(First in a series)

OK, call it a New Year’s Resolution, if that helps. 

Every 3,000 miles or so you take your precious automobile in for a tune-up, right?  And every year or so you trudge off to the doc to have your one-of-a-kind physical body checked out, don’t you?  And many of us attend church regularly or do some other work in order to maintain properly our spiritual lives.

The reason we do these things is simple enough: We want to prolong the lives and efficiency of the tools we have been given. This is pure common sense.  Our automobile is the practical tool we move around in.  Our physical body is the tool we live in, and our spiritual life is the “tool” that guides us.

More basically, have you stopped to think about how long you spend each day bathing, shaving, blow-drying, perfuming, primping, and getting your body ready for daily presentation to the world?  It likely adds up to many hours over the course of a year.

So here’s my proposal for your next “New Year’s Resolution”: Just as you spend time making yourself “pretty”, why not spend some time treating yourself to a financial check-up? Isn’t it at least as important arranging your financial life as it is arranging your hair? 

A financial check-up will include developing an understanding of your relationship with money, understanding what you want to accomplish with the money you earn and conforming your behaviors to your long-term goals (retirement, travel, kids’ education, etc.).

Let’s look at reasons NOT to do this, so some of you can stop reading right away.

1.  This resolution is not for you if you think that financial planning amounts to “waiting for Mom to die so I can inherit her money and then everything will be handled”.
2.  This is not for you if you think it makes perfect sense to spend all the money you earn, caring not at all about the future.
 3.   You do not need to do this if you are rich, or if you THINK you are rich, for then you can afford to make financial mistakes without worrying about the consequences.

For the rest of us, it is important to establish the right relationship with our money. This is the first step in undergoing a financial check-up.

If the mere accumulation of money is your long term financial goal, then you should simply work countless hours in the highest paying job you can find, spend a small fraction of your money on the barest of necessities and hoard the rest. In other words, you should treat your money as your “god”, as your reason for “living”.  I think that this is misguided.

Let’s assume, instead, that money is “just” a tool, exactly as your car is a tool, a means to an end, not THE end.   As with any tool that you intend to use, it is vital that you become the master of that tool rather than remain a slave to it:  you drive your car, it doesn’t drive you. 

How does one “take charge” of one’s money and one’s financial life? How does one achieve financial independence?   

Over the next several months, we will travel the pathway to just that goal - gaining control of your financial health in the same way you seek physical health by going to see your M.D.  You are invited to stroll along, to pay a visit to the financial “doctor”, if you will. 

You do not need to become an economist here, just as you do not have to go to medical school i to be treated by your doctor.  All you really have to do is be willing to consider some different ways to “deal” with your money.  If you can do that, then we are ready to take the next step.

Next:  Part 2  ~ Control The Things You Can