Dare to Change Life Coaching & Mentoring

Tag: finance tools

7 Steps to Regain Control Over Your Money: Step #5 – Pay Yourself First

In step #4 we talked about tracking your money, remember?

If you don’t know where your money goes, if you don’t have ANY mechanism (call it budget, call it a money tracker, call it whatever) – you don’t have control over your money. Money controls you!

You may feel that you have to make more and more money to live.

Yes?

What if you could spend less so you won’t need to work more to make more?

And if you feel that you’ve already trimmed your budget to the bare minimum, then it’s possible that it’s time to look for an additional source of income.

Ok, that was a quick reminder of key #4 – Track Your Money

Now the next, step #5, is to Pay Yourself First.

There’re THREE Aspects in this step:

1. Pay Yourself First

So, once you figure out how you can better control your optional spending, your unnecessary expenses (your “wants”), the next important money habit to develop is to pay yourself before you pay anyone else!

For many people, a good way to start saving regularly is to have a small amount transferred automatically from paycheck to a savings account.

In other words, have some savings automatically set aside!

If you don’t see it, you don’t miss it.

How much can you set aside?

The common suggestion is between 5 and 10 percent of your gross annual income.

Of course, this can be much harder than it sounds.

So, if you’re currently living paycheck to paycheck without clear opportunity to increase your income in the near future, begin by paying yourself with WHAT YOU CAN now. It could be one percent of your income, or $20, $50, $100.

ANYTHING is better than nothing. Train yourself to allocate consistent contributions toward your savings. That’s the goal here.

The next question: what is the purpose of these savings?

Here are a couple of suggestions:

2. Maintain an Emergency or “Peace of Mind Fund”

Before you commit your newfound savings to ANY investments (ALL investments involve risk), make sure you have at least three to six months’ worth of your lifestyle expenses saved in an emergency (aka peace of mind) fund.

Life happens to all of us; cars need repairs, houses need maintenance, medical emergencies, or other unforeseen circumstances.

Keeping your emergency fund liquid will ensure that you don’t have to panic and sell your investments when their prices are down, and guarantees that you can always get to your money quickly.

If you have trouble deciding how much you need to keep on hand, begin by considering the standard expenses you have in a month.

If you have dependents (e.g. kids, parents, etc.), you’ll want to keep more money in your emergency fund to offset the greater risk.

Once you fill your emergency fund, you can redirect money to your investments.

3. Give yourself an allowance

Here’s the fun part. Once you get to the point that your basic expenses and savings needs are met, you can decide how much money you want to spend guilt-free on anything you want (like shopping, eating out or entertainment).

You and your spouse can have that amount in cash each month but when the money runs out, it’s gone until the following month.

Anything you don’t spend can be carried over.

This may add some fun and money flexibility into your relationship because neither of you can question how the other spends their allowance.

Leave a comment and let me know what resonated with you and what you want to implement into your life right away.

To your Health, Wealth, and Freedom!

For more resources on various financial topics, check this page on my website:

WORK WITH MILLEN

For additional real-time support, join my private Facebook group:

WEALTH BUILDING FOR POWERFUL WOMEN

Free Resources:

DOWNLOAD MY FREE WEAL TH PLANNER

February 14, 2019
7 Keys to Regain Control Over Your Money: Step #4 – Track your money and identify money leaks in your cash flow

Do you sometimes feel like you’re living paycheck to paycheck and don’t know where your money went by the end of the month? You work really hard to make money but then spend most of it on just…living your life?

Regardless of how high your income is, what really matters is how much you make relative to how much you spend.

In other words, pay attention to how much money you keep every month.

If you’re earning $3k and spending $2k a month, you’d probably be less stressed out about your finances than if you’re making $8k but spending $9k a month.

I recently spoke with a professional single-mom in this situation. She works multiple jobs and takes home about $5,400 per month, which is well above the median household income.

Yet, she spends about $6k a month.

This is leaving her with no savings and a growing mountain of credit card debt.

