Want to control your finances in 2021? Here is a list of 4 steps that you can use to take control of your financial situation easily. If you want to learn more about how to take control of your finances just visit the North Brisbane Home Loans or contact our mortgage brokers in Brisbane, Queensland today.

Marianne decides to explore 12 popular self-help books over 12 months at the beginning of one year and discovers that they're not always helpful.

If you're like me you've read a lot of self-help books and occasionally taken a few pieces of advice from them before inertia and time spent doing other things moves you away from the book.  I keep meaning to do a Kondo-esque tidy but it would require more of my energy than I'm willing to devote to it.  I do question if it sparks joy of things I'm putting away and I've removed a few things from my house as I'm asking that question.  (I also remind myself that I deserve better than the things that don't work on my skin or in my life etc.).  I also listen to the excellent By the Book Podcast and often agree with a lot of their points about the ones I've read.

The Books she chooses are: Feel the Fear and do it anyway; Money a love story; The Secret; F**k it: the ultimate spiritual way; Angels with Doreen Virtue; 7 Habits of Highly effective people; Power of Now; Get the Guy; Daring Greatly and You can heal your life.  She strugles with depression and becoming a bit of a self-centred ass for a while and all the time her very Irish mammy trys to steer her on a good path.

Like me she finds things that resonate in books and sometimes she obsesses a bit and I couldn't abandon my life for a year like she did to look inward but by the end she's less broken, mostly by connecting with the people who are real in her life.

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At different times in life, you may find that you’re overwhelmed by finances. Whether you’re just starting out in your career and you’ve got student debts, or you’ve recently been laid off, and you’re not able to cope with your financial commitments, it can feel like the end of the world. But it doesn’t have to be. Even when your credit rating is affected, you can work to get it back. Although you’re not going to be able to change your situation overnight, you should find that you are able to make a difference to it, bit by bit. And every step you take forwards will always make you feel better. So let’s take a look at how you can work on making things a bit better.

Stop Spending

First things first, stop spending. Well, not on everything. Feel free to pay your rent and bills and buy food, but other than that, put a hold on things for a while if you can. Although you may want to go out with friends to perk yourself up, you’re only going to make your financial situation worse. But if you’re able to stop spending, for the time being, you’re going to be able to ensure that you don’t make things any worse than they already are. And you will find this a huge relief when you realize that you’ve started to make things better.

Get Advice

Then, you should think about getting some advice about your situation. And this doesn’t always mean heading to the bank. Because you might find that looking into debt consolidation options, speaking to financial charities, or looking into debt relief is going to work out better for you. And by speaking to a debt expert, you should feel a little more confident about your circumstances.

Work On Lowering What You Can

Then, you’re going to want to start tackling those debts. Whether they’re in the hundreds or thousands, you will definitely start to feel a lot better about the situation you’re in when you try to cut things down a bit. Even if it’s only starting to chip away at things slowly, seeing those amounts decrease will definitely empower you and motivate you to make them disappear for good.

Become Credible Again

However, you may be wondering what this is going to do for your credit rating. Well, firstly, bringing down the amount you own, especially if you’re at your credit limit, will always work in your favor with credit agencies. But at the same time, you also need to work on proving your credibility. For this, why not get a loan without guarantors to help work your credit up? Because when you do have bad credit, it can be hard to get more – but you often need it to prove that you can get in the green again.

Make Payments On Time

And of course, above all else, just make sure that you make your minimum payments on time. Because when you miss payments, it can harm your credit rating. So at the very least, just make sure that you’re making your minimum payments on time. And eventually, you will see that everything else improves too.

Article Source: http://www.lebrooks.com/articles/finance-insurance/build-yourself-a-better-credit-rating

This book probably had some good advice, but it was so dang boring that I couldn't really absorb much of it. I am frugal and I care about saving money, but Topolnicki's book goes a bit too much into the weeds of stuff that is a little too "economic" for me, like various types of retirement plans, college savings funds, etc. I just want to know how to pay my bills every month!

This book is fairly old, and because Topolnicki's advice is SO specific, it dated itself far more quickly than more general advice would. She gives SPECIFIC amounts that you can expect to pay for things like insurance, mortgages, etc., which doesn't do much good to a reader 20 years later, not to mention that price tags can vary widely from one part of the country to another. Also, it's super annoying that she assumes the stay-at-home parent is going to be the mom, even though she's upfront from the beginning about this assumption. And the fact that she just expects the husband to shoulder so much of the economic burden also rubbed me the wrong way -- there are several places where she suggests hubby get a second job so Mom can stay home, essentially depriving him of any sort of family life whatsoever. Following all the advice in this book might help your family financially, but it could be hell on your relationship.

Very frequently my dad gives me books, not the books that I want, the ones that he wants me to read.
This was one of them.

I found it on my cleaning day.

When my dad gave it to me I didn't find anything interesting so I just store it, like many others.But that day it looked like the most awesome treasure!

Suddenly I had in my hand some answers to one of my problems, money.
Specifically how to acquire and maintain it; explained in one of the best ways, with parables and stories!

Stories about Babylon!
Babylon for my has always been such a magical city.

So full of intrigue I start reading it, just to find the most simple rules or lessons in a clear and encouraging language.

With so much important information I can hardly say which is my favorite part...

I guess some books are destined to meet us just when we need them.