Thefuturemindset, Author at The Future Mindset

Today I’m going to write about what’s better, budgeting, or creating a millionaire money blueprint.

How does it make you feel when you have to budget? How does it feel to plan a millionaire blueprint? From my experience not many people like budgeting as it makes them feel limited. There have been studies done by Gallop who found two-thirds of Americans don’t even create one. (maybe that’s a reason why there’s so much debt in America.) There’s a Forbes post who state that budgeting doesn’t work.

Budgeting does work logically but humans are not always logical and emotional feelings get in the way of budgeting, dieting and new years resolution that fall away hours, days and weeks later. The reason why this happens is our approach and the words we use. This makes us dread the day we have to do it. But if you tell a person who wants to lose weight what they have to do instead of what they can’t do their mental approach towards burning calories changes.

This is the same for budgeting. For example, a couple wants to buy their dream home via mortgage but they need to raise x amount first. If you told them you have to budget for the next 5 years., how would that make you feel? Compared to if you said this is x amount you need save each month to be on track.

For me, one makes me feel I have to give up stuff to reach my dream and the latter makes you feel like what do I have to do to reach my goal. Instead of feeling down and a burden to save, you can feel uplifted and maybe find a way to speed up the process.

There are two different feelings towards it. That’s why the word budget has to go away when we set our self goals to save and increase our income. So I have personally changed the word budget to my Millionaire Money Blueprint.

Below are my strategies that helped me change my mentality towards increasing my savings. So you can decide whether Budgeting Or A having Millionaire Money Blueprint is beneficial.

Review Your Numbers Monthly

Reviewing your in-going and outgoings is super important for financial growth. When I was trying to grow my savings I was wondering why it wasn’t growing very fast. I was making good money at the time. Then I looked at my outgoings and I found so much money was being spent on eating out and many impulse buys. This was a shock at the time, as I never noticed the effect of my spending habits was having on my savings. From there I created a financial plan where I can track my money each month, i saw i was spending a lot on restaurants each week. I then asked myself the question, is this helping me or stopping me from achieving my saving goals.

This helped so much and from there the savings started to rise at a faster rate. So make sure you’re reviewing your numbers each month to further develop your millionaire money blueprint.

Enjoy The Process

When it comes to talking about money. Based on their past experiences people can become very defensive of the mention of budgeting or any speak of finances. 50 per cent of UK adults believe that talking about personal money matters is taboo – higher than sex (42 per cent), religion (26 per cent) or politics (14 per cent).

What you have to realise is, that your finances are not your enemy. Your enemy is your lack of understanding or when you put off looking at your bank statement. When you make money work for you and not the other way around – that’s when you can start enjoying the process of making, saving and investing your money. For me, one of the main aspects of a Millionaire Money Blue Print is to make money my best friend and put it work in the right areas.

Have A Clear Goal

When dealing with your finances it’s important to have a clear goal of what you want to invest in or save for. Without this, your spending habits will be wild and the hard work you put in to making it will be spent. This was me during university and a year into my first job. Money never stayed with me or worked for me, it was just spent. That’s when I decided I want to be a Millionaire. When I made this decision I decided to pick away the things I didn’t need and started increasing what I did need to help me with my goal. Of course, you need to have some fun in your life. Now instead of spending wastefully, I spend it on amazing moments, that create a lasting memory, not a fleeting one.

The main goal should be to make a clear goal on how much you want to earn. An amount you can say I’m happy with that. Then set a date and go for it.

Educate And Develop

For you to make sure you’re increasing your wealth you have to educate and develop yourself on everything to do with finances. I knew nothing about investing. So I read The Intelligent Investor, I read blogs about it and listened to Warren Buffet. Since then I now have an index fund with Vanguard. Now it’s making my money work for me. I didn’t know how to do a finance reports, so I researched it and found out how to do it myself.

My finances wouldn’t be what they are today if I didn’t educate myself. This is the same for anything you want to get better at in life. Finances are no exception. It’s not scary or something only smart people know. It’s very simple, you just have to find the right people who explain it the right way and you will be flying in developing your Millionaire Money Blueprint.

Final Thoughts

Well, I hope this helps you to understand that dealing with your finances shouldn’t have to be an ordeal. I hope you can develop your own clear goal and understanding of how to get there. To achieve your desires. I would love to know your feedback on this and what your money blueprint is.

