money

In your personal finance endeavour, you have to, of course, secure your hard earned money.

Securing your money doesn’t mean opening the most safest account possible. Securing your money means opening accounts and diversify to increase the speed of your money - or in other words, increasing your earning from the interests.

The main goal here is to beat inflation by as much as you can.

My choice of leverages

I have several favourite leverages to increase the speed of my money. The breakdown is as follow:

1. Forex

Not necessarily in forex market, I like to invest long-term in forex that is strong and stable, such as the Euro or British Pounds.

2. Money market

Money market is global financial market for short-term borrowing and lending. In my opinion, a money market account is similar to a mutual fund account, with different market focus.I particularly enjoy online investing - so online money market account, such as M&T Bank eMoney Market Account , is also my choice of flexible, low risk and good yield account.

3. Business

Investing in a business has always been interesting for me. Choosing the right business will likely to return your investment 40 per cent annually - but the figure varies greatly, depending on the type of business.

4. Real Estate

Despite the recession, real estate is still my choice of investment. I particularly enjoy investing in business premises, rather than homes.

5. Precious metal

The safest investment of all is not your saving accounts or deposit accounts - it’s gold. Classic, time-tested and a true asset investment.

What about mutual fund? Sorry - it’s simply not my type of investment. Too volatile, particularly in the place where I currently live.

Let’s say I’m weak at heart in mutual funds and stocks :)

What is your choice of leverages? Share yours by commenting to this post.

Ivan Widjaya
Leveraging money

Small business owners are always looking for resources on money and finance. I do, too.

In my case, I look for money and finance info in authority sites, feeds and newsletters, news portals, and social bookmarking sites.

Authority site on money

The first thing you always want to know is which products and services are the most appropriate for your situation, at the most affordable rates.

If you go online to seek for such information, you always want to find sites that compare services and products.

I just found a resource - it is UK-based, but very much useful for a more general audience - Money.co.uk.

Money.co.uk is one of the resources on money that offer you wealth of information on money and finance, as well as comparisons on credit card, mortgage, insurance, and many more.

In my opinion, it is a financial authority site with wealth of information, more in quality and quantity than finance information sites I often visit before.

I particularly enjoy and find useful information on credit card quotes, as well as insurance quotes comparison.

You can also compare mortgages and if you don’t want to compare anything at all, you may find the money news and tips section helpful.

Finance feeds and newsletters

I will most likely subscribe to exceptional websites or blogs that offer RSS feed subscriptions or newsletters. If a site offer them both, I usually subscribe to both.

I can access wealth of information from a ‘dashboard’ - in this case, Google Reader, then visit an article or two that interest me the most.

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Who wants to be a millionaire?

I do. You do. Everybody does - well, at least someone has to do some reality check if he/she doesn’t want to be a millionaire.

A millionaire has his/her own perks - more money, more to spend.

I highlight the latest. Why? Because that’s where most people are motivated to be a millionaire - to be able to buy whatever they want.

Unfortunately, that’s where most people will end up when they are finally made it into millionaires - big spenders on loads of stuff they actually don’t want. Period.

What’s wrong with spending big? A person could be so rich so one can do whatever he/she wants with his/her money, don’t they?

Yes, one could - but that’s make being rich is ‘wrong.’

You see, human always wants more - no matter laid back you are in money matters, deep down inside, you always dream about being rich - well, at least to let you stop worrying about money.

A person with lots of money don’t always manage his/hers well. So many things a person want to buy, so even a million dollar a month doesn’t really satisfy his/her need to want more.

So being a millionaire doesn’t really solve your money problems. Before being one, you have to learn how to spend your money well - the millionaire way.

How to spend money like a millionaire

Surprisingly, not all millionaire have the stereotype lifestyle - lying on the beach sipping fruit punch and partying all the time.

Today’s millionaires live their life like your person next door. A good house, a good car, and all other thing you can have to live comfortably.

What differ them from the non-millionaires is how they spend the money.

Yes, they enjoy a good life, but most of their money - I heard some invest 80 to 90 per cent of their money annually - is used to acquire assets.

I know some millionaires live off $5000 a month and spend the rest of their income on assets - Some conservative ones, like mutual funds, deposit accounts, bank accounts, buying lands, and precious commodities (gold, platinum, oil, and such); Some creative ones, like buying or fund businesses, stocks, investment real estates, etc.

So, stop visioning to be a millionaire like decades ago. Today hot trend is to be the millionaire next door.

The new millionaire vision is to live comfortably and family members don’t have to worry about money for the rest of their life.

No party, no beach, no pool, no cigar - well, maybe a little, but not too much :D

So, to conclude - You want to be a millionaire? If so, follow the following keys to live like a millionaire:

1. Transform your mindset - If you were rich, what would you do with you money? The answer to this question will determine how much money you will have in the end.
2. Boost your financial IQ by learning from anything and anybody related to managing your money.
3. Start investing a small percentage of your income to build your asset and increase this percentage to the highest possible over time.

Doing those things will make you the real millionaires - not just the newly born millionaire that has a lot of money but doesn’t know how to manage it - trust me, the money will go to the drain faster than you can imagine.

Ivan Widjaya
Spend like a millionaire next door