As I began preparing for my upcoming Earn What you Deserve workshop, I began reflecting back to when I began my journey towards earning a 6-figure income in corporate America. I remember spending  a lot of time in blame mode.   First, I blamed the system for not paying teachers enough. When I left teaching to join the dark side of the corporate world, I blamed my job for not paying me enough money and my boss for not offering me a raise when I was clearly performing above and beyond expectations.

Chances are if you’re dissatisfied with your income you’ve played the blame game, perhaps with different contestants  like your spouse, family, education, background, the economy, or whatever else comes to mind. Regardless of what or who you have been blaming, the truth is you have more control than you think when it comes to what you earn. And more importantly you have exclusive control over how to make what you earn work for you instead of against you.

If you are stuck in a place of consistently underearning, being paid less than what you are worth from an employer or client here are three reasons you are not having the financial success you desire (and deserve):

1. You base your salary requirements on your current expenses instead of what your skills and experiences are worth. How do you answer the question, “What kind of salary are you looking for?” What are you you using to come up with that number. Just because your budget only requires $40, 000 a year, doesn’t mean that should be the limit for your salary.

2. You have no clearly defined financial plan. Wanting to make more money so you can have more things is not a financial plan. When people don’t have a clearly defined plan, it usually means that their job is their only source of short term and long term income. Your plan should provide for your needs, wants, and goals for now and for the future) and include means for investing on others.

3. You are in conflict how what you feel about money and wealth. If you grew up in a home where there was myth and misinformation about how to acquire, manage and grow money, it can be a challenge to develop the habits or mind and wallet that lead to financial wealth. Until you address negative associations you have about money you will always find a way to sabotage the progress you make towards successfully reaching your financial goals. This includes any judgments you have about wealthy people as well.

4. You question your value. The issue of not asking for a raise has less to do with how your boss thinks about you and more to do with how you think about you. It’s the same thing if you are an entrepreneur or business owner:  it’s not that your people can’t afford your services – you don’t have the confidence to go after customers who will pay what you deserve for your product or service.

Ready to get out of this rut? Join me for  the next Earn What You Deserve workshop where you can learn 5 steps to overcome your fears about money and earn what you deserve. Click here for registration details.

As “The Career Makeover Coach”, Tai Goodwin is on a mission to help ambitious individuals reinvent their professional lives by centering on their passion and purpose. Holding as a core belief that we are all called to divine purpose and gifted with a unique passion, Tai uses a results driven, spiritually grounded approach to help clients create career paths to support the lifestyle they desire. Whether it’s helping people go from embittered to empowered professionals or making the transition from employee to entrepreneur, Tai is committed to helping clients tap into their own potential for brilliance. Tai has been empowering others through teaching and coaching for over 14 years. A gifted and insightful communicator, Tai holds a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education from Drexel University and a Master of Science in Education from Capella University. She has completed ASTD’s (American Society for Training and Development) Coaching Certificate program and is pursuing professional coaching certification through the International Coach Academy. Originally from Philadelphia, Tai currently lives in Delaware with her daughter. She is currently working on her first book: Reclaiming Your Brilliance: Seven Ways to Take Your Life from Bright to Brilliant.

Web site: http://www.careermakeovercoach.com

Buying a home may seem like a dauntingly complex proposition, perhaps because you’ve never done it before or never understood all the details of financing and closing a sale.

However, once you know what steps are involved, understand the purpose of each step, and learn how each is accomplished, buying a home will be revealed for what it is–a series of simple steps that lead toward a substantial emotional and financial commitment.

Prepare to Buy

1. Clarify your reasons to buy. Because it is such a weighty commitment, buying a home shouldn’t come with regret or second thoughts. Before you buy or even begin the process, make sure that your reasons and resolve to buy a home are clear and firm.

2. Get your financial house in order. It’s hard to have any idea about how much home you can afford if you don’t know how much of your money you want to devote toward housing. If you haven’t done so already, thinking about buying a home is a perfect reason to get your finances in order.
3. Check your credit history. Even if you aren’t going to buy a house, this is a good idea. If your credit report has mistakes or other blemishes, your credit rating will suffer. As a result, you will hurt your chances of securing financing and will probably pay higher interest rates or possibly not be able to secure financing.
4. Figure out how much home you can afford. Getting an accurate estimate of what priced home you can afford will make your search more realistic and efficient. It may even give you cause to reconsider buying altogether.
5. Buy vs. rent. Depending on your situation, renting a home instead of buying may make more sense (financially or otherwise). It’s a possibility that’s worth considering.

Buy a Home

1. Get prequalified. When preparing to buy a home, you estimate how much home you can afford. Now it’s the lender’s turn. Using financial information that you provide, prequalification is a lender’s analysis of your general position as a borrower, or in other words, an estimate of what you can afford. Getting prequalified gives you an even clearer understanding of what home you will be able to afford, and a prequalification letter from your lender helps strengthen your position with sellers in the early stages of negotiation.
2. Shop for loans. Finding a good loan is probably the most confusing part of the process (and definitely the dullest), but since it will dictate how much your monthly payment will be, it deserves your full attention. To simplify, your job is to decide what kind of loan you want, whom you want to get it from, and how long you want the term to be (most are either for 15 or 30 years).
3. Get preapproved. When you get preapproved, a lender gives a firm commitment to loan you up to a set amount without knowing the specific property. It’s particularly useful because when you make an offer on a home, waiting for financing won’t jeopardize your offer. Once you are preapproved, closing the loan is quick, depending only on a satisfactory appraisal and title report of the home. To get preapproved you apply for a certain purchase price, loan amount, and loan program, but these assumptions can change after you’re preapproved.
4. Find a home. Finding the perfect home can be challenging, especially if you are moving to a new area. Regardless of where you’re moving, the Internet offers powerful tools to research neighborhoods and find available homes.
5. Close the deal. Once you’ve found the home you want, you still must get it inspected, have it appraised, get a report on the title (to make sure the history of the house is clean), negotiate the price, and close your financing.
6. Move in. If you’ve made it this far, you’re close to the finish line, but the race isn’t over. Moving presents its own challenges, and there’s a litany of things to be mindful of, such as changing your address and more.

