<ol><li>Create a Financial Calendar: prevent yourself from forgetting quarterly tax payments and to get credit reports.</li><li>Check Your Interest Rate: Pay off loans, open saving accounts and negotiate credit debts based on interest rates.</li><li>Track Your Net Worth: The difference between your assets and debt — it tells you your financial standing. </li></ol>

3 Financial Basics

<ul><li>Consider an All-Cash Diet, as limiting yourself to physical currency combats overspending.</li><li>Set aside 1 minute a day to check on your financial transactions, to identify problems, track goal progress and set your spending tone.</li><li>Allocate at least 20% of your income to financial priorities like emergency funds, debts and retirement fund.</li><li>Budget about 30% of your income for nonbasic spendings, like entertainment. Abiding by the 30% rule, you can save and splurge at the same time.</li></ul>

Budgeting Like a Pro

<ul>
<li>Draft a Financial Vision Board, it motivates and helps you to stay on track with your financial goals.</li>
<li>Set specific financial goals stating the reason, the way, numbers and dates.</li>
<li>Adopt a spending mantra, a phrase that serves as a rule of thumb for how you spend.</li>
<li>Love yourself. Taking control of your finances is part of that.</li>
<li>Make bite-size money goals. Make the bigger ones but also small step goals to get there.</li>
<li>Don’t be a financial fatalist, and switch to more positive mantras.</li>
<li>Get your finances and body in shape. The discipline associated with regular exercising translates to managing your money well.</li>
<li>Appreciate what you have now, instead of being a consumerist.</li>
<li>Get a Money Buddy. Studies indicate people pick up good habits from friends with similar traits.</li>
</ul>

How to Get Money Motivated

<ul><li>When negotiating a salary, get the company to name figures first, otherwise you can’t know if you’re lowballing or highballing. </li><li>Try to negotiate more than just your salary. Work hours, official title, parental leave, vacation time, and which projects you’ll work on could all be negotiable.</li><li>Assume you qualify for unemployment and learn its rules. Many do qualify but are unaware.</li><li>When negotiating salary emphasize the value you bring to the company as employers don’t care about your dreams but do about keeping a good employee. </li></ul>

How to Amp Up Your Earning Potential

<ul><li>Paying off the little debts can give you confidence to tackle larger ones. It’s recommended to focus on debts with the higher interest rates, but sometimes a moral boost is worth it.</li><li>Don’t cosign loans. If the borrower misses a payment, your credit score plunges and the lender can charge you.</li><li>Every student should fill out the FAFSA; many miss out grants that don’t need to be paid back because they are not filling out the forms.</li><li>Choose federal student loans over private loans, they have flexible payment terms and often better interest rates.</li><li>Investigate repayment options for federal student loan payments. </li><li>Opt for mortgage payments below 28% of your monthly income. That’s a general rule of thumb on how much you can afford.</li></ul>

How to Keep Debt at Bay

<ul><li>Evaluate purchases by cost per use. Higher cost products may last longer, but go unconsidered because of their initial price.</li><li>Spend on experiences, not things, as they give you more happiness for your investment.</li><li>Shop solo to avoid buying unnecessary things due to social influence.</li><li>Spend on the real you, not the person you want to be.</li><li>Ditch the overdraft protection as it often trips people into overspending.</li></ul>

How to Shop Smart

<ul><li>Start Saving ASAP. Money you put in your retirement fund now will have more time to grow through compound growth.</li><li>Avoid cashing out your retirement account early as it prevents your money from being invested and leads to penalties and tax bills.</li><li>Contribute money so your employer can match it if you have a 401(k)</li><li>Invest your raise in your retirement savings. Up your automatic transfer to savings, and increase your retirement contributions. </li></ul>

How to Save Right for Retirement

<ul><li>Reviewing your credit report and your credit score regularly can save you money</li><li>Keep your credit use below 30% of your total available credit, as it can ding your credit score. You calculate it by dividing the total amount on all of your credit cards by your total available credit.</li><li>If you have bad credit, get a secured credit card. It helps build credit like a regular card but won’t let you overspend. And you don’t need good credit to get one.</li></ul>

How To Best Build And Track Your Credit

<ul><li>Get more life insurance on top of your company’s policy, as it is often far too little.</li><li>Get renters insurance and be covered from robberies, vandalism, natural disasters, and even things like the medical bills of people who get hurt at your place, damages you cause at someone else’s home, rent if you have to stay somewhere else because of damage done to your place.</li></ul>

