I bought “Start Late, Finish Rich” (Canadian Edition) to read on a recent plane ride to Paris. I loved it! Its simple, to the point and, it works! I’m an independent businessman and consultant who is too busy taking care of my clients’ needs to tend to my own so I greatly appreciated the section on “making it automatic”. I did it right away. From Paris I called my bank and set-up an automatic transfer to a reserved account of $50/week as my “Latte Factor” contribution. I’ve neglected my RRSP for the past year so I arranged for an RRSP loan for the max allowable (I’ll pay this off with my tax savings and a pre-arranged monthly loan payment).

I examined my finances further and found a good $300/month in “lost expediture”. I re-negotiated my mortgage to a bi-weekly mortgage and upped the payments by $100 every two weeks. This should help make short work of my mortgage! With the other $100, I opened a “dream account”. I always wanted to invest in a studio apartment in downtown Paris. I won’t open tomorrow but it WILL happen one day now that I’m actually saving for it.

My only debt is a car and my house, which I manage easily. However, I decided to “can” the auto loan when I sell my investment condo in May (which I made $75,000 on in 3 years) and will keep the remainder to invest in more real estate. This is fun!!! I’m a true convert and next week, I’m going over my sister-in-laws finances to work up a plan for her. I could do this for a living and die happy!