Empty Your Bag of Excuses for the Last Time

It’s time for me to take off the kid gloves and give it to you straight. Here goes…

You will NEVER achieve anything in your life if you don’t stop making excuses for why you’re not as wealthy as you would be or why you’re overweight or why you can’t find someone to share the rest of your life with. The first step to becoming successful in any area of life is to actually conceive and think of what goals are worthy to be pursued. The next step is to actually convince yourself that you can achieve your goal(s).

Don’t be defensive and don’t dismiss this article. Read it through to the end and see if you are holding onto excuses that are limiting your potential.

Excuses are just well, an excuse not to begin, not to succeed and not to go beyond your comfort zone.

Yes, going outside your comfort zone isn’t easy and you’ll have to endure some short-term pain, but isn’t it worth it? Don’t you owe it to yourself to rid yourself of those excuses that have you stopping one foot short of the finish line? Or worse, those excuses have so crippled you that you haven’t even entered the race at all?

Yeah, But…
No buts about it. You can accomplish anything you set your mind to achieving. Think hard about the current excuses you make for not achieving your goals. I bet you I could name a dozen people who have had the same “roadblock” in their life and have achieved greatness despite having your EXACT same excuse. Don’t believe me? Let’s examine some common excuses and I’ll debunk them for you.

ELIMINATING ROAD BLOCKS – EXCUSES ARE JUST EXCUSES

NO MONEY
I don’t have money to invest right now.’ That’s probably the biggest investing LIE people tell themselves.
The truth is you don’t need money to become rich and I’m not talking about “no money down” deals. Consider Anne Scheiber, who when she died in 1995 in New York at the age of 101, was worth $22 million. That fortune began as a $5,000 investment in the stock market by the auditor when she retired in 1944. Yeah but she must have been putting a lot of money in each year, right? Not exactly. She lived on a modest salary as an auditor for the Internal Revenue Service. Her salary at the start of her journey was just over $3000 a year.

She just made it a priority to invest month in and month out. You would be wise to dump your excuse of having no money to invest. Find a way to scrape up an additional $10 a week, then find $20 a week, then more and more. You’ll find that as you start the process of really examining how you’re spending your money, you have more than you think.

If you’re too lazy to examine your budget, you can invest as little as one percent of your salary in your company’s 401(k) plan. So if you make $800 every two weeks, that’s only $8.00 that you would be investing every two weeks or $4 a week. That’s all it takes to get started. Now can you somehow squeeze an extra $4 from your paycheck each week?

TOO YOUNG
I agree that you are young which might make it difficult to get a loan from a bank, but there are lenders out there that will take a chance on you. You just have to go to bank after bank until someone says yes. You’re young, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start a business. You just have to work hard at finding a way. Remember the old saying, ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way?’ Well, it’s the truth. If you really want it badly and you’re committed to having it, the way will present itself. Steven Jobs revolutionized the computer industry and became a millionaire by the age of twenty-three. And he did this in an age when it was hard, even for the founder of a company, to make a million dollars. Being young means you have a great asset in your corner. What asset is that?

Time

Time is on your side. Time is one of the greatest allies of an investor. The earlier you start, the better off you are because time can help make up for the mistakes all beginners make. How many people in your town or country for that matter would change places with you in a heartbeat? How many people want to go back to their youth and start all over? We all do, even me.

The truth is that you’re never too young to start.

Once you turn eighteen in this country you can own your own investment account registered in your name. If you’re under the age of eighteen, your parents can set up investment accounts for you. A qualified financial planner or broker should be able to help parents set up investment accounts for their children.

TOO OLD
Too old to succeed or get started? Just another excuse.

Granted, you may be older than some people and you may regret not having started when you were 20 or 30 or 40 or 50, but don’t compound the problem by not starting at all! While time may be the second most important factor in your success (money is the other, remember) and time may not be on your side, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn enough or invest enough in the coming years to impact your retirement years by starting today.

Colonel Sanders got his first social security check before he even conceived of the idea of hitting the road to sell his famous chicken recipe. How old was Ronald Reagan when he became president? Harrison Ford was in his thirties when he got his first break.

The real reason age is such an excuse for people is that in their minds they’re too old to change.

Changing your daily routine and their lifestyle is a hassle. You’ve become accustomed to your standard of living and don’t want to part with that first $100 dollars it takes to start investing.

Here’s a little tough medicine, if you don’t change you’re giving up and resigning yourself to a life of poverty, both in the fiscal and the mental aspects of life. It’s your decision and your age has nothing to do with it.

Begin today and live the life you deserve not the one that you’ve forced yourself to live.

NO KNOWLEDGE
I don’t know anything about investing and I’m not good at math, so there’s no way I can invest in the stock market.

One word: baloney. There is so much information out there today, you’ll probably drown yourself in it. Books, videos, magazines, newsletters, seminars, continuing education classes and the Internet. I can see how the choices can be overwhelming. I’d suggest that you re-read Peter Lynch’s books One Up on Wall Street and Beating the Street as primers. Also, any book about Warren Buffett is sure to help you. At the same time, start reading magazines like Money and Smart Money. Fortune and Forbes magazines will give you some great insight into business trends and great profiles on companies. You can hear what the CEOs of companies are saying through interviews and profiles.”

Oh, I left out one other source….THE INTERNET!

