There are many ways to spend smarter in your life. It’s all about making minor adjustments in your behavior:

1. Consider getting a roommate to split your expenses.
2. If you have co-workers who live near you, carpool to save gas expenses and mileage/maintenance.
3.  Do your own minor home improvements or repairs.
4.  When making travel arrangements, check for discount tickets on internet.
5.  Use coupons even the millionaires do (how do you think they got to be millionaires?). These are especially good when grocery stores offer double or triple coupon days. Buy only things that are on the grocery list.
6.  When you get tired of looking at your old furniture, don’t buy new; refurnish and reupholster.
7.  Even if you’re shopping for one person, join a bulk-buying club to save on non-perishables such as toothpaste, batteries, soap, paper goods, and more.
8. Carry your lunch from home instead of always eating in a restaurant or cafeteria.
9. Look for two-for-one or “early bird” specials if you eat in restaurants with friends who are also trying to save more money.
10. Don’t be too proud to ask for Senior Discounts or order from the children’s menu if you find that restaurants serve you too much food.
11. Stop buying lattes or mochas every morning. Drink coffee at home.
12. Make your own frozen dinners.
13. Buy generic brands of food and drug store items.
14. Try to never buy groceries on your credit card.
15. Wash your own car and pump your own gas. Some gas stations even give free car washes with gas purchases.
16. Do you need a different car or will your old one still be fine for a few more years? Your insurance rate and licensing may go down as your car ages.
17. Talk to an insurance agent to see if you have the best rate for the age of your car.
18. If your old car is getting too expensive to maintain, buy a used car rather than a new one. The first two years of depreciation are the greatest.
19. Keep your car on its scheduled maintenance program so it will last longer.
20. Car pool to work or use city transportation and avoid parking costs.
21. Buy monthly passes for busses and trains.
22. Mow your own lawn. It’s good for your mind, your body, and your pocketbook.
23. Clean your own house.Use a library instead of buying books or magazines.
24. Check out movie rentals at the library; many of them are free.
25. Go to matinees to see new films.
26. Take enough cash from each paycheck to get you through that period and avoid too many stops at the ATM. Keep track of where that cash is going.
27. Payoff your credit card balances each month. Just paying the minimum will keep your credit clean but the interest continues to grow and you will find that the entire bill increases monthly even if you add no new purchases.
28. Refuse to pay an annual fee for your credit cards.
29. Never sign a credit card receipt without checking the purchase price(s). Those wonderful sale prices are not always scanned into the computer correctly.
30. Call your telephone long-distance carrier about every six months and ask if you are getting the best rate they offer for your kind of usage. They will often offer an unpublished rate just to keep your business. You can get comparative information on an Internet .
31. Do you really need cable TV? If you need it for good reception, just get the basic plan.
32. Look at your phone bill. Do you really need the extra line, caller ID, call waiting, and call forwarding?
33. Try e-mailing your friends instead of calling long distance.
34. Do you really need a cellular phone? If so, are you paying for a more expensive plan than you really need?
35. Review your insurance policies annually. Have enough insurance to cover your needs, but not more than what you need.
36. Check your insurance premiums. Get quotes online (www.Quotes. com) or from an insurance broker or agent to see if you can save some money on your premiums. You may get a better rate by having your home or renter’s insurance with the same carrier as your auto insurance.
37. If you need life insurance, buy term insurance and be a responsible investor with the money you save over permanent insurance premiums. If no one is depending on you financially, you may not need life insurance at all.
38. Turn down your heat when you leave for the day to save on your heating bill.
39. Donate things you don’t use or want to charity and use the receipts to help lower your tax bill.
40. Press your clothes at home if that’s all they need, and save on your dry-cleaning bill.
41. Do you get the extended warranty on many things you buy? Sometimes that is covered by the store where you purchased the item.
42. Walk or ride your bike instead of joining a gym or having a personal trainer.
43. Shop for holidays all year long and take advantage of sales.
44. Instead of buying lottery tickets, put the money into your interestbearing cash reserve account. Your odds of winning are better.
45. Save money in an interest-bearing account for big items like furniture and buy when you have the money instead of financing on credit.
46. If you buy a seldom-used item such as a kitchen appliance, purchase less than the top-of-the-line model or brand if it will serve you well enough.
47. Pay bills on time so that there are no late fees or interest added.
48. Research large items you plan to buy on the Internet to save gas, time, and avoid falling for persuasive sales people.
49. Be proud of the way you spend your money. If you feel guilty, find out where that feeling is coming from and work on it.