How to Get Properly Insured

<ul><li>Make savings part of your monthly budget. </li><li>Keep your savings out of your checking account, as it may prevent you from spending it.</li><li>Open a savings account at a different bank than where you have your checking account so it won’t be too easy transferring between them.</li><li>Direct deposit to your savings account so only the money you want to spend goes to your checking account and your savings are preserved as they stay out of your mind.</li><li>Consider switching to a credit union; they could be the place to go for better customer service, kinder loans, and better interest rates on your savings accounts.</li><li>Only use your emergency savings account if you’ve lost your job, have a medical emergency, a car break, emergency home expenses (like a leaky roof), or you need to travel to a funeral.</li><li>Think about investing if you have more than six months’ savings in your emergency account (nine months if you’re self-employed), and you have enough socked away for your short-term financial goals.</li></ul>

How to Prepare for Rainy (Financial) Days

<ul><li>Pay attention to the fees you pay in your funds, also called expense ratios, as they can eat into your returns. It’s generally recommended to stick with low-cost index funds.</li><li>Rebalance your portfolio once a year. You need to take a look at your brokerage account every once in a while, to make sure that your investment allocations still match your greater investing goals.</li></ul>

How to Approach Investing

We've certainly amassed a wealth of knowledge over the years covering the money beat-be it the dozens of "I got out of debt" success stories we've featured to the scores of psychological studies we've covered linking better financial decision-making to behavior change.

50 Personal Finance Tips That Will Change the Way You Think About Money

<ul><li>Doing well with money has little to do with how smart you are, and a lot to do with how you behave.</li><li>Financial success is not hard science, it’s a soft skill where how you behave is more important than what you know.</li><li>To grasp why people bury themselves in debt, you need to study the history of greed, insecurity, and optimism.</li><li>Not all success is due to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. Keep this in mind when judging people, including yourself</li></ul>

Money: The Greatest Show On Earth

<ul><li>Luck and risk are siblings, they are both the reality that every outcome in life is guided by forces other than individual effort.</li><li>The world is too complex to allow 100% of your actions to dictate 100% of your outcomes.</li><li>When judging financial success, both your own and that of others, nothing is as good or as bad as it seems.</li><li>Be careful who you praise and admire, and be careful who you look down upon.</li><li>Be careful when assuming that 100% of outcomes can be attributed to effort and decisions.</li><li>Focus less on studying specific individuals and more on studying broad patterns.</li></ul>

Luck And Risk

Success is a lousy teacher, it seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

<ul><li>There is no reason to risk what you have and need for what you don’t have and don’t need.</li><li>The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving.</li><li>If expectations rise with results there is no logic in striving for more because you’ll feel the same after putting in the extra effort.</li><li>Life isn’t any fun without a sense of enough.</li><li>Happiness equals results minus expectations.</li><li>Social comparison is the problem.</li><li>Accept that you might have enough, even if it is less than those around you.</li><li>Enough is not too little.</li></ul>

Nothing is Ever Enough

<ul><li>Lessons from one field can often teach us something important about unrelated fields.</li><li>You do not need tremendous force to create tremendous results.</li><li>If something compounds, a small starting base can lead to extraordinary results.</li><li>Linear thinking is so much more intuitive than exponential thinking. You never get accustomed to how quickly things can grow with compounding.</li><li>The counterintuitiveness of compounding may be responsible for the majority of disappointing trades, bad strategies, and successful investing attempts.</li></ul>

The Compounding Of Money

<ul><li>There are a million ways to get wealthy. The only way to stay wealthy is some combination of frugality and paranoia.</li><li>To summarize money success in a single word: survival.</li><li>Getting money and keeping money are two different skills.</li><li>Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself out there.</li><li>Keeping money requires the opposite of taking risks, it requires humility and fear that what you’ve made can be taken away from you just as fast.</li><li>The ability to stick around for a long time without wiping out, or being forced to give up, is what makes the biggest difference.</li></ul>

Maintaining Your Wealth

<ul><li>Compounding doesn’t rely on earning big returns, merely good returns sustained uninterrupted for the longest period of time, will always win.</li><li>Many bets fail not because they were wrong, but because they were mostly right in a situation that required things to be exactly right.</li><li>Room for error often called the margin of safety is one of the most underappreciated forces in finance.</li><li>A mindset that can be paranoid and optimistic at the same time is hard to maintain.</li></ul>

