Errol Flynn

Almost, on a daily basis, after I meet with clients I am reminded of an old article that I have kept about Errol Flynn, which referred to his wild lifestyle of women, drugs, alcohol and over spending (man, why cant I do that?)

One of his quotes caught my eye and for the first time I realized the secret to why most of us just don’t know how to handle money:

“The problem is I can not reconcile my gross lifestyle with my net income”.

How true is that? Are you in the same situation of not being able to reconcile your gross lifestyle with your net income? Here are some of my suggestions that may help you:

ACCEPT that you can not afford everything in life.

ACCEPT that you must give up some things in order to have others e.g. if you want to buy something then you may need to cancel dinner for that week so you can use the money for the purchase.

ACCEPT that you need to learn to be smarter with your finances:

- if you have a debt then you must work towards reducing it. Don’t worry about tax deductions, negative gearing etc. A debt is a debt – it is not a tax benefit.

- understand Cash Flow v Tax Benefits – you will be surprised how much better you will be.

- don’t wait until 2 days before the end of the financial year to ring your accountant and ask how you can reduce your tax - ring him in July so you will have 12 months to prepare for it.

- if you are in business and you have been thinking of buying assets for the business - think about it now – so many people have rushed in before the end of the year to buy cars thinking that they will “reap” the tax system. Not true – tax deductions will only work for genuine expenditure not for the forced expenditure.

- think about your investments - learn about the timing of markets and the great opportunities when the markets are down. 

- and finally, keep buying those Tatts tickets