When you are walking done the aisle of your local pharmacy and looking for medication to relieve a headache, do you ever consider where your money is going?

When buying Pharmaceuticals, you have a choice to buy brand names or the equivalent generic brand.  Many things may pop into your head or may come up in your subconscious thought such as “this one is cheaper”, “this is what my parents always used”, “I liked the ad for this that I saw recently” however have you ever considered where the extra money is going that you would be paying for the brand name?

Brand Names (the inventors):

They invest millions or billions of dollars and many years in research and development to develop the drugs that help you and relieve your pain.

They work hard to give you the best product and use the finest ingredients to make sure that they surpass any FDA requirements.

Bottom Line:  You are spending a little more money but you are helping the company continue to develop new drugs that may help you or your children out in the future.

Generic (the improvers):

They don’t spend any time at all in research and development.

They jump in the second a patent from a brand name drug expires.

They duplicate the brand name drug using the cheapest ingredients that the FDA will approve (they don’t have to go the extra mile for fine ingredients because they don’t have the invested time and money at stake).

They follow the leader by taking a product that works and making it cheaper.

Bottom Line: You save some money but you are not supporting development of new drugs.

It’s unfortunate but Inventors always end up with the short straw.  They create something which the world needs but they spend all of their money, time and effort convincing the world that they need it.  The improvers jump into a market of people who already know they need the product, they make a little change that improves the product and they reap the benefits.  Just think, the person who invented the fax machine didn’t make it big but all the companies that sold fax machines once it became a staple everyone’s office did.

My take as a marketer and businessman is to give props to the generic guys because they are giving me the better deal but as a human being, I’d rather give the business to the Brand guys.I used to be a huge advocate for buying only generic because you get the same product for a lower cost but now I’m not sure.  Leave me a comment: what do you buy and what is your thought process ?

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Today is my birthday, but more importantly, it is about a year from the day that I decided to do something with my financial life and increase my financial luck. I have blogged about my decision in the past, especially close to the beginning of this blog but now I can actually look back at an entire year and see how much I have accomplished.

I wrote in my last article that it takes 6 years to become an overnight success. Just yesterday I read an article by Mobhappy who quoted Joseph Licklider that “People tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years …”. He also mentions that Bill Gates wrote in The Road Ahead “People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years, and underestimate what will happen in the next ten”. With all of this, I can look back at the last year and be happy with what I have accomplished and not worry that I have not accomplished my ultimate goal of financial freedom.

In “My Goals List and the Mapquest of my Life”, I wrote that for most of my life I was just coasting by and living day to day without really thinking about the future. Around my last birthday I woke up and realized that this cannot go on forever because eventually I will want to retire and without advance planning, it will never happen. I did a lot of researched and didn’t figure what I needed to do but I did figure out that I needed to do a lot more learning and research to figure out what it is that I needed to do. During that short period of discovery, I learned that not only was retirement possible and very achievable, I also learned that If I work on it, I can get lucky, become financially free and retire really early.

Twelve months ago I was completely financially illiterate. I didn’t know how to budget, I didn’t have any savings accounts earning interest and I definitely didn’t have any passive income. The only investment I had was a government bond of a few dollars that my grandparents gave me when I was younger.

Over the last year I have probably learned more about money and finance than I have learned in my entire life up to last year. Here are some of the things I have accomplished over the last year:

1. I started two blogs, this one and Sucky Poems. Both blogs have close to 80 posts on them. I own the domain names, I host them, I found nice themes and tweaked them to my liking and added tons of features to each of them. The blogs don’t bring me in a whole lot of money (yet) but they do bring in some passive income and the learning that I have accomplished to bring these blogs to what they are now is priceless. They bring me to my next accomplishment.

2. Because of everything I have learned by building my blogs such as some basic programming but much more so, how the internet and websites work, I have had many ideas for new businesses that I am either thinking of, or in the process of starting up.

3. I learned that you don’t have to trade hours for dollars or your time for money. I realized that I don’t want to work for the rest of my life but I want to make a living for the rest of my life. This can be accomplished by creating an income that scales well such as writing a book and getting the royalties for as long as it exists or owning a rental complex and making passive income off of the renters. My businesses are all at least leaning in this direction.