Survival Mindset

<ul><li>It is not intuitive that an investor can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune.</li><li>Anything that is huge, profitable, famous, or influential is the result of a tail event, an outlying one-in-thousands or millions event.</li><li>Most of our attention goes to things that are huge, profitable, famous, or influential.</li><li>When you accept that tails drive everything in business, investing, and finance, you realize that it’s normal for lots of things to go wrong, break, fail, and fall.</li></ul>

Heads And Tails

<ul><li>The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up and say “I can do whatever I want today.”</li><li>The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays.</li><li>Control over doing what you want, when you want to, with the people you want to, is the broadest lifestyle variable that makes people happy.</li><li>Money’s greatest intrinsic value is its ability to give you control over your time.</li></ul>

True Wealth Is Freedom

<ul><li>A small amount of wealth means the ability to take a few days off work when you are sick without breaking the bank.</li><li>To obtain bit by bit, a level of independence and autonomy that comes from unspent assets that give you greater control over what you can do and when you can do it.</li><li>Having six months of emergency expenses means not being terrified of your boss, because you know that you won’t be ruined if you have to take some time off to find a new job.</li><li>Using your money to buy time and options has a lifestyle benefit few luxury goods can compete with.</li></ul>

Having Money In The Bank Gives You Independence

<ul><li>The paradox of wealth is that people tend to want wealth to signal to others that they should be liked and admired.</li><li>You might think you want an expensive car, a fancy watch, and a huge house. What you really want is respect and admiration from other people.</li><li>You think having expensive stuff will bring it, but it almost never does, especially from the people you want to respect and admire you.</li><li>People generally aspire to be respected and admired by others, and using money to buy fancy things may bring less of it than you imagine.</li></ul>

The Paradox Of Wealth

<ul><li>Someone driving a $100,000 car might be wealthy. Or he may just be poorer by $100,000.</li><li>We tend to judge wealth by what we see because that is the information we have in front of us.</li><li>Wealth is the nice cars not purchased, the diamonds not bought, the watches not worn, and the first-class upgrade declined.</li><li>Wealth is financial assets that have not yet been converted into the stuff you see.</li></ul>The only way to be wealthy is to not spend the money that you do have. It’s not just the only way to accumulate wealth, it is the very definition of wealth.

True Wealth Is What You Don’t See

<ul><li>Rich is a current income. Someone driving a $100,000 car or living in a big house is almost certainly rich because you need a certain level of income to afford the monthly payment. It’s not hard to spot rich people. They often go out of their way to make themselves known.</li><li>Wealth is hidden, it is income not spent. Wealth is an option not yet taken to buy something later. Its value lies in offering you options, flexibility, and growth to one day purchase more stuff than you could right now.</li></ul>

Richie Rich

<ul><li>Building wealth has little to do with your income or investment returns, and lots to do with your savings rate.</li><li>If you view building wealth as something that will require more money or big investment returns, you may become too pessimistic.</li><li>You can build wealth without a high income but have no chance of building wealth without a high savings rate.</li><li>Learning to be happy with less money creates a gap between what you have and what you want.</li><li>One of the most powerful ways to increase your savings isn’t to raise your income, it is to raise your humility.</li></ul>

Facts about Saving Money

Two dangerous things happen when you rely too heavily on investment history as a guide to what’s going to happen next.<ol><li>You will likely miss the outlier events that move the needle the most.</li><li>History can be a misleading guide to the future of the economy and stock market because it doesn’t account for structural changes that are relevant to today’s world.</li></ol>Surprises:<ul><li>The most common plot of economic history is the role of surprises.</li><li>Realizing that the future might not look anything like the past is a special kind of skill.</li></ul>

The Neglected Element In Investing Money: Surprises

<ul><li>Good ideas taken too far are indistinguishable from bad ideas.</li><li>People underestimate the need for room for error in almost everything they do that involves money.</li><li>Room for error lets you endure a range of potential outcomes. Endurance lets you stick around long enough to let the odds of benefiting from a low probability outcome fall in your favour.</li><li>The biggest gains occur infrequently, either because they don’t happen often or because they take time to compound.</li></ul>

Mistakes and Errors

<ul><li>The ability to do what you want, when you want, for as long as you want has an infinite ROI.</li><li>You can’t prepare for what you can’t envision.</li><li>Avoid single points of failure. If many things rely on one thing working, and that thing breaks, you are counting the days until catastrophe.</li><li>The biggest single point of failure with money is a sole reliance on a paycheck to fund short-term spending needs.</li><li>The most important part of every plan is planning on your plan not going according to plan.</li></ul>

