When I go to the gym today, I expect it to be packed. Everyone is fresh off their holiday eating binge with the goal of getting in shape.
When March comes, I can assure you I will be working out alone.
The same goes for financial goals. Everyone has the goal that this will be the year that they get their finances in order (whatever that may mean), start saving for retirement, or save up for a down payment on a house.
From experience, I know that the success rate is very low on these types of goals.
30 Day Challenge # 1
Instead of you having the goal to get your finances in order in 2010, I want you to follow a plan that will guarantee success.
As I have written about before, the first step to a financial plan is to build a small emergency fund. This goal needs to be accomplished as fast as possible, so you can start paying off debt.
To speed up this phase, I find it helpful to sell some of your useless possessions. Therefore, the first 30 day challenge that I’m going to have will be to sell 30 old and useless possessions of mine on eBay.
Why?
Thankfully, I have already passed this first phase in my quest to build wealth. However, that doesn’t mean I’m just going to sell a bunch of stuff to waste my time.
I will be splitting this money into my travel fund and putting the other 50% into my business. Hopefully, this will be a nice jump-start towards reaching my goals for these categories.
How?
This 30 Day challenge is fairly simple. I plan on batching this into four separate days throughout the month.
- Day 1 – List 15 items
- Day 2 – Ship 15 items
- Day 3 – List 15 items
- Day 4 – Ship 15 items
I will provide two to three detailed updates throughout. My hope is that if you need to build your emergency fund or want to kick-start your 2010 financial goals, that you can join a long with me.
If you have any ideas for future 30 day challenges please let me know.
{ 2 comments }
I have many books I should sell online to clear space, won’t make much though
.-= Craig´s last blog ..Weekly Personal Finance Twitter Chat: Scholarships =-.
Great idea. I have had wonderful results from selling stuff on Amazon. You don’t have to go through the trouble of taking pictures and the prices are way higher than eBay, at least in my experience. I bought a software new for $150 and sold it used on Amazon for $200. The buyer even left positive feedback.
I saw Craig’s note above about books. Many books have very low resale values and aren’t worth the trouble of selling. It is nice to donate our unwanted books to libraries.Then many other people can read them. And, if the library doesn’t want them they sell them. So either way the books find a new home.
By the way, a funny story about donating books to the library. Call first! I assumed that the library would be perfectly happy to take books at any time. Guess what? You can only donate them during a two hour period on Saturday afternoons! Maybe they have too many books at my library. I don’k know…I guess it depends on the library.
.-= George´s last blog ..How to Tell if Your Boss is a Dinosaur =-.
Comments on this entry are closed.