Tag Archives: financial advisor

Be Ready When Opportunity Knocks!

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“A friend of mine recently bought a fabulous house in Mandeville at a bargain price. We’ve both been talking for years about home ownership. Unfortunately for me, I was not in a financial position to quickly bid for the house, while my friend was ready with her money.

“It seems that good opportunities always pass me by. I’m convinced that luck is not on my side, and I’m tempted to just give up trying.”

Sometimes it may seem that opportunity and luck favour the few. Is it possible that there is some unwritten universal law that decides whom lady luck will smile upon and fortune will bless?

Definitely not! The reality is that most people who are successful didn’t achieve their objectives by just being lucky. They had to put in many years of persistent, hard work in order to be in a position where they could grab the opportunities as they passed by. It takes a lot of effort to be in the right place at the right time.

Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s said in his autobiography, “I was an overnight success all right, but thirty years is a long, long night.” Continue reading Be Ready When Opportunity Knocks! →

Your Money Personality Pt 2

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“I read your discussion about the money personalities last week, and I realize that I’m very uptight about money. I grew up poor and was always determined to make it big.

“Now I have a high paying job and lots of money in my bank account but I hardly enjoy it. I’m afraid to spend any of it, and my family thinks I’m cheap. I may be rich, but I’m certainly not having fun and I would like some advice on how to change this.”

Last week we looked at five of the nine money personalities described in “Your Money Personality:  What It is and How You Can Profit from it,” by Kathleen Gurney, Ph.D. In this book she explains the connection between your emotions and the way you relate to money.

Why should we care about how we relate to money? As Dr Gurney points out, “the money style you have developed defines the amount of money you are earning now, the amount you save, the pleasure you get in using money, and the success of your investment plan.”

So if you’re not happy with your money situation now, perhaps you need to change your money personality.

Continue reading Your Money Personality Pt 2 →

Time is Money!

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“I’m 39 years old and I’m trying to save up for the deposit on a house. It seems like time is not on my side, because housing costs are rising much faster than I can save. I really regret not listening to my mother when she encouraged me to save when I was younger.

“I feel discouraged because if I had started saving earlier, I probably would have owned my house by now.”

As the popular saying goes, “Time waits for no man.“ Although it’s never too late to start saving towards your goals, you won’t be able to turn back the hands of time to recreate that nest egg that would have grown with an early savings plan.

Time is probably the most important factor in achieving your financial dreams. Small consistent savings earning a steady interest rate over many years has made many persons wealthy. When we waste time by not investing early, we’re actually losing money.

What are some of the factors that may cause us to put off saving, and lose the advantage of time? Continue reading Time is Money! →

Five Steps to Achieving Your Financial Dreams

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“Sometimes I dream about being a financial success -owning my own home and having enough money to buy nice things for my two children. Then I remember my present ‘hand-to-mouth’ existence, and I feel hopeless and depressed. I’m tired of worrying about money! Can you show me how to start turning my dreams into reality?”

We all have dream wish-lists that we like to think about: we hope to one day get rid of our landlords and turn our own keys; we wish that somehow we could be rescued from the jobs we hate; we desire that our children would be able to live better lives than we did.

Why is it that many people never seem to achieve their financial dreams? Sometimes if we dare to speak out about the big things we want out of life, we’re met with the words, “Stop dreaming and get real!” So we accept our present condition as our reality and give up without a fight. Continue reading Five Steps to Achieving Your Financial Dreams →

Planning for Education

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“I have three children ages 4, 8 and 11.  I’m worried that I have not been saving any money towards sending them to university. Right now it’s sometimes hard to find the school fees and money for extra activities, but I don’t want them to have to struggle to afford university.

“What can I do with my limited budget?”

The high cost of raising children is a reality that is never going to get easier. Sometimes it’s not that the money isn’t there to pay the school fees, but that parents didn’t start saving early enough to take care of the costs.

The saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail“ is really applicable in this case. I think that sometimes we look at the word ‘plan‘ as a bad four-letter word. We live from day to day without a clue for the future, hoping that some happy coincidence will provide us with what we need to survive.

It’s one thing to adopt this attitude when we’re only thinking of ourselves, but when children come into the picture, we owe it to them to plan for their future. Continue reading Planning for Education →