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How To Save Money And Achieve Financial Freedom

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The decisive factor in the achievement of financial freedom is the development of specific habits. Self-made millionaires have already learned these habits and as the result of practice and repetition, have reached financial freedom. You can learn to save money and think like self-made millionaires to become financially independent yourself
The First Habit of Self-Made Millionaires

Perhaps the most easily identifiable habit of self-made millionaires is the habit of frugality. Wealthy people are careful with every penny and every dollar. They know how to save money and allocate their funds carefully. They never buy new when they can buy used. They never buy if they can lease, and they never lease if they can rent. They never rent or lease if they can borrow.

For example, most self-made millionaires do not buy new cars. They save money and wait until a good quality car is about two years old before they buy it. Even then, they have the car thoroughly checked out by a reputable mechanic. Once they feel confident that it is an excellent buy, in good condition, they buy the car and then they drive it for five or ten years before replacing it. Most new cars drop 20% in value as soon as you drive them off the lot. After two years, many cars have lost 30% – 50% of their value. They are still in excellent condition, and often they are still covered by factory warranties. When you buy good quality used car, you can save many thousands of dollars, all of which can be saved and invested and allowed to grow at compound interest toward your ultimate goal of financial freedom.
Self-Made Millionaires Know How to Save Money

Self-made millionaires develop the habit of regular saving and investment from an early age. Human beings are creatures of habit. We very quickly adapt to almost any external condition or circumstance. If you save 10% off the top of your paycheck, and discipline yourself to live on the other 90%, you will soon adjust your lifestyle downward slightly so that you are quite comfortable on the lesser amount. In no time at all, living at this level becomes a habit and you stop thinking about it. Many people are deeply in debt and the idea of saving 10% of their income, off the top of each paycheck, is too difficult for them even to consider. In this case, which is quite common, I recommend a gradual process of learning to save money where you begin by saving 1% of your income and living on the other 99%. For example, if you are earning $2000 per month, make a decision today to save $20 per month, or 67 cents per day. You can then live on the other $1,980. Save money in the long run by going down to the bank and open up a separate account, your “financial freedom” account. Money that goes into this account only flows only one way- inward. Once you put money into this savings/investment account, you never, ever take it out or spend it for any reason. It has only one purpose: to enable you to achieve financial freedom as soon as possible. Once you have become comfortable living on 99% of your income, increase your monthly savings rate to 2% off the top. Within one year, you will find yourself living quite comfortably on 10% of your current income. Continue this process until you are saving 15% and then 20% of your income, off the top. You will not even notice the difference in your standard of living because it will be so gradual. But the difference in your financial life will be absolutely extraordinary.
Activate the Law of Attraction for Financial Freedom

Here is an extraordinary discovery. When you begin to save money, and you feel positive and happy about your growing account, these positive emotions imbue that money with a form of energy that begins to attract more money into your life, and into that account. Old friends will pay you back debts that you had forgotten a long time ago. You will have opportunities to earn additional amounts of money that had not occurred to you. You will sell things that you had had for a long time that you thought had no value. And as you add these amounts to your account, your account will develop even more positive energy, and attract even larger amounts of money. I had heard about this concept for many years, but I was always broke and there was never anything I could do about it. Then, about two years after I got married and started my own business, I ran out of money. I had been able to buy a house with my lifetime of savings, but now I had to sell the house to get the cash, and then move to a rented house. At this point, my wife Barbara demanded that I turn over to her $10,000 from the proceeds from the sale of the house. After some arguing I gave in. She took the money and deposited it in another bank account to which I did not have access. No matter how many financial problems we had in the months ahead, she refused to even consider the possibility of spending that money. This was her security blanket. The most remarkable thing happened. From that day forward, we were never broke again. Even though it was the midst of a recession and businesses were going bankrupt all around us, we were never again out of money. Every week, every month, business came in, the bills were paid, and opportunities opened up and exciting possibilities seemed to be attracted into our lives. Within a couple of years, we were able to move out of the rented house and buy a beautiful new home in a lovely neighborhood. Two years later, we were able to buy a home that cost five times as much on a beautiful golf course, overlooking two lakes with the ocean in the distance.
Save Money and Love It

There is an especially special habit that self-made millionaires and financially successful people learn or develop over time. It is the habit of responding to incoming money in a particular way. When we are growing up, we are encouraged to save money from our allowances. However, as children, we look upon money as a tool with which to buy candy, toys and other things that make us happy. As a result, we naturally begin to look upon saving as a punishment, something that hurts us and deprives us of the candy, toys and enjoyable things we desire. At an early age, most people begin to associate savings with pain, with sacrifice, with loss of pleasure, satisfaction and happiness. As adults, this negative habit is manifested in our desire to spend money as soon as we make it. Many people in their late teens and twenties look upon every paycheck as an opportunity to go out and spend as much money as they can. This is why it is generally known in the restaurant business that they will be the fullest at the middle and at the end of the month, on paydays. People very early begin to associate spending with happiness and saving with pain. Since the basic human motivation is to move away from pain toward pleasure, from discomfort toward comfort, and from dissatisfaction toward satisfaction, most people develop the habit of associating spending with enjoyment and saving with unhappiness.
Rewire Your Thinking and Gain Financial Freedom

Your job is to reverse the wiring on this habit. It is to detach the wires from one set of attitudes and reattach them with a different set of attitudes. Your job is to begin thinking in terms of pleasure whenever you think of saving and accumulation, and pain whenever you think of spending and getting rid of your money. Developing habits of self-made millionaires is the clear cut way to gaining financial freedom in your life. Thank you for reading this post on how to develop the habits of self-made millionaires to gain financial freedom

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