My Journey to Millions
  • Investments
    • Dividend Investment Portfolio
  • Personal Finance
  • Estate Planning
  • Life Insurance
  • Personal Situation
  • About
  • Archives
  • Contact / Advertise
  • Disclaimer
My Journey to Millions
  • Investments
    • Dividend Investment Portfolio
  • Personal Finance
  • Estate Planning
  • Life Insurance
  • Personal Situation
Tag:

money

Business concepts,Two men are consulting a business.
Business

How Small Businesses Should Spend Money to Make Money

by Evan November 23, 2019

As most experienced professionals can attest, you don’t get any freebies in the business world. Indeed, though it would be great for companies to “get something for nothing” every once in a while, the reality is that all businesses –– regardless of their size or industry –– have to speculate in order to accumulate. Or, in other words, business owners need to spend money to make money. What’s more, there’s an art to small business investment. And with that in mind, today we’ll focus on the top four ways business owners can spend their capital to ensure a solid return in the future. Check them out here:

Product/Service Development

At their core, all businesses provide some sort of product or service. While capable customer representatives and skillful marketing techniques can increase a company’s chance at success, no business will thrive with an inferior product or service. First and foremost, business owners should seek to bolster their products and services and ensure that they provide genuine quality and value. Otherwise, consumers will eventually abandon your business, and winning them back will prove an uphill task to say the least.

Talented Staff

It’s just about impossible to put a dollar-figure next to a talented employee. The best professionals go above and beyond the call of duty, and they enable businesses to grow thanks to their efforts. Note, excellent team members rarely come cheap. So even if you hire a great employee for a relatively low salary at first, it’s important to reallocate your finances to accommodate planned salary hikes. If you don’t do this, then expect your best employees to look elsewhere for superior compensation.

Expansion/Renovation

Despite the rise of online shopping and remote employment, the fact remains that businesses need physical space to expand. Furthermore,  companies can dramatically bolster employee productivity and improve the customer experience by investing in a workplace renovation. Whether you’re looking to enhance your dental office design or expand your restaurant, a renovation can set your company up for success for years to come. 

New Technology

It’s hard to say exactly what new technologies professionals will develop in the coming years. However, it’s safe to say that it will have a big impact on the business world. Indeed, just imagine trying to perform your best work only using technology circa 2009, and you’ll begin to see just how vital new tech is to business success. Remember, the best business owners don’t resist change –– they embrace it!

November 23, 2019 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Personal Finance

Do You Spend Too Much Money on Sports? Here Are Some Smart Tips

by Evan October 16, 2019

Author: Robert Bell

Table set with munchies for a Super Bowl party. White background.

If you love watching sports, then it is probably a hobby you don’t want to give up. Yet, what if you find that you are currently spending too much on going to the games?

The good news is that there are fairly simple pieces of advice that will allow you to carry on enjoying your favorite sports without it costing you a fortune.

Don’t Buy Food and Drink in the Stadium

It is no secret that most big sports stadiums charge a lot for their food and drinks. A piece of research carried out on NFL Super bowl menus showed that only the 2019 event in Atlanta’s
Mercedes-Benz Stadium charged reasonable amounts.

The chances are that you will need to pay way over the odds to buy something simple like a hot dog and a beer at a game. While this does feel like part of the overall fun of going, if you attend a lot of games then it will add up to a tidy sum over the season.

A far more sensible idea is to eat at home before you leave. It might not be as exciting, but it will save you cash.

Go Straight Home After the Game

Another way that some fans spend too much is by hanging around after the game is over. Most stadiums have some great bars near them where it is easy to either celebrate or else drown your tears.

If you get into this habit, then you could end up spending far more after the event than during it. Therefore, making a plan to go straight at the end is a sound decision.

Look for Last Minute Tickets

The price of tickets for the likes of NBA, NFL, and NHL games is pretty steep. For the 2018-19 season, the average NBA ticket price rose to $89 on the secondary market. In terms of the NFL, expect to pay an average of $130 to $150 just to get into the stadium.

If you prefer to see ice hockey in Canada then expect to pay from $51 US to get a seat. This lowest price is to see the Ottawa Senators. The highest is $96 US at the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Searching online for last-minute ticket deals can help you to pay less. Of course, it all comes down to demand so you might miss out sometimes and get a really low price on other occasions.

Use Your Knowledge to Win Money

Keen sports fans tend to gather a huge database of knowledge without even realizing it. This is fantastic for impressing friends at quizzes, but could you also use your knowledge to win some money too?

