By studying positive aspects in one facet of your life, you can learn a lot about what it takes to be successful in other areas. Below is a list of five ways that personal finance is like working out, and by learning to apply these five character traits, you can see growth in both areas.

Attitude

Attitude is one attribute that must be obtained and practiced to be successful with money and with your body. If you feel hopeless and lost, you will shy away from trying new things. It is your attitude towards trying the unknown that will eventually lead you to improve your life.

Before anything else, you have to believe that you can do it, no matter what challenges lie ahead. We’ve all heard stories of people paying off tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and just knowing that it has been done before should give you a positive attitude towards your ability to excel in the same way.

Commitment

Another essential trait for financial and physical success is commitment. Give me any idea and I can work at it for a week. The problem is that becoming healthy and wealthy in life takes more than a week. It’s not just something you do like a homework assignment. It really is a lifestyle change that you have to promise to adopt and commit yourself to living out.

Desire

Desire is similar to your overall attitude but differs in that you can always believe that something is possible, but if you don’t desire it for yourself, you will never put your thoughts to action. Desire can be one of the strongest motivators. You don’t just want to lose 25 pounds or become financially free, you desire it. You can try to put it out of your head, but the desire persists until it is satisfied.

Planning

Planning is where a lot of people struggle in their quest for physical or financial health. They have the right attitude, they are committed, and they have a desire for change, but don’t know what to do next.

Emotions without logic are as useful as nails with a marshmallow hammer. You must sit down and create a plan. This will give you a solid foundation to build from and analyze your progress.

Perseverance

Finally comes perseverance. Like I stated before, the choice to become more financially responsible or physically fit are not one-time, 30-day programs. Although short term, step-by-step guides can be a great starting point, the real change comes with your ability to persevere.

Once you have gained the proper knowledge and established good habits, a new challenge will present itself in that you must consciously work to sustain your new way of life. Over time it becomes easier and more natural, but the struggle (and it is a struggle) to essentially start over in life can be overwhelming.

The Road to Becoming Healthy and Wealthy

I know people who are in the best shape of their life physically, but if you had to rate their financial situation on a scale from “thin” to “fat”, you would give it a “morbidly obese”. On the contrary, a lot of people who spend countless hours perfecting their finances neglect their physical health.

If you are good at physical fitness or personal finance, applying the principals from one to the other can be a great first step towards progress in both.

Have you noticed a connection between your physical and financial situations?

I wanted to take a minute (see I am using my time wisely) and really think about what our goals should be as we learn to make and save money.

Making Money vs. Making Time

Are you making and saving money without a real goal in sight, or are you making and saving money so that you can free up your time?

Making money for the sake of making money puts you in the same position as somebody who is stuck working in a dead end job. If you are working with the single goal of earning more money, then you will never reach your final destination. You can always create more money, but you can’t create more time than what already exists.

If you have what it takes to get there, at a certain point you are no longer obligated to spend your time doing something you don’t enjoy, and this is the dream that most people strive for. What is the point of having nearly unending money if you have no time to enjoy it? Time is far more valuable than money alone.

What Is So Great About Money?

There are a lot of things money can do, including buying happiness. With a limitless supply of money you could:

• Travel to faraway lands
• Build the home of your dreams
• Give your friends and family all the gifts you want
• Support a charity that you believe in

The sad thing is that a lot of people have a lot of money, but more often than not, these people are slaves to that money. Once they stop working, the money stops coming. You don’t want this to happen to you do you?

A New Outlook on Money

I recently tried something that has changed the way I think about work and money. We all have ideas to earn more money, like doing side jobs, starting a business, or creating streams of passive income, but what if you were to spend time thinking of ways to increase your free time rather than increase your wealth?

It is a strange way to think of things, but I assure you, it will bring things to light that you never would have thought of otherwise.

The lifestyle of many people today is that of nonstop action.

Wake up at 7 so you can go to the gym, drive straight to work, spend your lunch hour on the phone trying to take care of your personal business, take your kids to sports practice right after work, go to Bible study, pick up the kids, make dinner, work on your side business for a few of hours, get ready for bed, watch the 11 o’clock news, sleep, rinse, lather, repeat.

This may sound ridiculous but is all too common. What if you were to simply eliminate or reallocate some of that time?

