This is now the formal start of my financial planning guide lessons. Since in our previous series of steps (for those who are new in my blog please click here and follow each step) we already talked about the necessary steps to take before actually planning your financial life.

You already have a dream life, a financial goal, and now it is time for the "apply lessons-fail-plan again-repeat until successful" part of financial planning.

Now let's talk about the three most common reasons why many people are poor.

1. Because most people do not really want to be rich.

Yup, you heard me right! We really do not want to be rich. I know many of you would react and say, "I have never heard a person say that he does not want to be rich". In fact if I ask you right now if you want to be financial free and be wealthy?

The common answer would be - OF COURSE!

Yet, I've crossed many people in my life that only say that they want to be rich yet their actions do not walk their talk.
Some even pray to God like this - "Lord make me rich and wealthy but not too much, I do not want to be bad."

It is this sick idea that when a person is rich, we are far from God's love. Maybe we have forgotten that many prophets in the old testament like Elijah, King Samuel and David were all very wealthy people yet they were very close to God.

I think many people view it this way because it was shaped by our culture this way. Today more and more media influences people in Sydney (for example) that romanticizing wealth is a sad thing. Many people even baffle the words like "I'd rather be happy than be rich" which is a good example of romanticizing poverty. In my life, I have always seen this as a wrong belief about wealth for whenever I had no money to buy my needs I could not sleep at night.

So I ask myself, how in the world can other people say that being poor makes us happier? Not being able to sleep at night is depressing enough.
Say this to yourself now - "I am rich because I know God loves me and he wants to prosper all the works of my hands, even my money".

2. Most people are poor because they are Financially Stupid.

Obviously many fail in their financial planning because they do not understand how money really works. They do not even understand the meaning of good debt and bad debt, so they just go around the mall wide sales and squander all their hard earned money to buy liabilities. (In our future financial planning guide lessons, I will go into the details of good debt, bad debt, assets and liabilities)

Much worse, when they do not have enough money to buy what they want, they used their credit cards and incur debt that they cannot pay at the end of their cut off. Hence, once they receive their credit card bill, they can only pay the highlighted box "minimum amount due", making them pay more and more due to high interest rates that credit cards offer.

Hey I don't blame you, there are even well known surgeons who can operate your brain but are also financially stupid. Engineers can create skyscrapers and compute all the necessary tensions needed to make these skyscrapers stable yet they too can be financially stupid as well.

Here's the key if by now you are already aware that you are also financially stupid, then directly learn to change your financial life. Go and burn the lines and ask people, call a financial adviser, read a book about basic good money habits, or better, follow my financial planning guide lessons (they are for FREE by the way) and apply all the lessons you learn here.

The important thing is to take action and commit to change your bad money habits. Focus on your dream life and set goals short term and long term.

3. Many are poor because we do not ride vehicles to wealth.

Have you ever tried comparing your travel time from using different modes of transportation to your office? Like what the difference would be if you walk to your office, ride a bike, ride a cab, use your own car, or ride the train?
Obviously among the transportation mentioned above, the train is the fastest and just like in our financial life we too must ride vehicles.

Most people are so dependent to the government that they are not even walking towards wealth. I'd rather compare walking to saving money in the bank without withdrawing it for at least 25 years.
However, walking alone will not get us to our destination. We must include in our financial planning the real vehicles to wealth like the mutual funds, paper assets, stocks, real estate, the internet, and other businesses.

Riding vehicles to wealth is the only way to attain financial abundance and without these vehicles, wealth will always be far fetched. Imagine if you can use an airplane as your vehicle to wealth. Or a jet plane to ride. Doesn't that sound exciting? Ride your vehicles now and reaching your financial goal will be a lot easier.

To our financial freedom.....

Cheers!