So, are you budgeting or creating a millionaire money blueprint?

This shows if you grow your money, it can grow into something beautiful.

Why am I in debt? How come I have no money left? Why is this getting worse the more money I make?

After years of being in debt in my early 20’s, these are some of the questions I asked myself. Once i came to my senses, I quickly found out the reasons why this was happening and quickly got to work to turn myself around. So below I have comprised 5 reasons why i was in debt and show you some of the answers I found for myself. The first stage to getting out of debt is knowing why you are there in the first place.

showing education is important for finances.

Did I Have A Poor Financial Education?

Growing up was pretty straight forward in my household. Get good grades at school, go on to university and get a good job. But during that time, no-one from my parents to teachers did they ever talk to me about finances. Isn’t that crazy? 21 years of my life and no talk of credit cards, overdrafts, fixed savings accounts, stocks, index funds. Now, you can play the blame game but did they even know any of this stuff themselves? I very much doubt it. So this is the first step to realising that it’s not your fault. It is now though after, reading this to not find out for yourself.

showing a group of people discussing different topics.

Is It Who I Hang Around With?

The quickest way to lose your money is hanging around with people who earn more money than you. You then feel you have to compete with their standards of spending. This is what I call ego spending. I did this for over a year and I was wondering why I have no money saved? Why am I getting overdraft charges again?

The reason is, I’m buying cocktails (mojito) and beers most nights, fancy dinners, takeaways and catching Uber’s everywhere. Then there’s the trips around the UK and abroad and a PRET or Starbucks every morning. Now all this stuff is great but if at the end of the month you’re in debt because of it – is it worth it? The answer is NO, NO, NO! This is not financially smart and not a Future Mindset.

expensive tastes explained through expensive champagne.

Is It My Expensive Tastes?

The rich and famous have all the nice stuff from cars to houses. I think there is something in all of us that wants a bit of that. This is normal and fine. What’s not fine is taking out a flashy car on finance that puts you more into debt. Buying the £200 suit that puts you into more debt. Buying presents for everyone that puts you into more debt. These are all cool things to do and buy, but it’s not worth you putting yourself into DEBT because of it – as these feelings are fleeting where being out of control with your finances is a lasting pain.

Do I Spend More Than I Earn?

This is the most black and white of them all. For example, If you earn £3000 a month and then you end up spending £3001 a month you have now made a loss. I was this person for a while. I had high expenses and the money i had left over was being spent on meals out, travelling, and anything else i could spend it on. It didn’t matter how hard i worked that month, the numbers didn’t care. That’s why it’s so important after your break-even you are being smart with your money, either investing to make more or saving for something of value. Isn’t that the whole reason most people work in the first place? To make money? No one is out there trying to make less money and go into debt.

Have I Ever Done A Money Report?

When you don’t check on your finances it’s always destined to go badly. Just like a relationship, when you never talk to each other it’s destined for failure. However, when you do talk, you find all your answers to fix your problems. (That’s why i asked myself 5 reasons why i’m in debt.)

i found my answers by checking my in-goings and outgoings. In-goings was for my age at a really good pay but my outgoings were atrocious. On there were phone bills over £100 because I was on the wrong plan. There were electric bills sky-high because I was on a standard tariff and over £400 of take-outs for the month. This was a defining factor of why debt was creeping up on me and getting out of control. If you’re not reviewing your cash flow its destined to go out of control.

Conclusion

When people think finances, they think complicated. I’m not smart enough, it’s too hard etc, but this is far from the truth. It’s mainly a lack of understanding and lack of pressure you’re willing to put on the issue to make the change. We all have a threshold of when we can take no more. Mine was being over £6000 in debt and feeling miserable for it. This is how i came up with the 5 questions of the reasons why i’m in debt.

So the question is, have you had enough of debt controlling your daily life? Do you want to be in control of your finances? Well, the first thing to do is admit that you have a problem and are ready to find the solution. If you wish to do that. Then stay with Future Mindset as we are here to guide you to a better future. A future that you’re in control of. By knowing the reasons why you’re in debt is the first step to get out of debt. These are my top 5 tips, what’s yours?