The Uncertain Future

<ul><li>Everything has a price and the key to a lot of things with money is figuring out what that price is and being willing to pay it.</li><li>Most things are harder in practice than they are in theory. This is often because we are not good at identifying what the price of success is, which prevents us from being able to pay it.</li><li>The price of successful investing is volatility, fear, doubt, uncertainty, and regret.</li><li>The inability to recognize that investing has a price can tempt us to try to get something for nothing.</li></ul>

Nothing Is Free

<ul><li>Short-term traders ignore the rules governing long-term investing, particularly around valuation. Because those rules are irrelevant to the game they are playing.</li><li>Bubbles do their damage when long-term investors playing one game start taking their cues from short-term traders playing another game.</li><li>It is hard to grasp that other investors have different goals than we do.</li><li>An anchor of psychology is not realizing that rational people can see the world through a different lens than their own.</li></ul>

The Psychology Of People

<ul><li>Optimism is the belief that the odds of a good outcome are in your favour over time, even when there will be setbacks along the way.</li><li>Two topics will affect your life whether you are interested in them or not, money and health.</li><li>An iron law in economics: extremely good and extremely bad circumstances rarely stay that way for long because supply and demand adapt in hard to predict ways.</li><li>Progress happens too slowly to notice, but setbacks happen too quickly to ignore.</li></ul>

Gravitating Towards a Negative Outlook

<ul><li>Stories are, by far, the most powerful force in the economy.</li><li>The more you want something to be true, the more likely you are to believe a story that overestimates the odds of it being true.</li><li>Everyone has an incomplete view of the world, but we form a complete narrative to fill in the gaps.</li><li>Coming to terms with how much you don’t know means coming to terms with how much of what happens in the world is out of your control.</li><li>The illusion of control is more persuasive than the reality of uncertainty.</li></ul>

Believing In Narratives

<ul><li>Go out of your way to find humility when things are going right and forgiveness and compassion when things are going wrong.</li><li>Less ego equals more wealth.</li><li>Become okay with a lot of things going wrong.</li><li>Use money to gain control over your time, because not having control of your time is a surefire way to be miserable.</li><li>Be nicer and less flashy. Nobody is as impressed with your possessions as much as you are.</li><li>You are more likely to gain respect and admiration through kindness and humility than horsepower and chrome.</li></ul>

Things To Remember

Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money—investing, personal finance, and business decisions—is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.

The Psychology of Money

Fear and greed can drive financially ignorant people to make irrational decisions.If you have money, you are likely to focus on all the new things it can buy (greed). If you don't have it, you worry you might never have enough (fear).People who are ignorant about how to manage their finances are especially prone to letting these emotions drive their decision-making.By building up your financial knowledge about things like investments, risk and debt, you can counter these emotions, and place you in a better position to make rational decisions.

Fear and Greed

Despite being vital for both personal and societal prosperity, we receive no training in financial intelligence.Being rich is not about being talented or capable. The world is full of such people, and most of them are poor. What they lack, is financial intelligence, an aptitude for financial subjects like investing, accounting etc.Sadly, we aren't raised with this intelligence. Our schooling doesn't cover financial intelligence amongst the myriad of concepts we learn.Since society has left us poorly equipped in terms of financial knowledge, it is up to the individual to educate himself.

Financial Intelligence

Financial self-education and a realistic appraisal of finances are the building blocks of growing wealthy.Earlier you start at building your personal wealth, the better. If you begin at 20, you're far more likely to become rich, than at 30.Set financial goals based on a realistic appraisal of finances. A good look at the income, and expenses helps you plan your future accordingly. Coupled with financial education, there's a good change you'll become wealthy one day.

Realistic appraisal of finances

To become wealthy, one must learn to take risks.Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. If you wish to change your current financial state, you'll need to start handling your finances differently.The biggest change needed is to take risks. Every financially successful person have taken risks to get where they are, and it is so because they manage these risks rather than fear them.Taking those bigger chances and handling those bigger risks will reap higher rewards, and make a bigger income.

Risks

The road to wealth is long, so you must keep yourself motivated.Journey to wealth is hard, long, and trying. It's easy to lose heart when you watch your risky investment suddently tumble. During such setbacks, you'll need to find ways to stay motivated.Make lists of "wants" and "don't wants". Pull these out to remind yourself why you started this journey.Gather more financial knowledge by researching life stories of how wealthy individuals like Warren Buffett overcame their struggles.

