Building Your Money Momentum

I was listening to a podcast about building a business. It talked about how during the initial stages of a business, you need to build momentum and get some sales through the door before moving into other things like staffing, customer services, outsourcing etc. Most entrepreneurs don’t past building sufficient momentum to carry their business to the next phase of building a solid business.

At the same time, I’m preparing for my final paper. Being thirty something and out of school for sometime now, having to go through seven manuals is quite a stretch. Although in my university days, I’m the studious type, now it’s a different story all together. With work, this blog, my other interests and other responsibilities that need my attention, sitting myself down to study and revise was tough, to say the least.

What has this two things got to do with building your money momentum? I guess it made me realize for people who hasn’t developed the habit of managing the money to do something will be an uphill task for them. For me, saving money was never a big issue with me due to the fact that my parents drummed it into my head when I was still young. The same thing with my studies. At this moment, to get started to want to to study, I really needed to force myself to do it. I found myself distracted by all sorts of things. I knew I needed to build momentum. So what I did was to read the easy stuff first. Things I already know without having to memorize the information. It really helped. As I got into the groove, I found myself cruising through the more difficult subjects.

I liked to encourage those who are trying to improve their financial habits to do the same. Pick something easy to build upon. Like saving a dollar a day, then 3 dollars, then 5 dollars a day. If you think you would like to save yourself the trouble and put aside say $21 a week instead of $3 a day, don’t. Use a piggy bank or a tin can and deposit $3 each day. Slowly build your financial muscle until you can do it once a week or once a month. Although putting money into a tin can or a cookie jar might seem juvenile, trust me, it works for many people. That’s why for some people, it’s not the returns on the money, it is the returns of the money. Forget about interest rates or which is the best financial tool, till you get past the first hurdle.

Now, if you are more advance, then this might not apply to you. But you can still use this strategy for yourself. Let’s say you would like to invest in real estate. You know that you must get a feel of the prices, looking at properties, checking out the rental and reading up about real estate. But you might not have the momentum to get you started to be serious about it. You might just look at one or two and get bored and do something else you like. Perhaps just set a target to look at 1 or 2 property ads a day, or just a page about real estate investment every day. Do this till you develop the interest in it, that you become natural to study real estate and really prepare yourself to buy some investment property.

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