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Building your financial reserves is also about cultivating your samurai mind.

Building your financial reserves is also about cultivating your samurai mind.

If you’ve been following my blog recently, you know that I am taking a course called Build Your Personal Foundation through CoachU.   I am currently on a unit about building your “reserves.”   According to the guide book “the more our needs are handled the more we can stretch and grow.”   The course emphasizes building reserves in 10 areas including:  time, space, money, energy, love, information, wisdom, self, and integrity.

Just beginning to read this chapter made me turn to my internet banking account.   It’s been about ten years that I learned from Phil Laut that it is really important to have multiple savings accounts.   I use different savings accounts not only to keep my financial resources focused, but more importantly as a way to train my brain to think about myself and my potential.

The Building Your Personal Foundation course explains, “part of you is so focused on survival that there isn’t time to stretch and move and say no.”  Creating savings accounts in different areas, even if you only add small amounts, is a way to send your brain a message that you are creating room in these areas.  Having an internet account like the one I have at capitalone360.com (no plug intended – do your research) allows me to create accounts and nickname them for different purposes.  I have many accounts including:  cash flow, business development, clothing, apartment, classes, financial independence, freedom days, large purchase, and impulse.

I’ve explained the purpose of multiple savings accounts elsewhere.   Each account serves a different purpose and not only let’s me save money, but it also helps me energize different areas and projects in my life.   However, I have automated most of these savings so they happen on a regular basis without me expending my time and effort.  However, reading the article on reserves made me realize that I should also openly think about where I am putting my resources instead of going on auto-pilot.

So the other I put $20 in four accounts–not only to save money but also to put a mental bookmark on projects and processes that I want to make happen.  “Business Development” is to invest in making a better blog or increasing my skill set.   “New Apartment” is for our future three bedroom or townhouse.   “Financial Independence”  is an account that Phil Laut recommended for training yourself to live off investment interest.   Last month I made a whopping $.15 in this account, but I think the big pay off is that it opens you up to the possibility of becoming someone who can live off of investment income.

The last account I invested in was the “Freedom Days” account.  This is an account that I can use for thinking about creating days, months, or years where I won’t have to work.  Part of the energy behind this account is fighting the “part of you [that] is so focused on survival that there isn’t time to stretch and move and say no.”   By saying no you can say yes to bigger things to life.

I think I will be moving my money a little bit more consciously in the future.   Even if I only have a dollar to spare, doling it out in actual accounts seems like a powerful way to think to think about and energize projects and priorities.

Build your reserves.  Stretch and grow.  Act small.  Think big.

Other articles about keeping money in balance: