It’s All About Revenue
Almost all the discussions I have at work on personal finance eventually somehow come back to Revenue – or how much income someone does or does not make. This post serves as a recap post for several of the deep dives I’ve gone over.
Your Mindset and Approach on Your Personal Finances Dictates All
In my first post on this blog I laid out my view: The Framework: Your Life as a Profit and Loss Statement and Balance Sheet
As discussed in the article we hit on the fact that personal finances are just like a company whether you realize it or not. Once approaching your personal finances from that view point you can ask some interesting questions to yourself.
How is your household Profit and Loss Statement and Balance Sheet looking? Is your household making money? What does your growth outlook look like? If you were a publicly traded stock would anyone invest in you or would they back away?
Revenue
As discussed in the post referenced above – Revenue is the life blood of your profit and Loss Statement. While obvious for most – here are typical revenue streams from a personal finance perspective and links to some related posts:
- Wage and tip income for you. Your Primary Income: What’s Your Strategy?
- Wage and tip income from your spouse or partner. Your Primary Income: What’s Your Strategy?
- Investment income – interest or dividends: Actionable Passive Income – An Ease Simple Scalable Diversified and Liquid Income Portfolio Starting at $25
- Passive income from another investment – such as rental income: My Rental Income Experience
- Rebates/cash back from your credit card if you use them: Making Money Every-time You Buy Something – Why Cash Reward Cards are King
- Selling things in your house or as part of a business. Why You Always Should Sell Stuff – Revenue Ideas
- Some other side hustle. Evaluating Side Hustles – What Actually Makes Sense to Pursue?
Growth
Most people who are reading personal finance blogs ultimately want to become financially independent or are just looking to improve their near term finances.
While a lot of gurus focus on cost cutting (which is value added but only to a point) to truly materially change your outlook you need to grow your revenue or establish a new revenue stream. The same need is there for both you personally and all companies….. look at Wall Street: how fast is the business growing? Why are sales up or down?
Initiatives
So what are your initiatives to grow your revenue or start a new stream? What’s your playbook?
Most companies have a business plan every year that is tied to pushing forward initiatives….. why don’t you?
My wife and I don’t have a formal sit down meetings or anything but we from time to time touch base on “when are we going to get X repaired/fixed” or “what’s out big financial goal for this year?” We come up with a rough outline of a plan and we are executing to it. Some people may need more detail and tracking than others…. in general I am the detailed executer and my wife just wants to agree on big picture.
Do you have a plan? What are you doing to change your outlook? It may be something small, something large, or something that may take a while to get across the line but what are YOU doing? Or are you just coasting?
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