Keep Your Eyes on the Money

22Mar2009 Filed under: Money Author: Bikash

Now isn’t the time to point fingers; it’s the time to take responsibility for your finances.

Many times you lose our money and blame it on others. When we lose money you blame the lenders who lent us money, the borrowers who borrowed from us, the mutual funds we invested in it, the fund manager, and the government.

So you can blame everyone else for losing our money. But is this the solution we can blame others for our whole lives or can take steps to correct it and prevent it in future. We can take care of our own finances. So people who are supposed to manage our money the best are not competent enough to do so.

The recent disaster and any other disaster where we lose money teaches us three main lessons-

Lesson #1: Offering your money to a fund manager (mutual fund, 401(k), others) is very easy. But it may be the costliest thing to do. Do you think someone else will look out for your money more than you?

Lesson #2: Do you think advice from people making commission, fee etc for such advice, will be the best one for you? Most of them are sale pitch for their sponsors (mutual funds, fund houses, brokerage firms). How much can you rely on them? So find people and sources that offer right and unbiased financial advice and information.

Lesson #3: You can only blame yourself. I understand you cannot control the economic condition of the country or the happenings in the industry space, but you can control your actions. You need to wake up and take charge of your money now.

Now you need to learn 3 key fundamentals

3 Key Fundamentals

You need to follow these three key fundamentals tom make sure you do not fall for any disaster and keep your money safe. These fundamentals will also help you to grow your money from the investments you do. When you need to select any investment, you should see three things:

1. Good partners

You need to have very good partners for your business and investments. Your partners should be good and talented enough to understand what he/she is doing. Your partner should be capable of understanding the economy and its future.

Do not accept a partnership because your partner offered you money. Money should not be the only consideration while getting into a partnership. Ts of a partner are character, values, talent and enjoyability of working with someone. Choose wisely because a good partner can help you create a good business and get most from your investment.

2. Good financing

Financing is what decided whether you are successful or not in any investment. Some of the financial consideration that you should do in any investment (whether it is real estate, stock or business)

- Purchase price
- Down payment
- Financing terms
- Debt
- Cash flow

If all these financial aspects are good, then probably you are evaluating a good dea

3. Good management.

Very important factor for any business or investment. Have you heard of the saying “Money follows management.” If you want to invest in any company, the first question that you should ask is “Who is the management team?” Any business with strong financial position and great products cannot do well unless the management is good. Without a good management team nobody can step forwards towards success.