What about betting on the outcomes of games involving teams that you know a lot about? There is a good chance that you can correctly predict what is going to happen a lot of the time.

If you choose to bet on football, basketball, or any other sport there is no guarantee of winning. However, it does give you an opportunity to see whether you are able to do so regularly.

Invite Friends Over to Watch Games

We have seen that going out to watch games can be very expensive. In fact, we haven’t even considered the cost of transport or parking yet.

Because of this, it can make sense to stay at home and invite some friends over to watch a game on the television. If everyone brings along snacks and something to drink, then it can be a brilliant night in that doesn’t cost anyone a lot of money.

October 16, 2019 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
saving money
Personal Finance

Saving Money 101: How Do You Save The Easy Way?

by Evan October 4, 2019

One of the trickiest questions in the realm of personal finance would be finding the most efficient way to save. And a lot of experts and professionals will often answer that this really depends on your current financial situation. That much is true – because it really depends on how much you earn, what sorts of debts you have, what you pay for, and what you want to do with your savings. However, just because the process can be complex doesn’t mean it’s impossible to accomplish. If you want to find the most efficient ways to save money, then you’ve come to the right place. Here are some of the most efficient methods to save money:

Adjust your lifestyle.

Part of the reason why a lot of people find it hard to save money is because of their chosen lifestyle. Sometimes, what we think are “safe” nights out, or gatherings with friends, or parties, and even the occasional smartphone or two, can actually have a huge impact on our savings. Try to look at your lifestyle and eliminate components that require unnecessary spending. This might not be much at first, but a lifestyle adjustment can have a huge payoff in the form of less spending in the long run.

Record your expenses. An important part of being able to save money is to know exactly what you’re spending, and if there are adjustments you can do in the process. Are you spending too much on your transportation? Maybe commute. Are you spending too much time on eating out? Maybe you can eat at home. Noting your expenses allows you to have a better understanding of how much money you might be wasting or spending into unnecessary things.

With your budget in mind and your savings goal in your head, try to see if there are ways you can adjust your lifestyle to help you save as much money as possible. When we say “adjust your lifestyle,” we don’t mean go totally away from your means. Rather, adjust your lifestyle in such a way that lets you spend less without sacrificing comfort and quality of life. Maybe you can opt for disposable utensils to save water, or use less electricity.

If you need to have extra money, maybe you can get extra shifts, extra workload, or even a part-time job to increase the money you have on-hand. This can get in handy for paying for debt, adding into your emergency fund, your insurance, or your savings overall. Such a situation can be helpful, especially now that there’s a ton of services like my-estub login that can help you keep track of how much you’re paid by employers without having to use complicated software.

Eliminate debt as soon as possible

This might be the hardest – but perhaps the most important – element of your quest for saving money. While you might think this can be a bit detrimental to the goal of this article, this tip might also be the most meaningful. How can you properly save money on your own terms if you have looming debt? Part of the process of saving money is to develop good financial habits, and you can develop such habits while in the process of paying off your debt. Imagine, once you focus on “saving” a particular amount of money to pay your debt, you’ll likely be able to focus on “saving” a particular amount of money to actual savings in the future. It’s all in the habit.

  • Take note of what debts you currently have, and focus on eliminating the largest debt you have. This largest debt will likely have the biggest interest rate, and will likely demand the most attention on your finances. Having this gone will allow you to spend more time allocating money into your savings and your other debt without worrying about not meeting your monthly dues. This will likely hinder you from actually saving substantial money for a while, but once your debt is fully paid, you’ll not have much to worry about. This is also good for your credit score.
  • Once you’ve paid off your debt, get a “new” one – in this case, a savings goal. It’s hard for others to save money because they only think of the action of “saving” and not what you want to use it for. It might help to actually visualize what you want to save up for, as well as setting up a timeline for you to achieve it. Do you want to buy a house within a few years? Do you want to get a car? You can use the same principle as “paying off debt” to “paying off your savings.”

Focus on an emergency fund

Again, this might be another tricky thing to do – after all, why save money if you can’t immediately spend it on relevant things? However, it’s important to be able to set up emergency precautions should accidents or other things happen that might immediately affect your financial status. Accidents, family and even professional situations might have some form of impact on your financial status. Not being prepared for such an eventuality might ruin your savings plan.

  • If you can, try modifying your savings and checking account to do something called auto debit every payday. This allows you to automatically move money from your paycheck to your savings, which essentially sets up an emergency fund without you knowing it.

