How positive are you now? Have you noticed that when you woke up early in the morning, fresh and positive, then someone came to you and keep telling you negative stuff. Your mood for the day will become negative as well. These people have no intention to drain your positive energy, but it's good that you have your own set of thoughts to filter the negativity, and it's best to avoid these people.

Sometimes you may feel uneasy and guilt to avoid such people if they are your family members, friends or loved one. It's inevitable from time to time people just want to find someone trustworthy to listen to their story about how sad their life, or how they don't like their job, not satisfy with their relationship and don't have enough money. People just want to express their feeling out to feel better themselves, you in turn will become negative.

What can you do?
There are only 2 options for you, either you joined them to become negative or get out from there. If you are reluctant to get out from the conversation, you can choose to buy into that conversation and when you spotted them saying about what they don't want, change them to what do you want. Ask them "what do you really want?” In most cases, when you asked them "what do you want?", they would tell you what they want (often negative people don't know what they want) and this change the whole conversation to become more positive, thus helping the other person achieve a more positive person. If no matter how positive you want to change in the conversation and he/she still remained as negative. You should leave for god sakes, you are responsible to look after yourself to be more positive.

How do you know if you are positive or negative?

Often you can tell how positive or negative you are by how you feel. If you were to measure your positive or negative energy by scale of 1-100, giving 100 is very positive and 0 as very negative. How do you want yourself to be? I bet you would want your everyday life to be above 50 positive, so that you can smile more, worry less and stay as happy you could. How can you achieve 50 above daily, it's all based on how you choose to feel? If you choose to be happy, you will remain happy, I know, it's easy said than done, if you can't choose the state of happiness, there's another option you can take, sticks around with positive people or likeminded people, and start attracting their positive energy.

You can see the difference, your day will be more colorful and you would start to see tree dancing and flower blooming.

Cheers ~

Do you have a set of goals? How realistic is your goals? I was surprised that many people do not have a goal, they just don't have one. I was quite amused by a reply of a friend, I asked her one day, I said "It's only 4 more months to year end. Had you achieved your 2008 resolution?". She smiled with feigned and said "Yes, I always have the same resolution every year and achieved them every year too". I replied, "Wow, that's good, what's your resolution for this year, mind to share?". She said "My yearly resolution is not to have a resolution, and I always achieve them, I don't make one because often it would NOT be fulfilled."

Goals set has to be realistic and measurable, when goals given are not realistic and clear, it's already doomed from the beginning. It immediately gives you a negative feeling to hold on to the persistence to accomplish your mission to achieve them. Even if you neglected them for being unrealistic such as setting a goals "to live happier, having less money problems and earn more money through passive income (stocks and properties)". At first glance, it seems to be good goals, actually it's not clear, and it does not have a time period to achieve them. If you print this out and read them everyday, your subconscious mind would only know what you want but do not know when you want it, to be precise and clear, first, you need to list them down clearly.

1. Goals setting has to be clear and specific.
It's easy to say "I want clear all my debt in the next 2 years", but to be more goals specifics "I want clear my debt by cultivate habit to be good in money management (learn up financial tools, document your expenses in excel or paper), spend less for more (live frugally), save 10% of my income (saving for rainy days), I will pay my credit card balance double or triple the minimum payment required by cutting down my spending habits, and I want to accomplish this in the next 2 years" is better.

2. Goals setting must be measurable.
Health - I want to lose weight. How many KG do you plan to lose your weight in 6 months or 1 year time?
Wealth - I want to make more money. How much money do you want to make in 6 months or 1 year time?
Love - I want my relationship to be better - When will you know your relationship will be better, give result that will let you know that you've accomplished the goals.

3 Goals setting is followed by action.
You don't set goals and sits there waiting for them to come, you have to be motivated to get what you want to be by starting movement towards the goals. Sticks to your goals and be persistence, start it slow if can, actions speak louder than words.

4 Goals setting in writing.
Write down your goals, it makes them more real and print it out and sticks it somewhere you can see it everyday. Visualize them everyday, feels how it is looks like when you already achieve them, and this can influence your subconscious mind.

The last things to remember is that goals naturally evolve, from time to time, we would change our goals in certain levels of life. Change accordingly and be firmed to your goals.

Being in debt is not fun, it's been 5 months since I started my life to be good in money management. I have been living frugally every month without much entertainment, most of my time spent was either gym, swimming, reading books and writing blog. I'm happy to keep myself disciplined in paying myself first, smarter in spending within my needs and afford ability. The interesting part is get to noticed my debts getting lesser and lesser. Guess what? I am living much more happier.

