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.

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?

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.

How many times have you heard that "money is not enough and I am not happy with my finances"? Alright, this is actually the voices from my heart. I use to blame the government because our education system does not include financial education classes for us to manage money well, sometimes I would blame my parent for not managing their money well enough for their kids to live better in future. But wait a minutes, is it their responsibility? This really got me thinking.

When something is at fault, there is always someone to be blamed. Let's think about it, before pointing finger to others, look at yourself what have you done. Let me share with you, recently I open a poll in a well known finance forum asking about how many people who has emergency fund on their hand if they do not work for 3 or 6 months. I wasn't surprise with the results, there are only 5 persons out of 53 that have emergency fund on hand. This is so common I was not shocked. From the 53 people that responded to my polls, I am sure they are smart and disciplined person. Emergency fund is essential in personal finance and why do this people not following? Perhaps it was just one example and I can't justify overall about personal finance but why do this good personal finance fail in the first place?

It kept me thinking for awhile and I think you may know how important it is to budget and manage your money. No doubt that there are still many people I know still don’t keep track of their expenses. Hmm…I use to think, if everyone is practicing, personal finance would not exists and this blog will not exists neither. Probably this is what I want it to happen.

To get a picture why these good personal finance idea is hard to follow and fail, I would use myself as an example and additional feedback from the poll that I had gathered. Here's some of the reasons and obstacles:

1. Not taking action and lazy to get started

Lazy could be the number one reason. They simply do not want to take action to get it started, all sort of excuses popup such as lack of time or rather spend the time in leisure to rest or do things they always wanted to do. In fact, the first step to get started will not take you long to plan and budget your day-to-day financial affairs. Despite doing all these planning will enable you to do the things that bring you satisfaction and enjoyment in later days. After all, it is completely up to you to take the first step. In my opinion, I think everyone should track where their money goes and I have not met people who is good in their finances that don't need to track their money unless they have a personal finance adviser.

2. Get lazy along the way

I know I know is lazy again. The second big obstacle required discipline and you may lost focus follow through. At this stage, even though you have make the right move to get started, but along the way you get lazy and the intention to give up is strong.

Since many will give up at this stage, if you continue to sticks to your goals, you'll will be better off others. You can cultivate good habits to keep you stay focus, for example, writing journal to remind you to sticks to your goals like I did, to blog about personal finance, and each time I wrote and reread what I wrote, it will automatically entered to my subconscious and keep me stay focus all the time.

See, this works for me, there is other ways to stay motivated, such as keep yourself a to-do-list all the time to force a daily routine to track your expenses. You can take about a minute or two a day after dinner or before you go to bed to list down what you had spend for the day.

3. It is not the right time yet

I know you may have a better important things to take care, you may thought of it is not important enough to take care personal finance now . But let me ask you, when is the best time? It is always the best time to start right now, start it small and you will eventually formulate a plan for yourself in long run that works for you. What's more important than paying attention to yourself. As with anything else in life, without financial goals and specific plans for meeting them, we drift along and leave our future to chance.

I always heard this anywhere in self development books or website -> "most people don't plan to fail; they just fail to plan." So, it reminds me that if I fail to plan, I will fail to reach my financial goals.

Given all the reasons and obstacles, the next step is all depends on you to get kick start your personal finance. It's easy to get started and practicing makes easy. The only courage you need is the first step. Here's a suggestion, you can read this book that I introduced before in my previous post - The Automatic Millionaire. Even J.D. Roth (world's most inspiring money blogger) recommending this book in his latest post - Personal Finance Made Easy: Pay Yourself First.

Finally, it hit us, this sentence "PRICE INCREASE" will be the hot topic anywhere in Malaysia. Fuel price jack up and the upcoming price increase for electricity, whether you like it or not, life must goes on.

In my previous 2 posts, I wrote Can your hard earn money keep up with inflation?, the 3.0% inflation that I mentioned in the post is outdated. The new inflation is estimate to rose to 5% or 6% due to fuel price increased. If we can't avoid inflation, then we can take opportunities from the advantage of it, to keep up with the inflation. Foremost, you may need to revise your lifestyle and start budgeting. I always think that the word "budget" is punishment for those who are poor, like I need to think twice before spending and budgeting seemed like a waste of time. After practising it for months, I discovered that budgeting can keep me focused on the goals I want to achieve and that's why I need it. I personally think it's a smart move NOT putting yourself on credit that you couldn't afford - "Spending without Budgeting". You can know more about how do I manage my money here.

I mentioned in my previous post that I would recommend a book. This is the book -> The Automatic Millionaire. All of us know this "Pay OURSELF first" before you pay others, but how many of us are doing that? When you received your paycheck, do you pay yourself first? through this book, you will discover ways never considered.

Here's the sum up, The Automatic Millionaire one-step plan to live and finish rich is to save money. If you are looking for a get rich quick book, you can avoid this one. To practice the concept in this book, required self-discipline and time. Basically the concept of this book is pay yourself first, and try to make it at least the first 10% of your gross income. This powerful concept and the magic of compounding is irresitable for everyone to follow if you want to finish rich.

Do you want to get up at the middle of the night and say this:- 

Ouch 1: I'm approaching retirement and I have no savings? 
Ouch 2: I tried very hard and no matter what I do, I can't seem to make enough money to cover my expenses and save some money. 
Ouch 3: I wish I could quit this miserable job, but I have no choice, I got bills to pay.

Money is not enough, do you blame money? Money is never the problem, you are the master of your Money. It's just our lack of understanding of money and how we manage our financial planning that cause us lose sleep at night.

You know what the things should do, but simply don't do it - Pay Yourself First!. Making excuses and blaming others, your parent for instead for not teaching us about money are over. If you want to continue to lose sleep at night, it's your choice and it's not because you are born poor, it's just lack of understanding. The great things about this book is that it does not ask you to save big, if you can, that's good, but most people are not in that position, which is why this book will show you how little savings can add up quickly. Saving is something found in your everyday life by the way you live and the choices you make. I am sure you have heard of this "Sikit Sikit Lama Lama Jadi Bukit (Malay translated in English as "from little to grows into mountain")" or this "Rome was not built in a day" and neither will your bank account.

There are hundreds of ways to save money, encouraged yourself that it is never too late to start saving, regardless of your age. Follow your own pace and I always put this quotes with me all the time "I cannot go back and make a new start, but I can start now and make a brand new ending."

Cheers~