Find Financial Freedom

If you live within your means (your monthly outgoings are less than your income) you can use the excess cash flow to increase your savings, make investments or start a business. All of which will move you further towards the goal of being financially free.

On the other hand if you live beyond your means (your income is less than you monthly outgoings) you’re either spending your savings or worse still increasing your debts. Both of which will have a detrimental effect on your financial health.

It should therefore be obvious that your goal is to ensure that your income exceeds your cost of living. There’s two ways to achieve this:

1. Earn more money - get a better paid job, get a second job, start a part time business or grow your full time business.
2. Become more frugal - take a long hard look at what you spend your money on each month and try to cut down on what you spend.

Until you can manage to live within your means, you’re not going to be able to achieve financial freedom and believe me anyone can manage to live within their means.

One of the keys to financial freedom is reducing your outgoing cash flow by spending less. That doesn’t always mean you have to forego a purchase though. Instead you could ask for a discount on the purchases you are making.

Friends often tell me that it’s hard to get a discount, or that they’re not good negotiators and wouldn’t know how to drive a hard bargain. In reality that doesn’t matter though as the simplest way to get a discount is to ASK!

Yes, it really is that simple, next time you make a purchase just try asking one of the following:

Is that the best price you can do me?

What deals are you offering at the moment?

If I commit today can you do me a deal?

Then just be quiet and wait. Alternatively if you don’t feel happy outright asking for a discount just make a statement along the lines of:

I really would like to buy, but it’s just outside my budget.

It’s perfect, if I had a little more money to spend I’d take it off your hands today.

Then be quiet and wait. In some cases you’re going to be disappointed, but surprisingly often the mere act of asking for a discount will get you one. In many cases staff aren’t allowed to offer discounts on high value items, but can off free accessories so using:

Unfortunately I also need to buy and X and Y to go with it and at this price I couldn’t afford them all.

Can sometimes work well. Finally if you’re not happy with any of these approaches you can always just stand there silently for a minute or two - sometimes a sales person will be overeager to make the sale and will enter into a unilateral negotiation and start dropping the price thinking they’re going to lose your sale - the longer you keep quiet the more it’ll drop.

In short you’ll be surprised how easy it is to get a discount on major purchases when you just ask and the worst reply you’ll get is “no”.

This approach can work anywhere, by doing so I’ve successfully gotten discounts on anything from fresh fruit and vegetables to a new house. For the best chance of success make sure you’re asking someone who has the authority to negotiate for the vendor - the checkout assistant at your local supermarket almost certainly does not.

So try to make a habit of asking for a discount wherever you go - you’ll be saving money without having to buy less.