The Beginner’s Guide To Financial Discipline

One of the most important concepts I have learnt over the years about money is the role of financial discipline in managing personal finances.

When you realize you are nowhere close to where you would like to be financially, you may need to forego some of the comforts of today in order to plan for tomorrow.

This in turn can keep you many comfortable steps ahead of your bills, and eventually enable you to live the life you desire.

I learnt the hard way that will power alone is not enough to sustain the financial discipline required to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

How do you give yourself that push? Here are four strategies I have found helpful:

 1.  Increase your knowledge about money

Having the right knowledge about money and acting on what you know can go a long way in helping you correct the mistakes that are keeping you from getting ahead.

Financial intelligence can also help you understand how the way you think about money influences the financial results in your life.

For instance, if you are always short of money and you get an unexpected cash windfall, you have found a short-term solution to a bigger problem.

Until you deal with the habits that put you in a financial mess in the first place, it is only a matter of time before you will be right back where you started.

2.  Know what your real financial challenges are

To stay on top of your finances you need to know what you consider to be your greatest financial challenge so you can tackle it head on.

The right solution to your challenge will depend on whether you have trouble getting out of debt, earning money, saving it, investing it or giving some of it away.

The mindset and skills needed to deal with each financial challenge will differ, and that is why you can only get clear on where to begin after you have established the source of the problem.

3.  Identify what is not working for you and get rid of it

It is a sad reality that we tend to focus on what we don’t want instead of what we really want, which creates confusion and overwhelm.

One of the easiest ways to focus on a specific set of activities that can turn your financial life around is to subtract from your life right now those habits that are not getting you closer to your financial goals.

This includes dissociating with people who belittle your ambitions, and putting a stop to spending money to impress others at the expense of your own happiness.

4.  Control your mental diet

Anyone who has tried to lose weight will tell you that watching what you eat is a fundamental principle to getting rid of those few extra pounds.

Likewise, it is very important to control what you feed your mind with on a daily basis.

This alone can accelerate your progress towards thinking and acting differently in the battle against bad financial habits.

If you believe that the solutions to your financial problems are somebody else’s responsibility because the economy is doing badly and unemployment is at an all time high, you need to question how that thought came to mind in the first place.

Financial discipline separates those who struggle with money from those who get ahead, and like most things in life, it can be learnt and improved.

For more insights on how to improve your financial discipline, click here to download The Money Management Blueprint and discover the simple yet little-known strategies that will help you manage your money with ease starting today.