4. I bought my first stock last year and in the last few months have built up an impressive portfolio (at least for me). I have watched my stocks go all the way down and then soar higher than I could have imagined and then back down again but I have been learning about the stock market every step of the way. I am confident that in the long run, my portfolio will do me well.

5. I set up savings accounts that give me significant interest, at least in this market. I also set up regular automatic transfers from my checking account to my savings to keep increasing my savings.

6. I started measuring my net worth monthly in December and have since almost doubled my net worth. I found out that for something to increase, it must be measured. By measuring my worth every month, I am more conscious and careful about where my money goes.

These were just some of my accomplishments. Have they made me successful overnight? NO! Have they made me financially free in a year? Not even close! Have they built a solid foundation for becoming an overnight success in 6 years? I hope so!

One way or another, I will continue to learn and trek along the road to financial freedom. If I take what I learned this past year and add the compound interest of the time spent, who knows where I will be next year, five years down the line or ten years in the future. I can honestly say that this has been the best year of my life. I’m also expecting my third child in a couple months with the most wonderful wife I could have possibly asked for, which makes everything worthwhile.

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I wrote a couple times about how I am tracking my finances and that they are all pretty much automatic since all my accounts are linked to each other. I have to say, it gives me a great amount of joy to check up on all of my accounts once a month and see them working. It puts a smile on my face to see my savings grow each month and my debt shrink away. The problem is that this past month I had to incur a few additional expenses that I don’t usually have and that are not budgeted for. I do have some wiggle room in my budget but most of that wiggle money ends up in my savings.

I hid from my fears

I have become attuned to all of my expenses and I can feel when I am spending more than I should. This month, that feeling went into overdrive. Because of this feeling, I did what many people do when they are in a situation that they don’t like, I hid. I was afraid to check my accounts as I do each month because I was scared to see the truth. I felt that it was better not to see the damage. Rich Dad, Robert Kiyosaki calls this financial cancer. You can treat a sickness if it is diagnosed but not if you hide from the doctor.

I got depressed

On top of being afraid of checking on what “I still have left”, (exaggeration, I didn’t overspend that much but it’s depressing when you are working on something so hard and you end up going backwards a bit) I got a little depressed and started spending more than I usually do on other thing such as eating out more or some entertainment.

Later in the month, I realized that I was overspending on eating out and entertainment and I got even more depressed which made me want to check my accounts even less.

I faced my fears

I forced myself to look at myself from the outside and I realized that I was heading for a financial landslide. I realized that the only reason my savings was growing was because I was monitoring it regularly. When I wasn’t monitoring it, I wasn’t saving anything and I was even losing some months.

I finally took a look at my finances, filled in my financial statements and realized it was not so bad. My net worth went down a little but it was not even close to what could have happened if I continued to hide from my finances. I still have many years to accrue wealth and the more I work on it, the better. Hiding from my fears and finances only hurt me.

This can be applied to anything in life, health, finances and even your social life. If you face your fears, you are in a much better place to conquer them and get ahead. If you run from them, you will end up in a terrible landslide that becomes harder and harder to get out of.

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Half-way through my 10 ways to get lucky posts I decided to write about something much more important and appropriate for New Years. My first post was New Years Resolution 2008, Lose Weight or Get Lucky. I am happy and proud to say that I took my own advice and have kept up to my New Year’s resolution of starting and keeping to this blog. I started this blog on December 4^th and this is now my 17^th article and I can feel myself going strong way into 2008 and beyond. I appreciate the encouragement and support from my readers and once again encourage all of my readers to continue emailing me at lucky@helpyourselfgetlucky.com and leaving comments on my page.

