21st Century Enlightenment

In order to minimize your commute time and maximize your comfort, you need a car. Now, for the echoing voices ardently bouncing off the walls yelling traffic, traffic, please allow me to continue. Yes, traffic actually makes things worse for many commuters, but if you need to visit 7 different places in a given day - believe me, a car can be a lifesaver.

Yet this article isn’t about whether a car is a bare necessity or not, I’ll leave that up for you to decide. It’s about sales, or more specifically, sales tactics. As a frugal consumer, you have to keep your eyes open all the time because sales guys are out to get you, and you have to know how not to let them play their game because they love games. What kind of games to they play?

1. The Pressure Game

As you casually approach the sleek, classy, and aggressive-looking used BMW, a salesman pops out of nowhere with a quadruple Quarter Pounder southern accent, “She’s a beaut, ain’t she? Lot of folk like this one, she’s one of a kind. Two hundred horsepower of pure adrenaline, came in yesterday. I already had customers callin in askin bout it and I think she’ll be gone by tomorra. Wanna take her for a spin?”

What comes to mind of the Average Joe who’s looking for a shiny beamer? The car will be gone tomorrow. If you don’t buy now, you may not get another chance.

Here in Warsaw we’ve had a residential property boom in recent years. I called up a few of the real estate developers and guess what I heard? Pretty much all the apartments are sold out…no, wait…hold on. Oh yeah, there’s still one left! If you hurry you might be able to buy it.

Solution

Wait it out.

Buying a home, car, or that new 60 inch TV isn’t like buying candy, but for some salesmen selling them is like taking candy from a baby. I’ve fallen for their dirty tricks in the past as well.

I suggest giving yourself at least a week after seeing the home, car, or TV before making the purchase decision. This should chill your frivolous excitement and give you time to seek out alternatives. If after a week you’re still certain that this is what you want, then go ahead and buy.

I’m not saying that finding bargains is impossible, but it doesn’t hurt to think twice.

2. The Fear Game

As a self-employed small business owner, I usually get along very well with others who run small businesses. Not always, but very often. Unfortunately, bosses are quite often surrounded by many a servile employee who attempt to sell you something. This has especially proven true in the case of car mechanics. Women beware, as you are very vulnerable to getting ripped off here.

“Wow, this rust looks really bad. If you don’t fix it, next month everything will fall apart. “ is what I heard one month ago. One month later, I’m still driving and perhaps a bit sad to see the rust on my Prelude, but it’s definitely not going to fall apart because of a rusty fender.

Bear in mind that fear is, has been, and will be used as a sales tactic and it is also creatively put to use by politicians as well. There’s a book on Amazon.com entitled Scare Tactics by Douglas Walton which addresses this very issue, but unfortunately at $139 it’s way out of my league. I would love to read it though.

Solution

So are people always wrong? No, but you should be wary of their games and perhaps get a second and third opinion before you make the move and choose a service or product. Don’t be driven into making a decision simply out of fear.

3. The Installment Game

Recently banks in Poland have become extremely generous and consumer loan advertisements are omnipresent. Usually they do their best to show you that the monthly installment is extremely low and affordable, and that’s where they get most people. Numbers with a lot of trailing zeros and a dollar sign make most people tremble, but add interest and time, and suddenly you have a nice low monthly installment. In reality,you really need to do the math because you’ll probably be paying way too much.

Solution

Do the math.

Conclusion

There are as many different sales tactics as there are salesmen, but the few I mentioned above are extremely common. Additionally, some are extremely good at getting a feel for who you are and what kind of customer you are. They morph and adjust to your way of thinking. In order to get ahead and not get screwtinized, perhaps you should think about a strategy you can use to outplay them in their own game.

Twenty years ago China was no better than Cuba in the eyes of the Western World. Today, it’s an economic communist powerhouse where foreign investors flock to maximize their profits. Vietnam’s GDP growth surpassed 8% last year, another communist state which not too long ago opened its market as well. Giants such as Sony Ericsson and Ikea of Sweden jumped at the opportunity and heavily invested in a country which only a quarter of a century ago was engulfed in a gruesome war with the United States. Okay, I get it, I get it, you hate commies! is probably what’s running through your mind right now. My answer is: not exactly.

There are a lot of books out there about how to run a business, how to negotiate, and how to do things the right way, the ethical way.  These are great books and can teach you a lot, but there are lots of things these books don’t tell you.

