How to begin your money mastery journey

The Golden Rule of personal finance is global, thousands of years old, and is in almost every money book ever written.

Do you know what it is?

It's simple, sustainable, specific, spiritual and seems to be accompanied with magic as if by cosmic design.

The Rule: Save 10% of every dollar you receive / earn / make.

It's simple: 

There's no complex formula to remember. You don't have to read a book to understand it. You don't need to be wealthy to be able to do it. 

And as long as you understand what the meaning of SAVE is, then you could succeed in life with this golden rule alone.

Save and invest 10% of every dollar that you actually receive. After tax and if in Australia, after your compulsory superannuation is taken out too.

So to sum it up: If you receive $100 in your bank account, put $10 of it into a Golden Rule account and keep it, forever.

It's sustainable:

It's a percentage, not a fixed amount. 

As your income goes up, you can stick to 10%. As it goes down, you can stick to 10%.

If you are new to the art of saving, then you can start at 1%, if that's the best you can do for now. Then as you gain more confidence and clarity on your income and expenses, then you can gradually increase your savings to 2%, 3% and so on.

Once you get to 10%, then do not exceed that amount in your Golden Rule account. This seems counter intuitive for most people. They expect that the goal is to just keep growing the percentage beyond 10% and into infinity... but that causes issues in the future!

It's specific:

When it says 10%, it means 10%. If you think you're smarter than the golden rule, then you are wrong.

Some heroes go out guns blazing and boldly save more in their early days. Like my friend Kurt. He got a pay rise and had 30% spare. So he saved 20% and enjoyed the other 10.

Eventually his lifestyle became more expensive. He got a nicer house, a nicer car. He got a bigger TV and went out for dinner more nights per week. He got a girlfriend and joined a gym...

Before he had realised, he'd allocated the majority of his extra 30% to a better lifestyle and all the little rewards people often allow themselves when their pay goes up. And this human tendency has been around for a long time. It's called Parkinson's Law.

Parkinson’s Law:

This law says that, no matter how much money people earn, they tend to spend the entire amount and a little bit more besides. Their expenses rise in lockstep with their earnings.

What Kurt should have done was to save the 10% into a savings account for investing. And then with the additional spare money he had, he should have put that into 1 or 2 additional accounts called bonus savings or project money or something to that extent.

That way when things change, as they always do, you can stick to the 10% golden rule and just sacrifice the bonus accounts you can afford anymore.

It's spiritual: 

Whether you like it or not, your personal finances have a powerful influence over every part of your life:

• Your relationships - you are judged on your personal finances from the very beginning of a romantic relationship and your family contribution and involvement is severely restricted by the amount of money / time you have to spend with them
• Your health and wellness - you are prevented from accessing the best food and therapies if you cannot afford them
• Your career - you are unable to walk away from a bad job if you need the money to survive
• Your purpose - if you are always having to work for money, you'll never afford the time it takes to be able to go deep and contemplate your true calling and you'll never be able to allocate the time and energy it takes to make it a reality

And the consequences of all of the above limitations, is that you'll struggle to live in peace and harmony with the world around you. 

If you are always in fight or flight mode as a result of being chronically broke, it will always be a challenge to reach your full spiritual potential.

It's magical:

Money is a store of energy and a token of exchange. 

Throughout the many years I have been working with people on their personal finances I have seen magical changes in peoples lives when they take charge of their money and start to follow the golden rule.

More opportunities come to light. How? Simply because now that they have money to invest, they become more aware of they possibilities that were always around them that they had been blind to. 

They feel better about themselves, both in public and in private. They have more confidence with their finances and subsequently tend to take a bigger interest in discussing money and opportunities with the people in their lives.

This has a compounding effect and I find that in a matter of weeks, not only are they earning more money, but tend to be invited to take part in projects that can multiply their money too.

Here's a few of the other very common money management rules you may have heard of. You'll be happy to know that by sticking to the 10% rule as above, then by default, you'll be honoring these rules too:

1. Pay yourself first:

When you honor the 10% golden rule, you honor this additional rule of money management because you're paying yourself the 10% before you pay any other people.

2. Live below your means: 

When you are saving 10%, you are by definition living below your means. And in addition, you also become one of the few who know what their 'means' actually are!

3. Those who manage their money, master their money

For you to be able to save 10%, you're almost certainly going to manage your money by default. Managing your money is a compulsory step to getting ahead and by honoring the 10% rule, you'll slowly develop a regular money management cycle.

BUT

You should be saving 20-30%. Sorry to throw that at you at the end of all this. But it's true.

The 10% rule is largely based on investing the 10% for a return that compounds.

Those days are gone for now. In 2020, and if you are over 30 with no savings, you really should be saving and investing at least 20% of your income.

But chill for now and start with 10%. You will likely fail if you try to go too hard too soon.

If starting now appeals to you, join our weekly webinar so I can show you how to get started in a user friendly and enjoyable way.

Reference links:

My YouTube Playlist on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJycMdKoYeb6Oc0QKpdGco2ON8X_ZB1p5

The 80 / 30 / 20 rule blog post and calculator: https://www.moneyunder30.com/percentage-of-income-should-you-save-every-month

How to get to $1m by retirement blog post: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/salary-needed-to-save-10-percent-of-your-income-and-retire-with-1-million-dollars.html

Brian Tracey and Parkinson's Law: https://www.briantracy.com/blog/financial-success/parkinsons-law/