the richest man in atherstone

After a pretty successful first year of setting goals for myself in 2007, I have decided to continue with the idea and set myself some goals for 2008. At the end of the year, I hope I can say that they've all been completed.

I've set myself 10 goals for this year, however only six of them are related to the financial and business aspects of my life, so only these will be discussed here on my website.

1. Save 10% of my salary - This was one of the routines I got into when I started my financial journal nearly three years ago and also one of the best pieces of financial advice I've ever heard of. I originally read it in the book 'The Richest Man in Babylon' by George S. Clason (also the inspiration for this website) and over the years, I've built up a very nice lump of capital.
2. Review utility bills - With my wife no longer working so that she can look after our baby, we find ourselves living on just one income rather than two so things will consequently be a lot tighter this year. In order to reduce our expenditures, I plan on reviewing our utility bills to see if I can get better deals elsewhere.
3. Set up and run my own company - This was one of the goals I struggled with last year, and I contemplated giving it a miss for 2008, however after going over my original motives for setting it, I included it on the list again. I want to learn about business and I always find the best way to learn something is by doing it. I plan on working for myself in the future, so there are a lot of important skills I will have the opportunity to master by setting up my own company. I was unsuccessful last year because of my procrastination. I'm determined not to fall into the same trap this year.
4. Reduce our mortgage capital to below £60'000 - Last year we managed to overpay our mortgage by around £1500 in just 8 months, an achievement of which we are very proud. That is £1500 that we will never have to pay interest on again. Our mortgage is now around £62500 and by the end of the year, it will be reduced to around £61400 by making the standard payments. We plan to earn enough extra cash to be able to overpay at least an extra £1400 over the course of the year to get our mortgage to below £60'000.
5. Complete steps 16 to 20 of my doubling plan - I'm currently on Step 16 of my Doubling Project and plan to reach Step 20 during 2008 (to find out what 'Doubling' is, see this explanatory post). The target amount for Step 20 is £5000.
6. Donate 1% of my salary to charity - This was one of my goals for 2007 that I'm happy to say I completed. I made my donation to a charity called BDF NewLife, which helps children with birth defects and their families. I have decided to include this goal on my list again this year and each subsequent year.

So, that's my list of goals for the coming twelve months

This series of articles was inspired by a wealth-building strategy created by Stuart Goldsmith. It is called 'Double Your way to a Million Plan' and you can sign up for your free copy on this webpage. For a brief outline of the strategy, take a look at this post.

I just received a monthly interest payment of £7.60 into my Doubling Pot from the Stoozing experiment I did a few months ago.

Step 16 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £185.74

This series of articles was inspired by a wealth-building strategy created by Stuart Goldsmith. It is called 'Double Your way to a Million Plan' and you can sign up for your free copy on this webpage. For a brief outline of the strategy, take a look at this post.

Despite my laziness over the last month or so, I have manged to make a couple of additions to my 'Doubling Stake'.

Firstly, I've earned £1.20 from completing free offers on RPoints. RPoints is a cashback website that gives you money for completing free offers - for a large list of similar websites, take a look at W3WAD's Cashback Website Comparison Matrix.

And secondly, over the Xmas period, I found a total of 20p on the ground whilst out walking with the kids.

In addition, I've also made nearly $50 via Clickbank from when I tested out the Bum Marketing Method. Unfortunately, I've set the payout threshold to $100 to reduce currency conversion fees, so I won't be able to add it to the Doubling Pot for a while longer.

Step 16 In Progress
Cumulative Cash: £178.14

Every year, at around the end of December and the beginning of January, I create my budget for the coming year. I use GNUCash - an Open Source book-keeping system - to keep track of my income and expense over the year. Not only does this allow me to calculate my expenditure over the twelve months, it also helps me to control my cashflow so that I know exactly how much cash I've got at any time (and ensures I don't go into the red). Additionally, I can pull off a plethora of reports to show my current financial status in terms of assets, liabilities, income and expense.