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Some business owners would chuckle to see a section like this induded in a chapter about earning more income. For many business owners, owning a company means not having an income for sometimes two or more years. Of course, if the business survives and makes a profit, the payoff will be worth it. If not, it can mean a devastating loss in both income and net worth.

The truth is, however, that business owners do have the greatest chance for high net worth. If you have always wanted to own your own company, be sure that you can afford to do it. Take each step carefully and calculate your risk along the way.

There is a great deal of help available to you if you are going to start a business. Small Business Development Centers are located throughout the country, and they are joined by a multitude of live and online resources. There are also numerous organizations created especially for the woman owned business, induding the Business Women’s Network and the National Foundation for Women Owned Businesses.

Remember, starting your own business can be as simple as turning the Christmas toffee you make once a year into a cottage candy company. Or it can be as logical as turning your new van into an airport shuttle or a guided tour van for points of interest in your area.

Or, you may prefer to use your talent at the piano to teach piano lessons. Maybe you love children and want to host an after school study program at your home for kids in your neighborhood.

Ask yourself what logical outgrowth of who you are and what you do could be transformed, or monetized, into an income stream. Let it develop naturally, and pay yourself first.

Before you open your doors, get some books from the library and develop a good business plan. Talk to people who are in the business and ask what they recommend for you.

Don’t give up easily on pursuing the possibilities of having your own business if you really feel strongly about doing it. Choose a business that comes naturally to you, that uses your best skills. Just be sure that you have done as much research as you need to before you plunge in. Remember, you are trying to increase your net worth through this venture.

So, whether you are opening a franchise, starting an Internet business, or launching a delivery service, do it right. Listen to those who have been there. Take advantage of every class and resource, and remember that the Internet can give you as much information in three hours as you could possibly want. An online excursion to flametree.com will get you started.

Be a money-smart business owner and watch out for your own bottom line. No business is worth losing your net worth.

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All games have scores. In the game of debt, the score is your credit report. You need to know what your score is and if it is accurate. Your credit report is also known as a credit file or credit history. Almost everyone has one, whether you know it or not. At one time or another, individuals or businesses have received information about you, including your name and Social Security number. They do not need to ask your permission to look at your credit report, but they do have to pay the reporting agency to do so.

Credit bureaus or credit reporting agencies are not governmental agencies, they are businesses in the private sector that collect information on you. Their customers are banks, finance companies, credit card companies, mortgage companies, merchants, landlords, and even schools anyone who has a need to know about your reputation in the way you use money, good or bad.

When I was a little girl in Iowa and my grandma was trading her eggs for groceries, storekeepers often had accounts open for people to buy groceries and other things the general store sold. If I went to the store to get some things for my mother, Grandpa Jackson (as he was called by all the kids in town) would just write it on my parents’ account and my dad would go in and pay up the account when he got paid. Everyone in the township knew everyone else and their business, so storekeepers knew who they could extend these open accounts to and who they wouldn’t.

People made businesses of gathering information on people in communities, and merchants would have a database to share so they could determine the credit-worthiness of those who wanted credit extended to them. A credit application form came from that idea, and as there became more and more need to see information about someone, files were gleaned from public records such as tax liens, bankruptcies, judgments, and anything anyone reported against the individual.