The journey to debt free (referring to bad debts) requires a lot of determination and disciplined, once you have decided to take the first step, you are on you way to debt free and settling Money problems. It takes a thousand miles to begin with a single step. Money shortages are always stressful and serious debt can emotionally drain you.

Thus, you can find dozen of debt management articles spread across the internet, you can read and understand them, but most of us need to dealt with ourself first, the biggest enemy is ourself. Life has up and down, different period in our life, we would have negative feelings of fear and anxiety.

Glad, after all it just money, take out the negative feelings, money problems can always be solve, you are still breathing, you are still alive, you are not losing your loved one or diagnose by incurable disease. You should be glad.

Accept, and don't blame. Part of your debts could be from your spending habit, it's your spending decision to create the problem for youself no matter you are aware of it or  not. There's always a choice, accept and works towards the responsibility.

Stop, spending is easy, stopping is hard. Digging is hard but stop digging is easy, if you are digging yourself into a hole, it's easy to stop digging. Likewise, same to money, when you stop spending, you are getting better control of your financial. Spend within your mean, you just need foods, water, cloth and a roof over your head to survive.

Personality, there's always good and bad debts, many people value a person by what car they drive, what they wear, what brand they carry in their hand or the brand of the watch they wear. What would be the purpose of having debts when you wear a ROLEX watch? Money is not to value a person status in society but the qualities of the person, character and personality. Sticks with true and honest people who don't really judge people by wealth but your their personality.

Learn, to be a lifelong student, it's part and parcel of learning experience in self-growth, debts you can resolve today can be an experience for you to deals with tougher challenge in future. When there is a challenge, there is always an opportunities, it could be a turning point in life for you to discover a better living lifestyle and a new start of life.

We get the message "Ubah Gaya Hidup", everything just hike up when fuel price increased. House is getting more expensive, stocks market is unstable, banks may increase interest rates. Political drama keep going on and economy isn't getting better, our country is in a mess. It seems like we had no idea what's gonna happen next.

Despite all the negativity that kept pouring in, "Ubah Gaya Hidup" living better for less seems impossible to be truth. In other perspective, a tough time could means a good time to make a difference in your life, a positive change.

How to take advantage in a bad economy?
Many of us are trimming their expenses and going out less, many has cancelled their yearly vacations from their to-do-list, you can utilize this time around to go travel with smaller crowds, MATTA Fair is just around the corner, visit and grab the cheapest package as fast as you can.

Invest, if you have money in your bank account, this would be a buyer paradise to invest in real estate, there may be many houses out for "lelong" and you can get a good location due to many empty lots available. Another opportunity would be starting your business, a great time to serve the market who would like to spend less for more, or perhaps look for a market that has the most number of businesses closing down and start building the root from there by researching the reason and find the solutions to cater for the market needs this time around.

Start a blog and earn money as people would be spending more at home surfing the internet looking for information and ideas to improve their life, aims for something that people would like to read such as money, entertainment, personal development and daily solutions method.

If worst come to worst, you can take this opportunity to explore working abroad where currency is much stronger. If you really have too many expenses you can't cope and in bad shape due bad economy, this could be a good idea to think about.

After all, economy wouldn't be bad all the times, we can make use of the bad times to learn and the good time to save so that we can handle it in future. "Ubah Gaya Hidup" to kicks the bad habits out and cultivate good one.

When it comes to money, it is very sensitive topic to talk about, when something goes wrong, it will ended up in a big fight and worst still affect the relationship that is so close. Everybody fight over money, husband/wife, friends, couple and family members.

No matter how nice you are, when talk about money that's not the way you want, you can be the fiercest person on earth. Money makes the world go round, here's where the common use of "No Money No Talk" came from. Everyone need money to get food into their stomach and a roof over their head, money is not evil, what's evil is the stress that cause by lack of money, for long we have know that stress can affect your mood and emotions, stress can make you gain or lose weight, depression, sleepless, loss appetite, loss interest in sex, anxiety and many more. Stress can kill you slowly and affect your health in long run, so why fight over money?.

