Implementing Age Old Money Clichés In Your Life.

There are a lot of old sayings that we all have heard about money. You know what I’m talking about, things such as “live on less than you make” and “pay yourself first.” They are all nice one-liners that our grandparents told us, but they aren’t always the easiest to make use of in our every day life. Here’s how you can implement some of the time-tested money clichés in your life.

"Pay Yourself First" – This means that you should save money first, and then take care of all your expenses, rather than to pay all of your expenses and then try to save money after that. The purpose of this statement is to make saving money a priority. You can do this by creating an automatic transfer to your savings account the day after your paycheck comes in. This will make it so you save a certain amount of money each month!

"Knowledge is Power" – People who know more generally get further in life than those who don’t. We can all go to high-school and college, and that’s definitely a good thing. The problem is that’s where most of us let our education stop. Technology advances so much and the business world is always changing, so we need to keep up our education. I suggest reading one non-fiction book a month so that you can keep learning about business, money, personal growth, and other topics.

"Buy Low, Sell High" – Buy investments at a low price, and sell them at a high price. This statement seems a basic, but quite often new investors do just the opposite. They buy when they hear about investments that are going up, and then panic when the investment goes down and sell it to avoid further losses. You have to adopt a very contrarian mindset to make this work. When the market is doing very poorly, there’s nowhere to go but up. We know from history that the stock market will recover and go to new all time highs. So we have to buy when the market is down, ride the waves and then sell when we hit highs. It can be done.

"Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket" – Every financial advisor in the world (except Robert Kiyosaki) will recommend that you diversify your investments. Don’t put more than 10% of your investments in one company or business. Invest in a mix of mutual funds, real-estate and cash reserves so that your money isn’t all in one place. That way if one of your investments goes down, you still have your other investments to.

"Live on Less Than You Make" – Recently there was an article in a major financial magazine entitled “Just Scrapping By on 150,000 a Year.” I had to laugh, since the median family income is around $40,000 a year. No matter how much money people make, they’ll always be find a way to spend it all. It’s a classic economic graph that as your income increases, so do your expenses. You have more money so you think you can spend more money. There’s no magic pill to living on less than you make then stop spending so much money! Everyone spends money on some things that they don’t absolutely have to, it’s a matter of making priorities. Unless you make a conscious decision to live on less money than you make, you’ll never do it. You have to make it a priority. Most people don’t do this because God forbid someone tells them there are things that they probably shouldn’t buy! Just quit spending so much money!

“It Takes Money to Make Money” – I’m not entirely sure that this money cliché is accurate. There are plenty of small businesses that have started up from nothing and become million dollar companies. You can be very successful in business without getting a huge sum of capital to start up with. You will of course need money to save for the future and investing. You can get this money by cutting back on your expenses or making more money, these are the only two ways to do it. There are no magic tricks, just common sense.