If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series, here they are.

Step One
Step Two
Step Three

The fourth step to achieving financial success is devising your strategies. First, create a cash flow statement that shows how much money you have coming in as well as going out. Whatever is left is your discretionary cash (or deficit, if the total is negative). Next, determine the costs necessary to achieve each of the objectives that you classified as a need (vs a want). If you still have discretionary cash left, then you’re doing great. All you have to do is to implement those need objectives.

However, if you’re like a lot of people, you will have a deficit for your discretionary cash. If this is the case, you will need to develop strategies that will give you a positive cash flow and allow you to fund your need objectives. This can be accomplished in a number of ways:

• Cutting discretionary expenses such as entertainment and dining out
• Refinancing loans (mortgage and car)
• Eliminating an extra car
• Consolidating student loans
• Increasing insurance deductibles(thereby lowering the premiums)
• Conserving water, electricity and other utilities
• Working overtime or taking on a second job

Try to create an exhaustive list of possible strategies.  This will prepare you for the fifth and final step which I’ll cover in the next post - selecting and implementing strategies.

I found this link on The Consumerist, so thanks to them.

Oftentimes, when you receive your credit report, there will be ‘reason codes’ or ‘action codes’ that define your risk factor. The following site explains the codes as well as what you can do to improve your credit rating for each of the codes received.

http://scottsecor.com/credit/pages/MC_reasons.html