Friday October 24, 1014

I enjoyed the reading on Personal finance: Introduction and another perspective.  I think this would be excellent for my kids to go through. They owe me rent money. It would be worth it for me to take off rent money in exchange for them reading and doing exercises with this program.  Their budgeting skills really lack. It mostly comes down to commitment and achieve. They are not willing to sacrifice yet.

I loved this:

1. Personal finance can help bring us to Christ

2. Personal finance can help us accomplish our divine mission

3. Personal finance can help us return with our families back to Heavenly Father's presence

4. Personal finance can help us become wiser stewards.

Five Step Process

I especially enjoyed learning about the five-step process of decide, educate, commit, believe, and achieve.

I had never thought of it that way but when I look back in our lives and our travels financial I can see how each step fits in.

Decide – First, you must decide the ‘why’ behind why you are doing this.  One of our personal reasons for why was we grew up hearing that there would be no social security for us.  My husband is 61 and we can see there will be.  But in our 20’s we really thought there would not be.  We made a conscious effort to save any amount we could in retirement savings plans. Because of that we made decisions such as no cable TV and taking that money and putting it into the retirement plans.  Another why is we wanted to go on a couple mission. We knew it would be expensive because you have living expenses where you are at and living expenses back home.  As we had those two goals in mind it helped us to be OK with budgeting and sometimes doing without something fun because we had a goal in mind.

Educate – Our years have come with a lot of learning.  Some via books and some via hard knocks. When I married I knew almost nothing about stocks and bonds. I read and read and read so I could make wise decisions in investing our long term savings.

Commit – We have always made monthly goals and yearly goals and long term goals for retirement. With these goals in mind it has made it easier BUT in the end it just takes controlling yourself. When we would get a little out of control we would go to the envelope method.  The amount of cash meant for groceries was put in an envelope and when it was empty there were no more groceries.  Without a commitment to keep my financial goals I could not have done that.  I have a married set of kids, they cannot stick to their goals.  They have no will power. They get no where in life.  The say one day, ok we are not eating out any more because we need to save the money, but then a few hours later, they eat out and they have their long list of excuses.  They make their goals, but then they do not commit hard enough to reach those goals.

Believe – I have vision. My husband does not. I could see we would be fine in our retirement years. It has thought for years we would not.  The other day he did a spread sheet of our ira’s, social security etc.  (He is CPA). He came home all excited and surprised.  We are going to be sitting just fine.  Vision helps you to keep your goals.

Achieve – We must work to achieve the goals.  Well, I think back at my young married kids. They just don’t work at achieving their goals. Oh, my daughter will make some cook fancy colored something to hang on the wall with their goals and an hour later they are already not achieving them because they have a hard time sacrificing.


Top ten myths came out of “So you Want to be an Entrepreneur?” by Joh Gillespie-Brown

1.     Entrepreneurs are born, not made

2.     Entrepreneurs are well educated, rich and young

3.     Entrepreneurs are big gamblers

4.     Entrepreneurs are loners and cannot work with others

5.     Entrepreneurs only care about money

6.     Most successful entrepreneurs start their companies with a break through invention or technology

7.     Fail at your first business and you will never get a second chance.

8.     They couldn’t get a good job so they work for themselves

9.     Entrepreneurs have to sail very close to the wind to succeed.

10.  You will have no life as an entrepreneur

What makes an entrepreneur?

1.     They want to exploit a perceived business opportunity (opportunity entrepreneurs)

2.     They are pushed into entrepreneurship because all other options for work are either absent or unsatisfactory. (necessity entrepreneurs)