Business is War

From my point of view, real business is a dog-eat-dog world. You either create a strategy and fiercely attack, or you will be attacked and taken down. I’m not talking about a few bucks here and there for mere mortals such as myself, I’m talking about moolah in the billions.

Think Bill Gates. You think he’s a nice guy? I don’t know, but he’s definitely a wise guy. He used a Pac-Man like strategy to gobble up a lot of small companies and stuck a Microsoft logo on their products. By using his incredible wit, often ruthlessness, and later the power of money, he forced the little guys into submission. Do any of you even remember Netscape Navigator?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Bill Gates is a bad guy. In every single case there was no bloodshed like in real war and so this makes things a lot more humane and perhaps fair. Hold on a second, did I just say fair?

Nice Guys Finish Last

There is no fair in real business, at least that’s what I think. It’s a tough world out there, so either eat or be eaten. Those who get really far ahead are the ones who break the rules of ethics.  Take a look at the most developed economies in the world: United States, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, etc. Now if you were to put the preceding countries in a two column list labeled Prey and Predator, where would they go?

I hope you get my point. I used to think that being a nice guy is cool and I probably try to be a nice guy most of the time, but seriously: nice guys do finish last. Which guys get the best looking women? Quite often these are, pardon my French, the assholes.

Conclusion

My point here is not to say that the world is evil and unfair and oh my what shall I do, poor old me. My point is that if you want to get ahead, you need to attack, and if you want to really push your business forward you need a Blitzkrieg strategy dressed up in gentleman’s clothes and a helluva defense system because deceit may be just around the corner. Business ethics? Tiananmen square is no longer an issue as long as the dough keeps on rolling in.
Just so we’re on the same page, this article wasn’t meant to criticize anything or anyone, my sole purpose was to make you understand that the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s still a world where if you want to make it big you screw or get screwed, except that these days you’ll be wearing a business suit in the process and come out alive in the end.

Recently I came across a story on CNN about Apple, Inc. and how its workforce consists of people who must strive for perfectionism. The problem with perfectionism is that it doesn’t exist. Someone I know told me that people who try to pursue it are never truly happy. I have to say that I am a perfectionist and I’ve seriously never really done anything that I was fully satisfied with, but I think I’m only being fair with myself. There are people out there who design cars, computers, buildings, write songs, and so on. What have I done? Not much, at least compared to them, and it makes me feel very small. I think that there are a lot of people out there who can relate as far as being small is concerned.

For the reasons mentioned above, I personally have difficulty accepting compliments. In order for me to accept a compliment, I would have to be complimented on a really big achievement and there’s nothing in my life that I’ve done so far that can be considered a big achievement. Nevertheless, most people out there have a soft spot for compliments and are often very glad to hear that their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. It is therefore imperative that people are rewarded for their hard work, not just with money, but with a deposit in their emotional bank account. How should this be done? Write.

If I am satisfied with a service, I do my best to get the person’s name and send an e-mail on their behalf to the company they work for. An e-mail complimenting someone’s professionalism is something that companies don’t receive too often and even if the employee doesn’t directly find out that their work was appreciated, I assure you that the news will echo through the ranks. So what do you get in return? I do my best not to think that way, but the truth is that you are working out of your own interest even if you don’t think you are. At the minimum, you will get better than standard service next time. I usually also try to get a discount next time and mention that I was satisfied with their service earlier. In the end, it’s a win-win for both parties as the business gets a loyal customer and I get a discount.

The other side of the coin is that you should send a letter of complaint when you’re dissatisfied with the service. This balances things out so that those who deserve it are rewarded and those who treat you unfairly are somehow punished. By all means do not become aggressive towards anyone, as this will work against you and make your case weaker. It will also make you look stupid. Your letter of complaint should:

• be polite and succinct
• mention the time, place, product or service, and person involved
• state why you are dissatisfied
• request a refund if necessary

Are there cases where you shouldn’t do any of the above? I think there are, you don’t want to go over the top. I once overheard a guy telling a waitress off in front of his girlfriend because the waitress didn’t have a smile on her face. The waitress felt totally intimidated and awkward. He probably never thought that maybe one of her family members is seriously ill? Or perhaps someone in her family passed away not too long ago? Or maybe her boss just told her off? This is something that Stephen R. Covey refers to as a paradigm shift. In one instant your whole view of the situation changes dramatically and makes you realize that the world is a lot more complicated than you had imagined. It’s a people world, and you should try to be a people person.