Motivation

Laziness and arrogance can drive even financially knowledgeable people to poverty.Personality pitfalls, like laziness and arrogance can hamper and even reverse the journey to wealth. Laziness is ignorance to certain variables, or even avoiding to make the right financial decisions.Arrogance too, is extremely dangerous. Can be defined as a combination of poor financial knowledge and an ego too proud to admit it. Keep these personality pitfalls in check.

Laziness and Arrogance

Invest in Assets, and avoid LiabilitiesKnowing the difference between an asset and a liabiltiy is necessary to ensure you're making strong investment decisions.Asset - Makes you moneyLiability - Costs you moneyInvest in more assets, like business, stocks, bonds, mutual funds. Anything whose value appreciates over time. Invest your excess income into assets, making money make money.Some liabilities are commonly mistaken for assets. For example, a house to a common man is a huge debt in terms of home loans for a large period of time.

Assets and Liability

Your profession pays the bills, but your business is what will make you wealthy.Profession is what you do from 9-5. It is what pays the bills, buys the groceries and covers other living costs.Business, is what you invest your money and time, to grow your assets. Investments in real estate, stock market trading, etc.Your profession often funds your business intially; therefore, it's wise to keep your day job until your business starts to show sustainable growth. When they do, your assets become your main source of income. And that is the sign of true financial independence.

Profession and Business

Understand the tax rules to help you minimize your taxes.By becoming aware of how the "system" works in your country, you may be able to regally reduce how much money the goverment takes from you.

Taxes

Because we're not trained in financial intelligence in school it's up to us as individuals to develop this trait by ourselves. We are only likely to become rich or financially independent once we have both a stronf financial IQ and a firm, ambitious mindset to support it. In the end, what you invest in your mind is what brings you success, because your mind is your most important asset in any financial situation.

A summary

Although we have been successful in our careers, they have not turned out quite as we expected. We both have changed positions several times-for all the right reasons-but there are no pension plans vesting on our behalf. Our retirement funds are growing only through our individual contributions. Michael and I have a wonderful marriage with three great children. As I write this, two are in college and one is just beginning high school. We have spent a fortune making sure our children have received the best education available. One day in 1996, one of my children came home disillusioned with school. He was bored and tired of studying. “Why should I put time into studying subjects I will never use in real life?” he protested. Without thinking, I responded, “Because if you don't get good grades, you won't get into college.” “Regardless of whether I go to college,” he replied, “I'm going to be rich.”

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

The bulk of your budget is made up of necessities like rent, phone and internet bills, insurance, etc. If you can lower your monthly expenses, you can save a lot for unplanned events.
<ul>
<li>Find a cheaper place to live.</li>
<li>Get a cheaper phone plan</li>
<li>Find a better insurance company</li>
<li>Grocery show once a week, so you don't waste food.</li>
</ul>

Regular monthly bills

There are a couple of paths you can take to pay off your high-interest debt when you're on a tight budget.
<ul>
<li>The snowball method. For those who need to see progress, pay off the lowest balance first. You'll feel inspired to keep going.</li>
<li>The avalanche method. Choose the debt with the highest interest rate to pay off first. This may require larger monthly payments and will take longer to see progress, but you will save the most money in the long run.</li>
<li>If you need to prioritize your credit score, focus on paying down your credit cards first. Paying the ones you are near to maxing out will improve your score quickly by a few points.</li>
<li>Set up payment plans, even if you can only afford a few dollars at a time. That way, your lenders can see you're paying something.</li>
</ul>

Debt when you're on a tight budget

Financial professionals will advise you to cut out expensive nights out. In truth, you will have night's out, even when you're dirt poor.
To incorporate unplanned entertainment, set aside an amount each month. Be realistic. You can open another savings account for fun spending or you can use cash only.

Incorporate unplanned entertainment in your budget

<ul>
<li>Emergency funds are essential, even if you put a bare minimum towards it. </li>
<li>Birthdays, Christmas, or car registration are expenses you should be able to plan for. Set aside some money towards it every week, and by the end of 12 months, you'll have a set amount to spend on these items.</li>
<li>If you have pets, you'll need to include a portion of your budget for their food and vet bills.</li>
</ul>

Things you don’t usually think about when budgeting

There are many great budgeting apps. However, apps can be frustrating and boring to use, or we may just get lazy.
Sometimes a pen and paper work best because it gives you a hand in your budget. With this method, you can also change your budget when you need to include extra expenses.

