Tag Archive: sacrifice

Save Now Without Depriving Yourself

dollar_sign.jpgBigg success is life on your own terms. The five elements of bigg success are money, time, growth, work and play. Today we’ll focus on money.

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When it comes to money, we’re all conscious these days that we have to save more. We saw a great definition of saving the other day by Carolyn Jabs. Her Growing Up Online column appeared in an article in Columbus Parent. She said:

“In its finest form, saving doesn't mean depriving yourself or your family of what you want, much less need. Instead, it means comparing long-term and short-term goals to decide which matter most.”

Bigg trade-offs

When she puts it that way, saving doesn’t sound so bad! We often think of savings as “doing without.” It’s not doing without. It’s deciding on the timing.

Saving, in and of itself, is not a noble act. It’s a means to an end, not the end. It’s about trade-offs – trading now for later or later for now.

If you pay cash for something today, you give up earning money on the money you used for the purchase. Your money will work for you if you save it and invest.

If you buy something and finance it, you’re deferring cash out the door today in exchange for even more cash out the door (since you’ll have to pay interest) in the future.

So, ultimately, it’s a decision about what will make you the happiest – enjoying your money now or stashing it away so you can enjoy it more tomorrow.

It’s living with purpose on purpose – defining your bigg goals and living each day to achieve them.

Your bigg plan

What if you don’t have to sacrifice the present for the future? That’s a bigg idea! Look for ways to enhance your present and your future.

You are the entrepreneur of your life, irrespective of whether or not you own your own business. Your life is your enterprise. You, and only you, are in charge of this enterprise. As the entrepreneur, plan your purchases.

Don’t get caught buying on impulse. It’s a trap that really hits us hard. And we’re not just talking about those insignificant items at the check-out. Marketers are really good at making us think we can’t afford to wait.

For example, think about the ads that promise “No Payments for Two Years.” We translate that, in our minds, as if we’re not spending money for two years. But the reality is, if we don’t have that money already set aside, it’s probably going to give our finances a jolt when the payments kick in … at incredibly high interest rates.

Synergize to ramp up your savings

By planning our purchases, and then sticking to the plan, we’ll only buy those items that we’ve determined make us happiest. We can keep our eyes open for the best deal which saves us money now – money that can go straight to our savings.

If you’ve set aside $2,000 and then only spend $1,500, give yourself a night out on the town in celebration of a job well done. Take the rest and put it into your savings.

By synergizing our savings with our spending, we can save more money for the future because we get the best deal when we buy today. That’s how we get what we want today without depriving ourselves. It’s one thing we can do to propel us to bigg success!

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Thanks so much for checking in with us today. Please join us next time when we’ll talk about the biggest time waster of all. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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(Image in today's post from Cna110703)

What Makes a Hero a Hero?

hero You’ve probably seen the photos and the news stories of the “miracle on the Hudson” Captain Chesley Sullenberger was able to save over 150 passengers by making an emergency landing on the Hudson River after both engines of his plane failed.

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icon for podpress  You can listen to George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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He’s received accolades from across the country, including Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York and two Presidents – President Bush who was the President at the time this happened and now President Obama who invited Sully, as his friends call him, to the Inaugural Ceremony.

The story is fascinating. We heard over and over again how calm and collected he was. His coolness kept the passengers calm and collected too.

What makes someone a hero?

The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission defines a hero as “a civilian who voluntarily risks his or her own life to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the life of another person.”

That definition fits the mission of their organization, but is it expansive enough?

We turned to Merriam Webster. Two of their definitions of a hero stand out:

  • a person admired for his or her noble achievements
  • someone who shows great courage

We crafted our own definition:

A hero is an ordinary person who does something
extraordinary for the good of someone else.

It is a gift, not a sacrifice (although it may involve sacrifice) in the mind of the hero. It is the opposite of narcissism, but it is definitely not martyrdom.

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3 steps to heroism

Do you want to be a hero? We thought about this and it seems to us that becoming a hero is a three-step process:

Heroism starts with an attitude
Almost all of us think we have a duty to prevent harm to others as long as it doesn’t cost us too much. A hero expands upon that attitude. They feel a duty to serve others – to do good – whether or not it costs them something. 

It continues with preparation
This sense of a bigger duty drives them to preparation. They have a drive to be ready when the time comes.

Going back to Sully … as the pilot of a plane, he knew at some point there might be a crisis. So he gave a great deal of his free time studying everything situation he might encounter. It was his duty to be as fully prepared as possible should a crisis arise.

It completes itself with an action
The act of a hero is the manifestation of an underlying attitude. The success of that act depends on the preparation for it.

Sully had to respond because it was his duty. But his response didn’t start when the birds knocked both engines out of his plane. It began years earlier when he began studying flying.

So when the situation arose, he was ready because he felt a sense of duty and he had prepared.

Heroes, heroes everywhere

Heroism doesn’t always show itself in actions that make the news. There are heroes all around us. That’s what we’re going to talk about in our next two posts. Next time, we’ll discuss the hero behind the hero.

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00313-012109.mp3

Related posts

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