Last night I had a meeting up at my church and the youth were going ice skating that same night. I was invited to come along, and I went since I love to ice skate and have my own ice hockey skates. At first I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go and had all sorts of reasons why not like I would be tired from work and would rather just relax at home doing nothing.

I reminded myself though of all the times that I didn’t really feel like getting out and doing something yet went anyway. And I’ve always been glad afterwards that I went and actually did something rather than staying home and doing nothing. So I decided that I would go, and naturally I had a good time and was able to socialize with everyone else who was there.

I was thinking about this because it’s a lot like our financial and investing lives. A lot of times we don’t really feel like putting in the effort that is required to find or choose good investments. Putting our financial house in order would just take too much time that we’d rather spend sitting in front of the television. However, once you do take the time to, let’s say, list out all of your debts and formulate a plan to eliminate them, you’re always glad that you did. This is because it usually feels good to accomplish something.

I’ve also heard a lot of people complain about how complicated it is to invest or that they can never find a good investment. I also know that most of these people have never taken the time to read a book about investing or have never spent any time in search of a good investment. And some things in life require some doing.

For example, I’ve had a rental property for about a year and a half now, and I’ve been asked numerous times how I went about the whole thing. I’ve also listened to many people tell me how they would like to do the same thing but they haven’t found anything or haven’t gotten around to it. So let me dispel the myth for you… an investment property didn’t just fall into my lap, and it won’t fall into yours either.

I could tell you of the many hours spent looking at properties with different agents and without agents. I could mention the time spent with a mortgage broker discussing how I could make it happen and what I would need to do. There was also the time I spent with an accountant learning all about the tax implications and benefits. It was a great learning experience, but it took a lot of time. And this doesn’t even include all the books I read about real estate investing and the seminar I went to.

So what does all of this have to do with my initial thoughts about going ice skating? The point is to get out do things and make things happen. There will always be time to sit and watch TV, but if there’s something that you want to do or accomplish, you just need to get out there and do it. I know you’ll be glad you did, and you definitely won’t regret it.

A couple of days ago I talked about starting the new year off right. And one of the possible goals that I mentioned was to learn about investing. This goal could be expanded into learning anything new concerning your finances. You can obviously choose to learn about whatever you’d like, but here are a few topics that you might be interested in learning more about:

• Retirement plans and options (401Ks, IRAs, etc.)
• Debt management and reduction
• Investing in the stock market
• Time management and your personal effectiveness
• Real estate investing
• How to start a new business, or
• Choose your own topic…

Whatever it is that you’ve now chosen to learn more about, it’s not going to just happen. You’re going to have to put a little effort into it and make something happen. Because everyone learns a little differently, I’m going to make a few different suggestions of how you can accomplish this goal without taking too much more of your already precious time.

One suggestion that I wrote about quite a while ago is to establish Your Mobile University. If you’re like most people, you probably spend quite a bit of time in your car whether it’s driving to and from work or running the many errands you need to get done. So, instead of just listening to the radio, try putting in an audiobook about the subject you want to learn about. Most libraries carry all sorts of audiobooks, and if they’re usually checked out you can most likely reserve them through an online system. I highly recommend this option and have done this myself and really enjoyed it.

Another option for those of you can’t stand the thought of silencing the music in your car is to do the same thing while you’re doing things around the house. You may as well learn something new while you’re vacuuming, doing the dishes, or just organizing and straightening up the house. Either put it on your home stereo or use headphones with your iPod or other such device.

A more boring version of the above would be to check out the actual books and just read them. This won’t really save you any time, but you may find that you can concentrate better by focusing only on the one thing. I personally like reading the occasional book but wouldn’t only do this option. It may work for you though.

You also don’t want to forget about all of the information that is available online. There are so many great resources and personal finance blogs out there, not to mention this one. And over this next year Fiscal Musings will be filled with a lot of great information. Also, if there’s something specific you’d like to read about here or learn more about, let me know via email at fiscalmusings@gmail.com or in the comments below.

With the start of the new year, many people are intent on their new year’s resolutions. You’ve probably got a few of them, even if they aren’t official and written down, or have at least been thinking about a few things you’d like to change. Obviously this blog has a financial slant on these goals, but I hope that you’re able to achieve any and all goals that you’ve set for yourself.

Like I briefly touched on above, you ought to accurately define your goals and write them down so that there’s no mistake as to what you’re trying to achieve. If you don’t define your goals and write them down, a couple of things will happen to them. Eventually you’ll forget about them (or just ignore them). You will also continue to change and redefine them over and over usually to make them easier to achieve. It’s difficult to attain a goal that’s always in flux.

So what are some specific goals that would be good to work on this year? It will be different for everyone since we’re all in different places financially, but here are a few suggestions:

1. Pay off/down your debt. If you’re making this a goal this year, make sure to attach a specific number to it and a completion date. Don’t be vague with this one or it’ll never happen.

2. Increase your savings. You’ll want to again make this one specific and also make sub-goals to go along with it. Perhaps part of it will include increasing your 401K contributions like was mentioned at Money Ning. You also might want to start automatic transfers into savings or increase the amount if you’re already doing this.

3. Develop another income stream. This isn’t a goal for everyone, but I know it is for a lot of people. It might come by starting a new business or from an investment, but you’ll want to have a date set by which you want to accomplish this. Otherwise it’ll just linger out there and never get done.

4. Learn about investing. This is a goal that I think everyone would do well to have. It won’t cost you anything except for your time. You can find a wealth of knowledge at the public library and learn about everything from stock market investing, mutual funds, to real estate investing. We’ll also be talking about this stuff here at Fiscal Musings so you’ll want to make sure and subscribe to the feed.

