Nothing is permanent in this wicked world — not even our troubles. — Charlie Chaplin
Have you ever watched a kid learning to ride a bike? We all have.
My younger daughter used to fall down every time she tried learning how to ride a bike, yet she always smiled and kept trying until she mastered that skill.
Most things we achieve in life relate to this little life lesson – learn to pick yourself up when life knocks you down.
Money is a taboo subject that we hate to discuss. The good news is that our Web is full of financial wisdom — explore and learn from these sites to super charge your finances.
1. Frugality is a way of life.
After a while you find yourself nickel-and-diming every purchase, picking up each and every object and finding an excuse why you don’t need it anymore. Before long you have almost nothing to your name and spend almost nothing either. Oddly that feels rather good! – retiredby40
2. Happiness comes from within, not from possessions.
Despite having little money up until 24 years old, I was so happy. I’m thankful for having supportive parents, a place to stay, and food to eat. Living in multiple third world countries really hammered home the fact that not everybody is so fortunate. This is why I encourage all of us to travel and learn a new language or two. There would be more love and less war if we traveled. --Yakezie
3. Buy assets. Avoid liabilities.
That’s it. Simply buy assets. Buy things that increase in value. Buy things that produce income. Avoid spending money earned in exchange for work on anything other than assets. The problem is, most of us take the exact opposite approach. We buy liabilities. We buy things that depreciate in value – sometimes quite rapidly. We buy “experiences” like magical vacations. We spend an inordinate amount of money on entertainment, eating out, and expensive hobbies. — Frugaldad
4. Learn how to invest wisely.
Over the past several years, I’ve read piles and piles of books and websites and other materials related to investing. Here are the gems I’ve found, focusing particularly on resources most useful for learning. – Thesimpledollar
5. Have courage to do what you love.
“I’m not forced to freelance because I can’t find work. I choose to freelance because that’s where the hottest opportunities are. I’m actually the rare journalist who wasn’t laid off — I voluntarily quit my newspaper job. I quit 8 months after I got a promotion and a $10,000 raise. Oh, and I loved my job. Loved my colleagues in the newsroom. Loved my boss. Quit anyway. Now I make more money AND have more free time than I did before.” — Afford-anything
6. Turtle wins the race.
The results speak for themselves. I chose the worst possible day to buy stocks by buying high, used the most inefficient use of dividends by letting it sit as cash and yet, by investing in defensive, blue chip companies, I actually come out 65.42% richer! Also note that I’m excluding the market recovery of 2010 (lost decade, duh!). – Moneycone
7. Get out of the rate race.
I currently have it good for my stage in life, and compared to many other people and where I could be, I really have no right to complain. I do, however, still feel that I am leaving something behind. I don’t want to do 9 to 5 for the rest of my life, and I believe that something better is possible. – Investitwisely
8. Conquer your debt.
You’re in debt! How did that happen? Who cares! Too often, we spend so much time focusing on “the how” and become paralyzed about improving the situation and starting the process of getting out of debt. — thedigeratilife
9. Don’t spend what you don’t have(A.K.A. Credit cards).
We use cash for most of our day-to-day purchases. A lot of this has to do with where we’re currently living – not as much is online, and not many mom-n-pop stores here take plastic – but even stateside, we rely a lot more on cash than on plastic. – simplemom
10. Super charge your brain.
Now I am not a brain surgeon and I am not going to suggest you do anything surgical or dangerous. I am however an astute student of human behavior, so I always look for simple ways to super charge my brain. — Shilpan@dumblittleman
Great post. #2 is very profound. I was just out with a friend last night talking about internal happiness and contentment and how we have to work at finding it sometimes. Realizing that stuff is not the answer is a huge step in the right direction.
Miss T,
You are absolutely right. Most of our worries go away if we understand that happiness comes from our own thoughts. No matter what circumstances we face, we can always choose to be happy. Possessions can never bring eternal happiness.
Great post Shilpan. You provide a lot of great take aways and have an easy style to follow. Also, I love the links you included too. I liked your article on DLM as well. Cheers!!!
Thank you!
You have a very nice format in your post! Thanks for highlighting.
Best, Sam
Sam,
Your article is one of the most inspiring articles that I’ve read recently. Thank you for sharing.
Shilpan
My favorite is #9, Don’t spend what you don’t have. Altohugh it may sound like the wisdom of obvious it’s actually very hard to do in the world where there is so many temptations and credit cards are so easy to get it.
Alik, You are correct;it is hard to control spending when we have so many options to get easy money.
[...] Smart Finance: 10 Simple tips to Super Charge Your Personal Finances – This article is collection of best financial wisdom from some of the blogs in Yakezie and [...]
Awesome post and thanks for including my Guest Post on Retire by 40. I really enjoyed the chatter on that post.
Forest,
I really enjoyed reading the post. Thank you for writing such an awesome article.