Maximize Your Financial Ability: Get a Home Mortgage
Editor's Note: The following article is an excerpt from "Suzanne Whang's Guide to Happy Home Buying."
This may be the most important part of my book. I've prepared what I call my "Financial Abundance Worksheet." I've developed this over years of meeting with people individually to help them increase their financial abundance. What follows is a list of things to do to assist you financially in meeting your goal of home ownership. There is no science, no tried-and-true method to some of these suggestions. Feel free to pick and choose the ones that make sense to you.
Financial Abundance Worksheet
1. Buy a notebook specifically for your financial abundance work.
2. Write down your perception of each of your parents' individual beliefs about money and their behavior with money. If your parents' beliefs or behaviors have changed from when you were a kid, then write that down too. If you weren't raised by your parents, do this exercise for whoever raised you.
3. Record your beliefs about money and your behavior with it. Answer these questions:
a. Do you believe that it's somehow romantic or more noble to be a struggling person than a financially abundant one?
b. Do you believe that you deserve to be rich?
c. Do you believe that it would be too complicated to have lots of money?
d. Would it be hard for you to trust other people (financial planners, accountants, investment brokers) with your money?
e. Do you have any judgments about people who are rich?
f. Are you stingy? A compulsive shopper?
g. Do you have massive amounts of debt?
4. List your necessary monthly expenses. Break these down by category and total the amounts.
5. Write down creative ways that you can save money on any of your monthly expense categories-e.g., shop around and find less-expensive car insurance, cook at home rather than eating out every night, change your telephone plan to suit your calling patterns.
6. Record your monthly income-or, if it varies, average it over the past six months. How does it compare to your monthly expenses?
7. Put 10 percent of your income from any source in an account only for you. In other words, pay yourself first.
8. Write down names of people you know (family members, friends, acquaintances) who either have a lot of money or are good with money. Contact each of them and ask if you can get together with them. Ask them what their philosophy of money is and what they do to keep themselves financially abundant. (If you want what others have, try doing what they do!)
9. Keep a daily log of every penny you spend and where it went. You may need to buy a separate small notebook and keep it with you at all times. You'll be doing this for several months, so get in the habit. You need to know where your money is going and where it might be possible for you to save.
Some people discover that they're spending $10 a day on "designer" cups of coffee, which adds up to $300 per month, and claim they can't afford to pay their phone bill! Or you might discover that you're such a penny-pincher, you never buy anything nice for yourself, even though you can afford it. Being a compulsive shopper or a miser are both unhealthy ways of handling your finances.
10. Write down 10 different ways you can bring in more income. Be creative with these ideas. What skills do you have? What are you willing to do? Do you have anything in your garage/storage area that you could sell? Can you type? Do data entry? Be a personal assistant? Tend bar? Waitress? Teach or tutor a foreign language or a musical instrument? Be a personal trainer? Write articles for a local newspaper? Clean houses? Organize people's offices? Wash cars? Babysit? Walk dogs? These ideas can also be used as skills you can barter for services that you need.
11. Write yourself a check for $10,000,000 and put it up where you can see it every day. I heard that Jim Carrey did this before he became famous, and look what it did for him: Now he makes much more than that for one feature film!
12. Go to an upscale store and try on expensive clothing you would love to own. Don't buy anything-simply enjoy the fact that you deserve these clothes. Also, test-drive your dream car. You're not wasting the salesperson's time. At some point, you'll buy the car. This is called "pre-paving." You are using the positive postulate that you will be living this lifestyle soon!
13. Volunteer at a homeless shelter near you to get true perspective on your financial situation. And rent a movie like Schindler's List or Malcolm X. You'll get to see what real challenges are and you'll be grateful about how blessed your life is.
14. Send a check for $5 (or more if you can afford it) to a charity you believe in. That positive energy will come back to you. Most people don't give to charities because they figure if they can't afford to give hundreds of dollars, they should not give at all. This is a symbolic gesture signifying that you realize there are people who are worse off than you are-people dealing with poverty or disease or other major challenges on a daily basis.
15. Make a gratitude list every day and either speak it aloud or write it down. Include everything you're grateful for: the clothes on your back, the shelter of your home or apartment, the food you had to eat today, your friends, family, car, favorite music, spiritual path-everything you can remember. This will help you recall the abundance that you have in your life.
Does this sound good to you? Take a deep breath, put yourself on a positive path-the Whang road to the right house-and use your money to create a happy home. It's all possible. It's all out there waiting for you.
About Suzanne Whang
Suzanne Whang is an author, actor, television host and home buying guru. She is an author with the recently published "Suzanne Whang's Guide To Happy Home Buying" which Meredith Publishing released last fall. For the past 5 seasons Suzanne has been the host of the #1 show on HGTV, "House Hunters" and has just been renewed for two more years.
For other useful home buying information, visit the Home Loan Learning Center at homeloanlearningcenter.com.