Maybe cut back on going to the gym from 6 days a week to only 3, talk to the parents of your kids soccer team about carpooling to and from practice each week, or even pick up dinner on the way home from work.

By doing just those three things you would be able to save nearly 5 hours a week. If you were to spend that time focusing on earning money through passive income, it would be like having 9 days in a week when compared to your previous schedule.

How many times have you wished for more hours in a day?

I know I talked about making time rather than making money, but the point of freeing up your time now is to be able to make and save money so that you will have complete freedom with your time at a closer point in the future.

Slow and steady is said to win the race, but wouldn’t fast and steady reach the finish line sooner? Work hard now so you can play hard sooner.

There is the danger of burning out by overworking yourself, but by dedicating your free time to your future, you can bring your future closer to the present.

Do you spend a lot of your free time on seemingly worthless things? Couldn’t you be doing more to get ahead of the game?

What ways have you been able to gain more time in order to earn more money?

It really does take a strong person to admit that they have a lot to learn when it comes to money, and sometimes it’s helpful to share criticisms of the way others spend their money because it helps us realize our own downfalls. Below is a short list of some of my biggest pet peeves with money. Be sure to add some of your own in the comments below.

Pet Peeves with Money

These are just a few things that annoy me. Some are more minor than others, but each has it’s own special place in my heart.

1. Upsizing Your Drink When You Are Eating In

A small soda, or pop for the uninitiated, at a fast food restaurant costs about $1. An extra large is usually double that. Almost all restaurants offer free refills on drinks, so why on earth would you even consider buying a extra large drink?

I drink more than most Bactrian camels (and Dromedary ones for that matter), and I still think it’s a waste of money. The average American eats about 20 fast food meals per month. Wouldn’t you rather have the extra $20 to save, pay off some debt, or just go out to the movies?

The only argument I’ve heard that has any ounce (get it? ounce…) of credibility is that people like taking their drinks with them after they leave, but do you really think that after downing three double cheeseburgers, a large fry, and 40 ounces of Dr. Pepper you should be taking another 400 calories to go?

2. Selling Items When You Need Cash And Re-Buying Them Later

I have a friend that used to do this constantly. Years ago, he bought his first Xbox 360. Six months later he decided that he’d rather have the cash to buy a Nintendo Gamecube and a ton of games. A couple of months after that he decided that he wanted the Xbox again. He repeated that process twice.

He has now essentially spent over $900 on a game system that originally cost him $400. Would you pay $40,000 for a Honda Civic? Then why would you pay over 200% of the retail cost for something else?

This friend has since become much more sane, but his financial antics were always amusing and occasionally irritating.

3. Buying Something Nice To Reward Yourself For Saving So Much

You did so well this month by working towards your savings goal and not spending a lot of money that you should get a reward right? Wrong. So you saved $200 extra this month. That’s great news, until you tell me that you celebrated by getting a new cell phone that cost you $400.

Do you not realize what you have done or do you just choose to ignore it? People do this all the time and it’s one of the main causes for getting into debt. They just spend money and never stop. Saving money for one month won’t get you ahead. It’s the longevity of the saving process that makes all the difference.

What Do You Do?

One pet peeve of my own is simply buying things because I can afford it, even though I know I won’t have time for it. I’m already too busy as it is so why would I think I can make time for learning underwater basket weaving? I’m not sure but $500 for an underwater basket weaving kit is a pretty good deal.

When you put it into the perspective of something as stupid as underwater basket weaving, it’s easier to see that you are wasting your time and money when you can be using them for something much more productive.

What things do your friends and family do with their money that you simply cannot comprehend? Do you knowingly waste your own money but can’t understand why?

Leave your story in the comments below or share this article with a money wasting friend.

The real question is whether or not our pretty drastic lifestyle changes made any financial difference. It definitely had an emotional and physical impact (I swear I’m hiring movers next time), but how has it affected our finances?

What We Saved

Below are some of the things we have cut back on in the month of July that have changed our future financial outlook.

