Are You Financially Fit? - Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Broker

Are You Financially Fit?

To be financially fit today is simple.... take Grandpa's advice and live within your means. "Wealth is what you save, not what you spend." stated Jennifer Waters in an article for Yahoo Finance. Case in point, billionaire Warren Buffet still lives in his modest Omaha home and invests his wealth where it can earn him more money.

Thomas Stanley and Wiliiam Danko, authors of "The Millionaire Next Door", write that "wealth is more often the result of a lifestyle of hard work, perseverance, planning, and, most of all, self discipline. It is seldom luck or inheritance or advanced degrees or even intelligence that enables people to amass fortunes."

Don't use "debt' to fund your lifestyle, use it for investment purposes. "Among the biggest differences between those flush with cash and those wishing they were, is in how they pay for things. Millionaires tend to use cash for most of their purchases, including cars, homes and boats." said Leslie Lassiter, managing director of the JPMorgan Private Wealth Management.

Waters recommends these tips for accumulating wealth:

Live below your means: People with high incomes who spend all their money are not rich; they're just stupid.
Plan: That means plan for today, tomorrow and 30 years after retirement. Take time doing it too and spend time monitoring it every day. Use budgets and stick to them.
Diversify your Assets
Reduce use of credit and turn to cash: It's easier, of course, for a prosperous person to pay for a house in cash than it might be for most folks, but credit-card debt for luxury purchases or extravagant vacations will never pave a road to riches.
Have access to cash: While the rich keep much of their wealth invested, they can get cash when they need it.
Spread cash around: When the wealthy pulled money out of the equities markets two and three years ago, they opened a bevy of bank accounts, all guaranteed up to $250,000 of deposits by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Estate planning: It's important that your heirs know where all the bank accounts and safe-deposit boxes are -- even that their names are on them, too -- who the attorney is, where the will and trusts are filed.