As a leader, you must take control of your financial future. There are no exceptions to this rule. To be effective as a leader, you must be comfortable with your financial status. This does not necessarily mean becoming rich, but it does mean that your need to be comfortable with your standard of living. This is important, because if you are not comfortable you cannot lead others without clarity. In a worst case scenario, lack of financial security also causes leaders to make decisions based on meeting their needs, rather than on what may be best for them, their followers, or the organization.
When it comes to financial security, the first thing you must do as a leader is to determine what you need to be comfortable. This is a very personal choice. There is no single answer. Some of you will be comfortable with the clothes on your back and a place to stay where food and water are readily available. Others will want a bit more, perhaps even wanting millions or billions of dollars. As you examine what you want, be careful not to judge others. We need people like Mother Teresa or Desmond Tutu, just as we also need billionaires who give away millions, if not billions of dollars to help the poor. What we don’t need, are billionaires who keep all their money to themselves, or terrorists in the disguise of revolutionaries who cause chaos just to further their own selfish ambitions.
Ok – the meat of the topic. How to take control of your financial future? Over the next few blogs, I am going to cover a variety of topics and am going to focus my answer on where the vast majority of you sit on this matter – the middle class. As someone living in the middle class there are a few things you need to do – here they are…
- Define what you need to survive (food, clothing, housing, education?, transportation)
- Create a budget that addresses your current expenses and income that will meet your needs
- Create a list of wants (Cable, Computer, Travel, Recreation, Dining Out, designer clothing etc…). Ensure that you include something charitable. Either by giving of your time or money
- Prioritize your list of wants
- Develop a long range retirement plan
- Generate enough income to cover all the items listed above.
The next few posts will break each of these down into smaller components. By the end of these few posts you will be on your way to taking control of your financial future.
Stay tuned…
All the best
All the time
JT