Whatever your goals are, I wish you the best in attaining them. I’m sure there are also a bunch of you out there that would like to lose some weight and be healthier in general. You should also find some way to quantify these goals and, of course, write them down. It’s going to be a great year, and I look forward to making progress with all of you.

So much has been written on the topic of saving money. You can find articles talking about how to save money, ways to save money, and the benefits of saving money. It would seem that this is one area of personal finance on which everyone could agree. But that’s not the case. There is a contrarian viewpoint however, that one ought to at least consider before deciding what is best for their situation.

There are those who don’t really believe in saving money. It’s not that they think it should just be spent frivolously, but that there are better things to do with it than just saving it and having it sit there. Just take a look at the following quote.

“There is nothing in saving money. The thing to do with it is to put it back into yourself, into your work, into the thing that is important, into whatever you are so much interested in that it is more important than money.” -Henry Ford

As you can see from this statement, it’s possible that investing in yourself and trying to further your own efforts may be more beneficial than putting your money in some account at a bank. It’s apparent that this statement from Ford has an entrepreneurial slant to it, but you get the idea nonetheless.

This belief, as some may think, is not just a passing thought from Henry Ford. This is something that he really believed in. It is also interesting to read another quote from him on the same subject.

“Old men are always advising young men to save money. That is bad advice. Don’t save every nickel. Invest in yourself. I never saved a dollar until I was 40 years old.” -Henry Ford

Whatever your thoughts are on this subject, I think it’s at least interesting to see a different perspective. Maybe you’ll want to continue on the same path that you’ve always been on, but you may also want to include this advice in your plans, at least to some extent.

You might have seen the new commercials from SafeCo Insurance where a pedestal shows up on someone’s doorstep with a card on it. The person then opens the card and takes the pedestal inside. What’s interesting in all this is the question that’s asked on the card:

What Matters To You?

Aside from it being an insurance ad, it’s a question that we should all ask ourselves. It’s hard to get our priorities in order if we don’t know the answer to this question.

I will assume that for many the answer would be family. You may wonder what this has to do with anything financial, but I believe that it does. If family is most important to you, you’ll want to be able to provide the best life possible for them. You’ll also want to be able to spend more time with them and less at work.

This leads to another possible priority for a lot of people, free time. I’ve spoken about this before as time freedom. If you value your time above all else, you’ll want to take steps to prepare yourself financially so that your time can be yours again.

Whatever it is that’s important to you will be personal, but all of us should be able to answer this question. And once we do it will shape our behaviour and our financial patterns. Without an answer, you will let your financial patterns dictate what’s important. I can’t imagine that a high consumption lifestyle filled with all manners of “toys” (electronics, furniture, cars, etc.) is what’s really important to people, yet we see this type of behaviour everyday.

You go to work everyday and nothing is out of the ordinary. You work on your projects and make significant headway. Perhaps you also help out a co-worker finish up an important task. You keep the customer happy by providing excellent service.

Suddenly the end of the year rolls around and it’s time for your annual performance review. Maybe you’ve also decided it’s time to look for another job and you need to update your resume. You then ask yourself the question, What have I been doing for the past year?

This scenario is more common than you might think. I’m revamping my resume currently in order to apply to business school. You won’t find yourself in this unsettling situation in the future however, if you take some time now to prepare for it.

You know that at some point you’re going to need to know what you’ve accomplished and what you’ve been working on so you should try and keep some sort of record of these things. There isn’t one “best” way to do this so I’ll offer a few suggestions that I’ve either used or seen.

Keep a work journal. At the end of each workday, take a few minutes to jot down what happened that day and what major tasks you either accomplished or made significant progress on. Reflect on how these experiences or tasks could benefit you on a resume, in an interview, or during your performance evaluation. Do this every day and you’ll never be caught without a great experience to demonstrate your skills and qualifications.

Archive your To Do lists. If you keep a task list or something similar to remind you of what you need to do, be sure to keep it even after you’ve accomplished what was on it. If it helped remind you to do something, you can be sure it’ll be able to remind you of what you’ve done. It’s a great resource to pull from when you’re gathering information.

Save your old appointment book or calendar. This is a great way to keep track of important meetings and dates. It can also serve as a backup record for important contact information.

Take some time to figure out how you can best keep track of your past accomplishments so you’ll have them when you need them. It’s much easier to pull from a source than to try and recreate and remember things from a long time ago.

I’m going to briefly revisit the topic of procrastination. For some reason it’s been on my mind lately, and I think it’s an important issue that we all deal with. We all have things that we know we have to do, but for some reason or another we haven’t done them. Eventually these things will get done because they have to, but probably not as soon as they should have.

There is another area of our lives that I’m more concerned with. Those things that we would like to do or accomplish. These things in our lives will not necessarily get taken care of eventually because they don’t really need to get done. If you procrastinate in general, you will be forced to prioritize more than you otherwise would have. Your desires will fall to the wayside making room for the urgent.

This is the unfortunate cycle that people get caught up in. They will find themselves extremely “busy” on the surface but feel as if they’re not making any headway. Everything that they’d like to get done won’t because they’ve procrastinated too many other things.

Life doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of always playing catch-up, try and stay ahead of things. Anticipate what needs to get done so you consciously leave time for what you’d like to get done. You’ve also then built in time if an emergency arises. This is the same approach I use when paying bills. I pay them as soon as they come in the mail instead of waiting until the due date. This leaves a small buffer if something else comes up; I’m not frantically wondering how I’m going to pay for something.

The bottom line: Take care of needful things early in order to leave time for what’s ultimately important to you. It can be done.