Budgeting apps vs pen and paper

What Does A Realistic Budget Look Like? - Money Under 30

Having some extra cash is helpful when the world falls apart. But emergency funds, while great in theory, are very difficult to put into practice. That is why so few people get around to saving one - most people have more urgent financial demands.
However, one should learn how to multitask with your money, moving between short- and long-term priorities.

Emergency funds

Write down your expenses from the past few months (look at your debit and credit card bills, your bank statements, etc.)
Next, see what is essential to support your basic needs and what you can cut if you had to.

Calculate a bare-bones monthly budget

Calculate the minimum amount you could survive on if things got tight, then multiply that amount by three. That is your starting goal for your emergency fund.
Eventually you'll want to save enough to live on for three to six months if you had to.

Consider the size of your emergency fund

Try to transfer your debt onto a zero-interest credit card (also known as a balance-transfer card). It will give you a limited time window where your debt won't accrue interest and allow you to get rid of your debt faster. But ensure you can pay it off within that window, otherwise the interest rate will skyrocket again.
<ul>
<li>If you're confident in your ability to pay your debt off, you can start saving at the same time.</li>
<li>If you are still paying a high-interest rate on your current credit card debt, then wait until your debt is paid off.</li>
</ul>
Once the debt is gone, put that same amount of money toward your emergency fund instead.

How to deal with your debt

Some people are disciplined enough to manually set aside "leftover" money at the end of every month into a high-interest savings account. Others take the decision-making out of the equation and automate the entire process. Most banks have a feature that allows you to set up recurring transfers from your checking account into your savings account.
Saving up three to six months' worth of expenses could take years. That's fine. Just keep at it.

How to follow through with saving up an emergency plan

How to Start an Emergency Fund

<ol><li>There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.</li><li>A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought. Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.</li><li>You must lay aside all other concepts of the universe than this monistic one; and you must dwell upon this until it is fixed in your mind, and has become your habitual thought.</li></ol>

3 Fundamentals

<ol><li>The desire for riches is simply the capacity for larger life seeking fulfillment; every desire is the effort of an unexpressed possibility to come into action.</li><li>It is power seeking to manifest which causes desire.</li><li>That which makes you want more money is the same as that which makes the plant grow; it is Life, seeking fuller expression </li></ol>

The Desire for Riches = Increasing Life

﻿It is the desire of God that you should get rich. He wants you to get rich because he can express himself better through you if you have plenty of things to use in giving him expression. He can live more in you if you have unlimited command of the means of life.﻿

<ul><li>The universe desires you to have everything you want to have.</li><li>Nature is friendly to your plans.</li><li>Everything is naturally for you.</li><li>Make up your mind that this is true.</li></ul>

Mindset of Richness 

You must want real life, not mere pleasure of sensual gratification.Life is the performance of function; and the individual really lives only when he performs every function - physical, mental, and spiritual, of which he is capable, without excess in any (balance in all 3 is the key).

What Does It Mean To Really Lives? 

You want to get rich in order that you may eat, drink, and be merry when it is time to do these things; in order that you may surround yourself with beautiful things, see distant lands, feed your mind, and develop your intellect; in order that you may love men and do kind things, and be able to play a good part in helping the world to find truth.

Why Do You Want To Get Rich?

<ol><li>No one lives completely who denies the impulses of the body a normal and healthful expression.</li><li>The man who lives for the pleasures of the intellect alone will only have a partial life, and he will never be satisfied with his lot.</li><li>The joys of the soul are only a part of life; and they are no better or nobler than any other part.</li><li>Extreme altruism is no better and no nobler than extreme selfishness; both are mistakes.</li></ol>

Balance & Wholesomeness in Body, Mind and Soul are the Key

Get rid of the idea that God wants you to sacrifice yourself for others, and that you can secure his favor by doing so; God requires nothing of the kind. What he wants is that you should make the most of yourself, for yourself, and for others; and you can help others more by making the most of yourself than in any other way.

Self-Love : Make the Most of Yourself for Yourself

You can make the most of yourself only by getting rich; so it is right and praiseworthy that you should give your first and best thought to the work of acquiring wealth.

