What can you do to improve your health, wealth and happiness in your life?
Buy assets not liabilities!
My friend argued with me that the primary house that we live in is an asset. I said that it is not from what I learnt in personal finance books.
He recently bought a large house for $600,000 and he did not like what I told him that it is a liability. He said that it would appreciate in the long term and that it is an asset. I explained to him that an asset brings more money. A liability loses money from our pocket. This house may appreciate in the long term but at the cost of thousands of extra property taxes that you would pay. Then he agreed with me that our home that we live is a liability and not an asset.
I recommend that every one should read at least one personal finance book right now.
Imagine we know exactly what needs to be done to be more healthy, more happy and more wealthy. Life would be much better for us.
I want all of us to think about the things that we could do in a different way so that we would save a lot of money and be more happy and healthy.
I want to mention a few that I think can be done easily without any effort.
Not exercising enough: We are all so busy that we don’t have time for our own personal care. Most of the time, we are busy with work or busy taking care of the kids. It’s strongly recommended to do a few minutes of exercise everyday.
Eating lot of sugars and carbohydrates: Carbohydrates and sugars release Insulin hormone in our body. This hormone works to decrease sugar levels in the body. When we keep eating large quantities of these insulin releasing foods, body develops insulin resistance leading to high blood sugars. This is what we call Diabetes. So, we should cut down amount of sugars and carbohydrates in our diet.
Buying brand new cars: 3-5 year old refurbished cars are the best bet to save a lot of money. Most of us buy brand new luxury cars which cost a fortune. They depreciate very fast after buying. Rich people buy assets that give money and poor people buy liabilities which make us lose money. Cars are a liability.
Buying large houses: Even though the whole family is just about three to four members, we are buying large houses which increases expenditure in the form of property taxes, Heating and Cooling and even the services like lawn mowing, house cleaning etc charge more money looking at our big house.
Buying costly rental properties: It’s a well-known fact that the rental property should not be more than $150k. The higher the cost of the properties above that, the lesser the Rent to cost ratio which means less profits.
Not following the stock market: Some of us do not have any clue where the whole economy is going. The market goes up and down in cycles. We can save money sometimes or at least, we can cut down losses if we can take intelligent decisions based on where the market is heading. For example, now the interest rates are going up and so the people are not buying houses as much as they did same time last year. There is a chance the prices of houses may go down.
The above mentioned things are only a few. We can list a lot of similar things that we do but we need to improve on.
I hope you start thinking about this and change the way you do things to help you become more efficient in life.
I am sure there are many that you can come up with like this. I am not advising you to do exactly what I did. Do what helps you the best. Take decisions only after considering good and bad about anything you do.
Please share if you have any suggestions like this in the comments below. Please share this article to help your close friends.