Getting The Money To Get Started

As the old saying goes, "It takes money to make money" True! and the more money you have to work with the more you can make or lose, as the case may be. Over the centuries this problem has been at the forefront of why more people have not become rich. Today, we are lucky in the developed world, in that money is readily available then ever in our history. Investment opportunities where money can be put to work is also much more abundant.

This book is about raising money to get started. Most of us have access to more money then we think we do. The problem is that most of us do not plan the use of our money, or know where we spend the money that passes through our hands. If getting rich is your goal? Then learning how to manage your money will be necessary. You will need a plan that indicates what you want to achieve, when you plan to achieve it, and how you plan to get there. You can make your plan informal or formal, detailed or vague, but it should be in writing, and referred to on a regular bases, in order to evaluate how you are doing in relationship to your stated goals.

To know how far you have come, you have to know from where you started, that means you need to prepare a personal financial statement showing your current net worth. And last, but not least, you need to prepare a monthly cash flow statement on your household. You must know where your money is going if you plan to save and invest any of it. For a personal financial statement form go to: http://www.sba.gov/sbaforms/sba413.pdf

Building An Investment Nest Egg. The first thing I learned when I tried to save for investing was that a family is most likely going to spend every penny that comes into the household. Every plan my wife, and I made fell apart as the inevitable surprise expense came up. Every time we tried to economize to reduce our spending, we ended up giving up. Here is how we finally did it.

All extra, unexpected money coming into the household went in to a separate investment savings account. Every extra dollar, tax refunds, birthday money, insurance settlements, bonus from work, over time pay and paychecks from extra jobs as well as garage sale money etc. We started this in 1978 and by 1981 we had $4,800 saved. I had a goal of $10,000 so I sold my car for $6,000 and bought an old pick up truck for $700, I then had the $10,000 I thought I needed to start investing in real estate.

Twenty-five years later we still invest most of the extra money coming into our household. Pocket change and one dollar bills were accumulated in a jar every day for those surprise expenses that ruin a budget and if none came up, we used it for vacation money. We took some of the money from our first three years savings to start a fireworks sales business to keep the extra money coming in. We ran the fireworks sales business for the next fourteen years. We worked every July 4th holiday, and Christmas/New year holiday selling fireworks. The point here is, if you want to accomplish your plan you will find a way.