What is the biggest hurdle to getting ahead financially?

Question

Is it always about money or is it about attitude?
They say you need money to make money but is that really true?
If you have enough drive you will succeed, right?

Answer 1

Having your head on straight, with your heart fully supporting, in terms of how the economic world really works, IS the issue.

Alas, most Americans fail to learn the fundamentals. ever.

It's not so surprising -- neither the schools nor your parents can teach what they don't know! So here's my abbreviated version:

1. Making money. There are only two honest, ethical ways to make money. Working and investing. Everything else always leads to someone else losing more than you get. That's neither honest nor ethical.

1b. the ONLY levers that multiply your money making efforts are -- knowledge, tools, and [very distantly] health. Not so oddly, all three of these are a result of investing -- investing in yourself, investing in tools, or investing in your health.

2. unless you plan to die young, there will come a time when you'll want to spend without working. It follows from #1 that this can only happen if you spend less than your income while you're working (or if you were born rich -- for most of us, definitely not true). Saving, and investing that saving, is MANDATORY.

Negative saving -- that is, owing for any reason other than assets that grow faster than your debt grows -- is ALWAYS a losing proposition.

2b. Rather obviously, the larger the portion of your income that you save and invest, the better off you'll be when you cease working. This REQUIRES keeping spending down.

2c. Also fairly obviously, if you're better at investing than the next guy [get a higher return] you'll end up with more assets and thus will be able to spend either more or longer without working.

Not so obviously, the way you get better at investing than the next guy is through learning. Just blindly taking bigger risks is likely to lose -- there are traps out there for those who go overboard on risk taking [bankruptcy is one of them].


There you go -- personal finance in two lessons. :-)

Answer 2

The biggest hurdle for most people is living within their means. Americans are terrible about getting credit and financing to make purchases that they don't really NEED to make. I quit using credit cards about 2 years ago and in that time I've already paid off half of my debt and I'll be completely out by the end of the year. Credit isn't a bad thing, but it needs to be used responsibly.

Americans seem to have this idea in their head that they are what they own and therefore they buy fancy cars and giant houses etc. to impress the people around them...not realizing that its ultimately going to have them living in the poor house.

If you live within your means, think before you buy, and act like a responsible adult then you'll have no problem getting the money that you need to help make more money.

J-

Answer 3

The biggest hurdle? Making more money than you spend...it's the problem most of us have.
Yes...sometimes it takes money to make money...when I was in sales, we had what we called "priming the pump"..if I had a sale late in the day, I would wait until the following morning to write it up...starting my day WITH a sale usually meant a day FULL of sales...in essence, making money with money...I was ALWAYS in the top three each month in sales...(out of 15...ALL men..but me!)...
see what I mean?
Drive, dedication, KNOWING the "right" people, and making the "system" work FOR you...are all things that are important in getting ahead.

Answer 4

You must learn how to save money. Than you need to learn how to invest.