Spend, Don’t Save

Introduction Your Financial Health and PowerSpending Many things in life are more important than money. Just about all of them cost money. If you want more of these things in your life than you have right now, this book is for you. Since you’re reading this, it’s safe to assume that you’re looking for a way to build more financial security. You might even be looking for a way to build wealth and prosperity. The good news is that there has never been a better time for you to make this happen than the time you’re now living in. You might remember in 1971 when President Richard Nixon decided that printed money was no longer going to represent the physical commodity of gold. Instead, printed money would represent the commitment of the American government to support the value of the dollar. For many people, this marked the beginning of the end for our economy…and it did, for the old economy. This, in conjunction with the power the Federal Reserve had to print money for bailing our banks out of financial trouble, has caused the currency of money to evolve into an idea. Nearly a century ago, Napoleon Hill wrote his groundbreaking book “Think and Grow Rich,” based on the principle that ideas could be converted into cash. Today, money itself has been converted into an idea: a free floating currency, unhinged from its bondage to the commodity of gold and free to evolve into something of far greater value. This is the foundation of the new economy, and those who learn and apply the proper principles of financial education will have one of the greatest opportunities in history to become financially secure and to build wealth. The purpose of this book is to provide you with the tools which will make this possible. This will be accomplished through the application of the two key principles for financial success in the new economy… Principle 1- Financial Health: Spend Don’t Save contains practical strategies and educational principles for improving the condition of both your financial and physical health. You might wonder what place advice on healthy living has in a book about financial success. The truth is that you cannot separate the two. Each affects the other at such a profound level that attempting to address one from the other is almost impossible. If you have poor physical health, you’ll end up crippled by health problems in your later years. Some of these problems may be severe, others more subtle. For instance, fatigue is a health problem which comes from a worn out metabolism due to poor eating habits, and lack of muscle tone due to lack of physical activity. Fatigue makes it difficult to focus and to be productive, which can have a direct effect on your ability to add value to your organization as an employee or an entrepreneur. On the more severe end of the spectrum, poor physical health can lead to diabetes, heart disease, stroke, dementia and a variety of other health problems. Considering the compounding problems with Medicare, the rising cost of health care, and the fact that medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, it’s easy to imagine the impact that severe health conditions can have on your financial security. On the other hand, if you have poor financial health, you’ll be crippled by a lack of money. You’ll likely suffer from anxiety and stress, due to feelings of insecurity that come from having your life controlled by money problems. This stress and anxiety will overflow into your relationships with others: the people you depend on to help make your life more enjoyable and meaningful. As this stress and anxiety spreads, it begins to impact your emotional well-being. Medical research reveals that this kind of stress weakens the immune system, causes the metabolism to be unbalanced, promotes unhealthy fat storage, and even encourages the growth and proliferation of cancer cells. As you can imagine, this downward spiral of physical and financial disease detracts from the quality of your life and can even bring it to an untimely end. But the cultivation of sound physical and financial health will have an equally impressive impact on the quality of your life. Not only will you live longer, you’ll enjoy a greater abundance of energy and vitality from the time you get up in the morning until the time you go to bed. You’ll be less likely to be overwhelmed by health problems and medical bills, both now and later in life. You’ll be more focused and productive in everything you do, which will increase your value at home and in the marketplace. It will empower you to pursue your dreams and hobbies and to enjoy extracurricular activities with your children and their children. You’ll have the money to purchase the things you need to be happy and healthy: natural and healthy foods, comfortable clothes, attractive and dependable vehicles, a safe and well furnished home, a good education, and vacations to the most interesting and exciting places in the world. All of this will have an invigorating impact on your emotional well being. Medical research reveals that good emotional health strengthens the immune system, balances the metabolism, promotes healthy cell growth and even helps fight off life-threatening illnesses like cancer. This harmonizing of physical and financial well-being is the primary focus of cultivating good financial health. This is accomplished through the application of the second principle… Principle 2 – PowerSpending: PowerSpending is the strategy we’ll be using in Spend Don’t Save to develop the habits of good financial health. Saving money is no longer adequate for the achievement of financial security or the accumulation of wealth. Inflation is making it more and more difficult for anyone to build financial security simply by saving. Instead, cash flow has become the method for cultivating wealth and prosperity in the new economy. Those who develop a healthy cash flow have all the financial security that they need. Those who don’t will watch their money flow toward someone who has developed a healthy cash flow. PowerSpending encourages positive cash flow by focusing spending on what will add value to your life, instead of to someone else’s. For example, most people spend their time working for a salary or an hourly wage. This spending of hours to earn dollars adds more value to the employer’s life than it does to theirs. It also keeps them from earning money fast enough to cover their expenses, invest their disposable income, and beat taxes and inflation so that they can build wealth. To add to this, most people spend their extra income on things that add value to other people’s lives instead of to their own life. These are depreciating assets such as: three thousand dollar high definition big screen televisions, new cars that lose nearly half their value in the first three years, meals at sit down restaurants, and other things that take money out of the spenders pocket and put it into the pocket of the vendor. As if that is not enough, these things are often purchased using credit, a product designed to cause money to flow away from the borrower and toward the lender. Finally, most people who do have money to invest spend it investing in company stocks and helping those companies to become wealthier, instead of investing in starting their own companies. All of these examples demonstrate cash flow strategies that control the direction in which the money is moving. These strategies are making one group of people wealthy and prosperous, while the other group is supplying the capital that makes the wealth and prosperity possible. As long as money exists, these types of strategies will exist, and so will people who benefit from them and people who don’t. Cash flow is inevitable. The only thing you can do is make sure it is flowing toward you instead of away from you. PowerSpending is a practical strategy for steering your personal cash flow in a positive direction. At the same time, the prin