reality shows, latest “news” and negative events that they have no control over
• Gossip about other people – what is wrong with them
• Blame everything and everyone for their misfortunes
• Complain about their lazy spouses, ungrateful kids, stupid boss, and controlling parents
• Have strong prejudices against other social groups (usually this includes wealthier and more successful people, people of other nationalities and other religions)
• Brag about all the good things that they have ever done for someone else
• Invest in things that bring instant gratification, without thinking about the consequences.

Wealthy or wealthy-to-be people talk about:

• New theories and skills that they are learning
• Investment ideas and strategies
• People who inspire and guide them
• Positive events that have happened in their life
• Activities and things that motivate them
• Their long-term goals

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Saving money is not about having to deny yourself something you want or feeling guilty about spending it. By doing this you only suppress your desires and make yourself feel unsatisfied and inferior by not being able to afford the stuff you want. Trying to force a “frugal” lifestyle onto yourself is like trying to stop the flood from a broken drainage pipe with your hand. It helps to temporary stop the flood, but does not fix the real problem!

I am a true believer that saving money should be painless and even an enjoyable activity!

Here are 7 Counter-Intuitive tips that will help you save more money for a rainy day than any “money-saving plan” could ever do:

1. Redefine your definition of “wealthy”. Most of us define wealth as having LOTS of money and LOTS of things. How do you define when you are rich and decide that it is enough? When I was a student, I dreamed of having my own car. After 7 months of hard work and many sacrifices I finally bought my first car. It was a sky blue 12 year-old Toyota Celica, with a scratch on the left front door. I loved it! And for a time I felt really cool! After a year and a half I bought a new car, but it did not feel as great, because there was an even cooler car at a dealership that I could not afford. No matter how much you have there will always be more.

Now I sit in my rented apartment in Miami, looking at a picture of my family and my closest friends on the desktop and I feel like a millionaire! Being rich to me means having enough money to pay my bills, puting some money away for “rainy days” and being able to give some money away to those who need it. What is your definition of wealth?

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Fact #1: 497 people (approximately 0.000008% of the world’s population) control $3.5 trillion (over 7% of world GDP).

Fact #2: 99% of the US population is NOT part of the “investing class”

Fact #3: At the end of 2008 the average credit card debt for households was $10,679. And it continues to grow.

You can consider wealthy people evil and greedy or you can view them as a group of people who donate millions of dollars to charity. You can envy them or you can learn from them. You can despise them for their success or admire them for their achievements. That is up to you!

But whatever your perception and beliefs about rich people are, you cannot deny one thing – they are good at keeping and multiplying their wealth.

So what do they do differently from the rest of the population?

What are their best kept secrets?

1. Wealthy people invest money instead of spending it.

In business investing money means making a purchase of value with the expectation of favorable future returns. To put it simply, you use money to make more money. I looked up the term “spending money” in a dictionary and it actually means “using money for small current or incidental expenses”.

Spending money was supposed to be something that we do occasionally when you feel particularly impulsive. Most of us, however, have got it other way around. We spend 20 times more than we invest. And this is the main reason, why we are still not rich.

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Have you noticed that most of us have an unhealthy emotional relationship with money?

On one hand, we love money because:

• we need it for basic necessities like food, shelter and clothing

• our financial security and well-being depends on it

• it gives us freedom to do whatever we like

• it is a powerful tool to help others

On the other hand, we hate money because:

• we feel it controls our life

• we do not have enough of it

• we believe that money changes people and brings out all the negative qualities in them

• it forces us to get a job that we hate and robs us of our freedom

This love-hate attitude is very similar to the one we have with food.

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If you are worried about your future and financial security of your family, if you experience financial difficulties, if your credit card payments continue to steadily grow, it can mean three things:

a) you don’t make enough money

b) you don’t spend your money wisely

c) you don’t make enough money and you don’t spend them wisely.

To have more money, you need to spend less of it! Sounds obvious, and yet any time we see the next “cool thing” we really want to have, we all face the ultimate dilemma “To buy, or not to buy!”.

Now you can stop that inner struggle and just take a quick “Affordability Quiz” to find out whether you can afford it or not!

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One of the oldest juridical principle states “Ignorance of the law excuses no one”. It means that even if we are unaware of the law, we still cannot escape liability for violating it.

Universal Abundance Laws follow the same principle. You might not be aware of them, but it does not mean that they do not influence your life and that you will not have to face the consequences for not following them to the letter.

If you feel that no matter what you do or how much you work, you still do not make enough money or live below your expectations and abilities, make sure that you read this!

1. THE LAW OF PAYMENT.  There is nothing free in the world. For anything you want to receive you have to pay first, be it with your money, time or energy. You pay for both – action and inaction. Usually in the long run inaction costs us a lot more than action does.

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Learn how to save from $20 to $350 in a week!

There are people, who are born with a talent for saving money. They are very rational about spending their money and almost never make impulsive decisions to buy something that they do not really need.  I honestly envy these people. I was born with a different talent, or rather a curse – I am good at spending money.

Since I was little as soon as I got some cash I would always know what I wanted to spend it on. And even if I put some pocket money aside, it would be for the sole purpose of buying something later that I could not afford at that moment.

However, the older I got the more I realized the importance of learning the art of saving and handling money. I was really eager to become less prodigal, but the usual approach “Save on Everything!” did not really work for me.