If you recall in your past why do you get so angry fighting over money with someone, is it because it does not meet your dreams, desires and goals. Stop for a moment, think again what leads to the arguments and what is cause of the stress and increased the tension. Is it important? Now switch your thought to how lovely and care the person gives to you. In fact, at that point of time, you can only see is their flaws and not why you love them. Even if you win the fight over money and got what you want, unfortunately someone you love and care about suddenly becomes someone you can't be around, do you want that? Money can't buy happiness, money problems lead to stress. Stress can leads to divorce, break up, loss of friendship and disconnect family love.

"No matter how thin you slice it, there are always two sides." - Baruch Spinoza

Whether you want it or not, couples fight over money because one or neither party are lack of money management. To avoid the fight, it is important to know that couple instead thinking like two, both should be thinking and acting like one to achieve the goals they set, goals setting should be realistic and discuss peacefully among each other. Hold to the trust to each other.

Only people make money evil and fighting, money has no problem, if you deals money issues in different perspective positively, you could see the other side of peace and harmonious. If you have read "who moved my cheese", when rat hit a roadblock, they would look for other way out, but unfortunately for human being, when they hit a roadblock, they start to blamed on others. If rat can find other way out, why can't you?

What trigger your spending? When you are sad, depressed, angry, excited or lonely? I use to spend more money when I feel bored or carrying a lot of cash in my pocket. That's why I don't carry much cash myself to avoid temptation to spend. Having to identify the way to trigger my spending, I have been very caution to avoid and control them. I find it challenge to disciplined myself and it takes time to learns discipline money.

It is very hard for you to have the temptation not to buy when the stuff you have been thinking to buy are on sales, 50%, 60% or 70% discount. You feel disturb and your subconcious mind keep asking yourself, "buy or not buy?", "sales now, great deals!", "I can swipe first and pay later since it's on sales, I can save a lot." and many more which you are convincing yourself to buy, you are finding a good reason to buy so that you can buy comfortably and feel better in spending, I think many of us have such thought before, self talking to yourself buy or not buy. However, it's good to practices evaluating before taking action to purchase, instead of convincing youself, why not you evaluate why you need the stuff, it is necessary? do I have more than enough? do I have budget for this? If the answer is NO, then just stay away and hang in there for awhile, you may notice your temptation to buy will fade away and you may even forgotten about it after 2 to 3 days. I know the feeling is sucks, whenever the feeling slip through, shift your thought to think positively, think about another fews more digit in your bank account or stay out of debts, it will makes you feel better. 

Discipline Money require self-discipline,  it is a key to reduce debts and increase savings, if you practice it in long run, it will also improve your standard of living. Undiscipline person normally does not have discipline in money, if you notices yourself working day and night for money and the money just slip away easily, it is time for you to review your spending habits and time for money management lesson.

Discipline Money require a lot of self-discipline,  it is easy when you come to think of fantastic rewards to reach financial stability that you hopes for. Take each step forward in controlling your spending habits with bit of imagination and just little creativity to put your hard-earned money on lock. 

There's always an argument that money can't buy happiness, I had written a post about this in october 2007, can money buy happiness? if money can't buy happiness, the same fact goes to happiness can't buy money. 

If money can't buy happiness, what can? Are you sastify with your current job? If you does, on what level? Money is definitely important to survive but there's a need to balance equally between Money and Happiness in long run. Most of time the job we are working now might not be the ideal job we are looking for and many of us fall into the line not by choice but by accident. We accepted the job, learned and stay in the job because of benefits and higher pay, we believe that we don't have any options left to choose.

If you choose to stay in the job merely because the job give what you want and moreover it give you certains level of comfort to perform the task with colleagues you are familiar, routine tasks you have been doing all the while and salary that you can survive, but most of the time, this doesn't ensure you for a lifetime happiness. Till then, do you think a degree is still necessary? A college degree only open up you to the scope in the field you are expert at, but restricted you to other fields to discover. Yet, it came to surprise that most of us doesn't really work on what their qualification for that line and we are taught to major at what field by influenced (by friends, relatives, parents and media) that guarantee a good future at that point of time.

After spending four to five years for a degree and the cost involved, we believe that we love this line and journey, but after working for five to ten years down the road, we lost the faith that it guarantee our happiness. We accept whatever we can take and salary we get, keep convincing ourself that there's no choice in our life and this is suppose life are meant to be, we are locked in here and no way out.  If we keep doing what we already have and what we already know, it's just a routine, it doesn't make us happy. It doesn't fulfill the dream of what we could be. We accept it because we believe that's the way life is.