I’ve wanted to write this article for a while, but I’ve been putting it off and saying to myself that this one needs to be written extremely well. Unfortunately, I’m really short on time. Between trying to run my own business, school, and home it can be quite difficult to write this blog despite the fact that I thoroughly enjoy it. I finally decided that it’s time to get on with it. Perhaps it won’t be exactly the way I want it to be, but I’ll definitely improve in the future if I keep trying.

The topic today is entrepreneurship, namely what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

I asked some of the people I know about their point of view and I would like to sincerely thank those of you who provided me with some interesting answers, you know who you are.  I think I’m going to try this one totally on my own though, My views are going to be straight off the top of my head and I will be writing from experience. You may or may not agree and as always, I welcome all comments. My business is still trying to get off the ground, and I honestly wouldn’t even call it a business because I don’t employ anyone and a much better term for now would be that I’m self-employed.

I’ve compiled a list of the top 5 traits which I think are necessary, in order of importance.

1. Risk-taker

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. -Franklin D. Roosevelt,  32nd President of the United States

Life is full of unexpected, unpredictable events, and most of them we have no control over. A person who wants to run their own business needs to be a risk-taker. My mindset is that no matter what happens, I’ll manage, and I’ll manage because I’m pretty much willing to take on any job if it deems necessary. Think about losing all the material goods in your life, what are you left with? You’re left with what you know, who you are, and hopefully, family. Sometimes when you risk it, you will lose, and you have to learn how to lose. Losing isn’t bad, but you have to do your best to learn why you lost.

In the end, risk is not as bad as it seems as it can be managed and it can be reduced, but if you’re looking to make big bucks you have to take the plunge and just go for it. There’s fear in every single one of us, even those who appear to be tough. I remember back when I was in 5th grade at Fair Ave. Elementary in North Hollywood CA and I got picked on all the time. There was an incident where this guy tried to get tough with me and I became really aggressive. He actually got scared of me, he actually got scared of a dorky looking kid. This just proves that everyone gets scared, you just have to let out a loud roar and in order you do that, you need courage.

2. Determined

It is said that Thomas Edison failed thousands of times before he finally invented the light bulb. Where would we be today if he had given up sooner? In business, you have to be determined. There will be obstacles. In fact, things will go definitely go wrong sometimes, and it’s a tough world out there. You have to fight and continue fighting, no matter what.

3. Reliable

Call them rice cookers if you want, but I love Japanese cars. I do admit that I’m a bit biased, especially toward Hondas, but part of the reason is reliability. You get in, turn the key, and it works - sunshine or that other weather.

As a person you have to be reliable because you are the face of your business. People will see you in their own idiosyncratic kind of way, but the last thing you want to hear from them is that you’re unreliable.

4. Outgoing

The ability to forge relationships is one of the keys to running a successful enterprise. I like to seek out mentors and I deeply admire and respect many of the people I’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with. Sometimes new opportunities emerge out of those relationships whether you like it or not!

In order to form these relationships, you have to try be an open and outgoing person. You need an ice-breaking, small-talk oriented strategy in your life if you want to meet people, and meeting new people may be one of the biggest rewards for you and your enterprise.

5. Creative

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but your mind is a powerful thing, and you need to let your imagination run wild. It’s amazing the things your brain will come up with when you allow it to. Creativity allows you to find new ways of doing things and this is something crucial for your business, as you will need to use your creative talent to push your business forward, and, more importantly, set it apart from the competition.

There is, of course, a myriad of other traits which you may come up with, but I think that if you have the ones I mentioned above, you have a pretty good chance of success.

About two years ago I had a car which was actually a gift from my dad, but it was in really poor shape and I desperately needed to get something newer. The floor had a hole in it and as much as I enjoyed the Flinstones as a kid, leg power wasn’t really my idea of getting around. Since I didn’t have the money for a new car, and I didn’t have money for a good used one either, I asked my bank for a loan and…I got it!

Looking back at what I did I have to admit that the decision to take out a loan wasn’t really a bad decision, but my way of thinking about the loan itself was definitely a bit skewed. As always, I was really focused on investing money and so I put most of my savings into mutual funds instead of using it to pay off the loan. The result was that I was losing more than I was earning.

My justification for this was of course that invested money served . I mean that when you have money invested, it’s there and you feel as if you actually have savings plus I’m a long-term investor so I plan to withdraw my money in about 5 years or so. In reality though, you’re losing money.