Another Important Mindset Shift

<ol><li>You must get rid of the thought of competition.</li><li>You are to create, not to compete for what is already created.</li><li>You do not have to take anything away from any one.</li><li>You do not have to drive sharp bargains. You do not have to cheat, or to take advantage.</li><li>You do not need to let any man work for you for less than he earns.</li></ol>

Be a Creator, Get Rid of Unhealthy Competitive Thoughts. Integrity is Key too.

You are to become a creator, not a competitor; you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man will have more than he has now.

A Creator Always Choose Win-Win

Never get afraid that you will lose what you want because some other person “beats you to it”.That cannot possibly happen; you are not seeking any thing that is possessed by anybody else; you are causing what you want to be created from Formless Substance, and the supply is without limits.

Abundance, Supply is Without Limits

If you fix upon your consciousness the fact that the desire you feel for the possession of riches is one with the desire of Omnipotence for more complete expression, your faith becomes invincible.

<ol><li>There is a Law of Gratitude, and it is absolutely necessary that you should observe the law, if you are to get the results you seek. </li><li>The law of gratitude is the natural principle that action and reaction are always equal, and in opposite directions. </li><li>The grateful outreaching of your mind in thankful praise to the Supreme is a liberation or expenditure of force; it cannot fail to reach that to which it addressed, and the reaction is an instantaneous movement towards you.</li></ol>

The Law of Gratitude

The first step toward getting rich is to convey the idea of your wants to the Formless Substance. This is true, and you will see that in order to do so it becomes necessary to relate yourself to the Formless Intelligence in a harmonious way.﻿

The whole process of mental adjustment and atonement can be summed up in one word, GRATITUDE. <ol><li>First, you believe that there is one Intelligent Substance, from which all things proceed; </li><li>Second, you believe that this Substance gives you everything you desire; and </li><li>Third, you relate yourself to it by a feeling of deep and profound gratitude.</li></ol>Many people who order their lives rightly in all other ways are kept in poverty by their lack of gratitude. Having received one gift from God, they cut the wires which connect them with Him by failing to make acknowledgment.

GRATITUDE

It is easy to understand that the nearer we live to the source of wealth, the more wealth we shall receive; and it is easy also to understand that the soul that is always grateful lives in closer touch with God than the one which never looks to Him in thankful acknowledgment.﻿

The more gratefully we fix our minds on the Supreme when good things come to us, the more good things we will receive, and the more rapidly they will come; and the reason simply is that the mental attitude of gratitude draws the mind into closer touch with the source from which the blessings come.

<ul><li>Gratitude will lead your mind out along the ways by which things come; and it will keep you in close harmony with creative thought and prevent you from falling into competitive thought.</li><li>And if your gratitude is strong and constant, the reaction in Formless Substance will be strong and continuous; the movement of the things you want will be always toward you.</li></ul>

The Power of Gratitude

<ol><li>The Creative Power within us makes us into the image of that to which we give our attention. </li><li>We are Thinking Substance, and thinking substance always takes the form of that which it thinks about.</li><li>The grateful mind is constantly fixed upon the best; therefore it tends to become the best; it takes the form or character of the best, and will receive the best.</li></ol>

Think Gratitude Attracts the Best for Us to Receive

FAITH is born of gratitude. <ul><li>The grateful mind continually expects good things, and expectation becomes faith. </li><li>The reaction of gratitude upon one’s own mind produces faith; and every outgoing wave of grateful thanksgiving increases faith.</li><li>He who has no feeling of gratitude cannot long retain a living faith; and without a living faith you cannot get rich by the creative method, as we shall see in the following chapters.</li></ul>

Faith is Born Out of Gratitude

<ul><li>It is necessary, then, to cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you; and to give thanks continuously.</li><li>And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.</li><li>This will bring you into harmonious relations with the good in everything, and the good in everything will move toward you.</li></ul>

Gratitude for All Things is Necessary

<ol><li>You must form a clear and definite mental picture of what you want; you cannot transmit an idea unless you have it yourself.</li><li>The more clear and definite you make your picture then, and the more you dwell upon it, bringing out all its delightful details, the stronger your desire will be; and the stronger your desire, the easier it will be to hold your mind fixed upon the picture of what you want.</li><li>Behind your clear vision must be the purpose to realize it; to bring it out in tangible expression.</li><li>And behind this purpose must be an invincible and unwavering FAITH that the thing is already yours; that it is “at hand” and you have only to take possession of it.</li></ol>

