Your Finance Cornerstone consists of three Keys: your income, your budget and your investments. This Maximum Balance Cornerstone will give you questions to consider, potential plans to enact and most importantly tasks to take action towards achieving more balance in each of these Keys. Everything is geared toward helping you achieve Financial balance.
Too much attention on one of these financial areas will mean you're out of balance, just as much as too little. And certainly over-indulgence in any area is a risk. Your success and focus on your income, budgeting and investments can feed upon and grow from each other, just as they can steal from and compromise each other. Balance in each is required for Maximum Finance Balance.
Stress and worry about money are so significant in many of our lives that financial balance is a Maximum Balance cornerstone on par with your Personal, Career, Relationship and Giving health. Many of our heads are constantly buzzing with anxiety, and even fear, about our next raise, fluctuating interest rates, late fees and overdrafts on your checking account and the fundamental terror of just not having enough money to make ends meet. We can all laugh at the myriad of get-rich-quick schemes offering salvation through leveraged real estate and fancy multi-level marketing ploys, but the truth is the siren's song of freedom from financial worry is so strong that we're all desperate to try just about anything.
Maximum Balance is focused on putting an end to quick fixes, single shot solutions, and irrational areas of focus. We recognize that you are not 'broken'. You don't need to be fixed. Rather, everyone is in different states of balance and achievement, and life is the continuous pursuit of more balance across all your Cornerstones.
For each Key within your Finance Cornerstone, we have provided guidelines to take you through the Maximum Balance Framework — Assess, Plan, Act! For first time readers, please be sure to read about the Maximum Balance Framework™, the Getting Balanced™ program, and how to learn more about getting your Life MBA, the Maximum Balance Advantage™.
Income
The amount and nature of the financial resources available for addressing all of life's needs and wants.
Budget
The structure and control of the outward flow of financial resources to meet your life needs and wants.
Investments
The vehicles and approach you use to translate present income into assets available for use in the future.