Since she’s struggling to pay her bills and have been late with payments, she has seen the interest rates on the credit card debt jump to as high as 29%. Even worse, the financial stress has put a strain on health. She started experiencing migraines, anxiety and insomnia.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone.

Many people who have seemingly good income suffer from lack of “intentional money management”. Yes, situations like an unexpected job loss, medical bills or other financial emergencies happen.

But for the most part, it’s how you manage your cash flow – incoming and out-coming – that will make a difference in your financial life.

Here are some simple suggestions to help you track your money so that you get back control over your finances:

1. Evaluate Your Income. How much money do you have coming in?

It may seem like obvious knowledge yet it’s not the case for many people.

You may have several sources of income – from part-time jobs, freelancing, your mate’s income, annuities’ payments, etc.

So, get really clear what you total monthly income is. Using one centralized account for your in-coming cash flow could be helpful.

Then you can decide how much money you want to keep every month (aka “pay yourself first.”)

The difference is what you can now allocate to various lifestyle expenses.

2. Figure out where your money is currently going.

You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

Take a look at the last 3 months of your bank and credit card statements and categorize each of your expenses in a spreadsheet (you can create your own or find money tracking spreadsheets online).

That will cover everything purchased by automatic withdrawal, checks, debit or credit cards.

While you can’t see what you bought in cash, you can at least see how much cash you withdrew.

By looking at 3 months’ spending, you can get an average of monthly variable expenses like transportation/gas, groceries, and entertainment that aren’t always the same every month and monthly fixed expenses like utilities (electricity, water, internet, etc.), rent/mortgage, medical insurance premium, gym membership, etc.

You’ll also capture quarterly or annual expenses like some property taxes, home insurance, personal tax returns, etc.

However, that still leaves some spending that may happen once or twice a year like a summer vacation or holiday gifts.

You can divide what you spend on those annual expenses by 12 to convert them into a monthly amount.

For example, if you tend to spend about $4,800 a year on a family vacation, you would say that you spend $400 a month on vacations.

There are sites like mint.com and yodlee.com that can help you to continue tracking your spending online for free.

This is especially useful if you have lots of different accounts since they consolidate everything on one site. You can even get set up to be alerted by email or text message if you start spending more than you budgeted for in any particular category.

3. Find where you can cut back.

Start with your fixed expenses and think about how you might be able to spend less on each one.

Shop around for lower cost insurance, cable, internet, and/or phone service.

Are you paying for insurance coverage, services, memberships, or subscriptions you don’t really need?

Can you be more efficient with your energy and water use to cut down on utility bills?

Have you taken advantage of coupons or warehouse clubs for groceries?

Can you refinance or negotiate down the interest rates on your debt?

And if you really need additional money, you might even want to consider working a part-time job, moving into a lower rent apartment, getting a roommate, or renting a room in your home.

Always be mindful of where you can cut your unnecessary expenses if you want to save more.

To Your Health, Wealth and freedom!

For more resources on various financial topics, check this page on my website:

WORK WITH MILLEN

For additional real-time support, join my private Facebook group:

WEALTH BUILDING FOR POWERFUL WOMEN

Free Resources:

DOWNLOAD MY FREE WEAL TH PLANNER

P.S. If you like to see a big picture for your financial life and want to start upgrading it beyond “survival”, you would enjoy and benefit from my new Wealth Planner Companion Training.

It’s a step-by-step, easy to follow online program and will only take you 30 mins at most to watch each of the 6 training videos! You’ll get lifetime access to the videos, audios and transcripts for this program. And I made it a complete “no-brainer” for you at only $48! Your return on this investment could be at least 100X of this amount or as high as you allow it to be!

February 9, 2019
Essential #7 for Creating Wealth and Success
Do you remember that in Essential #4 for creating Wealth and Success, I talked about the importance of feeling rich and living wealthy regardless of your current financial situation?

To feel rich and live wealthy, in addition to everything else that I shared with you earlier, you’ve got to take on the identity of a rich person! Start with thinking like a rich person and normalizing your new, wealthy reality and focus on experiences that confirm (to your own logical mind) that you already have wealth.

Make feeling wealthy your new NORMAL.