This article serves as a warning to those who are interested in taking out a consumer loan. Banks are not charitable organizations and you shouldn’t give your money away freely. Let’s crunch some numbers:

Money borrowed: 10 000 EUR
APR: 15%
Length of Loan: 36 months
Total amount paid after 36 months: 15208.75 EUR
Interest paid: 5208.75 EUR

Just to give you a picture, I’ll assume you make 15 EUR/hour. You would have to work 347 hours or 43 days more just to pay off the interest on that loan. Creepy, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you rather spend that money on something else, like an LCD TV or a vacation?

You may of course lessen the impact of your losses by investing the cash you have instead of spending it, but in the end you still end up losing money.

What I’ve just showed you may be extremely obvious, but most people are enticed by banks because of a low monthly payment and fail to calculate the full cost of the loan.

In my previous article I wrote about how important it is to stick to your word and not make empty promises. If you want to be a reliable person, you need some discipline in your life. As harsh as the word discipline may sound, it is definitely a trait that will bolster your momentum on your path to success.

One of the simplest ways to discipline yourself is to create a routine. I personally have a morning and evening routine which I try to adhere to. Remember that any plans you ever make have to be written down and visible. Here’s what my routine looks like:

Okay, so you’ve already tried making a routine but you didn’t stick to it, just like I do sometimes! Hey, nobody’s perfect. Here’s are some tips that help me persevere:

1. Adjust Your Routine To Your Goals
You’re tired and you don’t want to do the dishes today? What if someone told you that if you wash the dishes, you get $1000, would you do them then even though you’re tired? Most people would and I bet you that you would get a sudden burst of energy.

Hate waking up in the morning? Think about the last time you had to fly somewhere on vacation and had to get up early, still hated it? I’m sure that the excitement you felt fully expelled the I’m still sleepy and I can’t get up feeling out of your mind.

If you want to commit yourself to waking up early, having a reason to wake up is crucial.

Steve Pavlina has a nice guide which outlines how to become an early riser. Although I don’t agree with his strategy of going to sleep only when you feel really tired and waking up at a fixed time every single day, there are some nice tips you’ll find there. There are some people out there who need 9 hours of sleep and others who only need 6 and I think that you shouldn’t deprive your body of sleep unless it’s absolutely necessary. Lack of sleep makes you feel sluggish during the day and decreases your brain’s performance.

So when you’re setting up your routine, think about your goals. For me, one of my major goals is health and peace of mind. I know that when I wake up I don’t have to think about clothes and making sure I have everything in my briefcase and it really makes mornings a lot smoother.

2. Excuses are for Wooses

Property prices in Warsaw skyrocketed last year, but luckily (?) enough I’m still renting and I’m getting a great deal. Anyway, a couple of years earlier my friend and I rented an apartment from this weird lady we liked to call Pani w Kapeluszu or The Hat Lady. She wore these wacky extravagant hats and every time she came to pick up rent she would open up our fridge and bathroom cabinets to check what’s lurking in there. Maybe she thought she had left one of her hats in there. Anyway, she also had a son and, albeit being much nicer than her, he had a really peculiar perception of time. I remember when he called that he’d come to pick up the rent on Thursday evening, and he actually ended up coming on Saturday morning saying, “I’m sorry I’m late, there was a lot of traffic.” Yep, traffic for two days, and on a Saturday morning.

The moral of the story is: stop making excuses. If you make a commitment, think it through so that you know you’ll be able to follow through. Otherwise, there’s no sense in deceiving yourself and others.

3. Honesty is the Best Policy

Back in elementary school one of my teachers asked me whether I had done my homework. Well, I didn’t just make up an excuse, I blatantly lied. It was a cool, rainy winter day in North Hollywood, CA - a very odd day provided that Los Angeles had been tackling a drought problem in the preceding years. “It fell in a puddle”, I said, referring to the homework that I had supposedly done. The teacher no doubt noticed my Pinocchioesque conduct since I was never any good at lying anyway, and not only did I not get credit for failing to do my homework, but the act also nicked my integrity in the teacher’s eyes.

Be honest with yourself. Sometimes there will be cases where you skip something and that’s okay, but don’t check it off on the schedule! Yes, you failed, but don’t dwell on your failures, thrive on your successes.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. -Ralph Waldo Emmerson

By the way, I would greatly appreciate any comments or suggestions you may have regarding this site. Therefore, if there are articles you’d like to see here or would like to post your own opinion then please do so! I, unfortunately, have to go and do the dishes and as much as I’d like to, writing comments to myself about my own articles and then replying to those comments might be an early indicator of multiple personality disorder.

Have you ever had someone tell you that they’re going to call you, but they never do?

Have you ever had someone promise the moon and then fail to deliver?

