The Art of Budgeting

You're thinking to yourself, "What do you mean a budget?  How can budgeting ever be involved in a Millionaire's Mentality?  Millionaires have all the money in the world, there's no need to budget!"

Wrong.  Very few people who accomplish their dreams and do what it takes to achieve a Millionaire Mentality have succeed without budgeting skills.  When we're striving to be our best possible selves we can not be so narrow-minded as to view budgeting as strictly money business.  We must have a budget for every part of our lives, but don't sweat it.  Just because you're budgeting doesn't mean you can't live life to the fullest.

BUDGETING MONEY

It's true that budgeting does not include only money but let's face it, you will never be able to fulfill your dreams without good money management.  So how do we go about budgeting our money?  Let's go over one of the biggest myths that seems like the only way to go in the current "recession."

Saving.

Yes, there it is.  Saving your money and locking it away can be one of the most detrimental actions you can take towards accomplishing your goals.  You must destroy the fear of spending your money.  Now I'm not telling everyone to go blow your life savings on whatever you want like booze and parties (unless your dream is to become the worlds greatest drunkard).  We must change our mentality on saving and shift it towards investing.  Realize that money is arbitrary.  It's just a number in your bank account.  Don't be afraid to spend your money efficiently.

Budgeting Now to Invest Later

The goal of budgeting is to find out how much money you can safely invest.  How can you determine this? All you need is a month, a paper and pencil, and three steps.

1. Record your spending for one month.

2. Separate your spending categories into Rent/Mortgage, Food, Gas, Car Payment, Utilities, Phone Bill, Insurance Payment, and Misc.

3. Figure out your weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly income

These three simple actions is all it takes to set up an infallible budget and investment plan to capture that dream.

Once you know how much you spend during the month you can subtract that from your monthly income.  The number you get from this figure will either piss you off or make you extremely happy.  There really is no in-between.

Whether you're negative or positive for the month however makes no difference.  With either outcome, you must determine what money spent is an investment and which is purely unnecessary. 

In order to have a Millionaire Mentality you must have the ability to cross everything out of the Misc. category that isn't an investment to your future.  That night out drinking, instead of writing your novel.  How much did that cost you?  How about the 150 channels of cable that you never watch?  How much money did you just save there?  Magazine subscriptions, pricey electronics, fast food, designer clothes, etc.  If these purchases do nothing for your goal, then it is all wasted money that could be invested.  If you're not willing to give up these misc. items, then you're not yet ready for greatness.

Live Below Your Means

That was the easy part.  Now we need to dissect exactly how much we're paying for what we "need."

Here are some tips to live below your means:

1. If you're spending more than 30% of your monthly income on rent/mortgage, it's time to move.

2. If having a car is an unnecessary means to your income, sell it.  If you absolutely need a car, use it as a tool. Drive it only when you need to.

3. Only eat out if it is to improve a profitable relationship.  If not, cook at home.  It's cheaper.

4. Don't buy groceries in excess.  If you're buying more than a week's worth of food per person in your home, most of it is going to go bad or uneaten.

5. Learn to spend money on experience, not things.

6. Use your phone as a tool. Cut down your phone plan.  "Unlimited Everything" might sound like a sweet deal, but that's 100 dollars a month that could be invested elsewhere.

Once you're willing to trim fat off of the "essentials,"  you'll find out you need less than you think.  Freeing yourself from these financial pitfalls can pay dividends in the future.

BUDGETING TIME

If there's one thing we waste more than money, it's time.  Indeed time is money, but the reverse is not true.  Money is not time.  You can not buy back your teenage years.  You can not buy back the countless hours staring at Facebook or watching television.  Millionaires know this.  With a Millionaire Mentality, you'll learn to look at every action you do as either an investment or a waste.  It is much more important that you learn to budget your time than it is your money.

Kill Time Vampires

We've all been there.  There's a paper to write, studying to do, work to be done, yet we just can't get off the internet.  Between Twitter, Stumbleupon, Facebook, tumblr, Pintrest, cat blogs, and memes, working towards our dreams just doesn't seem much fun.  So twenty minutes becomes an hour, then three hours, then all of the sudden we've listened through the same album on Spotify 6 times and it's 4:00AM with no work done.

Avoid this stress.  You know who you want to be.  You know what you love to do.  If you're not marketing on social networks.  Delete your account.  Don't be afraid, people won't forget you.  Even if some do, you'll be grateful you don't have to look at any more amateur photos of their Paris trip or how cute their cat looks in a Santa hat.  No more reading passive aggressive statuses or whiny girls who just broke up with their boyfriend.  Dare to imagine!

You don't have time to be preoccupying yourself with other people wasting theirs.  Even worse than wasting their time, they're inviting you to waste your time.  Forget about it, you have better things to do.  Invest all the extra time towards your dream.  Write, exercise, get another job for extra income, double major, or learn a skill.  Burn the leeches.