If anything, most of the money saving tips that were out there, while making a lot of sense, would put me in a mild state of depression. Using less shampoo, when washing hair, turning down the thermostat and putting on an extra sweater when I am cold, wearing clothes more than once before washing them, buying only discounted products – all these tips made me feel the lack of money even stronger. And, honestly, by saving a few cents here and there my financial situation did not improve much.

By trying hundreds of different tips I found three that really worked and helped me to get my finances in order. If you are a natural “spender” like me and you are tired of feeling frustrated and guilty, because you are not saving enough money and that your credit card debt is growing every year, use these tips! They will help you to improve your finances in just one week and to become more frugal without having to drastically change your lifestyle.

Forget about “I can’t afford it!” set of mind!

Often when we try to cut back on our expenditures the first thing we tell ourselves is “I can’t afford it!” which basically means “I really want it, but I can’t have it.” This way of thinking creates inner conflict between desire to spend money and common sense that tells you that you should not do so. These conflicting emotions provoke tension, frustration and feeling of guilt.

Forcing yourself not to spend money is just like being on a cabbage soup diet. Sure, you can do it for a week and even a month, but one day you are just going to snap and eat as many hot fudge brownies and French fries as you humanly can. The same behavior is triggered if you keep telling yourself that you can not afford something. Believe me, as soon as you get the chance you will spend most of your savings on something really great, but really useless just to satisfy your hunger for spending money.

Therefore, whenever you have an impulse to buy the next cool thing you see, do not tell yourself that you can afford it. Instead, ask yourself if you truly need it. In reality there are only a few things in our life that we can not live without. I am sure a 48’ flat screen TV or the 25th pair of shoes is not on that list.

Many self-development programs teach us that in order to have money we need to think like millionaires. This is why the first step to prosperity and debt-free living is in switching your mindset from “I can’t afford it!” to “I don’t need it!”. Can you see the difference? In the first case you concentrate on lack, in the second case – on abundance. This small shift of mindset results in huge changes in your financial situation.

Go cash-only for a week!

A telephone survey from the nationwide Pew Research Center has shown that older people are much more likely than the rest of the adult population to save and invest enough money. Sure, these results may be easily explained by the fact that older people (65 years old and above) are much wiser, rational and more experienced when managing their budget, but that is not the only reason. I believe that older people tend to spend less, just because they are more accustomed to using cash rather than credit cards.

Why would using cash cut our spending? Because when we have to pay with actual money rather than blindly swiping our credit card, we instantly become more conscious about how much we are spending. If you do not believe me, next time try to pay for something that costs over $300 with cash. You will notice that giving away each banknote causes a tiny twinge of pain. This is a good kind of pain. Pain we can use to our advantage.

How does a cash-only week work?

There are only three easy steps:

1. Make a quick estimation of how much money you expect to spend during the week. I would suggest that you add an extra 10% to your estimated amount, because we often tend to be overly optimistic when it comes to planning our budget.
2. Go to the bank or ATM machine and withdraw this amount of money.
3. Take all the credit and debit cards out of your wallet/purse and hide them somewhere in your desk, to avoid the temptation to use them.  That is it!

Note! The only condition of a cash-only week is that you have to stay within your budget. No exceptions! You have a limited amount of money. You can not have more. You need to live off it for a week. If by the end of the week you realize that you have very little money left, it probably means that you will have to cut back on entertainment or eating out.

Find out where your money goes!

It is almost impossible to save money if you do not know three “magical” numbers:

• The first number is how much money you have coming in every week. Most of us can quickly do the math and divide our salary by 4.
• The second number is the amount of money that you have going out every week. This is already more challenging $2 for a pack of gum here… $1,5 for a beverage there… we do not even notice how these little payments add up and turn into big bucks over the course of  a week.
• Finally, the third number that you absolutely must know is your debit minus your credit or the first number (money you get) minus the second number (money you spend) per week. Once you have a clear picture of your incoming money and outgoing money, you will be able to identify areas where you can save.

You can use a personal-finance system like Mint or Quicken, and manually enter your transactions. Or you can carry a little notepad where you write down all of your transactions, just make sure that you do it on a daily basis, because after a while it gets very difficult to keep all the numbers in your head. Do this for a week and afterwards analyze what you are overspending on and what small and easy adjustments you can make to lower your expenditures.

If you apply these three tips without doing anything else, you will begin to notice a few extra hundred dollars on your checking account by the end of the week. Just get into the habit of putting that amount of money into your savings account and promise yourself not to touch it for at least a year. I can not explain you how great it feels to see your savings account rapidly growing with very little effort on your part, so I will just let you discover it on your own.

I am sure you will agree with me that not having money does not feel good. The agony of struggling financially is something most of us have faced at some point of our life.

I still remember the time when I was completely broke. I will never forget the feeling, when I saw all the beautiful things that I really wanted to buy, but could not because the answer was always the same, “I can’t afford it!” Whenever I entered a grocery store my eyes would automatically start searching for discounted products, while my mind was racing, adding up those pennies to see if I had enough cash to buy them. I did my best at managing my budget, but my bills were still piling up and I got deeper into debt every month.

Of course, money will not buy you happiness, but let’s face it – it makes our life a lot easier.

If you are tired of not having money or just feel that you could earn a lot more, pay close attention to what I am about to tell you, because this information has changed my life, my way of thinking, and my financial situation in just 6 months.

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