Personal Finance Reflection

Background

After reading numerous books about personal finance, I have found none that has ever covered all aspects of this subject, probably because the typical authors only covers their own limited area of expertise.

So my question was why do you need to buy a multitude of books or need a university degree to get the whole picture? This annoyance has been my inspiration for writing this book, which covers all aspects of private finance. This 360 degree view covers setting goals, budgeting, how to maximize your savings, arrive at the best financial decisions, avoid risky investments and more, e.g. giving you insight in the most important factors that influence your finances, opportunities and determines how easy you can grow wealth, etc.

Thinking back, I can see that if I had done things differently I could have achieved this situation considerably earlier in my life. Up to my mid twenties, I spend every dime I earned and more. I never bothered about money, only bothered about how to have as much fun as possible. Possibly because as a child, my father lured me into saving most my pocket money, and then he dictated what my savings should be used for. This was of course a childish way to react, but that is probably what you get, when you force too much control on your children, even with the best of intensions.

Raised under quite poor conditions I soon learned how to live on limited means. I still remember those years where the crop failed and the taxation commission claimed that the income was too low to live on. Therefore, they claimed that there had to be some hidden income, which they then taxed.

The lesson I learned was that it does not require much to survive, and that there is numerous ways to save money and get by anyway. In addition, and even more important, happiness has nothing to do with money or your earthly possessions. It is more a state of

We will start with how to reach your financial goals, e.g. get out of debt, be able to live a comfortable life as a pensioner, get the best chances for exploiting life’s opportunities or become financially independent.

Ideas for improving income and reducing expenses will play a key role. Budgeting and keeping track of your expenses, making sound economic decisions, etc. will pave the way. As we go along, we will look into how you might reduce your cost of living by 30% or more without loosing out on anything important.

The next step will be figuring out how you manage your money the best way and at the same time both maximizing your return and minimizing your risk.

The last section is about complex issues concerning our lives and opportunities. It is for inspiration, if you want to know more, dig deeper or just want to be able to ask the right questions. It shows how to exploit the cycles in the economy and how to find the right time to invest in anything, when to be especially cautious and which dangers you should try to