Ahhh, September. Footy finals here in Australia and a multitude of sport all around the planet.

We have the cricket coming to an end in the UK, the Vuelta Espana in the cycling and countless other events to keep every sports hungry fanatic glued to the living room sofa.

My team? Gone. No more. We made the semi-finals (limped in is a better term), only to be thwarted in the first week to start thinking about 2010.

Who to support now? Anyone? I just love watching great sport, period.

Plenty of issues to discuss at the moment. Freddy Flintoff becoming a free agent in the cricket is interesting. To be honest, I think many other players will follow suit. The attraction for playing any sport for your country would have to be a big thing for any athlete, but if you can get ten times (or even more) money for being a free agent, I would have no interest what-so-ever if I had to choose one or the other. Sure, it’s an opportunity lost, but as a professional sportsman, you have only a few years at the peak of your ability before you have to figure out how to spend the majority of your life once you retire.

Smart financial sense to take the cash!

Will this sort of thing happen in other sports? Well, for my favourite sport, it already does. Rugby League is happy to watch its players get poached by other sports, because it can’t match the money. Why would you even be loyal to a sport you love that you’ve been playing all your life, when you can get a 50% pay rise to try something new.

If it doesn’t work out, you can always go back to the original plan, right?

What would you do?

I know where I would be! Playing quoits if it meant the best income!

Here’s the problem. Almost every single lottery winner after just a year or two that wins a huge amount is either back to where they started, or even more in debt. How? That would never happen to me, you say. It would.

Most people who come into an amount of money they are not used to, just don’t know what to do with it. They spend it on frivilous things and take advice from their family, friends and next door neighbours (who wouldn’t know the first thing about money).

I bet you still don’t believe it! If you won the lotto, you would be smart and live happilly ever after, right? Wrong. Statistically, you are not without hope, but it is a long shot.

Wierd huh!

So what goes wrong? Well, as I said, poor advice, poor spending habits. Just because they have a huge amount of money doesn’t mean they all of a sudden start to manage their money any better than before. Mind you, if they did manage their money well previously, chances are they will do the same with a larger amount.

So here’s what to do if you come in to a huge sum of cash. GET PROPER ADVICE! Get advice from people who are used to dealing with that amount of money and make it work!

Why am I telling you this? Because that is what you should do no matter how much money you have. Get advice. Even if you don’t think you earn enough to bother, you’d be suprised if the figures were layed out in front of you.

For example, I have seen a couple earning $20,000 a year TOTAL, not only live in a nice home, but travel for three months of the year as well. Not backpacking either. Not possible? Your thinking is probably too narrow. Keep it up and you’re destined to go nowhere.

Yeah right. Another one of these complete rubbish headlines. But I’ve convinced you enough to read on… are you a sucker, or was this a smart move?

Well, as with most plans that guarantee wealth, it only works if you DO SOMETHING!

Have you ever heard of the story about “The richest man in Babylon”? Well, if you haven’t, find it and read it. Soon.

If you haven’t though, I have the bottom line of the story. A guarantee to wealth in just a few years and yes you can do this weather you earn only a few bucks an hour or have a solid wealth but seem to bleed your cash every week.

“A part of all you earn is yours to keep”. Yep. It’s that simple folks. But what does it mean?

Well, here’s the go. Every time you get paid, take 10% of your GROSS income and put it into an investment account and here’s the trick, DON’T TOUCH IT.

Now, here’s the point, no matter how much your expenses are, no matter how many bills you have, pay yourself first. Even if it leaves you short for that pay period, pay yourself first. Pay the full 10% (or even more if you want the riches faster).

That’s it.

Yep, really.

If you don’t think that it is going to work, I dare you to do this for five years and see what happens. I bet most of you don’t do it, but if you do, let me know how it goes.

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It rolls off the tongue so easilly, though can hurt so bad at the same time. So where should your thoughts be when you say this phrase that everyone uses at one stage or another?

For me, it’s a powerful thing to say. On the one hand, I respect money, though on the other hand I realise that money is simply a servant and there is plenty of it in the world that I have at my disposal if I so desire. This phrase brings me back to this fact.

For others, it can be a very destructive phrase. It can be a cop out for taking responsibility of their financial situation. It can be a deep dark hole.

Next time you think about money, think about it as energy that is at your command and not something that brushes past you at its own discretion. If you think this way, there will always be an abundance. The only thing lost in saying “it’s only money”, is the time it took to think about it and get the words out!