This year is going to be more difficult financially for my family. My wife's maternity leave has come to an end and she doesn't intend to go back to work for a few years until our baby is at school, so instead of two incomes, there will now be just mine. The fact that I plan to leave my job sometime soon doesn't help matters too much either

After playing around with the numbers for a while, it became apparent that although my salary would cover all the bills, there wouldn't be much left over for recreational purposes. After discussions with my wonderful wife, we decided the best thing to do would be for me to look after the household expenses, and she would control our 'fun' budget. She also plans to pick up a few odd-jobs that she can do from home while looking after our baby to ensure that we have a bit extra for entertainment. So from now on, I'll be asking the missus for money if I want to go out

We also decided that there were a few other things we would like to spend any additional income on and came up with the following plan to split any extra money that I earn.

1. 50% to be added to our recreation budget.
2. 30% on mortgage over-payments.
3. 10% to be put into our savings.
4. 10% to go into our emergency fund.

Of course, this will not affect any money I earn as part of my 'Double To A Million' project.

Every quarter, I will go back over the previous three months and divide my additional earnings accordingly.

Personally, I wanted more cash to go on overpaying the mortgage and my wife wanted more for the recreation budget, however our discussions led to an amicable compromise and we are both pleased with our financial plan for 2008.

Happy New Year everyone.

A few people have asked me to give a more detailed explanation of the 'Double Your Way To A Million' project I am working through. I thought I'd give a brief overview of the strategy and if you'd like to find out more, I recommend that you download the Free Doubling Report from 'Megastep International' in exchange for your name and email address (you can opt out again immediately and I've experienced no spam problems from them).

The basic principle behind 'Doubling Your Way To A Million' or 'Doubling' as us 'Doublers' call it is to generate a million pounds/dollars/euros starting from just a single penny/cent. The first penny must be found on the ground and once you have it, that is Step 1 of the 28-Step project complete. You now have a penny in your 'Doubling Pot' also known as your 'Stake' by many Doublers and from now on money can be earned.

To complete step 2, you must get 2p in your Doubling Pot. Again this could be found money, or you could offer to help someone with something for the token sum of a penny or perhaps even ask a friend to exchange your shiny new penny (if indeed it is shiny and new) for one of their grubby twopence pieces. How you do it doesn't really matter - the important thing is setting the goal for yourself, thinking about it and achieving it.

Having completed step 2, you now need to bump up your Doubling Pot to 4p to complete Step 3. There are an infinite number of ways you can do this and with a little thought, you'll soon be on Step 4. You now need your Doubling Pot to hit 8p and then for Step 5, you need to double again to 16p.

Each Step requires you to double your money until you complete Step 28, at which point you're Doubling Pot consists of over a million pounds and you have completed your project and are free to spend the money how you want (or perhaps even double it again). Each step also requires different strategies - for example, in the early steps you could get a part time job but as you progress, it will become harder and harder as you will need to earn more and more. There are a number of rules laid out in the Free Double Your Way To A Million Report that iron out the details of the strategy. I can't reproduce them here as it would be both illegal and unethical.

I've been Doubling for a little over a year now and am currently on Step 16 (over halfway through - woo-hoo), having earned £176.74 so far. I'm sure most other people could get to this amount a lot quicker than I have! I've found it to be a positive and thoroughly enjoyable experience. It has made me spot opportunities where I wouldn't have otherwise looked and helped me to discover a number of different methods of making money that I previously didn't know about. Plus it's made me more confident in goal-setting and attainment as well as earning me a few quid (although that's staying in my Doubling Pot for a while longer). I'd recommend to anyone that they should give it a go - maybe a future Doubling Millionaire is reading this right now

Additional Resources:
Doubling Blogroll - A list of other Doubler's blogs
The Doubler's Den - A place for Doubler's to hang out, discuss ideas, share experiences and give each other moral support.