1. Pet Care. When we first got our cats, it was cheaper to pay for the yearly plan than it was to pay for a spay and neuter. The year is up and we no longer have to pay monthly for their semi-annual checkups. Since they’re indoor cats, we’ll take the chance and pay for any medical expenses in cash should they arise. – $60/month
2. Mortgage/Rent. We have rented out our house. The difference between our mortgage and our new rent is almost a 50% savings. – $635/month
3. Power and Utilities. Utilities are included in our rent and having a smaller place with lower ceilings comes with a lower power bill. – $150/month.
4. Gas. We are now closer to most of the places we go so we are saving some money on gas every month. – $30/month.

We have a pretty good list of money savers here. In total we have cut back on $875 of monthly expenses, and that will go a long way towards paying off our auto loans and saving for future opportunities.

What We Earned

My stock graphics continue to bring in $100-$200 a month. I didn’t add to them much, but I am fleshing out a couple of other ideas related to graphic design. I will share more information once things are more permanent. To be honest, we were so busy with getting our house rented and starting a couple of new blogs that I wasn’t able to dedicate much time to the growth of our current passive income streams.

1. Renting. Not only are we saving on rent, but we are also make a small amount of profit on the house after all is said and done. It’s really not enough to justify renting the house if you are doing it solely for profit, but the freedom we get from it is well worth it. – $100/month.

In total we have increased our income by $100 a month.

After the changes we made in July, the net change in our monthly income is +$975.

What We Have Done

I also wanted to let everyone know the kinds of things we are able to do with the extra money.

1. I built a new fence on one side of the back yard, and the materials for the other side is paid for and will go up in the next couple of weeks.
2. I installed 3 new bathroom sinks and faucets and installed new shower hardware in our guest bathroom.
3. We whitened the grout in the kitchen, bathrooms, and foyer.
4. We moved! Change is always interesting, especially when your neighbors smell like asparagus and chocolate chip cookies.

There are a few other things I’m probably forgetting, but you get the idea.

What ways have you managed to save or earn more money this month?

Leave your comments or share this article below.

Be sure to check our some of my personal favorites below that were included in the carnival.

The Best Money Blog’s Favorites

• How To Convince Your Spouse You Need A Budget by Neal Frankle @ Wealth Pilgrim
• 10 Tips To Create Wealth. by Bob @ Christian Personal Finance
• These Commercials Are Making Me Batty! by J. Money @ Budgets Are Sexy

Defeat Fear With The Knowledge Of F.E.A.R.

To make it a little easier to work through your apprehensions, I wanted to give you an easy way to remember that you should not fear change.

F: Failure

Failure only teaches you how to succeed.

If your goal involves freedom from owing people money for your car, house, or even old student loans, then you absolutely cannot afford to fear failure. If you live a safe life, you will get safe results. You have to take chances to live an extraordinary life. Notice I said “chances” and not just “chance”.

You are used to a life of habit and routines. Many of the things that you try that have great earning potential will fail. If you were to stop the first time you failed, you would be done trying before dinner time. Knowing that you will sometimes, and maybe even often times, fail before diving into something new will help you see it as a learning experience, rather than a message from God telling you to stop trying.

It may seem unnatural to fail over and over again, but that is because it is something you have learned. If you think about it, our natural instinct is to do whatever it takes to get what we want.

If you were a primitive hunter in a desolate jungle, would you give up the first time you failed to catch an animal for food? Not if you wanted to live. This is the attitude you need to adopt. You must learn to treat other situations in the same way.

You know that you have what it takes to succeed, but you have to be determined to do it. Do not fear failure. Embrace it as a tool to help you succeed in the future.

E: Emotion

This is for all the ladies out there! I’m just kidding. Fear is an emotion, and emotions make us do irrational things.

In the wake of our decision to downsize to save money, there has been some uneasiness both on my part and from my wife.

We are leaving the home (albeit temporarily) that I proposed in, our first house as a married couple, and the place we brought home our two furry babies. Are you crying yet?

I’m not saying that in order to get ahead financially you have to live as a stoic for the rest of your life. You do, however, need to understand your emotions and learn to think logically.

If the purpose of earning and saving money is to live a better life, then you must realize that emotions are temporary. You may have to leave a home with a lot of memories, but you will create new memories wherever you go, and to be honest, wouldn’t you like those memories to be traveling to different countries, spending your days with family and friends rather than working, or laying out by the pool at your dream house? I thought so.

It’s like the delayed gratification, marshmallow experiment. You can have a car, home, and a lot of toys right now, but at what expense? If you can learn to make decisions based on logic rather than emotion to save money now, while finding new ways to earn even more, you will be able to have your ten-tier chocolate cake and eat it too.