I encourage you to practice the following:
1. Develop Confident Decisiveness – train yourself to take bold decisive actions and be responsible for the outcome.
2. Be willing to take risk (calculated risk).
3. Don’t be afraid of failures – see them as Valuable Growth Lessons. “Failures” are the bricks to your road to success. Many people “failed” their way to riches.
4. Play to WIN, NOT not to lose (and be willing to leave the Good to welcome the Great).
Fortune favors the bold.

So, the Essential # 7 for Creating Wealth and Success is:

Be Willing to Take Risk.

You’ve got to be in a game and be OK with losing in order to learn and grow.Yes, you’ve got to PRACTICE taking decisive actions and be willing to take risk.

Not ‘gambling’ type of risk! Mindful risk.

And often this entails to be willing to leave the Good to welcome the Great.

Here’re some examples from my own life when I did exactly that:
- Invested in the stock market to raise money for the down-payment on our first house
- Left my marriage… left everything behind – the gorgeous house, the comfort of 2 incomes…and re-starting my NEW LIFE in a tiny apartment near my job.
- Left my well-paid and prestigious Wall Street career and went back to the Business School in my mid 40’s, then started my own investment company
- Started my wealth mentoring business, put myself out there to support other women on the journey to wealth and freedom. My remarkable life didn’t happen overnight. My CHOICES shaped me and my life’s trajectory.
And a few of these choices were risky. I was (for the most part) playing to WIN, NOT not to lose. I was scared… often.

Yet I was willing (and it was REALLY scary) to Leave the Good in order to Welcome the Great.

Obviously, different people have different tolerance for risk. Be aware of your risk tolerance, respect it yet see if you can stretch it a bit…and a bit more…and more.

Fortune favors the bold.

The suggestions offered here may feel like scary or crazy… Keep practicing them anyway.

Things will start shifting… your feelings will change, your energy will change….
You will start creating and experiencing forward-moving momentum.

Synchronizations and serendipitous experiences will be happening, you will start attracting good opportunities instead of repelling them.

Risk is embedded in any business or investing decisions.

Nothing is guaranteed in life (except taxes and death.)

BUT it doesn’t mean that you should stay away from any endeavors that involve risk, not at all!

Instead, you’ve got to:
- Become aware of your particular risk tolerance and;
- Take decisions that involve measured/mindful risk so that your possibility for success exceeds the possibility of loss
- Your loss will not put you into despair and make you lose sleep
- Develop courage and Be Willing to Leave the Good to Welcome the Great.
Comment below and tell me how this Essential #7 lands on you…. What resonated? What did not?

To your health wealth & Happiness

P.S. If you want to be part of a supportive community of the like-minded women, join us FREE here >>> Wealth Building for Powerful Women Community
November 2, 2018
How to Become Financially Independent: 4 Essentials of the Wealth Pathway
“How did you become financially independent?”

“How much money you had when you started?”

“How much time did it take you to build the income needed for being financially free?”

“How can I become financially free?”

These are good questions that I hear from people who know me enough to ask them.

And I totally understand the desire to know HOW… While money is not everything and it cannot buy you happiness, it helps to enjoy life, right? LOL

In this articles I want to cover the HOW questions. But first, let ME ask you a few questions…

…do you feel like you have to work hard for your money for the rest of your life?

…do you worry that you don’t do enough for your financial future?

…does the idea of becoming financially Independent seem like farfetched to you?

If you’ve answered YES to ANY of my questions – keep reading. Otherwise, stop and go for a walk, or make love, or dance, or whatever. LOL

Are you still here? Then let’s dive into the 4 Essentials of the Pathway to Wealth.

If you’ve read my books, or heard me speaking and teaching, you know that I always emphasize the Duality of Money and Wealth.

Since EVERYTHING IS ENERGY, so IS MONEY.

Money and Wealth have a certain energy vibration Frequency that YOU CAN ALIGN WITH.

When it happens, you FEEL BLISSFUL and BLESSED, PEACEFUL and LOVED. NATURALLY.

