It’s been a while since posting an update about the plan. I cover the investing strategy in another post, but I have been reading a few books that all mention the same things.
Prime examples are setting goals and getting into habits, specifically habits that were determined before emotions get in the way.
Action is important, and according to Grant Cardone, massive action is important. However, consistency is key. To try this theory, I added a few new habits to my daily plan.
Two basic ones, mainly to prove this consistency theory, are to drink at least 1 cup of black coffee a day and to dribble a basketball for 10 minutes.
I hate black coffee and am hoping that drinking it a cup a day will make me get used to it. It’s also the most basic test I can come up with to prove the habit theory.
Can I get in the habit of drinking something I don’t actually like, if I do it consistently enough?
Neither of those are really beneficial, but they should prove the habit theory. In addition, I will follow the Richest Man In Babylon theory of paying myself first.
I will set aside a specific amount of money every week. The amount will be higher than the 10% recommended in the book. I am thinking about picking a number higher than what I make with client work to make it hard to do, but not impossible.
Plus with rental houses and investments, I have additional money coming in above client work.
Grant Cardone recommends saving 40%. With the addition of the new client, I will aim for $8,000 saved per week. That should get me close to what I need for new investments while not being completely and totally unrealistic. However, it also won’t be super easy.
I do make a little more than that with client work, but I set aside some money for taxes. It’s about 95.2% of my pre-tax client work. Plus I have investments like rental houses that would help contribute.
Realistically, I just have to keep expenses in check and I should be able to hit it, especially with the whole eBay/Amazon wholesale orders coming in and going full throttle.
The only real issue will be the second week of June. It will be when a credit card payment is due from the importing of eBay items, but before I get paid my first check from the new client.
Not real sure how well any of this will work, or if there will really be any benefit. The coffee and ball dribbling thing is just a basic test of how well new habits can be added into my day and if they really produce any kind of improvement.
The saving money plan seems like it should work and is widely recommended, but there’s still the issue of doing it easily and consistently enough to keep doing it, and whether or not it will actually make a difference.
The whole theory was a mix of popular books, including 4 Disciplines of Execution. Even though not specifically habits, it talks about setting shorter goals. The reason is you will take the allotted time to complete the goal regardless of the amount of time.
If you have 1 week to do it, you can do it in a week, but if you have 52 weeks to do it, you will take all 52 weeks.
The strategy is to do some things over and over to get better and used to doing them, but to also allow for time to do other things with an end goal in mind.
For example, if ever day I dribble the ball, drink a cup of coffee, and work on something that helps sell sites, I keep the momentum going with site sales.
I will not have something I can continually do over and over, like dribbling or drinking coffee, but I want to get used to spending time each week, or even each day, working on selling sites.
One issue I do see, however, is the generic “do something related to selling sites” will require effort to first determine what it is I should be doing, and then effort to actually do it. It’s the coming up with what to actually do that will likely derail me.
One option I thought of was to create a to-do list of all the items for each project. The issue with that approach is I will be far more likely to do the easy tasks on the list and say I am done for the day than doing the tasks that are the most important to actually complete.
Ideally, I would break large tasks down into smaller ones making all tasks under that project equal. So far, this still seems like a good option, even though it’s not perfect.