A: Apathy

Apathy is one of my biggest pet peeves. I can understand not caring whether you eat beef, chicken, or spicy duck neck for dinner, but how can you not care about how you will be spending your time for the rest of your life?

A lot of the fear you have comes back to apathy. You are understandably scared to try something new, but that fear turns into apathy as you become accustomed to working 8-5, living paycheck to paycheck, and working for the weekend.

You begin to lose hope that your situation will ever change, and you will live an apathetic, unproductive, and unchanging life.

R: Responsibility

The fear of responsibility is an effective subconscious enemy of those with big dreams. You would love to have the freedom and resources to work when you want, travel where you want, and purchase what you want, but you are afraid of how you will deal with it all.

I have friends in their late twenties that still live at home with their parents. Their parents do their laundry, cook their meals, and for all I know still tuck them in and kiss them goodnight. It’s one thing to save money on living expenses, but it’s nothing but fear that keeps them from exploring a life of their own.

There will always be a solution to life’s problems, even if you don’t like what that may be. Do not be afraid of responsibility. It will teach you how to manage your life and utilize the tools around you for your benefit.

Use F.E.A.R. To Make Money

Keep the following four things in mind and you will open new doors to making money.

1. Failure: Do not be afraid to fail. Use your failures as a learning tool to succeed in the future.
2. Emotion: Do not let your emotions control your decisions. Make your choices based on logic and you will have better control over the outcome.
3. Apathy: Care about the things you do in your life, if not for yourself, then for those around you. Your decisions affect your friends and family too.
4. Responsibility: Do not be scared of taking on new things. You will learn and grow in ways you never thought possible.

Has fear stopped you from taking action in the past?

Share your story in the comments or share this article with a fearful friend below.

A couple of days ago I went into some detail as to what we are planning to do with the money we will save. Today I want to try to explain it in a way to will serve as a long term inspiration to anyone, no matter what financial situation you might be in.

Where The Idea Came From

I was reading Frugal Dad’s post on how to insulate kids from financial fears and one of the things he said got me thinking. When talking about encouraging kids to save rather than spend he said:

“Instead of focusing on saving money for emergencies, teach kids to save money for opportunities.”

This is the whole reason I have saved money for years, only I never stopped to put it into perspective like this.

Why do we save money? What is the point of earning money if we just put it all into savings and never see it again?

Let me start off by saying that saving money without a plan and purpose in mind is just as bad as spending it frivolously. Setting goals and saving money for a reason will get you ahead in life, but if you just start hoarding all the extra cash you make, you will die no richer than you are now.

Saving Money For Emergencies vs. Saving Money for Opportunities

A lot of advice you’ll read will tell you to save money for the unexpected. This isn’t bad advice, but if this is where it ends, then you are doing yourself no favors. It is a smart to have an emergency fund for things like, medical bills, problems with your house, or family trouble. Everyone should have some money stashed away for use in situations like this.

The topic that I want to explore further is what saving money for opportunities means.

What Saving For Opportunities Can Mean For You

Imagine you are living life as many people do. You own a house with your spouse and are spending just about 100% of what you make every month. The house two doors down from you goes into foreclosure.  It’s been well taken care of, but the family that lives there could no longer afford to pay the mortgage of $1,500. The house is valued at $200,000 but is about to sell for only $150,000 because the housing market is so bad. Sound familiar?

Whoever buys it will get an interest rate so low that the monthly mortgage payments will only be about $1,000/month. You see a foreclosed house but think nothing of it because you can’t afford to do anything with it anyways. You go about your life doing nothing different.

Now imagine a second scenario in which you have been saving for just this opportunity.

You live in the same house, but you have managed to save $1,500 a month for the past two years, and have been actively seeking a way to use this money as an investment. The foreclosed upon house is going to sell for $150,000, only this time, you have the chance to do something about it.

Being Ready When Opportunity Arises

With $36,000 in the bank, you are now able to seize the moment and make an investment that can potentially make you hundreds of thousands of dollars in just 5-10 years.

After some research, you learn that similar houses in the surrounding area rent for about $1,500/month, about the same as the previous owners mortgage payment. The only difference is that if you could buy that house right now, your monthly payment would only be $1,000, $500 less than the potential rental amount.

