On wealth: European and American style
Anyone who is reading this article thinking that I am going to teach you how to be rich – forget it! That is the domain of Ramit Sethi from I will Teach You to be Rich. I hate treading on other peoples’ toes. Really! Apart from that I am likely to be teaching you how to be wealthy rather than how to be rich. What is this about then?
I am in America; in Atlanta to be precise! Attending a large conference organised by Georgia Tech which is very interesting on its own. Continue reading
Phew! I have a bank account…in Bulgaria
Walking the streets of large cities in any country is like meeting a person – the outside of what you see is a pretty good measure of what you may find inside. This old rule, a modification of ‘as above so below’, generally works although there can be exceptions. When you walk down the streets of a city they may be lined with shops, with art galleries with eating places. Sometimes, the streets of large cities are lined with banks – banks shout aspirations. Continue reading
My financial goals: four months later
Right! Have I mentioned before that goal setting and following is not really my strongest points? If I have failed to mention this one, now is confession time. Throughout my life I have mostly wanted and achieved; most of the time what I want and what I achieve are very different things. This is what not having clear goals leads to: how likely is it that one will get where they wish to be if they don’t know where they are going?
This is why, and as a part of a general drive for change and wealth, in May I published our financial goals. Did I publish them and promptly moved to the next thing, to the next idea? You bet I did. But today I am getting back to these goals and am going to report to you, my readers. A bit of accountability only focuses the mind; apart from me secretly hoping to generate some crafty and savvy ideas about how to achieve these goals. Continue reading
Budgeting that works: The Money Principle Way
When I needed a budgeting framework that is easy to apply and does not constrain me within a budget I used Arkad’s rules. This worked really well for two reasons. One, I could automate the negative wealth repayment and get on with my life instead of obsessing over it all the time. As a result my quality of life improved, my work improved and my work results improved. This will soon pay off, I believe, in career and financial terms. Two, we built an emergency fund and started building savings/investments. This made me feel less fearful about the future and, let us face it, less vulnerable to any adverse future developments. So, Arkad’s budgeting was good for quite some time.
Several months ago I noticed that we spend hardly anything on fun and on ourselves. This wasn’t because there was nothing left to spend but because of the way in which we budgeted: fun was not in our budgeting frame. Having realised this, and the detrimental effects it has on family life and individual feeling of worth, I started playing around with the budgeting frame. After all this is one of the advantages of budgeting: if it doesn’t work you look at it and re-work it rather than feeling as a complete failure. Continue reading