Imagine if you could get back all the time you've wasted on the internet.  You'd probably be a millionaire already.

Your Circle

Spend time around positive  people.  Spend time around people who are better than you.  You know you're potential, you know how great you can be, so spend time around people who deserve it.  Try to be the best, but don't stick around if the people you interact with are unchallenging.

Think about the last time you thought you were the greatest at something.  You might have had the best three point shot in your whole high school.  Maybe you were always picked first in gym class and everyone cheered for you every pep rally.  Then you got relaxed, you thought you were at your peak, you were already the best.  Then you went to college and went out for the team.

You didn't make it.

That's because what you thought was the peak, what you thought was success,  was really a plateau.  Your circle told you that you were the best, they glorified your skills and called you the best.  They allowed you to accept your plateau.

Spend your time around people willing to make you better.  People who view success as an infinite journey, are the only people you want to spend your time with.  Those who believe the peak is the highest they can climb are only those who never learned to fly.  If you surround yourself with eagles, soon you will learn how to soar.

Once you've mastered budgeting your time and money, you'll be amazed at how many more resources you'll have to accomplish your dreams.  Now get off the internet and go trim the fat.

Defining Your Goal

This might seem like an obvious step towards your Millionaire Mentality, but even so, there are still those of you out there reading this post pondering what you should do with your life.  You bounce back and forth between jobs, careers, or majors trying to find out what's right for you.  Society tells you to "take your time" and "don't worry about it, we all fall into what we're supposed to do."  So you watch Dancing with the Stars and American Idol, admiring those at the top while you dream and dream away at what's in store for your future.  "It'll come" you say to yourself, "I'll get what I deserve; My life will turn out."

Wake up.

 

The time for dreaming and pondering ended when you left your mother's teet.  That time when you stopped asking your parents for twenty bucks so you could go to the movies and got a job, but you kept dreaming.  Everyone told you it would come, the money, the lifestyle, all you had to do was go to college, work hard, get that piece of paper, and the world would be waiting to hand you what you deserve.  What they didn't tell you is that you better decide exactly what the hell you're gonna do.

So you're thrown out into the world with a certificate that says "I can do it world!"  Then the world asks "Do what exactly?"  That's when you realize it.  For the first time, the world is yours.  You've proven yourself (at least that's what that frame on the wall and $40,000 in student loans say) and you have all these options.  Unfortunately, in the midst of all the homework, the scantrons, the group projects, the cute guy or girl in 4B, your dog dying, lease signing, spring break, grade begging, pizza eating, and all around whirlwind of life that doesn't involve your mother tucking you in at night, you forget to define exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life.  That's why you're here today, to make that decision, and never look back.

You Must Choose Before You Act

 

Don't be so swayed by the pressure to be something that you completely dive into the first opportunity given to you.  That is exactly how pencil pushers end up going to bed one night when they're 23 and wake up the next day, 45 years old, and wondering which wife was allowed to take those 22 years in the divorce.  Just because someone offers you a salary five times less than theirs to do ten times the amount of work they do doesn't mean you have to settle.  The difference between the employer and the employee is the decision.  At one point, the employer decided to be the boss and his employees decided to work for him.  Choose to be the boss.  Choose to be a millionaire.  Whether you have 10 dollars or 10,000, it all begins with your decision.

Don't Choose What Others Choose For You

 

Everyone has an idea of how you should live your life.  My family decided that I should go to college.  They decided that I should do something "worth it."  So I chose what I was good at, English.  All of the sudden this major didn't compute with everyone's expectations of me.

"Have you chosen a major yet?"

"Yeah, English."

"Oh, so you're gonna be a teacher?"

"No I don't wanna be a teacher?"

"Well what are you gonna do then?"

"...I don't know."

Sound familiar to you?  Everyone has already decided what you're going to be in their minds.  They know where they see you in ten years.  They know what you're supposed to do.  There's one problem.  They aren't you.  They don't know exactly what goes on inside your mind.  What you truly want to do, your life goal, your passion.  They don't know what keeps you awake at night because you can't wait to get started.  Each individual only knows what's best for themselves.  Don't let another person, even if it's the closest person to you: your Mom your Dad, your Grandmother, your wife, your girlfriend, choose what's best for you.  Not everyone will like what you've chosen, people will try and resist you, which brings me to my next point...

Be Willing to Do it Alone

 

I was having a rough time figuring out exactly what I wanted to do with my life, when my phone rang.  It was my best friend who had recently just conquered his demons months before when he was abusing drugs and alcohol.  He has always been an inspiration to me and even more so now that he has shaken addiction.  We talked regularly after his breakthrough and he was always positive and uplifting.  This afternoon however, I wasn't having it.  I let him know everything, how I was upset with my academics, how I didn't care anymore, how I wanted to start up so many ideas and accomplish so many goals that had nothing to do with analyzing literature.  I kept telling him no one was on my side, no one would help me, no one would give me the resources I needed to start up my ventures.