The housing market is hurting, and prices are at an extreme low. If history is any indicator, in the next 5-10 years, that same house will be worth almost double its current value

You decide to purchase the house and put $30,000 down to avoid private mortgage insurance costs, while still being able to keep $6,000 for any repairs you might have to do right away. Your mortgage on the rental house is $1,000 a month and you find responsible renters that are willing to pay $1,500 each month.

Over the next 5 years, you earn $30,000 profit from rent alone. Of course, $10,000 of this money goes towards fixing things that have broken over the years, but you came out $20,000 in the black.

It may not seem like 5 years of playing landlord was worth $20,000, but you look at the bigger picture. You look at the housing market as it stands now. That $30,000 you put down on a $150,000 house 5 years ago turns out to be the best decision you could have made. You now owe only $110,000 on the house, which is now worth $350,000. You decide to sell.

You sell the house for market value, and after broker and agent commission and paying off what you still owed on the house, you are left with $220,000 cash. By paying your monthly minimum payments for the past 5 years, you have reduced what you owe on your primary house to only $120,000.

You use the $220,000 from your rental sale to pay off your primary home completely. You now have $100,000 in cash, and no monthly mortgage payment. Not only that, but your primary house is now worth $300,000.

Your net worth is $400,000 and it is all very liquid. Since your old mortgage payment on your first house was $1,400, you could conceivably buy a much newer, larger, and nicer home now and pay a smaller monthly payment than you did before.

You sell your primary house for $300,000. By combining that $280,000 (after commission) with your $100,000 in cash you now have $380,000. You find your dream home for $500,000, and since you have still been saving $1,500 a month for the past 10 years, you can easily afford to pay for it completely in cash. You never thought you could afford to live in a home worth this much.

You put all your money into the purchase of your new home. Many people think you are making a mistake, spending all of your savings on this one possession, but you know better.

You know you could have continued living in your current home, saving thousands of dollars every month. You could have used the 6 digits in your bank account to invest further, growing your wealth exponentially for later in life, but that’s not the road you chose.

You bought the one thing you have worked towards your whole life, your dream home. Not only that, but you own it outright.

Where Is Your Opportunity?

Your opportunity to spend money might be right around the corner. Will you have anything saved when it arrives?

Saving money blindly will not help you achieve your goals. Creating a plan and working towards it over the years will.

The somewhere-in-between part is where saving money for opportunities lies. You may not know what you are going to spend the money on in the future, but by saving money and constantly looking for a place to utilize it, you will be able to take advantage of life changing situations when they finally arrive.

What opportunities have come up that you wish you could have taken advantage of?

Leave your stories in the comments or share this article below.

Be sure to check our some of my personal favorites below that were included in the carnival.

Top 3 Money Articles of the Week

• U.S. Presidents and their Net Worth by J. Money @ Budgets Are Sexy
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We have rented out our house and are downsizing to an apartment! Before any congratulations or bashing begins, read the rest of the article to see our reasoning behind the move.

The Cost Of Owning Our Home

Our current mortgage for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a pool is $1,400, and with all of our other expenses we are only left with about $500 a month to save, spend, or invest. This is even after cutting back on our monthly expenses like cable TV.

Other costs associated with the house include the following:

• Utilities – $55/month
• Electricity – $150-$200/month
• Gas (We live slightly far out) – $250/month
• Lawn Service (I do this myself as of now) – $0/month
• Pool service (Same here) – $0/month
• Maintenance – $100/month

This brings the total cost of owning the house to about $2,000 a month.

Downsizing To Save Money

Here is a breakdown of our living costs at our new 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment:

• Rent – $765/month
• Utilities (Included) – $0/month
• Electricity – $50-$75/month
• Gas (Closer to work, friends, and stores) – $200/month
• Lawn service – $0/month
• Pool service – $0/month
• Maintenance – $0/month

This brings the total cost of renting our apartment to about $1,050.

We are renting the house out for $1,500/month, and the extra $100 will go towards lawn and pool maintenance. We are basically breaking even on the house, but will be able to save an additional $900-$1,000 a month.

