Joyfully and Easily Invite Prosperity On All Levels Into My Life Daily

These are the things I learned from my 5-year old in the past 24-hrs:

• Know what you want
• Focus on what you want to achieve, not on what cannot be achieved
• Leverage
• Negotiate
• Have fun in the process of obtaining your goal, whether you fail, make a little process, or a lot of process
• Share your success
• Have a good plan
• Bring others in on your success
• Every experience is a new one
• Learn from your past, but do not dwell on failures or successes
• Observe
• Be generous
• Be grateful during the whole process
• Show appreciation to those who help you; give them respect
• Cheer for the success of others & celebrate with them
• Be excited here and now
• Sacrifice where needed
• Know your priorities
• Celebrate every step towards your goal
• Ask for help (do not be ashamed or embarrassed)
• Get involved in the help
• Follow-up on the help you receive

Okay, I sent a trading buddy of mine whom we share expenses on some things telling him that I don’t want to have a lot of extraneous expenses and I’m cutting back on things that I’m not really utilizing or doing it completely. I told him about my Lan Line and how I was able to save $15 plus tax on it by eliminating all the features I do not use. This enables me to get the highest speed internet access, which is $15, but tax is way less on this than on my phone.

I keep the lan line for faxes as well as I don’t like talking about certain things on my cell phone. The latter is the main reason. In the end, this makes my phone/cable modem about $4-5 less per month. Not a big savings, but in a year, that’s a tank of gas, nearly.

My trading buddy suggested I take a look at my cell phone, too. So, just looking at the trend in how I use my minutes and my provider’s newer plans, I was able to drop from 1400 min. to 900 min., which saves me $20+tax and since the lowest text messaging is 400, and I’m well within that for my total usage, that gives me another $2 back.

This saves me nearly $30 and I don’t have to change the way I use things. I get to keep the 10 myCircle people, which helps me keep my minutes lower, so as long as if I know I’m going to talk longer with someone 24 hrs in advanced, to enter it into myCircle and I can talk for free. Yay!!! I really like this feature of my calling plan.

That’s another $360 in my pocket a year—or 5.7 tanks of gas. That’s about 2+ months of free gas.

I had been paying for all sorts of subscriptions of all different types with my trading amounting to literally thousands and thousands of dollars every year.

I’ve nixed many thousands already.

• Scans for $1K/yr
• News service for $2K/yr
• Real Time charting $1.4K/yr
• Classroom coaching $5.2K/yr
• A charting tool $600/yr
• Online classes – Full Price $12K/yr
• Earnings Reports – $480/yr

That’s like $23K of subscriptions I nixed per year.

Also found out my internet provider has free Virus Protection and Personal Firewall through the very same provider I have now, except that’s free. That will save me another $90. It’s the same exact thing that I have now.

Right now I’m still paying for a couple things I will be nixing:

• new service $90/yr
• real time charting service $1700/yr

I can save another $225 from the real time charting service I plan on keeping by paying in full rather than month-by-month.

This will give a savings in the next year of $2105, which is another $175.42/month in my pocket. At current gas prices for me ($2.49/gal), that’s 2.78 tanks of gas or 700 miles, which is about how much I would spend a month in gas.

So, just by making a few adjustments in my spending, at really no sacrifice to me, but actually decluttering my desktop as well as my harddrive space, cookies, I have found a way to not spend more money, but less and to pay for an expense with that savings.

My real time charting service comes up for renewal at the beginning of November and my news service in Jan, as well as my virus/firewall. I’m really excited.

In about 1 year’s time, I nixed about $2.1K/month off my expenses. This is clearing my life of unnecessary clutter.

I’m thankful I’ve nixed most of the fees from my checking, like keeping enough money in there so I do not go into overdraft and it’s been that way for nearly 9 months, so that is really good. Praise God.

However, I’m still being charged monthly $5.95 for my checking and I’ve been with B of A for over 2 decades. If I have direct deposit, it becomes free checking, so I will have to see if I can begin paying myself from my business as a direct deposit, that will then save me $71.40/year.

I used to not get this fee as I had direct deposit from my previous employer, or I can check with B of A to see if they have any no fee checking that I do not have to keep any minimum. Many banks offer this and I’ll tell them I have it at the other 2 banks I bank at.

