Part 10: Aim for Financial Excellence

February 6, 2019February 4, 2019 ~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment

Get your FREE sample of the 100 Steps to Financial Independence Book here

If you’ve read and implemented all of the previous 9 Parts to Financial Independence: first of all WELL DONE and congratulations on making it this far! If you have stuck with me on this journey, it shows you’ve got the right motivation and determination to achieve your financial dreams! If you’ve still got a few parts pending, or have skipped some, go back and revisit them over the next few days and don’t miss the opportunity to start your journey to become financially independent!

In this very last part of the 10 Parts to Financial Independence, we’re going to round off with some pro-tips to take your Financial Independence to the next level, by making sure you keep your mission to become financially independent at the forefront of your planning for the next year.

Part 10: Aim for Financial Excellence

As said above, if you’ve gone through and have implemented all of the previous 9 parts, you’ve already beaten the odds and shown real determination. The difficult question is: how are you going to keep that up over the next weeks, months, indeed years in order to keep building your wealth, creating more financial stability and becoming financially independent?

Firstly, consider getting a coach or mentor: somebody who can inspire and motivate you and keeps you committed to your goal. A coach can push you to stay accountable, share their experience, help you with specific goal setting and give you feedback on your journey, progress and targets. A good coach might cost a bit of money but they can offer you a lot more in return long-term.

Another way to keep working on your personal finance skills is to make it ta habit to play the “What If…” game, so you keep reminding yourself of the importance of improving your financial situation. In the “What If” game you ask yourself how you would financially be able to deal with some specific adverse scenarios: What if your income suddenly went down by 50%? What if you lost your job next month? What if you lost all of your savings? What if your partner couldn’t work anymore? It pushes you to have an emergency plan available and to build up savings and other income streams.

Lastly I’d like to advocate for two ways to spread the love and involve others to help them benefit from your increased financial awareness and financial situation. Firstly, if you have any children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews, consider passing on your knowledge in an age-appropriate way to them. I am sure there have been moments when you thought: “If only I had known about this when I was younger!”. Maybe nobody taught you, but you can still teach others and help them become more financially literate from a young age. This can be through games, stories, at-home-savings plans and many other ways!

Secondly, if you’re not already, start supporting a charity. Find one today that does work that you believe in and would like to support, be that in the field of health and health care, animal welfare and conservation, human and civil rights, environmental initiatives, arts and culture or social and community projects. You can make contributions from as little as $10 a year. That might not sound like a lot to you, but if that’s all you can miss at this moment, it is a lot more than nothing. With time when your finances improve, make it a habit to also increase your contributions. Even if you start small, you’ll end up making bigger contribution over time.

Make some time available today to sit down and implement the above suggestions, to ensure you stay on track on your journey to financial independence!

The above is an adaptation of part 10 of the 10 parts in the guidebook to Financial Independence: 100 Steps to Financial Independence: The Definitive Roadmap to Achieving Your Financial Dreams where you can find more details as well as action plans and guidelines to each of the 10 parts. Available in both ebook and paperback format!

Get your FREE sample of the 100 Steps to Financial Independence Book here

Day 31 / 31 Set Goals and Visualize your Dreams

Day 31: Set Goals and Visualize your Dreams

October 31, 2017October 8, 2017 ~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment

Congratulations!! You’ve made it to the last day of the 31 Day Challenge to Financial Excellence! Some days might have been easier and others more difficult, but you held on and continued until the end. That’s a good sign as it not only means that you’ve probably made some huge progress in many of your financial areas, it also indicates that you are much more likely to appreciate the progress you’ve made and to keep up giving financial planning a prominent place in your life.

And that is also the very last challenge of this series: to set goals and to visualize your dreams in order to keep moving forward even now you’ve come to an end of the 31 Days. Continue reading “Day 31 / 31 Set Goals and Visualize your Dreams” →

Day 30 / 31 Your Children & Finances

October 30, 2017October 7, 2017 ~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment

Whether you have children on your own, grandchildren or (adopted) nieces and nephews or plan to have children at some point in the future, you can play an important role in educating these children financially, especially taking into consideration how little most schools incorporate personal finance into their curriculum.

Save money for your children

The first thing to do, is to set aside some money in a savings or investment account (again it doesn’t matter how much or little) so you can start growing some money for your children. Not only will this once they are a little older give you a great topic to discuss with them to show them the power of compound interest, it also makes for a great 18^th, 21^st or wedding gift. Continue reading “Day 30 / 31 Your Children & Finances” →

Day 29 / 31 Give to Charity

October 29, 2017October 7, 2017 ~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment

Day 29Day 29 of the day Challenge to Financial Excellence — Day 29: Give to Charity

I think we all appreciate that we “should” give to charity and help improve the lives of others and make this world a better place.

