What does financial success look like to you?
Financial success will look different for everybody: for some, being able to retire early is success, while for others building a business represents success. Whatever your ultimate goal, the steps to getting there look the same and can be applied across many goals.
Rather than talking, they take action
There is a popular saying that, ‘Talk is cheap’. Successful people are action oriented people. They are decisive and committed to make things happen. If you have a picture of what financial success for you looks like, the first step is to take action towards achieving that.
They don’t work in their comfort zone.
What is your comfort zone? Your comfort zone is defined as “A psychological state in which a person feels familiar, at ease, in control, and experiences low anxiety.” The reason we are comfortable in our comfort zone is because we are not taking risks when we are in this state. 
When we live in our comfort zones, we are living life like hamsters on a wheel, going around and around in a constant cycle, but going nowhere in our lives. But this may not be the road to financial success. To retire early or build a business, you may need to step outside your comfort zone and take a risk.
Famous motivational speaker, Les Brown, said it best with, “If you put yourself in a position where you have to stretch outside your comfort zone, then you are forced to expand your consciousness.”
They don’t fear asking for advice.
People with financial success know that obtaining advice from experts is key to achieving that success. It’s a mistake to believe that you know it all or that you can do it alone.
Asking for advice is not always easy. We think that we have the same opportunity as everyone else and sometimes feel insecure and dependent, so we decide not to ask for advice, and try to figure it out ourselves. But this could be greatly limiting us from reaching our full potential, because the advice we might be seeking could be something that somebody knows very well.
They don’t get lost in the small details.
When life gives us seemingly endless opportunities, it is very easy to get lost in the small details. The small details are very easy for us to become focused on, thus causing us to miss out on the overall vision, also known as the “big picture”.
Focusing too much on the smaller details constricts your ability to see how everything ties together. Much of our lives hinge upon the connections that we make with others and with ourselves. If we get lost in the small detail, it is like having missing pieces to a puzzle. How are we supposed to solve that?
On the way to your financial success, you’ll hit some setbacks. Don’t dwell on these; instead focus on the big picture.
They make paying off debt and saving money a priority.
They know that “When one is bound by debt, he has no choice but to stay in a miserable job, location or house against his own will.”
Debt is the number one thing that robs people from time and freedom. Why? It requires time to work to generate income and make the payments. Sometimes that requires overtime work!
Staying out of debt allows you to buy life’s most important asset when you need it most — time. This is especially true when you are thinking of retiring in part or in full – debt will mean that you don’t have the freedom to choose.
Without debt, you have a lot more flexibility and most importantly, get back the time to invest in wealth building activities such as starting a business or in creating products and services to sell. The financially successful know that personal debt is a hindrance and they do everything they can to avoid it.
They focus on long-term financial goals.
Instead of just making money and spending it, they take the time to create financial plans which enable them to reach long-term goals, and then they stick to those plans. Building wealth is a top priority in their plans and it’s done with steady plodding over time, not overnight. The financially successful seek to maximize retirement investments via their superannuation but go further in creating assets that appreciate in value.
Such assets come in the form of businesses or real estate that can eventually be sold or can generate monthly income to support them later in life, or even replace the need of working for another employer in a full-time capacity. Time is extremely valuable and the investment in assets, which may require work upfront, creates free time once it grows in value and produces passive income.
They don’t assume they already know everything.
As already mentioned, people with financial success admit that they don’t know everything. 86% of wealthy people love to read and believe in lifelong education. 88% of them read educational or work-related material for 30 minutes or more each day. 63% listen to audio books as they commute to and from work.
Assemble a team of experts. I constantly hear about how successful people surround themselves with the right people to support them in what they are doing. Personal finance is no different. Who said it had to all be personal, anyway?
Successful people have identified where they are experts and where they aren’t. Most people will find that at some point in their lifetime they need a good family or business lawyer, accountant, and financial planner to help them along the way.
Seek out these people now so you don’t have to hunt for them later. Aside from the lawyer, the other experts are people you’ll want to meet with several times a year.
They set goals.
And speaking of goals, the financially successful have them. Who needs goals? You do if you have dreams and aspirations you want to accomplish in life. Interested in replacing your day job with a small business or generate passive income while you sleep? How will you achieve financial success if you don’t know what that looks like or how to get there?
Doing so requires a plan and setting SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) to keep you moving. Otherwise, you’ll squander time and just tell yourself you’ll get to it tomorrow.
Setting SMART goals works for their personal finance goals too. Such financial goals help with saving more money and managing spending month to month.
At Altitude Wealth Solutions, we are passionate about helping people achieve financial success. Our friendly and experienced financial planners can help you achieve your financial goals. Contact us today to find out how.