This is my favorite source of information. I can go to my brokerage account and get stock quotes, financial information and I don’t have to do the math on all those financial ratios I look at. The site does it for me. In addition, I get some newsletters sent to me through e-mail. I just open my e-mail account and read away. It’s that simple.

You don’t need a college degree to start investing, so stop using your lack of knowledge as an excuse. You don’t have to be an investing expert to do well in the stock market. You just have to learn the basics and anyone, and I mean anyone, can do this in less than a year’s time.

NOT SMART ENOUGH
One of the reasons people often tell me they don’t want to invest is that they’re not smart enough. They point to the fact that they don’t have a college degree or that they dropped out of high school. I tell them they’re just making excuses for themselves. Bill Gates dropped out of college. Ben Franklin dropped out in his teens, as did Edison. It doesn’t take an advanced degree to learn about the stock market.

I’m not saying school education isn’t important, but I am saying is that you should never stop learning. Today you have a current level of knowledge, but it’s up to you and you alone to increase that knowledge. The people I just mentioned didn’t have college degrees, but they were experts in their field. They made sure they kept up on what was going on in their fields through constant reading and other information sources. Second, they were all driven to succeed because they believed they could succeed. They never looked at their lack of a degree hold them back.

Yeah, but they were brilliant you say. Sure, those guys were smart, but take a look at Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He constantly tells people that he’s not smart, that he relies on his financial advisors and that despite the fact that he once flunked English he has written several best-selling books.

Nope, sorry folks, not being smart enough is not a valid excuse.

If investing is what you want to do, I suggest you pursue your financial degree in money.

Getting your financial degree in money is about the process of taking responsibility for your future by learning as much as possible about investing, budgeting, assets and liabilities. All it takes is an hour a day, every day for the next month or two depending on which resources you use.

While it might sound like a lot of work, all it takes is an hour of reading every night or two or three hours on the weekends and you can be an expert in your field in less than five years. Yes it’s a big commitment, but if your goal is to become financially free and improve your life along the way, shouldn’t you do what it takes to achieve that goal?

NO ONE TO HELP ME
Next up is the ‘I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth’ or ‘I grew up in the ghetto’ or ‘I didn’t have a father’ or ‘let me figure out who to blame other than myself excuse.’

People have a natural habit of comparing themselves to others around them. When they see someone around them who is doing well they either try to put that person down and or justify why they themselves are not as successful as the other person.

Just stop it. Stop comparing yourself to your sister, your mother, your neighbor, and your best friend. One of the biggest excuses that comes out of people’s mouths when you’re talking about why someone is successful is, ‘yeah, but he/she got help from their _______ . ‘If I was given ______ like they were, I’d be rich too.’

I usually respond in one of two ways. If the person is thick-headed, I just nod my head and say ‘pass the chips.’ If I can reach the person, I usually point out the other things the successful person had to do in order to become successful. Sure Donald Trump got help from his father, but he still had to go to Cincinnati and work his plan. Sure Bill Gates came from a wealthy family, but did that mean he was handed Microsoft? No, he built it from the ground up.

Even J.Paul Getty had to strike out on his own. J.Paul Getty had a lot of family money, but he had to go out to the oil fields and take the risks of drilling on his own. In the end, he ended up with an empire that dwarfed his father’s all because he worked and worked hard. As for those that don’t have father’s and mother’s like J.Paul Getty and Donald Trump, they simply have to work harder and smarter to get ahead. There’s nothing wrong with that.

You’ve read The Millionaire Next Door. You know that the majority of the millionaires in this country started with close to nothing and no inheritance. It can be done. Just stop making excuses, find the mentors and resources you need and put your plan into action. End of story.

NO TIME
We’re all busy. We have work to do, friends to hang out with, loved ones to spend time with and errands to run. These are important things, but if you analyze how you spend your time in a given week you’ll realize how much time is wasted on non-productive things. How much time do you spend each week watching television? The average adult spends over twenty-four hours a week watching TV. That’s over a day a week, dedicated to the mindless absorption of sitcoms, news, and commercials.

The truth is that you can find the time if you want to achieve something badly enough

It’s not the TV that’s killing you, it’s how you’re choosing to spend your time, your precious time. Investing doesn’t require that much time, but it does require your attention and some dedicated time during your week, especially in the beginning. Once you’ve chosen your brokerage firm and set up your automatic withdrawal from your savings account, you’ll spend maybe an hour per day learning about investing and following up on your investments.

Then after a month or two of this intensive reading, you’ll know 90 percent of what you’ll need to become a successful investor.

In short, we’re all busy, but if we wanted to, all of us could find the time to set aside for investing.

In Summary…

Stop making excuses and just do it.

That’s the attitude you need to have. If you just get started today and over time you’ll reap the rewards for your actions.

Need More Inspiration to Get Started?
How about these little facts…

Franklin D. Roosevelt led this country from a wheel chair.
Helen Keller was blind and deaf and led a more rewarding life than most ever will.
Michael Dell was a freshman in college when he started his company.
Colonel Sanders was a senior citizen before starting KFC.
Beethoven was deaf and composed some of the greatest music ever written.

What’s your excuse? Why not eliminate it and start doing something today to reach your goals?

I wish you the best in your pursuit of your dreams. Begin today.

All the best.

fabman

© 2003, The Wealthy Pauper, LLC
http://www.fabmansecrets.com