If you want money you need to learn how to control it. You need to improve your financial education and build your discipline. I am going to reveal to you how you can do both. Let me ask you a very simple question. Do you want money? Of course you do!

Everybody wants money. You might think my next questions are even sillier, but I’ll ask them anyway. Would you like to have money all the time? Do you really want money?

You see what I am asking you, by adding the word “really,” is do you actually want the money itself or do you want the freedom it can buy you? Ahh. Now you see what I am getting at. What you really want is the freedom that the money represents. What you really want is freedom.

Access to money allows lots of freedom.

What would be the point of being a millionaire or even a billionaire if you were serving a prison sentence for the rest of your life? Your loss of freedom would render your prime use for that money next to useless.

So, how do we get money? There are many ways. We can work for it, receive commissions, receive royalties and we can accrue it from things like interest and investments. We can even steal it, much as I dislike even mentioning such an option.

In reality there are only two basic ways of accumulating money:

1 - we can work for it ourselves by exchanging time and effort,

2 - our existing money can be put to work to replicate itself.

For most people, it is not how much they earn, it is how much they are able to keep. That is the single most important difference between becoming wealthy and staying poor. Spending more than we earn is the recipe to certain financial disaster. Yet most people do just that.

The answer to becoming wealthy is financial education and discipline.

There are many ways to educate yourself better in the ways of handling money. However, by far, the easiest is to gather the knowledge through the wisdom contained in appropriate books. In my opinion, there is no better general resource than George Classon’s timeless classic, “The Richest Man in Babylon”. I highly recommend it.

I know from experience that those who desperately need the knowledge this excellent book contains will never read it - even if it were placed in front of them every day for a month. That is why they are poor. They think poor and do nothing to change it. What is in their wallet or purse is a direct result of what is in their head, or, more correctly, what is not in their head.

The poorest people are the people who spend the greatest amount of money on trash. They would never think to buy knowledge or invest in their greatest asset - their brain!

There is another very powerful thing that you can do to prepare yourself to handle money wisely. If you want to have money, I suggest a good place to start is with your own discipline. This is another area where poor people fall well short.

If you want to elevate your self esteem and improve your discipline both at the same time, try the following. It will ensure that you have money all the time:

Go to your bank. Withdraw the biggest single denominational note you can (say $100). Put the note in your wallet or purse then, and here comes the most important part, DO NOT SPEND IT!

Nothing will give you greater self esteem and nothing will build financial discipline stronger than doing this.

I have been walking around with three $100 notes in my wallet now for over a month. I refuse to spend them. I go into shops, I look at things I want, I think, “Gee, I’d really like that!” then I turn around and walk out. How much money do you think I have saved by not giving in to impulse buying?

My $300 gives me a great lift. It gives me tremendous self esteem to know that I can afford to buy lots of things if I want. I am in control of that money. It is not controlling me. I am exercising my discipline not to spend it.

I have other money in my wallet. It’s just that the $300 is what I call my “quarantine money.” The other money is my budget money.

If you want money you need to learn how to control it. You need to improve your financial education and build your discipline. I have just revealed to you how you can do both. Now that you know, will you do anything about it? Hmm.

[If you like this article and would like to use it on your own website or ezine you may do so ONLY if the article is not changed in any way and the final paragraph: “About the author”, with all links intact, is included.]

About the author: Gary Simpson is the author of eight books covering a diverse range of subjects such as self esteem, affirmations, self defense, finance and much more. His articles appear all over the web. Gary’s email address is budo@iinet.net.au. Click here to go to his Motivation & Self Esteem for Success website where you can receive his “Zenspirational Thoughts” plus an immediate FREE copy of his highly acclaimed, life-changing e-book “The Power of Choice.”

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Before I lost my health coverage, I never paid much attention to my type II diabetes. Sure I took my medicine, visited the doctor as instructed, and made many half hearted attempts to lose weight but I never really took responsibility for the management of my own health care.

First off while I was overweight, my medication kept my numbers low. I always got complements for my A1c results (the ones that show your average blood sugar levels over the preceding 3 months). And I only checked my own levels occasionally. I ate plenty of ice cream, cake, and candy, rationalizing that sugar was sugar. I told myself that any carbs I ate would turn into sugar anyway, so I might as well be happy. I did not pay attention to natural blood sugar stabilizers because I did not want to interfere with my diabetes medicine.

Well all that changed when I became self-employed. I had been prepared to pay the $400 a month it would cost to insure myself. What I did not realize was that I would have to pay that premium each month for a whole year before my diabetes was covered. That meant for a whole year I would have to pay insurance plus pay for all doctor visits relating to diabetes and all tests related to diabetes. The kicker was that I also had to pay full price for all of my prescriptions! Yikes! I was not even into profitability without all those expenses. My medications alone cost several hundred dollars a month! I was in shock!

It was not long before I couldn’t pay my insurance any more and I couldn’t pay for doctor’s visits or tests or even medicine. Meanwhile, I had all sorts of other problems and issues to deal with so I just let it go. It was pretty irresponsible, I know, but that is what I did.

I wasn’t testing my blood so I did not know what my numbers were but I did begin to gain more weight and I started to feel listless and tired and before long I acknowledged what I knew all along. I needed to take responsibility for my own health and take action to improve it.

So I did some research; and let me tell you, even with the internet it was difficult to get a consensus on self-help. For example, if I was going to get my blood glucose levels under control, I would need to check my levels many times each day. I knew that my morning blood glucose reading should be below 120 mg/dl but what about two hours after lunch or at bed time? It took me weeks to find that out. All of the official web sites always say to check with your doctor on everything.
Once I established my goals, I needed to re-educate myself on how to eat and I needed to find an exercise regimen that was flexible enough for me to follow. Next I started researching the effect of certain vitamins and herbs on a diabetics’ blood sugar. My goodness there is a lot of research out there! I finally decided to pick two sources and follow their recommendations and see what happened. I am documenting my experiences on my web-site, http://www.jeannerussell.com. Hopefully others can learn a little from my mistakes.

That is where I am now. I am still in transition but I have already lost over 10 lbs. and I feel wonderful. My levels are still not where I want them to be but they are getting lower all the time and I am in control. I would love to have health insurance again and I am working towards that. But never again will I blindly choose pills over healthy living. I truly believe that losing my insurance might have been the best thing that could have happened for my long term health and well being. It woke me up.

– Jeanne Russell is a mother writer and entrepreneur, She is founder of http://www.jeannerussell.com ( a website devoted to self-improvement and success) and also http://www.stressandthesinglemom.com

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