Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Where Are You Financially In Real Estate?

By C Bolden

The most important step in starting any goal in Real Estate is knowing where you are financially. You want to start off preparing a financial statement which is basically how much you're worth. The best way to create your financial statement is to take a piece of paper and divide it into two columns.

In one columns list all your assets; in the other column, list all your debts. Then subtract your total debts from your total assets. This will give you your net worth. This is one way to prepare your financial statement balance sheet. This is a good review because it's very important to build a balance sheet and understand your net worth. If you want to build and retain your wealth, you must focus on both.

Next you want to think about an income statement because you want to know how much money you have rolling in. If your income exceeds your expenses, you have a positive cash flow. If your expenses exceed your income, you have a negative cash flow. Until you prepare an income statement, you may not know where your money is really going. The way today's economy is going - believe me you dont have the time to know not where your money is going.

To prepare your income statement, get a sheet of paper and divide it into 2 columns. Column 1 is sources of income. Column 2 is your list of expenses. What you would want to do is list your income on a monthly basis. When you subtract the second column from the first column, you get a sound look at your net positive or negative cash flow for the month. You can also do an annual report by keeping track of your monthly report.

Now that you know where you are financially, you can set goals for where you want to be within a realistic time frame. This way you can make changes, reevaluate and create a plan to get where you want to be maybe one, two or ten years down the road. What you also doing is creating a easier blueprint for your success, so you want to lay out your plans in as much detail as possible.

What should happen is if you continue with this method of knowing where you are financially in real estate, one of the most rewarding experiences is you'll be able to look back on your goals you set financially five, ten years later and see how many of them you have achieved.

Knowing where you are financially you can achieve goals withing your specific time frame. This will also help you make new achievements that will far exceed some of the goals you have created in a shorter time frame.

It's so amazing the power of keeping track of knowing where you are financially in real estate. Your mind will immediately begin working on knowing where you're at and influences your daily actions toward your success. So I will say keeping track of those columns are an essential part of your achievement personally and professionally in real estate.

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