I’ve spoken a lot before about saving money and never paying retail, though here’s another trick to hopefully put some more money back in your pocket.

The best way to explain this strategy is to give a live example. However, this trick would work the same with many other fields as well, you just have to search for the resources.

The example today is travel. I love to travel. I hate paying too much for travel! Someone said to me years ago, if you pay half price for your travel, you can afford two trips instead! How true!

Here’s what to do. Join as many travel websites (free) as you can. Airfare sites, airline sites, hotwire, priceline, travelzoo etc etc. Then just kep half an eye on what deals are coming through. Sometimes you will know when you are travelling and can keep an eye on specific dates. Other times, you might have an idea of what you might like to do, and keeping an eye on the trips might help out cement something.

Now, here’s the trick. If for example, a price comes up on an airfare site, I don’t just click the link and go to that site, I use this as my base figure during my search. Say it was an airfare on bestflights with United between Australia and the USA, there’s a few things I would check. First, I would go straight to the airlines site and check the price. These days, often the airline itself has the best price (and a price guarantee)! Even though you were tipped off by another website, there’s no need to pay them 10-15% more than if you do a quick search! Then I would also check other travel websites, often based in different countries because often you can find a cheaper fare if you select a different currency because their ticket prices were set before recent currency movements (take into account exchange rate and bank fees etc).

At the end, here’s a real life example.

Sydney to Vancouver return: general sale fare price is about AUD$2300.
By waiting, searching and being flexible with a transfer in Hawaii: AUD$1100. Yep, that’s right!

At the end of the day though, it’s up to you to go out there and try for yourself!

Ok, so how?

This one is really simple, though in truth isn’t easy!

Try this. For one week, carry around a small notebook and every time you spend anything, and I mean even 5 cents, write it down. It’s actually quite a hard thing to do, because it is something you are not used to, though do it anyway.

Once you have done that, sit down and look at the list. Add up everything you’ve spent. Make sure to include any automatic bank or credit card payments.

Now go through the list and add up all the things that are NOT essential for life. For example, if you eat out, include that in the total. If you drink coffee from a store, add that. Anything that is not essential for life, add it! Think outside the square here too. For example, I thought I had to use a toll road every day to drive to work that cost $5. Instead, I leave home 5 minutes earlier and bypass the toll road. I thought it was essential, it wasn’t.

Now add up all the non essential items.

How much was it? That’s for just one week. Multiply it by 52. What did you get? In my case, it was over $20,000 a year! What!? Yes, $20,000 of my money was going toward things I didn’t even need.

At first, it was hard to give up some of the luxuries, though to be honest, after a while I didn’t even notice because I still buy everything I really want and just don’t buy the things I didn’t really want or need in the first place!

Here’s the real gem.

In a few weeks, I am heading off again to North America. Hawaii, Atlanta, Washington DC and spending Christmas and new year with friends in Toronto and still skiing for two months!

I’m not telling you this because I have loads of money or because I’m trying to big note myself. I’m telling you this because it is being paid for by this exact technique I have just laid out. Don’t believe me? Well feel free to drop by one day and I’ll show you the notepad from when I first did this and I’ll show you the expenses I cut out.

I had a single friend do this two years ago. She earned about $20,000 a year after tax. Not a huge amount. Rent alone cost her $7,500 a year. She had a debt of $5,000 to boot.

Within twelve months, she had not only paid off her debt, though went on her first holiday overseas to Japan and now can afford to live by herself and is planning her next trip to Europe.

All this on $20,000 a year!

Are you brave enough to give it a go? If not, to be honest, I don’t really care, because I’ll be too busy skiing.

October 1929, October 1987 and October 2008.

Huge losses on markets around the world each time.

What is it with October?

Not only these major crashes, though if you go through your history notes, you’ll find countless other “mini-crashes” in there as well.

Is it the feeling of coming out of a beautiful summer knowing you are on the verge of a brutal winter? Certainly not where I live in Australia where it is the other way around! And besides, I can’t wait to go skiing!

I am certain though, that there is a correlation with the month of October. Maybe not a financial connection or one which the textbooks will show, though maybe a psychological one.

If people would just chill out, the market would stabalize! Sounds ridiculous but it’s true. This market is in panic and only a bit of sanity is going to level it out. The lesson is, when it does, I hope you are in a position to invest because it’s going to be a great time to snap up some true bargains!