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Your Budget - Your ROCK

Read a "money book" carefully and you'll notice every "guru" mentions the need for a budget. Each stresses its importance for...oh, about three sentences. They then move on to catchier, more popular, more saleable things.

That's the biggest problem people have with budgeting--it doesn't sell. It's not sexy. It's not complicated. As a matter of fact, a lot of times an author sells a book by over-complicating something that was simple to begin with. Not so with a budget-- it's just too straight-forward...

BUT, it is the ROCK upon which your financial life is built. It is your foundation. All other financial decisions are appendages to the budget. The budget is the tree. Your retirement plan is the fruit. The budget is the massive trunk, rooted deep into the ground, immovable by any force. The new car you want is the fruit. The house you want--the fruit. The college savings you're dying to put away for your kids is, you guessed it...the fruit.

If you don't plant and care for the tree, you won't get the fruit...

Most financial books focus on the fruit. During this course, we're focusing on the tree. The fruit needs to come from somewhere, and that's ALL we're going to talk about (well, almost).

The next post will discuss the budget's bad rap, and expose some dirty lies about budgeting. In two posts we'll hit our First of Four Rules.

Write down the "fruit" you would like to grow from your financial tree. What will you do?
Get out of debt?
Pay off your home?
Invest more earnestly for retirement?
Put away money for a fancy vacation?
Buy a new TV?
Write down your financial goals. This course will open your eyes to the reality of those goals--they are a reality. You just need to plant your tree, help it take root, and watch it grow.

Action Steps:

Write down your short- and long-term financial goals.