The Principles of Prosperity are occasionally bandied about with other “motivational phrases” like “think and grow rich”, as if anyone has ever gotten rich sitting on their tails and looking at pictures of gold or other riches and luxury items. The truth of the matter is much more corporeal and “real” in nature. In other words, principles not put into practice are not going to do you any good.
There are far too many people who have been economically challenged, even driven to bankruptcy or had their financial lives turned upside down in the past couple of years. Fortunately, at the same time, there are also an incredible number of new opportunities for earning a living from home or otherwise online.
That being said, even a limited business selling your skills and services will require some economic investment on your part. With that in mind, in addition to the recent increases in people relying on cash advance loans, pawn shop loans, and other means for “just getting by”, we will introduce you to some basic principles replete with instructions on how to put them into practice.
What Does It Mean to Build a Better Financial Future?
What it means to build a better financial future may in reality depend on what your goals are to accomplish in your lifetime. For some people, home ownership is too much of a hassle, and success to them may be nothing more than being able to pay their rent on time without concern. Somebody else may desire to be the next Elon Musk, regardless of whether or not they ever successfully become the richest person in the world.
A better financial future is about as subjective as anything will ever get. However, one thing is almost certain, and that is that nobody wants to be broke their entire life. However, the idea that all they have to do is to sit around and imagine themselves with pretty things is dangerous on the best of days.
Can I Really Think and Grow Rich?
Can you really sit down on your couch, just think about it, and suddenly become rich? For some people the answer actually is yes. However, this is generally because they have very rich relatives they leech off of their entire lives, and do nothing more than sitting around thinking about when their relatives die, which eventually they will.
A positive outlook and “affirmation” of your economic success is never a bad thing. Unless of course you allow it to occupy all of your time. If you are like most of the rest of the world, you are ultimately going to have to work for what you earn, and learn to live within your means. Once you have understood, accepted, and mastered that ability, half the battle may indeed already be won.
So, What Are The 5 Most Important Principles of Prosperity?
It could be said that the most important principles of prosperity are those ones that you actually put into practice. That would not be fair though, and would relegate this article to nothing more than clickbait. Since the idea is to actually help people, and to ensure that you really can enjoy a better financial life and economic prosperity, have a look for yourself.
1. Learn How to Recognize Impulse Purchases
The average person alone, not an entire family, but an average person will spend more than five thousand dollars every year on impulse buys. Don’t believe it? Cup of coffee, five days a week for 52 weeks, a buck a cup, $260 bucks right there. Do you drink Starbucks? Multiply that by five or ten times.
When you pay for your gas or stop for milk on your way home, do you grab that soda sitting in the ice bin at the cash register, and maybe just the small bag of chips sitting next to them? 3 to 5 bucks a day right there. Advertisers and marketing people spend billions of dollars learning how to get you to spend money making impulse purchases.
Learn to catch yourself, stop making those purchases, and you can see an average of five thousand bucks a year extra in your pocket. If you are one of the fifty percent or so of people who actually spend more than that, well you do the math. It starts adding up to real money quickly.
2. Learn How to Create and Stay in a Budget
Yeah, create and live within a budget is not fun for anyone, but you literally have to write down every penny you earn and find, and write down every penny you spend, no matter what you spend it on. And remember, you can lie to yourself about all those impulse purchases, but you cannot lie money back into your wallet.
Writing everything down will force you to recognize where all of your money is going, and when you start seeing how much money you actually spend on things you did not really need, and never had any intention to buy, the first principle of prosperity will start making a lot more sense.
3. Save 10 Percent of Everything You Earn
About the only thing I ever learned in any of those self-help books I read was that you need to save ten percent of everything that you earn. Yeah, everybody says there is no way that they can do that. In response, I would challenge you to approach anyone who has ever had their wages attached for any reason, and see if they were able to live through the financial pressure of that experience.
People as a rule, do not lack willpower. What people tend to lack is that all-important “will-not” power. You will not buy the soda or the chips, you will not buy coffee at the store every day, you will not go out to that fine diner with the good-looking waiter or waitress for lunch every day. Again, master the ability of saving ten percent of everything you earn, and you have come that much closer to winning the biggest battle of all, and nearly winning the war on poverty.
4. Learn How to Live with Temptation
What? What does temptation have to do with any of this? First off, there is no sin in being tempted. The only time it becomes a sin is when we succumb to the temptation. Do you really want to impress that good looking girl or that good looking guy you have had your eyes on? Ask them over to your house (with more friends of yours to ensure your safety ideally) and cook them a homemade meal.
Yeah, it was more fun eating at the sports bar every day for lunch, but taking lunch from home just saved you about enough to start saving some ten percent of everything you earn. Learn how to live with and control temptation, or it will own you, both literally and figuratively.
5. Pay Your Bills on Time
Yeah, it sounds so easy right? Especially when you have all that extra money in the bank because you can just pay off your bills with the credit card. Never mind the fact that you have to either pay off your credit card bills in full or face dire interest rates. You got some extra money so, meh, those little impulse buys are not going to hurt that much. Right? Oops.
Paying your bills on time not only is the right thing to do, but it will help you to build a stronger sense of personal responsibility. This can be especially true when you have allowed yourself to splurge just a little, and suddenly you are looking for payday advance loans just to get through
Do The Principles of Prosperity Really Work?
No. The principles of prosperity do not fix anything by themselves. No matter how many principles you believe that you have, if you do not put the principles of prosperity into practice, they will never work. At the end of the day, it is up to you to do the right thing, and that is something that you have to find deep within yourself.