I told him it was all a crock: school, my dreams, life.  After about twenty seconds of silence, I knew I had won, I knew I was right, that life wasn't about accomplishing your dreams, too much was against me.  He cleared his throat and started laughing.  At first I was upset, I asked him how he could be such an ass.

"What have you done about it?"

 "What do you mean man, I've told everyone my ideas, I've asked everyone I know for help!"

"No man, what have you actually done though, you sit here and complain about how no one will help you, but what have you actually showed them."

"I show them that I care, that I'm willing."

"Yeah?  You're talking like you want to be a writer, and you want to be a professional poker player, but when's the last time you sat down and wrote.  When's the last time you went and played poker?"

That's when I started to realize.  I was not attempting to make my dreams a reality, I was just talking about it.  I wasn't putting in the work and the resources I wanted other people to put in for me, I was just asking for help.  No one is going to believe in you until you have something to show them.  You must be willing to do it alone for at least a little bit until people actually see you as a good investment.

If you want to be a professional basketball player and want your family to buy you a basketball net, personal coaching, a gym membership, and new shoes, you better be willing to do some push ups in the front yard.  If you want a basketball hoop, you better be running 2 miles to the nearest court just to shoot threes and free throws.  If you want a coach, you better be willing to coach yourself first, learning everything that you can, doing as many drills that you can.  So that one day, someone can come along and invest in you and know you're going to make it.

Be Risky, Be Extravagant, Be Specific

 

No one ever became a millionaire doing something that was boring.  Even if it seemed boring to the masses, I can assure you it was one of the top ten most exhilarating things to the Millionaire.  What everyone doesn't see when Will Smith is blowing up the box offices are the hours upon hours of hard work and faith it took to get him to where he is today.  They don't realize the risks that he had to take, skipping college, auditioning, and denying admission to MIT's Engineering program, in order become the superstar he is today(1). Those risks are the difference between $40,000 a year and $4,000,000.

When you think of your dream, you might destroy your opportunities by saying things like,

"That's unrealistic."

"That's unreachable."

"That's impossible."

"That's unimaginable."

I encourage you to be extravagant.  I encourage you to still say these phrases to yourself and realize that the only thing holding you back from becoming the next Millionaire CEO, Professional Athlete, or Movie Star is one syllable.  Without "im-" and "un-" your dreams become realistic.  Your dreams become possible.  Your dreams become reachable.    Your dreams become imaginable.  The only thing holding you back from deciding to accomplish these dreams is you.

I encourage you to be specific.  Don't try to be a Movie Star, a Professional Athlete, and CEO at the same time.  Pick something you can focus on.  Pick a goal in which you can give your whole self.  In order to accomplish your Millionaire Mentality, you must eat, sleep, and breathe your dream.  You must not distract yourself with unspecific goals.  Once you decide, that's it, it's done.

Don't Be Afraid to Commit

 

Once you know your goal.  Once you're ready to be who you want to be.  Once you're willing to have the Millionaire Mentality.  You must commit 100%.  You cannot half-ass it.  Many people know what they want to do.  They tell their friends.  They convince their family.  They tell everyone how hard it's going to be.  How much work it's going to take.  They pump themselves up and run up and down some steps to Eye of the Tiger.

But when it really comes down to it.  When it's time to sweat.  When it's time to hurt someones feelings or disappoint someone with their decision.  They back out.  They become so afraid of taking a chance, of jumping off the cliff, because they can't see through the fog at the bottom.  Their fear keeps them from knowing the possibilities of greatness.

All they see when they look down is fog, and about the jagged rocks that might be on the other side.  They fear the crashing tides of failure, eagerly waiting to sweep them into oblivion.  They don't see that the water is full of success, that the dream will cushion their fall.  They don't experience the rush of life that hits you when you penetrate the fog and realize that gravity isn't pushing you towards failure, but to a yacht with a million tempurpedics ready to embrace you.  Stagnicity is failure.  Sitting at the top of the cliff staring at the fog is failure.  Don't be afraid to make the ultimate commitment and dive into your dream.

Now Decide

 

My last point is the simplest but the most overlooked.  You can come to this blog and read about how to have a Millionaire Mentality.  You can get motivated and excited.  You can imagine your life having it all, doing what you love, being fulfilled, living the perfect life.  You can have it all, but you have to decide exactly what you want to do.  I can't tell you that.  I can tell you my dreams and my goals, but I have no idea what keeps you up at night.  I can't experience your dreams for you.  I can't choose for you.  Once you decide, the rest is just a magnificent and beautiful process.  So live it, dream it, breathe it, eat it, but first:  CHOOSE IT!