Now that I have tackled my new year’s resolution and built the habit of writing regularly and always having the blog on my mind, I can make a second new year’s resolution and become even luckier. My new New Year’s resolution is to keep monthly financial statements for myself. Every month, I will go over my income, expenses, assets and liabilities and I will track them on a balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. I decided to do this because I have been reading a few books from the Rich Dad’s series, specifically Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!, Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom and Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest in, That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!. Robert Kiyosaki, the author of the series is adamant that becoming financially literate is the only way to get ahead financially in life. Once you are financially literate, you will be a more educated investor by being able to see into any business or corporation. Numbers don’t lie. A company cannot hide anything from their financial statements but most people don’t know how to read them so they will never know how the company actually runs and how good or bad of an investment it is.

I always thought that I was good when it came to my personal finances. I never carry a balance on my credit card and I always spend less than I make. When I looked at my savings account, I would be impressed with myself at how well I was coming along. But when I put everything down on my statements and I was able to look at a snapshot of my financial life, I realized that I was not doing as well as I thought I was. I am in debt for my student loans from college and from the purchase of my new car last November. I never really thought of these as debt because they were controlled. I would pay the same thing every month and they would be paid off within a certain amount of years. When I look at the picture as a whole, I am in debt and I need to get out of it if I am going to get ahead in my financial life.

Seeing the big picture of what you are worth and where all of your money is coming from and going to lets you know exactly what you need to do to get into better financial shape. Now that I have seen my life at a glance, I will start building up my investment and my passive income and also try and lower the debt so that I can get ahead. I will look at my financial statements on a regular basis and recreate them at the end of every month. By learning how to put together my own statements, I am starting to understand more about how companies put together their statements. This is one of the first steps in my becoming financially literate and eventually financially free. Being financially literate is a huge skill that can lead to tons of luckortunity. Being financially free can put you in the position to take advantage of even more luckortunity.

I will blog more about my financial journey as time goes on. In the meanwhile, I suggest that you make some financial statements for yourselves see where you stand and how you can improve your financial wellbeing. If you want a blank copy of the financial template I made for myself, email me at lucky@helpyourselfgetlucky.com or leave a comment with your email address and I would be glad to send it over.

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This is my fourth post in my series of 10 on how to increase your luck and create Luckortunity.

Most people don’t like risk, they would rather have certainty. The problem with that is that they will wake up one day and realize that nothing has changed and that they have never gained anything. If you think about it, the only way to gain anything is to take a risk. You could risk being rejected for a position, you can risk losing money, and you can even risk a friendship with a friend of the opposite sex that you like. But just think of all the alternatives, you can get that position, you can make money or you can find out that the feeling is mutual with your friend and live happily ever after.

Think of the worst case scenario, you get rejected for a position that you really wanted but that doesn’t matter since positions come and go and another one will come along just as quickly as this one did. On top of that you feel good about trying and then learn something from the experience. Peter Kash would thank every single person that rejected him because he knew that every “No” he received brought him one step closer to an eventual “Yes”. You can even ask why you were rejected and learn how you can improve yourself for the next position that comes along.

In terms of the money, when you are risking, always make sure that it is an educated risk. Don’t just gamble your money away at a casino, do some research and know what you are investing in. Then you will be able to make an educated decision and if you lose, you will learn a lesson that will bring you closer to making a winning investment. Most people get scared off by any loss which paralyzes them financially and they never take a risk again. If you look at any self made millionaire out there, you will see that they lost money on numerous occasions but what made them their money was their continuing to take risks and not giving up after a loss.

Losing a good friend is really tough but can you imagine living the rest of your life as friends with someone you feel so much more for? I think the bigger risk is not telling your friend your feelings.

Now look at the best case scenario. You get the position you wanted, you make a ton of money and you get the guy or girl of your dreams to spend the rest of your life with. Each of these risks can end up paying you dividends for life and take you in a whole new direction.

Now tell me, what is the real risk? Going for it or just letting the opportunity fade away? Leave me a comment if you’ve been in a similar situation where you were faced with a potentially life altering decision.

Previous Posts in this Series: 10 Ways to Increase your Luck.

1. Increase Your Luck by Taking a Different Route to Work
2. Don’t listen to your Mother, Speak to Strangers!
3. StumbleUpon the Greatest Luckortunity, the Cure for Boredom
4. Blog to the Future

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