He­len Shair-Singh

"Make more mon­ey" is al­most al­ways at the top of our list of res­o­lu­tions, but un­for­tu­nate­ly al­so one of the most un­der-achieved. Just like the OTH­ER most un­der-achieved goal, weight loss, it is most­ly due to the lack of three key things: a work­able plan, mo­ti­va­tion and per­sis­tence. With those in­gre­di­ents firm­ly in place, suc­cess would be al­most un­avoid­able. And a holis­tic ap­proach - not just ma­te­r­i­al changes but chang­ing of the 'pover­ty mind-set' - would en­sure even greater, and longer last­ing, suc­cess.

Here are some tips to help you along this year.

1. Char­lene M. Gowrie, a cer­ti­fied Life Coach (charlen­emag@out­look.com) says we should be­gin by ex­am­in­ing our thoughts about mon­ey, as your be­liefs are al­ways re­flect­ed in your ex­ter­nal re­al­i­ty. If you con­stant­ly SAY 'I'm broke', or con­stant­ly think, 'mon­ey is hard to come by', then you may al­ways ex­pe­ri­ence lack when it comes to wealth. If you have $20 in your wal­let, you're not broke, so stop say­ing it. Start speak­ing pos­i­tives like "my in­come is con­stant­ly in­creas­ing" and "I AL­WAYS have more than enough!" in­stead. This is not fool­ing your­self, it's re­fus­ing to keep pover­ty in your life by your thoughts & words and in­stead be­gin­ning, first in your own mind, to cre­ate a new and more abun­dant re­al­i­ty.

2. She al­so sug­gests 'en­vi­sion­ing' your goal - hav­ing a clear pic­ture in your mind of what you want to achieve fi­nan­cial­ly � and then be­gin to iden­ti­fy all the pos­si­ble av­enues to get you on your way there. The eas­i­est way to raise your bank ac­count lev­el is sim­ple: spend less, save more. Sav­ing might sound im­pos­si­ble on an al­ready tight­ly stretched bud­get but it's ac­tu­al­ly not. Start with just $100 a month, and be­gin to ac­cept it as a manda­to­ry and non-ne­go­tiable ac­tion, and you will be sur­prised at just how quick­ly you ad­just to do­ing with­out it. You be­gin to find many lit­tle op­por­tu­ni­ties to spend less, and they add up! And the first im­me­di­ate re­sult is peace of mind in know­ing that you now have a 'nest egg'.

3. Set up a stand­ing or­der to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly pull the month­ly sav­ings amount from your salary. 'Out of sight, out of mind'.

4. Try a sav­ings plan that is not as eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble as a bank sav­ings ac­count, such as a mu­tu­al fund or fixed de­posit, which al­so yields high­er re­turns.

5. Pay off cred­it card debt in full AS SOON AS pos­si­ble. In­ter­est on out­stand­ing bal­ances can grow fast & fu­ri­ous if left unchecked. Pay­ing off your bal­ance be­fore it starts to ac­cu­mu­late in­ter­est al­lows you to en­joy all the ben­e­fits of hav­ing a cred­it card (and some banks of­fer re­al­ly great re­wards with their cards) but with­out the dan­gers.

Kevin Ali, a Fi­nan­cial Plan­ning Con­sul­tant (ali.kevin@gmail.com), al­so of­fered the fol­low­ing ad­vice:

6. Do a bud­get. It's eas­i­er than you think - take a blank lined page and on one side list all your sources of in­come and the amounts, and on the oth­er ALL of your reg­u­lar month­ly ex­pens­es, in­clud­ing the Fri­day af­ter-work beers! See­ing your ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture writ­ten down in black & white is a huge aide in iden­ti­fy­ing ar­eas where you can save.

7. Sep­a­rate your fi­nan­cial goals in­to Short, Medi­um and Long Term. Suc­cess­ful­ly achiev­ing small goals along way keeps you mo­ti­vat­ed and in­spired to per­sist in achiev­ing the big­ger goals.

8. When tak­ing out Life or Crit­i­cal Ill­ness In­sur­ance, se­lect a pol­i­cy that gen­er­ates a cash val­ue. There are many ben­e­fits to this: if the pol­i­cy is in­tend­ed to pro­tect a thir­ty-year mort­gage, you will have a very healthy cash val­ue when it ma­tures; if you are tem­porar­i­ly un­able to main­tain the pre­mi­um pay­ments, the cash val­ue will keep the pol­i­cy in force; it can be used as col­lat­er­al for loans; it even helps the "Sum As­sured" keep pace with in­fla­tion since the paid ben­e­fit is a to­tal of the cash val­ue AND the cov­er­age amount.

9. When you DO find your­self in a bet­ter fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and ready to ex­plore in­vest­ing, he says: "Nev­er take in­vest­ment ad­vice from cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Their job is to get you to in­vest in their com­pa­ny's prod­ucts. Seek out a trained in­vest­ment ad­vi­sor".

And fi­nal­ly:

10. Al­ter­na­tive sources of in­come are your path to free­dom in many ways, and one of the best in­vest­ments you can make is in YOUR­SELF as an al­ter­na­tive source of in­come. Make this one of your goals... many of us have tal­ents we nev­er use or knew we had! Go for it!