And you can literally rewire your brain to align with the frequency of wealth by training yourself using particular rituals and developing certain habits and attitudes. You can find this information in a few other articles here and here.

However, the information is not enough. You’ve got to apply it.

You’ve got to TRAIN YOUR MIND to ALLOW, to RECEIVE with EASE, to BE in the Frequency of Wealth naturally and continuously.

YES, your energy ALIGNMENT is super important. However, we also live in a physical, real world. And in the real world, you’ve got to know the tactical/practical aspects of creating wealth.

Just like when you travel and want to get from point A to point B, you likely want to have a map to your destination (or use your GPS), unless you know the terrain already. Would you agree?

I distilled the intricacies of the PATHWAY to WEALTH into 4 essential elements. Let’s briefly go over them.

4 Essentials of the Wealth Pathway
1. MAKE MONEY. You’ve got to offer VALUE. You’ve got to GIVE in order to GAIN. Your own alignment with higher energy vibration is very important here because it helps you become magnetic to your clients, prospective clients, hiring managers, etc.
Sources of income could be:
- Job
- Business
- Other sources of income
1. KEEP MONEY. You’ve got to control your in-coming and out-coming cash flow and keep some of your money so you can grow it. You have at least 3 levers to control your cash flow:
- Income
- Budget (or a certain pattern of Spending);
- Debt
1. GROW MONEY. Develop a strategic plan for growing your money. You can use LEVERAGE to grow your money by:
- Investing in the Stock Market
- Investing in Real Estate
- Investing in Private businesses
- Buying a franchise business
- Building your own business
- Other
1. MAKE MONEY WORK FOR YOU. You can design your Financial Independence by having multiple sources of passive income. That’s the financial setup when your money starts working for you. It’s not a question of IF but rather WHEN if you incorporate all the other essential elements.
ALL 4 essentials of the Wealth Pathway are very intertwine. You’ve got to attend to all of them in order to experience true Financial Freedom.

I hope that this simplified breakdown of the essential elements helps you see more clear how YOU too can get to Wealth and Financial Independence.

However, there is a catch here.

EVERYBODY WANTS TO HAVE WEALTH and FREEDOM BUT FEW ARE WILLING TO TRAIN TO HAVE IT.

If YOU are one of those few, let me share with you a MAP of TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES that cover one or several Wealth Pathway essentials.

These trainings are the VEHICLES designed to help you get to your desired destination faster and easier, with less setbacks and detours, and more fun.
1. VEHICLE 1: ACTIVATE EFFORTLESS WEALTH – 10-week online group mentoring program: you’ll to train your mind to ALLOW Wealth and to RECEIVE it with ease; you’ll change your relationship with money once and for all and you’ll release and heal old money (energy) blocks. This programs is valuable for your ESSENTIAL #1 – MAKE MONEY.
1. VEHICLE 2: YOUR POWER TO PROSPER – 3-day PRIVATE LIVE event: You’ll learn and practice the elements of the energetic framework for CREATING WEALTH. The private setting and a sanctuary environment is perfect for practicing Alignment and activating your inner Power to Prosper. This training is valuable for your ESSENTIAL #1 – MAKE MONEY.
1. VEHICLE 3: LASTING WEALTH ACADEMY – 4-month Wealth Building personal group mentoring training: You’ll uplevel your Wealth Mindset alignment, learn and practice Intentional Money Management (and calculate your Financial Freedom Number), then learn and apply strategic investing guidelines (e.g. the stock market and real estate investing), then…. Well, there is much more there. This program is valuable for your ESSENTIALS #2, #3, and #4.
So, now you’ve got the PATHWAY, the MAP and the VEHICLES to get to your desired DREAM LIFE and FREEDOM faster and easier.

And since YOU ARE the CEO of your life, you’ve got to DECIDE what is REALLY important to you and what is your COST OF WAITING to start your journey to FREEDOM and WEALTH.

To your Health, Wealth and Freedom!

Millen

P.S. This is the stuff I wish I had when I first started on my journey to Wealth and Freedom. Now I’m offering it to you. Frankly, I don’f know if it’s valuable to you or not… there are a lot of variables here. However, if you’re truly ready to step out of your old story and are committed to your goals – I am open to have a CONVERSATION and see if there is a fit.