Invest on saving

Another efficient way you can save money is to spend it – weird choice of words, right? The thing is, you can actually save more money by investing in smarter choices around you – be it with yourself, or with the overall household. For instance, if you want to lessen your utility costs, don’t wait for the utility companies to lower prices for you. Instead, make measures to ensure your household doesn’t consume that much electricity and water. If you make many of these smart investments, not only will you “reclaim” what you’ve spent in a few months or years, but even save more money naturally.

  • Invest in improving aspects of your day-to-day operations, especially at home. If you have extra money, you can invest in rainwater storage tanks, renewable energy sources such as solar power, and even repair broken utility tools at home. This might be costly, but it’s an investment that can help you save money for years to come.
  • Invest in insurance, especially life and accident insurance. Aside from an emergency fund, having insurance for you and the family will allow you to be able to have financial assistance in the case of emergencies that would otherwise be too costly. Having insurance also allows you to seek the services of professionals for free, provided you get to pay your premium.

Smarter Choices, Planning Make More Money

Remember, with the tips above, you’ll likely be able to save quite a bit of money with a few lifestyle adjustments. These might not make you immediately save a ton of money on the get-go, but developing a habit of decreasing your spending this way can at least help you slowly save up money to meet your spending goals. The idea here is to slowly cultivate habits that will enable you to save up but not necessarily ruin the lifestyle you’ve set for yourself. And always remember to adjust the tips above to your needs so you’ll still live the kind of life you want with important financial adjustments.

October 4, 2019 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Personal Finance

The Best Kept Secrets of the World’s Most Successful Self-Made Millionaires

by Evan September 19, 2019

Maybe it’s not your specific goal to become a self-made millionaire, but there’s a good chance that one of your goals is to become financially comfortable. Whether you hope to earn millions of dollars or you merely wish to pay your bills, we all have the urge to make more money. This is just the way that humans are wired, especially humans living in Western consumerist societies.

Saying that you wish to become a millionaire is a lofty goal, but it’s certainly not impossible. As long as you have the education, determination, and passion for what you’re doing, making a million dollars is feasible. The road will be long and challenging, but these best-kept secrets from the world’s most successful self-made millionaires will help you get there.

Don’t Be Afraid to Take Risks

There’s nothing wrong with playing it safe. Billions of people choose to play it safe every single day by going in to work at a dead-end job, just to pay the bills. Playing it safe can even eventually make you a million dollars. But taking this path will take time, and you might not get there before it’s time to retire.

If you want to become a millionaire during your youthful years and actually enjoy the money you’ve earned, you need to learn how to take calculated risks. Taking calculated risks means that you’ve thought long and hard about a course of action. You eventually decide that, albeit risky, it is worth the risk.

The majority of the world’s self-made millionaires earned their money by taking a calculated risk. When we talk about risk, we’re not referring to spinning online slots for free. No, we’re talking about furthering your business career with an action that has the potential to bring you to the next level.

Stop Spending, Start Investing

In order to make money, you need to spend money. But in order to make millions of dollars, you need to invest money. Although the rich do indeed spend money, they also understand that the best way to continue being rich – or become richer – is to make wise investments. Part of the reason for this is that the rich understand that US tax laws favor investing over spending.

Just think about it…When you purchase a new house for personal use, you can’t simply write it off when it comes time to file property taxes. But when you invest in a property that produces income, it’s possible to write off the appreciation of the property. The same goes for purchasing luxury cars for personal use as opposed to company use. If you want to become a millionaire, start investing rather than spending.

Surround Yourself With Like-Minded People

This does not mean you need to surround yourself with millionaires and only millionaires. But you should at least be spending time with driven people who share a similar mindset. In other words, stop spending time with people who are complacent with living paycheck to paycheck. Becoming a millionaire isn’t just about hard work and smart investments; it’s also about who you choose to spend your time with.

Stop Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket

Focusing on one revenue stream or one source of income is fairly normal for the average person. But not for self-made millionaires. Most wealthy people of the world create multiple flows of income and never place all of their eggs in one single basket. Even if a multi-million dollar company has consistently been successful, that does not mean it will always remain that way.

Once you have a good amount of money in your bank account, think of an additional option for generating an income. Maybe this means investing in real estate, or perhaps it means playing around with stocks. Whatever you do, just remember that having one source of income is never a good idea, especially if you want to remain a millionaire for years to come.

