How to attract and increase money in your life
A famous poet once wrote, “Most people live lives of quiet desperation” – always having just enough money to barely survive, and often not even that. Is this true for you? Do you realise that this situation is an unconscious choice you made as a result of your conditioning and that you can change it and bring abundance into your life?
You are not rich for one reason only. You do not believe that you can be rich, that you do not deserve to be rich, that it is bad to be rich, or that only a few lucky people are rich. Our language even reflects the fact that the common subconscious belief is that being rich is bad. Reflect on these common expressions – “he or she is so lucky”, “he is stinking rich” or “money is dirty there are many more examples of this.
As you were growing up you probably often heard the adults in your life tell you “money does not grow on trees” or “Where do you think the money will come from”. You grew up believing and accepting that there is a scarcity of money, that you have to “turn every penny around” before spending it. Do you recognise this? Because of this most people have a scarcity mentality and believe that it is impossible to make enough money to buy what they desire and spend money just because they would love to have or do something. Napoleon Hill calls this a poverty mentality.
Until you get yourself to the point where you change your attitude and your relationship with money, you will never have enough money. As long as you nurture this perception of shortage you will always be poor. The good news is that you can change it. Nobody else can do it for you, but yourself. It will not be easy, but it can be done and has been done by many others. In other words, you have to change yourself within, before you can change your life’s circumstances.
Now let us look at how others have done it.
A common trait among millionaires is knowing exactly what they want and going after it with everything they have.
In this article, we will explore how you can do that, to attract money into your life and achieve your goals of financial wealth.
Before you start doubting yourself, know that you can do it. You are reading this, and that means that you have the desire to make your financial dreams a reality.
While doing research for this article some things about people who make it in life stand out. One striking fact was that it does not matter what personality or skills you have, you can make it big if you believe you can.
People with grit, determination, and the ability to ignore doubters are the ones who achieve their dreams. Dr. Adrian Atkinson has this to say about millionaires, “These are people who didn’t know it was impossible, so they just did it.”
It does not matter if you make it big by climbing the corporate ladder or starting your own company, it is not only entrepreneurs who can, and do, achieve financial success. Some people are born to be entrepreneurs while others are born to run big companies. Which one are you?
Here are a few books to read, get them, read them, apply the principles and see what happens.
- Think and grow Rich by Napoleon Him
- Success: the best of Napoleon Hill
- Think yourself Rich by Sharon Maxwell Magnus
- The 100 absolutely unbreakable laws of business success by Brian Tracy
These books are a good place to start and will set you on the road to financial independence and wealth that is only limited by what you believe and by your ability to dream it.
Increasing your money
There are three parts to financial freedom. These are savings, insurance, and investment.
Savings
In a study done by Napoleon Hill, he discovered that people who fail in life do not have a goal and they also do not manage their money well.
When you study successful people you find that their number one priority is to have money for savings and investments. More than that, they have regular, systematic savings. Poor people do not have regular, systematic savings. It does not matter how much money you save every month, if you are saving something then you have the mindset of a successful person.
More than that, saving helps people build self-confidence because they know they have some protection. So, ensure that you build up to three to six months’ salary in a high-interest bank account. This will be your fallback money in case of redundancy or an unexpected emergency. It should be six months if you have dependent children.
People who are most successful with their money are the ones that take the long-term view. Delayed gratification, self-discipline, and sacrifice in the short term are the key to financial success.
Ask yourself
- What is your long-term financial goal?
- What will you give up now – financially – to get there?
Parkinson’s Law states that expenses always rise to meet income. The trick is to violate this law by not letting your expenses rise as your income does, or by forcing your expenses to rise slower than your income does. Then you save the extra money.
Insurance
Insurance is vital for emergencies. So having adequate household, vehicle and health insurance will mean that your savings is not adversely affected should something unforeseen happen.
Investing
You cannot afford to invest anything until you have cleared your debts (except for your mortgage) so spend all extra money on clearing your debts before you start to invest.
The best and most secure investment you can make is in your house bond. Paying any extra money into your bond will also save you a large amount in interest.
Once you have savings you can start to look at investments, however investing in stocks and shares can be risky so only invest money that should you lose it, it will not cripple you.
Only invest in something you have investigated well. Spend at least as much time studying a particular investment as you do earning the money for that investment.
Invest only with experts who have a proven track record of success with their own money.
“I had dinner with a self-made millionaire in Portland, Oregon, says Brian Tracy. “He started with nothing and had gradually worked and invested his way to a network of several million dollars. He had a simple philosophy. He would invest only with people who had been successful at making money in the past. As he moved up financially, he would invest only with people who were doing better than he was with their own money.
“Because he was relatively wealthy, he was often approached by people selling investments of various kinds. He would always invite the salesperson to trade financial statements with him. If the salesperson was doing better than he was with the investments being recommended, he would accept the advice and buy the investment. If he was doing better than the salesperson with his current investments, he would decline.”
Know why you are investing so that you can manage the risk, for example, investing for your child’s education should be a lower risk investment than one that is for a yacht.
Investing is not a short term way to get rich. It is a long term strategy. Only invest if you are prepared to keep the money invested for three to five years.
Patience is key to wealth in many regards, but one of the most useful is compound interest. Invest your money carefully, allowing it to earn compound interest. This will eventually make you rich.
“Compound interest is considered one of the greatest miracles of all of human history and economics. Albert Einstein described it as the most powerful force in our society,” says Brian Tracy
Just letting your money compound over a period of time will allow it to grow more than you can imagine. As your savings accumulate you start to develop a momentum that moves you more rapidly towards your financial goals.
The 80/20 rule also applies to your finances. The last 80 percent of your fortune will be made in the last 20% of your time. In other words, you will spend 80% of your time making the first 20% of your wealth and the last 80% will be done the fastest.
“Peter Lynch, the former manager of the Magellan Mutual Fund, one of the most successful mutual funds in history, said the best investments he made were those that took a long time to come to fruition. He would often buy stock of a company that had not increased in value for several years. Then it would suddenly increase and go up ten or twenty times in price. This strategy of picking stocks for the long term eventually made him one of the most successful and highest-paid money managers in America,” says Tracy.
Ask yourself
- Where have you invested without seeing any significant return?
- Is this investment worth the long-term reward?
Final Note
It is easy to become overwhelmed and give up. Always remember that you are capable of reaching heights that you cannot even imagine right now, if you can get yourself to the point where you can make the unimaginable a reality in your own mind. So take it one step at a time and determinedly follow your plan for success.
Put your plan and the steps to get there so that it is visible. Put it on a wall near where you work so that you can see it every day. Make it look attractive so that you will want to look at it. Put pictures up of your ideal vacation house or anything that you desire to have, if it will help you to visualise your goal.
Talk to your spouse about your goals because he or she will have to buy into the dream in order to support you and help you to keep going through the tough times.
Always remember that you have to get rid of the poverty mentality first and that the effort you put in now is a long-term project, which will pay off big at the end.