Clarity of Vision, Purpose and Faith - Mental Picture 

The man who can sincerely thank God for the things which as yet he owns only in imagination, has real faith. He will get rich; he will cause the creation of whatsoever he wants.﻿

<ul><li>You do not need to pray repeatedly for things you want; it is not necessary to tell God about it every day.</li><li>Your part is to intelligently formulate your desire for the things which make for a larger life, and to get these desire arranged into a coherent whole; and then to impress this Whole Desire upon the Formless Substance, which has the power and the will to bring you what you want.</li><li>You do not make this impression by repeating strings of words; you make it by holding the vision with unshakable PURPOSE to attain it, and with steadfast FAITH that you do attain it.</li><li>The answer to prayer is not according to your faith while you are talking, but according to your faith while you are working.</li></ul>

Steadfast Faith While Working

<ol><li>You cannot impress the mind of God by having a special Sabbath day set apart to tell Him what you want, and then forgetting Him during the rest of the week. </li><li>You cannot impress Him by having special hours to go into your closet and pray, if you then dismiss the matter from your mind until the hour of prayer comes again. </li><li>Oral prayer is well enough, and has its effect, especially upon yourself, in clarifying your vision and strengthening your faith; but it is not your oral petitions which get you what you want. </li><li>In order to get rich you do not need a “sweet hour of prayer”; you need to “pray without ceasing.” </li><li>And by prayer I mean holding steadily to your vision, with the purpose to cause its creation into solid form, and the faith that you are doing so. </li><li>“Believe that ye receive them.”</li></ol>

Holding Steadily to Your Vision 

<ol><li>The whole matter turns on receiving, once you have clearly formed your vision. </li><li>When you have formed it, it is well to make an oral statement, addressing the Supreme in reverent prayer; and from that moment you must, in mind, receive what you ask for.</li><li>Think and speak of all the things you have asked for in terms of actual present ownership. </li><li>Imagine an environment, and a financial condition exactly as you want them, and live all the time in that imaginary environment and financial condition.</li></ol>

Start Receiving When Your Vision is Clear

<ul><li>Mind, however, that you do not do this as a mere dreamer and castle builder; hold to the FAITH that the imaginary is being realized, and to the PURPOSE to realize it.</li><li>Remember that it is faith and purpose in the use of the imagination which make the difference between the scientist and the dreamer.</li></ul>

Faith and Purpose to Realize What We Want

<ol><li>To set about getting rich in a scientific way, you do not try to apply your will power to anything outside of yourself.</li><li>It is wrong to apply your will to other men and women, in order to get them to do what you wish done.</li><li>You have no right to use your will power upon another person, even “for his own good”; for you do not know what is for his good. </li><li>To get rich, you need only to use your will power upon yourself.</li><li>When you know what to think and do, then you must use your will to compel yourself to think and do the right things.</li></ol>

Willpower Upon Own Self to Think & Do Right Things 

The more steady and continuous your faith and purpose, the more rapidly you will get rich, because you will make only POSITIVE impressions upon Substance; and you will not neutralize or offset them by negative impressions. ﻿

<ul><li>Get rich; that is the best way you can help the poor. And you cannot hold the mental image which is to make you rich if you fill your mind with pictures of poverty.</li><li>What tends to do away with poverty is not the getting of pictures of poverty into your mind, but getting pictures of wealth into the minds of the poor.</li><li>If you want to help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can become rich; prove it by getting rich yourself.</li></ul>

Getting Rich Yourself is the Best Way to Help the Poor

<ol><li>Man must pass from the competitive to the creative mind; he must form a clear mental picture of the things he wants, and hold this picture in his thoughts with the fixed PURPOSE to get what he wants, and the unwavering FAITH that he does get what he wants, closing his mind to all that may tend to shake his purpose, dim his vision, or quench his faith.</li><li>That he may receive what he wants when it comes, man must act NOW upon the people and things in his present environment.</li></ol>

Summary 

This classic declares that life's direction is a self-fulfilling prophecy and offers a practical rather than philosophical approach. It shows how creative thought and willpower are key to achieving goals.

The Science of Getting Rich

Use these ideas to improve your money management and mature into a smart spender

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The Science of Getting Rich

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

💸No More Broke

50 Personal Finance Tips That Will Change the Way You Think About Money

The Psychology of Money

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What Does A Realistic Budget Look Like? - Money Under 30

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The Science of Getting Rich

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

💸
No More Broke