Today, there are thousands of credit bureaus collecting all sorts of information on consumers. Much of it is entered manually, and the error rate is huge. In March 1999, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group reported that 70 percent of credit reports in their sample contained mistakes or errors of some kind and 29 percent contained serious errors that could be used to deny credit; 19 percent of the credit reports contained accounts that could not be identified or did not belong to the consumer; and 26 percent contained credit accounts that were closed by the consumer but listed as open.

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Beliefs are our conclusions about what we have seen, heard, and experienced. They may be accurate or not, but they are still our beliefs and we build our behaviors on them. Our money beliefs or ” misbeliefs”govern our financial choices and patterns.

Sometimes our beliefs are in line with those who have influenced us, like Monica, and sometimes we take the opposite extreme and vow to never live like we did when we were children, as Nancy did.

Nancy, brilliant and creative, was raised by a tight-fisted mother who always undergave. Nancy was embarrassed by her mother’s seeming selfishness. She made a private vow to be generous. As an adult, Nancy launched a pattern of excessive gift-giving. She was continually surprising friends and family with unexpected gifts, even though she couldn’t afford them. Her credit card debt was out of control, jeopardizing her family’s financial health. Nancy is dynamic and passionate about life, and it is easy to picture her spontaneously buying wonderful gifts for the people around her.

Life circumstances forced Nancy to realize that her belief in generosity at the expense of one’s own family was wrong. She faced it and corrected it. She built a new pattern of behavior and removed a great deal of internal as well as financial chaos from her life. She has found other ways to express her joy and love to people around her.

Our beliefs either help us or hurt us. It is important to determine what beliefs are governing you and supporting your patterns. Look over the following misbeliefs to spot those you have adopted. If you don’t find beliefs that resemble yours, ask yourself what misbeliefs you hold about money. The following is a list of common money-limiting beliefs:

Managing money is complicated (boring, tedious, frustrating, useless).

• A person needs to be good at math to be good with money.
• Others need my money more than I do.
• There will always be someone to take care of me.
• I’ll learn what I need to know about money when I have to.
• I’ve always managed on what money I have and I always will.
• I can do without.
• I wasn’t destined to have a lot of money.
• The rich are snobs.
• My friends would leave me if I earned more money than they did.
• Poor people know how to appreciate life more than rich people.
• I wouldn’t know what to do with extra money if I had it.
• You can’t have wealth and strong values at the same time.
• It takes a lot of money to invest.
• My debt is too big to do anything about it.
• I trust my husband to make good choices for me.
• Married women who insist on being in on financial decisions (like insurance and investing) don’t trust their partners.

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Rule #1: What you borrow, you pay back with interest. Once you’ve signed on the dotted line, you’ve committed yourself to repay that loan, and then some. According to Steve Rhode, creator of myvesta. com’s “The History of Money and Debt,” an entertaining and enlightening online exhibit, the Sumerians were the first recorded culture to develop the concept of interest, and they called it mash, the word for calves. Herds of cows were loaned for, say, a year. When the herd was returned, calves had been born and the size of the herd had increased. These calves were the interest on the loan of the original cows. As Rhodes says, “If cattle were the standard currency of the time, then loans in all comparable commodities would be expected to “give birth” as well. Why shouldn’t the same be true for money?

Rule #2: If you don’t pay, you suffer. There are consequences when you don’t repay a loan-unpleasant ones. Urgent messages arrive in the mail, creditors call you at home, and surprise visits from skilled repossessors come to take back what you bought but didn’t pay for. Avoid this type of grief in your life. Repay what you borrow.

Rule #3: If you pay your loan on time with interest and you are rewarded. In other words, companies in the business of loaning money will think you’re great and will want to loan you even more because they know chances are good you will pay them back.

Rule #4: Your performance in the game of debt earns you a score. Everyone has a credit score. Three primary credit agencies in the United States keep sophisticated records of each individual’s credit history, including yours. The better you pay back a loan (for example, you never miss a loan payment and you always pay your loan on time each month) the better your credit score will become. An excellent credit score simplifies life in a number of ways, from simplified car loans to a better night’s sleep.

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