Back to Basics

“Isn’t it a little silly recording every chewing gum or Coke you buy and the 20⊄ you pay for using the toilet in a shopping complex?” my client asked, expressing his frustration. I told my client that businesses and wealthy people hire accountants and bookkeepers to track their money. Poor people don’t. This is one of the reasons why they stay poor.

Some of us may still remember the little small 555 booklet that used to cost 5-10 sen which our parents used to record the groceries they bought. I remember my mum carried one with her whenever she visited the sundry shop. Those little 555 books are still available today but due to inflation, it costs a lot more now.

Get hold of one of these and start recording all inflows and outflows of your money. By merely writing down all your financial transactions, you are not only beginning the process of easing your financial problems but you are also on your way to achieving financial success. You will find money that has been slipping though the cracks. Tracking helps you see these cracks, so you can plug them up and as a result, save more money for the important things.

If you spend a little time every day doing the fundamentals, like recording your expenses, you will begin to find yourself on auto-pilot, and very much in control. By now you probably have realized that we are telling you something you already knew, a principle buried in some deep forgotten place but the aim of this article is to trigger you to do something which appears to be trivial but yet so very powerful.

“Over the years I have learned to keep my weight down. It wasn’t easy, but one of the strange phenomena of dieting is if you can discipline yourself to write down on a piece of paper the calorie count in every item of food you eat, and without doing anything else, you begin to lose weight. The process of counting calories alone will bring about a weight loss. Isn’t that interesting?” said one of my clients to me on how she succeeded in keeping her weight down without burning a big hole in her pocket by going to a slimming centre. So, start today!

Client :Springfield consultancy SDN. BHD.
Illustration of Springfield Newsletter Nov 2007/ Issue 16