Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa December 14/ January 15 | Page 66

LESSONS 5 BY Vangile Makwakwa Important personal finance questions to ask yourself What are your financial goals for 2015? 1. What will your life look like five years from now if you continue your current financial behaviour? 2. What do you want your life to look like 5 years from now? The first question helps us understand the impact of our current financial behaviour on our future. This question helps us get very clear on the life that we want to really create. Write this vision down and start taking action to make it a reality. If your answer to question two is wildly different to your answer in number one, then you should start asking yourself what you need to change in your current life in order to create the life you really want. 3. What is the one financial or behavioural change you can make to move yourself closer to the life you desire? Change is scary. Our subconscious mind is primitive and is engineered to keep us alive, so when we try something new it revolts, because it’s not sure that this change won’t kill us. Financial change is very scary. The best way to approach any change in financial behaviour is one step at a time. When my finances were a mess I chose to spend the first year just focusing on improving my income, which meant going from making no money to making a decent salary every week. That meant really changing my thinking about what people were willing to pay me and what I was worth. I spent the first six months of 2011 doing nothing but questioning my thoughts about money and my earning ability. I did that for eight hours a day everyday until I saw a difference in my income. 64 December 14 /January 15 SA Real Estate Investor 4. Does your hourly wage reflect what you’re truly worth? Divide your monthly/weekly salary or wages by the number of hours you work. Include all your overtime. Most of us think that we’re earning lots of money in our jobs but when we actually measure how much we earn, against the amount of time we spend at work and work related tasks, we get a different picture. You have to decide how much your time is worth and if your salary adequately covers your time. I’ve been in high paying jobs that cost me money – the job is so demanding and stressful that I end up spending a fortune on coaching, therapy, yogo, reiki etc. just to stay sane and stop myself from getting depressed. This is money I would not have spent if I was in a job I loved. Sometimes, it makes more sense to earn less money but work less hours, because the hourly wage is higher and you have free time to create extra revenue streams. “The best way to approach any change in financial behaviour is one step at a time.” 5. How much do you need to earn annually to live the life you truly want? How much is it going to cost you to live the life that you want in the next five years? You can’t have a million dollar dream with a minimum wage work ethic. RESOURCES Wealthy-money.com www.reimag.co.za