2 Ways to Define your Poverty and What to do about It

There are only 2 primary reasons why people are broke, and by determining which is YOUR reason, you can then take the steps needed to not be broke anymore.

Inspired by a message from my blogging buddy Stephen Martile over at Personal Development Made Simple, and my own recent announcement about the Wealth Creation for Superior Living podcast, this post is meant to help you open your eyes about the fact that you don’t have any money because you either:

1) Don’t manage your money effectively, or

2) You simply don’t make enough of it to begin with

For most people, it is probably a combination of both of those reasons, yet every single instance of wanting money – but not having it – will fall under one of those categories.

If you don’t know how to manage your money, then Stephen has shared a very cool system for doing so, and he even has a possibly award-winning video about it. On the other hand, if you don’t make enough money to begin with, then realizing that more money will be needed to power your dream lifestyle should be the kick in the butt that you need to start finding a way to make that happen.

Effective Money Management

This category is for people who want to save money, but they simply can’t figure out how to do it. No matter how many times they try to budget their money, they still end up broke, and they still never manage to save any significant amount of money, or they never manage to pay for that car, house, or dream vacation that they’ve been saving for.

For these people, a course in money management is far more important than figuring out a way to actually bring in more money. If you have $50 per week left out of your paycheck after you pay your bills, and you can’t manage even that relatively small sum of money, what makes you think that you will be able to manage a larger sum of money?

If managing the money that you already have (however much or however little) is a problem for you, then you don’t need more money (yet); you first need to manage the money that you already have by changing your relationship with money.

Here are 2 paid and 3 free resources for doing so:

Paid Resources:

Brian Tracy’s Profit Maximization

James Arthur Ray’s Million Dollar Mindset Series

Free Resources:

T. Harv Eker’s Secrets of The Millionaire Mind Teleseminar

Money Management Tutorials

Online Money Management Software (interest request)

Need to Make More Money

If you can budget, save, invest, and diversify with the best of ’em, but you simply don’t have enough actual income to ever do much more than pay your bills, then it’s time to change those circumstances.

The first thing for you to realize is that your J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) is potentially one of the worst possible ways for you to make money. Without even giving it much thought, here are several great reasons to NOT depend on your job for financial success:

• You will always be trading time for dollars. “X” amount of time equals “X” amount of dollars – always.
• You have no job security. It doesn’t matter who you work for these days, your job could go away in an instant.
• You do not control your income level; your boss or management team does.
• You will always be limited by what you are “allowed” to do in order to bring in additional money.
• You will always have to deal with the schedule of your employer and/or your customers, even if that schedule is not conducive to creating additional wealth.

So, if a J.O.B. is not the way to make money, then how you are supposed to get your hands on the cash? Simple: Realize that a J.O.B. is only one model of creating wealth, and then find a model that works better for you:

• Internet Marketing
• Networking Marketing
• Investments
• Consulting
• Contract Work
• Virtual Work
• Coaching

Think that you don’t have the skills or the expertise to get involved in one or more of those business models? Consider the following:

• Internet Marketing and Network Marketing are both HUGE and growing industries, both of them have a free or very low-cost threshold for entry, and both of them have individual “niche” markets that are exploding with new business. For Internet Marketing at its finest, I recommend Armand Morin and/or Shawn Casey as gurus worth listening to. For Networking Marketing, I have worked with and used the products from both Tahitian Noni International, as well as Pharmanex.
• Investing is not just a game for the rich. Even a small investment can yield a result that can then be reinvested in something else, and then that return can be reinvested, and so on down the line. Quality information about investing is free all over the Internet.
• Consulting and Contract work has never been easier to get into than it is right now. As people learn that getting quality help is more important than hiring the most prestigious service providers, becoming a consultant or a contract worker isn’t much more difficult than showing that you can be dependable, and that you do quality work. Check out FreelanceFolder.com as an awesome resource for learning about contracting or consulting work done on a freelance basis.
• Virtual work can literally be done from anywhere with an Internet connection, and there are people right now paying other people to do everything from surf the Internet for them, to tend to their social bookmarking needs, to participating in forums and message boards. Not rocket-science stuff, and anyone with an Internet connection is eligible to check it out. Read this awesome article for more information about that field of work.
• Coaching is one of the hottest trends in wealth creation right now, and with good reason. As people are starting to become more empowered and starting to believe that they can truly create wonderful lives for themselves, their first question is , “OK, how do I do that?”. The people with those answers are in demand! Check out So
  lutionBox for more on coaching careers.

The Bottom Line

Regardless of whether your financial issues are related to poor money management skills or a lack of (presently) available capital, you do have the ability to turn it around! Embrace that ability and start living your life, instead of worrying about your money.