Pursuit of Excellence

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-no-1-financial-regret-of-older-americans-2016-05-17

Most Americans are filled with regrets — financial regrets. Fully three in four, in fact, admit they harbor financial regrets, according to a survey of more than 1,000 adults by Bankrate.com. Their biggest regret: not saving for retirement early enough (nearly one in five Americans put this in the No. 1 spot). What’s more, among those 65 and up, 27% said this was the biggest regret, compared with 17% of those aged 30 to 49. The author goes on to show the consequences of waiting to save comparing the difference of saving at age 25 vs 35. According to 2015 data from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, fully 28% of workers say they have less than $1,000 saved and 17% have between $1,000 and $9,999; meanwhile, just 14% of workers have $250,000 or more saved. That’s far too little, according to many financial advisers: Guidelines from Fidelity, for example, state that by the age of 30, you should have your entire salary saved; by 40, three times your salary saved; and, by 50, six times your salary saved. Other financial regrets include not having an emergency savings and too much student loan debt. It’s important to have a budget to know how much is coming out and when it’s coming out. Make sure you have positive cash flow at the end of the month. If you do, I recommend a simple 10-10-80 strategy and just as important starting to use the self-lending principle.

We’ve all heard the stories of young entrepreneurs who start a successful business from their parents’ basement. But how do you build a business from inside a van? Mariah Coz knows. She built a seven-figure business in a 35-square-foot van–that’s about the size of a small bathroom!–which she shared with her boyfriend as they traveled across the country. They spent about a year and a half on the road, visiting nearly every state in the continental United States. Among her favorite experiences were hiking in Yosemite, exploring Yellowstone, and seeing the Grand Canyon. Mariah took her expertise of living in her camper and turned into an online course, and began teaching business strategy through her company Femtrepreneur. She teaches others interested in freedom how to build online business and offers six important tips. The tips are: be flexible, pick one day a week and block out five to eight hours for work, figure out what chains have the best Wi-Fi and become a repeat customer, do less with more impact, set realistic expectations and goals, and focus on mobile-friendly marketing. You must be able to systematize your business so it will run with as little involvement from you as possible. The author suggests setting aside a block of time to complete all your tasks for the week which will allow focus and productivity. If you are going to use a business’s Wi-Fi I suggest that you have a good identity theft protection plan in place, because your information is on an open network and can become compromised. “When you have limited time to devote to your business, you have to focus on the high-impact activities and cut out all the rest. That means applying the 80-20 principle–focusing on the 20 percent of activities that bring in 80 percent of your revenue. Focus on just one product, one marketing channel–one thing at a time,” she says. Finally, it’s important to set realistic goals while at the same time making sure that your marketing is convenient for your needs if you are constantly traveling. Mariah believes everyone has unique life experiences and skills that can help people and can be monetized. And the good news is, it doesn’t need to take a lot of time or money to get started. As she puts it, “You can start now with what you have, where you are, no matter what situation you are in!” It’s important to act, and to not waste your days because they are measured. Ask yourself how can I take advantage of my unique gifts and knowledge, how can I reach the world and make it better, and how can I do it just once and have it accessible to the world? If you can figure out how to answer these three questions, then in my opinion you can build a business.
Items in italics are direct quotes from the articles above

If you need are interested in creating a budget, then contact me for a financial checkup in the contact me section. Also, learn more about the self-lending principle in the mustard seed section.

For this week, I’ve included Retrain your Mind from the Be Inspired YouTube channel.

“If you think you know it all, you’re a fool for sure; real survivors learn wisdom from others.” Proverbs 28:26 MSG