With my Chase Visa, every $2500 I spend on it, I get a free $25 with Amazon. I have 2 so far. Now I ought to reassess how I pay all my bills and do everything on my Visa. Between my mortgages, living expenses, this adds up to more than $2500 per month, I think, so this would give me a $25 Amazon gift certificate a month, which would be another $300 in my pocket a year.

I’m not really sure if I could really pay my mortgage with my Visa, but if I can, I will. Will need to check on this.

Last weekend, I used my first Amazon gift certificate of $25. I bought a pair of Privo flip flops for that price, AND, it came with free shipping. I no longer have the Prime shipping with an annual fee of $75, as I wasn’t buying enough to justify that cost, so I nixed that when it came time to renew early this year in Feb or Mar.

So, I got my very cute and comfy Privo flip flops totally for free. It was way cool checking out, typing in the gift certificate code and then see it subtract the $7.95 it was going to charge me for shipping. I was very happy about that.

I could use the free gift certs to buy even some of the vitamins I have gotten off their from the past. I wonder if there is a limit to how many you can get in a month. Not that I’m going to go on a spending spree, but I was already going to use the money for my normal living, why not redirect it so I get free money?

And, if I buy things that are on sale, that’s even better, which my Privo’s were 50% discounted as they are normally $50/pair.

There’s not a whole lot that I have to do different here except change from where they take out the money (my checking) and move it to my Visa.

I haven’t written much here over the summer, so I’ll just write something short here for now. I began reading Suze Orman’s book “The Courage To Be Rich”. She gets into some New Age stuff, but I ignore those things and put the Bible in there instead.

She has some good things to say, though.

What I’m reading there is about financial clutter. That’s certainly been the case with me, so I am in the process of getting someone to help me organize my bills, paperwork, so I can be free to trade. She’s not been very organized with her time, though, so I may need to get someone else to also help here.

As I begin to know where I am again, probably following a Dave Ramsey thing of paying off the smallest debts first so that I can feel some success in getting rid of financial debts, which is clutter.

There are probably books I have that I will never read that I just need to get rid of, like sell on half.com or eBay or something.

Last year, I got rid of a lot of clutter in my home, but it still seems cluttered. I got rid of a lot of magazine subscriptions, but I think there is still too much, so I will need to donate some of my magazines or toss them out. It’s amazing how easily things can accumulate.

Do I really need this or that? This is the ability to let go.

Today I just got a notice from my electric company, which mine tends to be the more expensive one out of the 3 in my area that I know of that offer electricity to the various communities. It wasn’t that I chose this, but rather what services my neighborhood.

Anyway, this morning in my email, mind you, it’s summer and HOT here, the electric company tells me that they are further lowering my electric bill. I work from home and am home during the day.

I’m on an equalizer plan, so that means they take an average of my bills and I pay the same bill all year round, which I really love because I don’t have super high bills in the summer, though, my winter bill is higher. I always know what to expect.

A year ago, I was paying $140. The year before and many years, it was at $124, then raised to $140. The prices of fuel increased or something. Then, last December or so, I got notified they were going to lower my bill to $112. I was ecstatic. And, now, 6 months later, they are further lowering it to $101.

With gas prices going up, I’m thinking other fuels are going up, so the fact that my electric bill is lowering is so incredibly amazing.

My home is always comfortable, never too hot or too cold. And, I do do the heavy electric usages like the dryer and dishwasher during peak hours.

It’s only $11, but hey, that’s 2+ gals of gas and I’ll take it. Praise be to God. God is just so amazing. I feel like dancing for joy. In fact, I’ll just go do it!!!

Since right now cashflow is an issue, I’ve been much more aware of what I spend money on or not. I’ve been helping various people out with my time, making things, childcare, etc, because money isn’t one of those things I can really give right now.

Typically I have a lot of fresh or dried ingredients in my home, so tomorrow for Cleansing Streams, I’m taking a cut up watermelon that I got at Safeway for $2.88. It’s huge and seedless. Not organic, though.