This may not seem like a lot to some people, but the beauty of the plan is in the goals we have set. We owe $644/month in auto loans. By putting some of the money we save towards paying off those loans faster, we will be able to eliminate our auto loan debt within a year and be able to save an additional $700 (insurance will be cheaper) a month on top of everything else. Can you imagine what you would do with an extra $2,200/month?

After the auto loans are gone, we have the option to pay off the mortgage at an accelerated rate, or at least enough of it to eliminate the $120/month PMI payment, which would reduce our mortgage to only $1,280/month. We may decide to do that, or we may go another route which would be to save money for a substantial down payment on our dream home.

We have our current house in case we need to move back, and if we manage to save enough money for a new house, we’ll be able to continue renting the first one until housing prices go back up.

The worst that can happen is that renting doesn’t work out and we move back to our first house and continue making our monthly payments until we figure something else out.

The best case scenario would be that we keep our current house, eliminate our debt, and purchase a new home before housing prices go back up. If and when they do, we can sell the first house to completely pay off the new one, or continue renting it until it too is completely paid off.

It isn’t so much about saving the extra money from downsizing, but more about freeing that money up to pursue other avenues. There are plenty of things we can do with the extra cash including:

• Upgrading the house
• Putting it into savings
• Using it to grow our new business
• Investing it

The point is that it opens up many options that were not there before, giving us more freedom to make lifestyle improvements sooner rather than later.

It may seem a little complicated, but we have thought it through, and in our situation we feel that we have all of our bases covered no matter what might happen.

Downsizing isn’t for everybody, but if you are in a place where you can make it work, you can literally save yourself years of earning and saving money.

Have you ever downsized your home or belongings in order to get a head start on the rest of your life?

Leave your stories in the comments below of share this article with others.

Cash Back Credit Cards at Their Finest

My Chase Freedom credit card gives me 5% cash back right now on gas, home improvement, and a few other categories. At work, I do a lot of traveling as well as purchasing of things I can easily find at Home Depot, Lowe’s, OSH, etc. I have always been reimbursed for my expenses, but it finally dawned on me that I can use this to my advantage, and not in an unethical or illegal way.

By simply using my cash back credit card I am basically earning 5% interest on any business expenses within set categories when I front the money myself. A 5% guaranteed return on a one month investment is pretty decent. You say we need some rugs for around the office? No problem boss, I’ll run out and get them right now. Someone needs to pick up some goods from the next town? I can do that no problem.

There’s nothing complicated about it. I’ve received over $250 in checks from Chase alone this year so far, and about half of the spending that lead to my cash back rewards came from buying things at work.

If I were to purchase things for around the house, I would obviously need to buy less, so the earnings wouldn’t be quite as much, but if I were to purchase 50x more for an office of 50 employees, the rewards are much more significant. On top of that, you’ll look good around the office and could quite possibly get some free lunches out of it as well (it has happened to me on many occasions).

Things To Watch Out For With Reimbursements

This method of earning doesn’t make sense in every situation, and I’d venture to say it isn’t very practical in most cases, but if you do the math and want to try it yourself, make sure you think it through from all angles.

1. Gas and mileage. If you are reimbursed for gas then it’s a good idea to take advantage of this, especially since gas is one of the most popular categories for bigger rewards. You do, however, have to make sure you are also reimbursed for mileage. If you drive 50 miles and make 5% cash back on 2 gallons of gas at $3/gallon, you are essentially earning only $0.30. The 2010 standard mileage rate is $0.50/mile, so by driving 50 miles and not getting reimbursed for mileage, you are losing $25. This is hardly a good trade off.
2. Card limits. Make sure that you aren’t over spending on your credit cards. Going over your limit can result in fees that will quickly overwhelm any cash you might have earned.
3. Pay your bills on time. If your work only reimburses you on a monthly basis, and you have to pay back your credit card sooner than that, make sure you have the cash to do it. You don’t want to pay interest on what you owe because it will easily outweigh any benefits you might see from your rewards progam.

What To Do With Your Cash Back

This is up to you, but the best thing you can do is to have a plan before you begin earning so you aren’t tempted to spend it frivolously as extra money. You may not think this will amount to much, but if you can earn 5% on certain purchases, it will add up more quickly than you think, especially if you have high limits and can make a lot of purchases.

Do you have any other clever ways of utilizing cash back credit cards?

Leave your thoughts or share this article below.