Here’s the video I recorded about the 4 Essentials of the Wealth Pathway
July 18, 2018
8 Online Tools to Help Manage Your Business Finances

Managing your business finances is a lot easier today than it was prior to the proliferation of online, cloud-based software solutions that can do everything from automatically posting transactions to figuring your quarterly taxes. There is a lot to choose from when it comes to online tools, with more appearing every day. Here are a few stand-outs.

1. GoDaddy Bookkeeping – If you’re not sure about double entry bookkeeping and you have a very small business without any employees and hire only contractors, GoDaddy Bookkeeping may be the answer. You can sync it with your PayPal account, bank account, and/or FreshBooks account to help accomplish a lot of data entry tasks, automatically cutting your time spent on the books down to a bare minimum.

Link:
GoDaddy Bookkeeping – https://bookkeeping.godaddy.com/
FreshBooks – http://www.freshbooks.com/

2. PayPal.com – Anyone who wants to do business online these days needs to accept PayPal. It’s a great way to accept credit cards without having to go through the hassle of getting a merchant account along with the associated fees. In fact, most people who have merchant accounts typically end up with PayPal accounts anyway.

Paypal: https://www.paypal.com

3. Wave Accounting – This is a full-featured online accounting software that does invoicing, accounting and payroll. You can even manage your receipts using Wave by scanning and uploading them to their system to keep track of them. You can email receipts, upload them via the web, and take pictures of them with your mobile device to upload them. No need to hang on to paper receipts any longer, and that’s just one of the great things about Wave.

Link:
Wave Accounting – http://www.waveapps.com/

4. QuickBooks Online – A favorite of accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers, QuickBooks Online is what everyone else aspires to be. It’s serious accounting software with all the features you’d expect at a surprisingly affordable cost. You can start using QuickBooks Online for less than $15.00 a month and build on from there, depending on the features you need adding and subtracting as your business grows and/or contracts. With QuickBooks Online you do not need any other software to do invoicing, bookkeeping, 1099s, payroll, bill payment, and so forth.

Link:
QuickBooks Online – http://quickbooks.intuit.com/

5. inDinero – This software seeks to be a one-off solution for everything a business owner needs to manage their finances. They help take care of all your accounting needs, including filing your tax returns. The software can help you take care of simple bookkeeping and accounting tasks as well as payroll, 1099s, payroll, bill payments, and more. InDinero can grow with your business so you only pay for what you need.

Link:
inDinero – https://indinero.com/

6. BudgetTracker – From time sheets and invoices to inventory, BudgetTracker is a full-featured online piece of software that you can use for tracking spending, organizing your life and even forecasting your income. You have access to graphs and charts, and creative features you may never have considered, with the ability to track anything you’re doing. The business version is inexpensive, and has many features that other online software doesn’t offer, such as a full-featured client relationship management tool.

Link:
BudgetTracker – https://secure.budgettracker.com/info_biz.php

7. FreshBooks – This is really time-tracking, invoicing, project management and billing software more than accounting software, and FreshBooks is easy to use. You can send invoices by email to their FreshBooks account, or via mail. They keep your data in the cloud, so you won’t lose track of any of your client’s information or time that you’ve worked. You can also use your mobile device to update any invoice, time worked on any account, and even add expenses.

Link:
FreshBooks – http://www.freshbooks.com/tour.php

8. iBillTo – This app is available in the App Store at iTunes and is a way to keep track of your clients, billing rates, hours worked on specific projects and expenses. This app is currently only for iPhone and iPod Touch. All the information you input is saved online “in the cloud” so that you don’t have to worry about syncing and other problems with some online systems that use space on your desktop.

Link:
iBillTo – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibillto/id322332930?mt=8

Finding online tools to help you manage your finances is not hard to do. Deciding which one is right for you will depend entirely on your needs. But these eight tools should give you a good place to start looking.

To your Health, Wealth and Freedom!

Millen Livis

November 29, 2017