Sean and I this morning made pumpkin zucchini bread, tropical muffins (coconut flakes, frozen mango & pineapple, and dried papaya with giradelli (sp?) chocolate chips that I had in the freezer), and a cranberry-orange, banana with applesauce pecan muffins.

The sweet Italian sausage at Sprouts was reasonably price, so I bought 1.25 lbs and cooked that up. Then, I’ll shred some purple potatoes I have to make them into hashbrown like stuff, combine that with broccoli, cheese, rice milk, eggs and some spices to make like a Farmer’s egg dish.

I also have some fresh asparagus spears, red & yellow sweet peppers and add some zucchini and make another egg dish out of this one. I may add some ham to it, too, and if I still have feta left, maybe add that, too. This may be a 2nd egg dish.

Will leave the juice to someone else to bring.

Strawberries were still too expensive, as well as grapes. The mango’s weren’t ripe and pineapple also too expensive. So, it will be just the watermelon.

I think bring 5-6 different things for an all day Cleansing Streams event will be more than enough, considering, I’m the least financially able right now in the group.

This is just for a time, but one day again soon, I’ll be able to financiall give more.

Today I also semi-made some hummus to take to a birthday party.

One of the cool things was I did not really have to spend a lot for all these ingredients as they are normal staples in my home and I can quickly whip any of these things up, at least one at a time.

Sean and I had a great time working together. I still have some chopping to do with the egg dishes and to cutup the watermelon this evening. Tomorrow AM, hopefully all I have to do is heat up the egg dishes and I should be good to go.

My house smells so good.

Lately, I’ve not really been cooking as the kids and I have been just eating egg scramble dishes, grabbing fruit, sandwiches. I go through my spurts of making things and sometimes it’s just very, very simple.

I know had I gone out to buy like a fruit platter that is less than the watermelon quantity, they are like $20 at Safeway. That’s just ridiculous. I know, paying for the labor of it.

I’m able to take 4 dozen muffins and 2 loaves of homemade bread. All of that cost me less than $10 for all the ingredients, and yes, there is the electricity. Sean and I had the time, and overall, we saved a bunch of money making it ourselves and had great bonding time. Most of the ingredients are organic and fresh, so very healthy.

One of the things that I’m learning about financially successful people is they are great managers of money. It doesn’t matter what amount they have, they are great managers of their money.

I’m starting to enjoy this, too.

The Bible talks about before God can entrust more to a person, we have to be good managers & stewards of the little that we have first.

As I listened to Lynne Twist’s audio on “Unleashing the Soul of Money”, in Section 3, she talks about “Enough”, about “Sufficiency”. Whenever I hear the word sufficiency, 2 things come to mind:

• Self-Sufficiency
• God’s grace is sufficient

The meanings of both those are the complete opposite. The first, we depend on ourselves, the latter, we depend on God.

The Message translation of 2 Corinthians 7-10 is:

7-10Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,

My grace is enough; it’s all you need.

My strength comes into its own in your weakness.

Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.

The Bible refers to Jesus Christ as the living water, “LIVING”, not dead. Ms. Twist makes a comparison between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee has water that flows into and out of it, breathing life into that body of water. It is a perfect balance of receiving and giving, nourishing. It allocates, does not accumulate. It is a current, a carrier. It energizes, flows. There is a sense of well-being, of integrity with this, honor, gratitude.

On the other hand, the Dead Sea is stagnant. Water flows in, but does not flow out. It only takes, hoards, holds onto, thus becoming toxic, deadly. That’s like fear and greed where those 2 things trap a person, causing death. Life ceases. It’s never enough. It always wants more.

I’ve heard and focused on living abundantly, but I never realized until hearing Ms. Twist that that means to live in “Enough”. You let go of what you do not need. This frees up oceans of energy so that one can pay attention to what one already has, allowing this to expand so you can truly make a difference with that which you already have because it is enough.

So, this allows one to be in the presence of the exquisite distinction of having enough. This means that we are no longer consumers living in a consumer culture, rather we appreciate, thus that appreciates.

Money is a carrier, but we have to ask ourselves what does it carry? Does money for us carry courage, positive energy, love, a higher commitment? Or, does it carry fear, greed, death?

Anyway, there is a lot more to write, but will save for another time.