Investing in Yourself

If you are interested in personal development it is important you commit to investing in yourself. No matter what it is you want to improve, no matter what you want to achieve, it will almost certainly require an investment or will be much better and be achieved much quicker with the right investment. Start by listing the areas of improvement to which you wish to commit. This can be in a very wide area, and I am not limiting myself at all to one particular niche. Have a look at the Top Ten New Year Resolutions as identified by the University of Scranton in the journal of Clinical Psychology in December 2012: 1 Lose Weight 2 Get Organized 3 Spend Less, Save More 4 Enjoy Life to the Fullest 5 Staying Fit and Healthy 6 Learn Something Exciting 7 Quit Smoking 8 Help Others in Their Dreams 9 Fall in Love 10 Spend More Time with Family All ten are perfectly acceptable self improvement goals, and you can probably add quite a few more to this list. Take a look around and see what products and services are out there which could help you make serious inroads on those improvements your desire. Examine them carefully. There are a lot of scams out there, but there are also a lot of diamonds if you look carefully enough. Try to find at least one for each of the areas on your list. Don’t worry at this stage about how much money they may cost. All that should conce you right now is whether you believe they will help you achieve your goals better or faster, or both. Once you have come up with the list of investments you want to make in yourself and are reasonably comfortable that, at least for now, this is a fairly complete list, the next step is to work out how you will pay for them. One problem many people have, though, is that after they have paid all their monthly bills there is no money left to invest in themselves. What may surprise you, though, is that no matter how much you earn you will almost certainly still find there is no money left after paying the bills. How can this be? Parkinson’s Second Law The answer lies in Parkinson’s Second Law. You have probably heard his First Law – “work expands to fill the available time”. But perhaps you missed the Second Law – “expenditure rises to meet the available income”. Parkinson’s Second Law is often applied to bureaucracies and they way they can needlessly spend our money. But it is equally applicable to personal expenditure. The corollary of Parkinson’s Second Law is that if you look carefully at your spending you will always find cuts you can make without impacting noticeably on your overall lifestyle. Your first step should therefore be to examine your budget very carefully. Pretend you are a business which is not making profit. Step back and look at that business as if you were the finance director (or maybe the bank manager!). I think you will be surprised by some of the cuts you could make and still continue to enjoy life just as much. Pay Yourself First Once you have done this, regard yourself as your own primary creditor. You owe yourself a lot of money, so start paying it back. Pay yourself first. Before you pay anyone else. Do not feel guilty about doing this. Every day of your adult life up to now you have paid everyone except yourself. Now it is your turn! How much should you pay yourself? Well, that depends, of course. It depends on many factors. Not least of which is how much you managed to save off your budget – make sure at least half of this goes to you. Some coaches suggest it should be a minimum of 10% of your gross earnings. But again I stress this depends on your own circumstances and budget. Just don’t allow it to be whittled down to almost nothing! Put it in savings and investments that you resolve not to touch except when investing in yourself. Invest in Yourself Once you have started this habit of paying yourself first, start to invest with the money you have saved. Not in company shares. Not in bricks and mortar. You are going to invest in something far more valuable than that. You are going to invest in yourself!