Yesterday, I opened myself up to the world and committed to being accountable for my weight to you. Today, I answer the question of what being accountable for my weight has to do with you and your wealth.
The answer is quite simple. In order to achieve ANY goal, you must be accountable. The question is - to whom? Are you going to be accountable to your spouse? To your children? To a friend? Ultimately, of course, we need to be accountable to ourself and to God. Unfortunately, these two are the people we lie to most easily. We lie to ourselves every time we spend money on some doodad that we don't really need or even want that much. And we lie to God constantly - whenever we do something we know isn't right.
When it comes to wealth, may I suggest you be accountable to your wealth coach? And who better for a wealth coach than someone who actually knows something about being accountable for wealth - your accountant? What? Be accountable to my accountant? At once, this seems odd and obvious at the same time.
After all, your accountant is the expert at accountability. The problem for most people is that we spend lots of money on our accountant at tax time and we never use the information our accountant produces for anything productive. That's right - tax returns are not productive. Of course, with the right accountant, properly prepared tax returns can reduce your chance of being audited by the IRS and can even reduce your tax bill. But the fact of preparing a tax return is not productive in and of itself.
But the information that goes into the tax return is valuable information and with the right reporting, you could use this information to measure the results of your income and wealth creation and to be accountable for your financial actions.
Stay tuned for more on how to measure your financial activity and how to use your accountant as a wealth coach so you can be accountable and, as a result, successful in achieving your wealth and income goals.
Warmest regards,
Tom
P.S. - Someone asked me yesterday for the target date of my weight loss. My goal is to be 165 lbs on May 3, 2008, the date of my next triathlon.