Technology has introduced endless ways to improve your financial standing. You can find financial services and learn more about money with just a few taps on your phone. However, it has also developed a culture of appreciating false wealth when you look at your friends or family living extravagantly and lavishly on social media.
Luxuries are expenses, and it’s only part of a person’s financial standing. Therefore, it’s crucial to think about wealth in a holistic sense. If you’re asking yourself: What are the accurate indicators of financial success? What are the signs of false wealth? How can you determine your financial standing?
These are the four financial success indicators as established by long-term investment professionals:
Playing the Correct Financial Game
Are you playing the right game? One key metric in measuring monetary success is understanding the game, which dictates your financial values, motivations, knowledge, and attitude. The game sets the baseline for your relationship with money and eventual success.
According to Ellinghams Tokyo Japan, knowing what financial game you play enables you to assess your standing accurately. You can attain long-term wealth if you play the right game.
There are two financial games you can play:
The Status Game
The status game revolves around superficial success markets like home size, shoe brands, bags, fashion, and lifestyle you flaunt on social media. The main problem with playing the status game is that you may spend more than you earn due to competing or chasing after the coveted status symbols.
The status game puts you at the risk of spending more than you earn since external flaunting heavily relies on luxury purchases rather than investments or assets.
The Wealth Game
The wealth game involves behind-the-scene efforts to create long-term stability and freedom instead of the present external validation. You will focus more on investments like buying assets and developing businesses that are the foundations of financial success.
The wealth game positions your intentions in place because you compete with others. Instead, you are prioritizing your long-term goals and working towards them.
Checking Where Your Earnings Stand
Your income ultimately dictates how successful you can become. According to Ellinghams Tokyo Japan review, your earnings will tell you how you are faring in the market, and it’s one of the financial success indicators. Occasionally, look at your locality’s average income or salary to understand if you are below or above the market.
Aside from that, improve your earning potential by creating more income streams beyond salaries and professional fees. Optimize your income sources by creating passive revenue.
Getting the Three Financial Fundamentals Right
Your financial knowledge will make or break your long-term wealth-building efforts. Therefore, you must internalize the foundations of cash flow control, emergency preparedness, and debt management for better decisions.
These are the fundamentals at the core of financial success:
Establish your relationship with money
The first fundamental revolves around understanding your money principles and values. Your relationship with money is a critical financial success metric because it is a projection of what you eventually decide to do with your money.
These are the steps:
- Set your financial goals.
- Track your cash flow of income against spending.
- Check the monthly trends. Are you net positive (earning more than you spend) or negative (spending more than you make)?
- Create a budget based on your typical spending. You may also use the 50-30-20 or 70-20-10 (needs-wants-savings/debt repayment).
- Develop a financial strategy to improve income while decreasing expenditures.
The main point is improving your cash flow for excess funds that you can use to save or invest for financial success.
Build an emergency fund
The second fundamental is preparing for possible calamities or crises because they take a big chunk of your savings. You can create an emergency fund of at least six months’ current monthly income. The bigger the emergency fund, the better.
Manage debt responsibly
The third fundamental involves debt management. Avoid excessive loans to ensure sufficient funds for savings and investments. If you currently have insurmountable debt, utilize different repayment techniques like the snowball or avalanche methods.
Looking Through Societal or Individual Lens
Society has introduced its expectations and models from the moment we take our first steps into the world. We are told to attend school, acquire a degree, enter the workforce, find a life partner, build a family, and eventually retire.
It’s a script handed down through generations, a road map to what many consider a successful life. Yet, if we peer closer, we realize that these standards, although deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness, hold no guarantee of long-term wealth or fulfillment.
The last measure of financial success is allowing yourself to shift your perspective from the societal lens to the individual or personal. True wealth is overcoming external validation to make decisions for your finances.
You must eventually decide whether to view life through a societal or individual lens.
Societal Lens
Society’s expectations and comparisons can be overwhelming, with a tendency to applaud external markers not aligned with your personal goals. If society’s standards led to success, everyone would have been millionaires.
Individual Lens
Embrace a viewpoint that values your monetary goals and objectives. This perspective allows you to break free from societal pressures and chart your unique path to financial success.
Most millionaires or billionaires have deviated from societal norms by not getting a degree or staying single, which means that being creative and innovative about money is a better indicator of long-term wealth.
Start Planning for Healthy Finances
Financial firms like Ellinghams Tokyo Japan have extensive experience and understanding of dependable financial success benchmarks. These measures include playing the wealth game, developing your earnings through a diverse portfolio, having solid fundamentals, and looking at wealth through an individual lens.
Everyone aims for financial success, but a considerable lack of financial education exists. Some people often believe they can only quickly obtain assets if they inherit them from birth. If you grew up with this belief, improve your mindset and understand how true wealth is measured.