Perhaps even your own parents made empty promises and you, today, have followed suit.

One of the most important and fundamental characteristics of successful people is that they do as they say and that’s how they get their respect. If you say you’re going to be there at 8, be there at 8.

I realize that for some people it’s quite difficult, and I personally continue to fight battles in order to stick to my word, and I don’t always come out victorious. Nike’s slogan says Just Do It, but if it were that easy, then why do so many people break their promises in the first place? Are they lazy?

Sometimes it’s actually quite the opposite. Here are some ways to make sure your promises are never broken:

1. Be Realistic

Last year I started jogging and I’ve personally always hated jogging with a vengeance.. This time, I actually managed to run about three times a week for over a month, which was a great success for me. In the end I started having acute pain in my left foot and no matter what I did it just kept on coming back so I gave up.

So how is it that a person who loathed just the thought of jogging actually started jogging? Baby steps. I downloaded a very nice schedule from Nike’s website which was really simple to follow for the first two weeks or so. You actually had to walk, not run, at the very beginning.

Now contrast that with my attempt to start jogging on a freezing January morning with no training whatsoever beforehand - I’m sure you get the point.

In order to get somewhere in life, we often need years of training, so start slow. Once you do that, always give yourself a pat on the back for the achievement.

If you make a promise to yourself that you’re going to climb Mt. Everest within a year with no prior training in mountain climbing, I have to words for you — Get Real!

Set goals which are realistic and measure up to your own abilities otherwise you’re going to give up very easily.

2. Limit Your Goals

About 6 years ago I sat down and wrote down a list of 100 things I wanted to accomplish and I broke them up into 1, 5, and 10 year goals. I do have something to look back at now, but having 100 goals means that you’re putting an extremely heavy load on your shoulders.

I currently have three main goals and I’m trying extremely hard to stick to them and to make them my priority, this blog, by the way, is one of them.

3. Cool Your Ambitions

Ever heard of the straw that broke the camel’s back? There are only 24 hours in a day and if you make too many promises to yourself you will find yourself totally stressed out and end up not getting anything accomplished in the first place.

By being overly ambitious I mean learning French, German, and Spanish at the same time while at the same time trying to get your PhD and working full time.

4. Stick to Your Own Promises

This one is crucial as it has a lot to do with your own self esteem. People come and go but we don’t usually forgive ourselves too easily. By not sticking to promises you’ve made to yourself, you severely diminish your self-worth. Besides, how can you expect others to count on you if you can’t even count on yourself?

5. Be Honest

There are times when you may be feeling overwhelmed, but you agree to do the next thing your boss, colleague, wife, or mother-in-law asks you for even though you have other priorities. Just be honest, tell them you can’t commit if you really can’t. In most cases your honesty will be appreciated. Beware that sometimes others will try to induce guilt for the sole purpose of manipulating you into doing something, don’t let them!

6. Shut It

That’s right, keep your mouth shut, as simple as that. It’s much better to talk about the things you’ve already accomplished rather than future forecasted accomplishments. Actually, you should definitely talk about the things you’ve accomplished, but be careful when meeting new people because you may come across as being boastful.

So you say to yourself, who are you to tell me this? Well, I’m just like you, struggling and pushing myself towards being the type of person I described above. I too make mistakes, but then again, those who don’t make mistakes don’t do anything.

For a large part of my life, just like Trent over at thesimpledollar.com I’ve been an introvert. My parents claim that as a child I was totally different, but then as children we’re often different, aren’t we?

Well, I came to the conclusion that I am, in fact, different. But then again, being different isn’t necessarily a bad trait and being different doesn’t make you or me any worse than the other people out there now, does it?

This article is about being different and standing out a bit in a herd of sheep. Quite often people do things that other people do, just because. There’s no logical reasoning behind their actions. So how should you be different?

1. Be a Black Sheep

What I want to talk about here is driving, although there are many other situations where this can be applied.

Most people take the same route to work every single day, they don’t really think about whether it’s the best route, but they get used to it and take the same roads that everyone else does.

So what’s the solution? Think. I slashed the time I needed to get to work by about 40% just because I tested a few different routes.

So you say that no matter which route you take you’ll get stuck in traffic? Leave home earlier, get to work earlier and talk to your boss about it to see if you can leave work earlier as well. You will save a lot of time and save yourself the anxiety of being stuck in traffic.

2. Think Outside the Box

The whole world uses Microsoft Windows, but I don’t. Okay, I admit there may be quite a few Linux aficionados out there and people who are also OS X users like myself, but the majority of people I know use Microsoft Windows. I actually like to Think different.

