Eight habits of financially successful people you should mimic

Time is enduringly elastic. 

Moulding to one's prevailing mindscape, an hour can stretch into a millennia or contract into a moment.

For ET Wealth, time has swung similarly in tandem with the economic turmoil and its readers' fortunes, moving between the stress of recession and the sanguinity of an upturn. Even as we dispelled ways to tackle each situation with advice and information, we came upon a simple truth: the mind impacts not just time, but also our financial decisions.

This knowledge helped us compress the volatility of these past four years into an important learning. The affluent and successful people have a common thread running through their financial weft: good fiscal habits. As ET Wealth celebrates its fourth anniversary, we bring to you this distilled wisdom in the form of 8 Habits of Financially Successful People.

As your pore through the following pages, you will realise that more than a secret strategy or investing tips, you need to streamline your behavioural and emotional patterns to secure your financial future. So, you may need to make goals on time, learn not to react impulsively and avoid today's pleasures for future gains.

You may, of course, run into the wall of behavioural biases, which prevent one from developing these habits, but there are ways to overcome these. "Financial behaviour is part of normal behaviour and it is difficult to reorient completely in one vertical. So if you need to unlearn a bad habit, give it time," says Jayant Pai, Mumbai-based financial planner.

There is a good chance that you may not have to alter all your habits. After all, the chaos of the past few years has helped evolve the investing instincts of many a reader. This was evident in the mature responses of most of the 6,785 people who undertook the recent Economictimes. com survey on managing money.

If you do need to inculcate these habits, try to understand the consequences of your actions, which is what we have highlighted for you in this package. We hope time flies as you try to imbibe the good habits, but holds still as you achieve financial success.

They make a plan
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail,' said Benjamin Franklin. Planning is clearly the unstated commonality among winners and the first step to formulating a successful strategy. Its two vital components are budgeting and framing goals.

Unless you know your current location, you will never understand where you are headed. Writing down income and expenses will tell you how much you can save to build your future and the way you can increase this amount by cutting down on discretionary expenses.

"Budgeting helped me undertake course correction in order to achieve my goals. It also enabled me to understand many things, such as the difference between investment and expense, and the necessity to reduce expenses if I was overshooting them," says Arun Mathur, who is in his mid-40s.

He began planning only in his 30s, but has caught up since. In fact, according to the Economictimes. com survey, as many as 49 per cent of the respondents started planning in their 30s, but it may not be too bad a place to start if you stay on course subsequently.

Read the rest of the article: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-12-22/news/57316757_1_habits-expenses-future

Related article: The retirement researcher