Tiffany Bass Bukow is the CEO & Founder of the #1 Personal Finance Website for Women and Families – www.msmoney.com. My life mission is to help people and the world thrive through creating companies that provide money, career and life skills education.

How many times have you said or heard, “I will never change.  I like myself exactly as I am.” The willingness to change is essential to love and happiness and without it, we stop growing.

1.  Change is always about you, not the other person. When you do it for someone else it never works.

• So often we “change” to please another person not understanding that the change will be short-lived at best.
• The only time change works is if it is really what we want to do.
• It has to come from very deep inside and there needs to be a firm resolve. That resolve is what keeps you going during the hard times and doesn’t allow you to give up.

2.  Unless you are willing to change what doesn’t work you will keep getting the same results. All behavior has critical mass and momentum.

• Remember, time does nothing but pass.
• Things that are bad get worse over time, so anyone who says, “Let some time pass and things will get better”, didn’t know what they were talking about.
• The longer you behave in a particular way, the more energy is behind that way of being. Dysfunction stuff becomes automatic as time goes on.

3.  Change needs to resonate as true for you.

• You know you need to change regardless of what anyone else says. 
• Ask yourself the question: If I was all alone on this universe would my behavior be attractive to ME? Be honest. Are you attractive to your Self?
• If the answer is “No”, then you need to change.

4.  Change is an opportunity to grow and stretch and makes you feel good about yourself.

• If you don’t change and grow, what are you doing on this planet?
• If you think it is to keep making more and money, you are mistaken.
• Remember, an authentic life is different than a successful one.

5.  You can decide whether you want to be around someone who refuses to make changes.

• I had a client tell me that her husband said he would never change and that he liked himself just the way he was (with bad behavior and all). I told her that just like he had the right to decide so did she, and that she could decide whether or not she wanted to be around someone who didn’t want to change.

 In a national competition, Chandra Alexander, MSW, was selected by THE OPRAH MAGAZINE as the Life Coach to deliver a series of coaching sessions to the grand prize winner of their prestigious Toyota Moving Forward contest. She also spent five years on NBC/TV “DAYTIME” giving a weekly “Reality Check”. Chandra has been living and teaching authenticity for the last 30 years and is the founder of Coaching for Authenticity, a place to explore and discover the essence of who you really are.

I was on a teleconference today with some very bright business owners, and the message I heard loud and clear was that marketing can really suck. As in – suck you dry. But also, of course, it can be an awfully unpleasant thing (that you keep procrastinating) on your to-do list.

I personally have encountered marketing becoming a daunting and unpleasant activity, but I can also say that it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are three things you can do to improve how you feel about your marketing:

1. Remember that it’s like exercise – it’s critical that you do it, but sometimes it takes about 10 minutes to “warm up,” but, even still, you might be counting the minutes until it’s finished.

2. Remember that what feels like “rejection” or “being ignored” isn’t personal. It’s not about you – it’s really about the person you’re trying to reach not thinking they need what you’re marketing right now. Regroup and try again.

3. Remember that the marketing activities with the greatest impact are not the expensive ones. Remember what I said about exercise? Well, a lot of us try to motivate ourselves to exercise by spending a lot of money on fancy outfits and tools. In the end, you could put on a decent pair of shoes and just go for a walk. Marketing is the same way. Just get out and do it – you don’t need a lot of money to succeed!

Virginia Ginsburg is an entrepreneur and business & marketing consultant who delivers strategic, affordable marketing services through her company accordionmarketing. She also writes a blog called Body > Mind > Business, which discuses the connection between business health and personal health, and the struggles she faces in pursuit of work-life balance. Virginia has an MBA from the University of Southern California and is currently (slowly) pursuing a Ph.D. in Psychology at UCLA. She has more than 12 years of experience as a senior marketing consultant, and has served as a trusted partner, coach and consultant to more than 100 sole proprietors, partnerships and corporations. 
Virginia lives in Santa Monica, CA with her husband and daughter. As part of her passion for working with entrepreneurs, Virginia is actively involved in small business development projects in the U.S. and in developing countries.

Common wisdom holds that in the long-term, it’s always better to buy a home than to rent. However, given the changes in how people work and live in the last 20 years, it’s not obvious that buying is necessarily better than renting.

When is it better to rent than to buy? Financially speaking, the rule of thumb is that if you don’t stay in a home for at least 3 years, you probably won’t break even on the closing expenses incurred while buying it. That is, of course, as long as you’re not speculating that property values will rise dramatically. Given the high costs of owning a home, it’s possible that you will not see the financial benefits of buying for 5 to 10 years.

Besides some potential financial advantages, renting a home offers other benefits. For example, renting relieves you of the risk and headache of maintaining and repairing the structure–if a pipe bursts, it’s not your responsibility. Some people also value the flexibility it offers–i.e., the freedom to pull up stakes, not having to go through the process of selling a home. And with lower monthly payments, renting may allow you to save more for a down payment when you do decide to buy.

You can use our Buy vs. Rent Tool to compare the financial costs and benefits over time of buying vs. renting a home.

Tiffany Bass Bukow is the CEO & Founder of the #1 Personal Finance Website for Women and Families – www.msmoney.com. My life mission is to help people and the world thrive through creating companies that provide money, career and life skills education.