So, what is money and happiness? If you are given a choice to determine your life with money and happiness, which one would give you more sastifaction. Looking at what we expect and finding out what actually value us most by giving rating and deem most important can give you piece of sastifaction. In fact, the term "money can't buy happiness" is depend on how you give rating to your happiness and money.

I felt sorry to myself for not blogging for weeks, where's my goals, where's all the promises that I have make to myself. Missing in action for weeks, back to reality again, recently just caught up with forex trading and taking all my free time to understand and learn the system. I would say interesting and still much to learn. Here's where I start - babypips.

What does successful means to you (in terms of financial)? If you want to be successful, then you should go to motivational talks, seminars and read up all the latest self development or financial books, how to earn multi million through trading, investment, real estate and etc.

Does that really make you millionaire or billionaire? If it's so easy then everyone would be rich!, this is what I get recently chatting with a friend in mamak "reading a book and joining seminar would get your rich, then everyone would be rich, don't be so NAIVE". My friend really keep me mute for seconds.

Somehow I think back what my friend say could be true if only you listen or read advice from the books or seminar more than ACT, we know we understand a lot theorytically, but practically not. It's easy said than done, the question about how easy successful can be?  It's not easy but the answer to achieving it is taking ACTION. Spending thousand and hundred of ringgit to seminar and reading another book without taking what you learnt into practice means nothing in the end. 

This could see why successful people keep taking action and moving forward by looking for resources they are lack of, while not so successful people are waiting for something to happen and sit still in the position without leaving their comfort zone.

Well, I guess I should start moving and acting on what I know now rather than waiting what I want to know tomorrow. At least I have taken the action no matter it's large or small, it moves me closer to achieving my goals.

Somehow I doubt about the term "Time is Money", I would rather agreed on "Doing the right thing on the right time." However some time spent with family, friends, exercising, vacation are even more valuable.

How do  we balance our time wisely? According to wikipedia "Time Management is commonly defined as the management of time in order to make the most out of it." I think the best practice in time management is to plan ahead what to do on the day, to get most of it try to cultivate habits to list down a to do list before you go to sleep. I have been practising it for months, using an online to do list which is very convenient for me as I face in front of computer during work hours and I don't have to carry anything with me all the time. I can plan it out at home and login from office and refer to the to do list at work, the best thing about online to do list is that it allowed me to categorize it's prioritiness, assign labels and what most you can access anywhere you want. If you opted for an online to do list, I strongly recommend todoist.com. Here's an article which is very useful to prepared a doable to do list - The art of the doable to-do list. If you have limited access online, you can try using outlook to do list or more traditional way by using a "555" small notepad to start off.

So, you have constructed your time management scheme. Stick to your goals and practising it everyday, you may get lazy on the first or two weeks, remind yourself all the time, stick to your plan and goals, make it a habit and when you get use to it after 3 months, I can assure you that it will be an everyday routine without you reminding yourself and you can see a tremedous change in the outcome you perform in work and balancing your time effectively.

What do you see yourself in age 60, retired and finish rich. I have heard that only 1% of the people retired rich and 60% of them finish rich because of business, the rest are either inherited or from high management position (CEO, CFO, etc…). Ever wonder how to be part of the 1% of people to finish and retired rich. Recently I read a book - How You can become A Multi Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Milan Doshi. There's an idea from the book that suggested you can become a Millionaire getting 1 property every 5 years by saving as little as RM450 a month. The idea is pretty awesome and is good if you start from NOW. Since I am in the late twenty group, it would be a good time to start to set a goals for this.

It may sounds strange for a person not reach thirty to have such thought of thinking retirement, but I have been thinking about retirement and visualise them lately, I think I am getting older and older and need to start something. Seeing some of my friends, in their early thirty still partying all night long and not ready to settle down financially, I am not sure if they had any plan but what I know is that many of them are planning to get out of Malaysia to earn more Money. Is the grass greener on the other side?

If you happened to visit some of the seminar about wealth, you may notice, all walks of life is there to look for a change in their life, some are fourty and fifty, some are doctor, businessman and millionaires (no kidding). Sometimes, I was wondering what are they doing here, they shoud enjoy the high pay salary or income. I was wrong, they are having good pay and income but felt insecure and no freedom. It's not passive income but active income, if they stop working today, the money will not be coming in. What they are looking for is multiple source of income which mean the number of days they can survive if they stop working today.The true wealth to retire rich is to live rich with lots of freedom.

So, the next time when someone ask you, how much a person actually needs in order to retire? The answer should be the number of days I can survive in infinity if I start to stop working now.