Giving to charity does not have to cost you hundreds of dollars a year. It is just like saving money: start with it early, even if you can only contribute $1 a month, or $10 a year. Not only is that still $10 a year, it also gets you into the habit of giving, so that every time you have a little more money available, it will be easy to also increase that contribution, even if it is by just a small amount, to make space for it in your budget and to remember that there are so many who are less fortunate than you and to whom your (however small) contribution can make a considerable difference. Continue reading “Day 29 / 31 Give to Charity” →

Day 28 / 31 Celebrate your Victories

October 28, 2017October 5, 2017 ~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment

During the past few weeks and in the next weeks, months and indeed years, you hopefully will have and will continue to set new financial goals. Setting goals is one thing, but achieving them is a whole different matter. Goals are usually easy to set and difficult to achieve and require real commitment and dedication. As you continue on your journey to financial excellence, your goals might become bigger and more abstract which in turn makes it more difficult to see your daily efforts paying off.

You can make goals more tangible by not focussing on the end goal but on smaller milestones along the way, making it easier to see progress.. Then – and here is the most important part – you should celebrate your victories. Once you have got together half, a quarter or even just 10% of your $10,000 savings goal – celebrate. Continue reading “Day 28 / 31 Celebrate your Victories” →

Day 27 / 31 Organize your Administration

October 27, 2017October 4, 2017 ~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment

Now that you have almost got to the end stage of the 31 Day Challenge to financial excellence and have hopefully made huge progress on various areas of your financial life, one of the worst things is to have your finances all in order and then not being able to find important financial documents when you need them, such as insurance policies, warranties, bank statements or income stubs for your tax return.

Having a proper, up-to-date and easy to understand filing system, does not only guarantee less stress and time lost when you are looking for things, it also ensures you do not waste money for example on a new product if your old one still has a guarantee on it. It allows you to quickly check you still have the right insurance, update your assets, debts and cash flow and makes is easy to check your credit card statements are all correct. Continue reading “Day 27 / 31 Organize your Administration” →

Day 26 / 31 Update your Estate Plan

October 26, 2017October 3, 2017 ~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment

Today’s challenge may not be the most cheerful of the ones to busy yourself with, but estate planning should be high up on your priority list of financial planning, no matter how old or young you are.

Estate planning is about taking the necessary steps now to arrange for what will happen to your inheritance for when you pass away as well as making arrangements for who is to make key decisions in case you no longer can.

There are 6 key parts you should arrange as part of your estate planning, which include: Continue reading “Day 26 / 31 Update your Estate Plan” →

Day 25 / 31 Audit your Insurance

October 25, 2017October 2, 2017 ~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment

Risk management and insurance is an important part of financial planning, although surprisingly often overlooked. Many feel insurance is boring, complicated or not needed and years of careful financial planning amounts to nothing if a small oversight on your side leads to a financial disaster for you or your family.

Choosing which types of insurance you need, which ones you do not and making sure that the ones you have are still up-to-date and applicable to your current situation can be a bit of challenge though, which is exactly why it is our challenge for today!

An insurance is essentially a financial protection you contract against the risks of a possible loss. Below are the 5 most common types of insurance you might need: Continue reading “Day 25 / 31 Audit your Insurance” →

Day 24 / 31 Investing Concepts

October 24, 2017October 1, 2017 ~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment

Before moving on to the next financial area, let’s finish off with three key investing concepts.

Bull & Bear Markets

We speak of a bull market when share prices go up over a period of time, leading to more market activity and people wanting to buy more, thereby driving up the prices further. The opposite of a bull market is a bear market, during which prices generally go down, with many investors often wanting to offload their shares to avoid any further losses. Continue reading “Day 24 / 31 Investing Concepts” →

Day 23 / 31 Should you Invest?

October 23, 2017September 29, 2017 ~ Inge Natalie Hol ~ Leave a comment

Now that we have covered the basics of investing and the stock market, you might still be wondering whether investing is the right move for you. This challenge starts with looking at reasons to invest, followed by some reasons to hold off investing, after which you should be able to make a more informed decision.

Why should you invest?

Let’s start with some of the main reasons that makes investing worthwhile to many.

Investing is an alternative to saving: by setting money aside people hope to grow it and with time build up a nice small capital.
Over long periods of time, the stock market generally goes up. Even if there is the occasional crash when stock prices go down, if you have the time and the patience to sit it out and wait, the market will recover again.
On average the markets go up by somewhere between 7-10% yearly. That is more than most yearly inflation rates;
The market average is also normally higher than interest rates offered on saving accounts;
Another fun advantage of investing: many people like to track their shares and see how they are doing with their investments.

Continue reading “Day 23 / 31 Should you Invest?” →