Believe me, I’ve tried Linux. I actually had a love affair with Linux and I don’t regret any of it because I learned a lot, but I also learned that for most day-to-day tasks OS X cannot be beat because of its stability. Linux was also an example of thinking different.

So the next time you go out there to buy something, think different. There are many products out there which simply excel in terms of quality but their marketing is simply not there, and those are the gems you want to look for whether it be motor oil, running shoes, or pots and pans.

3. Don’t Do Things That Others Do

Lots of people go to McDonald’s, lots of people listen to pop music, and lots of people do things that other people do. Think outside the box. Try eating something totally new this weekend, buy music which you’ve never bought before, and generally try enriching your life somehow by not following the crowd.

People like Martin Luther, Newton, Einstein and Gandhi were all people who thought outside the box and were somehow different.

Your brain is an idea powerhouse, and it’s about time you jot your thoughts down somewhere so you can fully utilize its power.

Organizing those ideas is also a challenge and it’s something I won’t be covering in-depth today,  but how do you collect them in the first place? Well, I would suggest three simple ways.

Notebook

Carry a notebook and pen with you at all times so that you can write down whatever comes to mind. This is really indispensable, especially if you’re an entrepreneur. If you don’t jot them down somewhere, you will forget, believe me.

Mind Mapping Software

Now I could make this really complicated and go through all the possible options, but I won’t. There’s a nice program out there called FreeMind which allows you to create, share, and print awesome mind maps. Best of all, it’s free and runs on most operating system since it’s Java-based. I use FreeMind all the time.

Digital Voice Recorder

Another way of imprinting your thoughts is by carrying around a digital voice recorder and you may actually want to check whether your phone allows you record your voice before you go and shell out some cash.

In the future I’ll talk about what can be done with all the thoughts you’ve written down, but this is it for now.

50 cent gets money, definitely a lot more than I do, but most of us aren’t stars and so the get-rich-quick scheme, although achievable, is like hoping you’ll hit the jackpot in the billion dollar lottery.

Shortcuts are for Desktops

I personally don’t believe in shortcuts, and if you take them you have to be prepared for trade offs. For example, you can become a criminal like 50 cent in his early days, but you have to face the possibility of getting shot or going to jail. Remember, there are no shortcuts, period.

I do believe in hard work though, and you probably work hard day in and day out, but do you, at the end of the day, actually know where the money you earn is going? And do you think companies know where their money is going? You bet they do. They keep track of a lot more than that, especially the large corporations.

Even if you don’t plan on being an entrepreneur, not knowing where your money is going is a vile mistake that may cost you a lot of stress in the long run. I’ve noticed that as people earn more and more money, they tend to spend more, drive better cars, buy bigger houses. They look great, but their net worth is still below 0! I’m not saying that you should stash all your cash away, but you actually can live a better life when you earn more and at the same time slowly increase your net worth.

I fully realize that you can only be young once and you only have one life to live, but you also don’t expect to die tomorrow, do you? Just like companies do, you need to formulate a long-term strategy for financial management. So where should you start?

Keep Track of Your Money

Use money management software for budgeting and keeping track of your finances. It takes me about 10-15 minutes a day and that’s only because the banks in Poland don’t allow me to download transaction data straight into my software, which would make things a whole lot easier.

So which software should you use? I chose Moneydance because it suits me best, although I have to admit that I’m somewhat discontented with the support because when I asked the company for a Polish translation they said I could do it myself for free if I wanted to - at least that’s how I understood it. One major advantage of Moneydance is that it runs on different platforms so I can use it on my girlfriend’s computer as well as on my Mac.

There are a lot of other software packages out there, such as Microsoft Money, Quicken, and also a free package called GnuCash to name a few.

I used Microsoft Money for a while a very long time ago and I also tried GnuCash under Linux, but I’ve become accustomed to Moneydance and it works just fine for me.

Be Consistent

Keeping track of where your money is going to require consistency. I suggest you enter transaction data every day or every other day. At the end of the month you can print out a report and then update your budget for the next month accordingly. If you stop doing this consistently you’ll find that eventually you’ll give up because catching up will require tremendous effort from your side.

Procrastination Causes Stagnation

Don’t just sit there thinking about it, go download one of the software packages I mentioned or some other one that perhaps you’re more familiar with and set up your accounts. Once you’re done, set aside about 15 minutes per day in the evening or the morning to either enter or categorize the transactions. One of my best friends had a quote up in his room which said: Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. Get the point?