Don’t Get So Busy That You Stop Using Your Income Efficiently

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There are tons of money-making strategies that can bring in extra cash. Whatever method you find that works for you is great. On this site, we tend to favor passive income methods, income strategies where all the work is front-loaded. Those willing to work hard for a while, to create a product or service that sells itself for months to come, these people will have a lot of financial options available to them in the future.

But then comes to money management aspect of this whole equation. It doesn’t matter how much extra money you bring in if you don’t know how to manage it. So really, money-making is only one of the two skill sets necessary for changing your financial life. The other is money management. These personal finance steps are all pretty well known, but just like going to the gym or eating right, what is good for you is not always what is easy, especially in the long term.

The long term is challenging because circumstances change. Most of us can manage ourselves well in the short term, when the stars align, we get enough rest, not too much is on our plates, and everything else is in relative order. When things get more busy or complicated, it’s easy to let our cobbled-together life management strategies fall apart. For people who don’t come from money, who need to spend lots of time and energy making their financial lives work, it’s important not to let everything fall apart when time and energy are in short supply.

One of the best ways to prepare yourself for the inevitability of busyness and personal chaos is to know the ways that things typically fall apart at the seams. By identifying these seams ahead of time, you can notice problems before they happen, or catch them quickly when they emerge.

One of the most important places to pay attention is to your cash flow, incoming and outgoing. Cash flow problems kill businesses every day, and lots of individuals have difficulties from the same problems. Many people are not overly acquainted with their personal cash flow, so it’s important to spend a few minutes each week taking a look at what you are working with. This may reveal a number of problems.

Over the last decade, many homeowners in Europe who have taken on this behavior have discovered outgoing payments to insurance providers that they were not aware they were paying. “Have I Got PPI” is still a common Google search term in many parts of the world, as many people discover that these payments were automatically tied to loan agreements they made, even though they didn’t necessarily want the coverage.

There are many ways that our personal money management can fall apart when things get stressful. There are lots of ways to prepare for the future – to establish personal finance systems that will stand the test of time. But with automation comes the possibility of establishing patterns that will run themselves into the ground. Don’t let these processes go unchecked. Keep reworking them until your systems build wealth and stability for yourself.