Transform Weakness into Strength

We’ve all been asked that question at an interview. The one that goes something like, “Can you tell me about your weaknesses?” Most of us try to turn the question around by listing off weaknesses that could also be perceived as strengths. But this is actually not the best way to answer that question.

It is important to actually acknowledge that every human has weaknesses. Becoming aware of your weaknesses is an essential step to becoming a self-made millionaire. Once you have identified what your flaws are, you can work to improve those flaws, and eventually, you may even be able to transform them into strengths.

Take public speaking as an example. When it comes to speaking in front of an audience, you fumble over your words and begin to sweat profusely. As soon as you become aware of this flaw, you decide to take a public speaking class. After the 6-week course, you finally master the art of speaking in front of a crowd. In fact, you have acquired to tools and skills necessary to speak in front of others flawlessly.

Look at Millionaire Status as a Duty, Not a Goal

So many people view “becoming rich” as a goal, something to accomplish over time. If you want to earn millions, you need to get rid of this attitude and start treating it as a duty. You have a duty to fulfill, and that is to reach your fullest potential. Becoming a self-made millionaire is one of the best ways to accomplish that.

September 19, 2019 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Debt

Fast Ways to Borrow Money When You’re in a Pinch

by Evan September 18, 2019

There are times where we may need to borrow money quickly

When people need some additional money or need to make a large purchase, they use loans. Loans are incredibly common and over one third of Americans take out loans every year. They can help people buy homes, cars, pay for their education and a variety of other things. However, we don’t always know in advance when we may need some money.

Emergencies and accidents happen all the time and often require a lot of money to fix or make better. And with some stats showing that around 40% of Americans don’t have enough to cover a $400 emergency, there are times where we may need to borrow money quickly.

Thankfully, there are a couple of different fast ways to borrow money in a pinch, and this article is going to look at a few of them.

Ask Your Friends and Family

It’s not worth ruining a relationship for a bit of cash, so be careful when borrowing from friends

This might be tough for some people, but one of the better and cheaper ways to get money quickly is to ask friends or family members. Swallowing your pride and asking can be difficult for some, but it is a great way to get money without paying extremely high-interest rates. Of course, you will be better off only asking those who are very close to you, as others may not be willing to help.

However, if you borrow money from friends and family, be sure to pay them back in a reasonable amount of time. The last thing you want to do is take advantage of someone nice enough to help you out. It’s not worth ruining a relationship for a bit of cash, so always pay people back on time. In addition to that, you could even consider paying them back a little extra to show your appreciation.

Use Your Car or Home as Collateral

If you can’t borrow money from friends or family and don’t have enough time for a standard loan, you could consider using your home or car to borrow. Opening a HELOC (home equity line of credit) is very fast and can get you the money you need soon. Also, getting car title loans in Los Angeles or wherever you’re from is also quick and easy.

These involve you essentially borrowing money against the equity of your home or car. As you could imagine, it is quite risky to use your car or home as collateral. You need to be sure to make all of your payments on time and in full. If not, you run the risk of potentially losing your home or car. But if you know you can keep up with the payments they are a great option for getting money quickly.

Utilize Short Term or Payday Loans

While this shouldn’t be your first choice, it is certainly an option that nearly everybody has. There are likely many lenders in your local area that offer short term or payday loans. These loans are meant to hold you over for a few weeks or a month, or until you get paid next. They are incredibly convenient and quick but often come with incredibly high-interest rates. Even still, sometimes they might be the only option a person has.

Of course, it must also be mentioned many payday loans are predatory in nature and look to take advantage of borrowers. If something seems fishy or seems too good to be true, it is best to listen to your gut and avoid it. Whenever you borrow money, whether through a payday loan or not, be sure to know all the information and terms before signing anything.

Hopefully, this blog post has helped you learn some helpful methods of borrowing money quickly when you need it most.

September 18, 2019 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4

Follow on Twitter

Tweets by MJTM

Sign Up to Receive Posts

Subscribe our Newsletter for new blog posts, tips & new photos. Let's stay updated!

Popular Posts

  • 1

    What Can John Wooden Teach us about Stock Analysis?

    June 14, 2010
  • 2

    10 Year Anniversary at Work

    May 18, 2017
  • 3

    Three Common Qualities of High Net Worth Individual’s Balance Sheets

    January 31, 2010
  • 4

    The Best Kept Secrets of the World’s Most Successful Self-Made Millionaires

    September 19, 2019
  • 5

    Top 5 Finance Sites

    August 22, 2008

Back To Top