You + Your Money  +  Movies   =   Freedom

 Do you want a NEST EGG to set you Free?)  or Stay BROKE all the time?

Or maybe you are CONTENT to live from pay check to pay check?

The most powerful concept to understand about money is the Theory of the Marching Dollars.  If you imagine your money as an army of little soldiers marching into battle, always moving, always growing always advancing, moving forward towards your goals, then you have grasped the fundamental concept of saving money.  When you save money, you are building your army of Marching Dollars.

To get started, you must watch Lost In America, an inspirational lesson on building a nest egg and then blowing it all and having to start all over again.  It is a fun movie full of laughs and irony, from Albert Brooks heading out on the road in his RV to Steppenwolf's Born To Be Wild to the desperate job hunt that lands him a plum crossing guard gig.  Go thou and do not do likewise.  However, they do calculate their net worth, set a budget and start out right...

If you want to Invest your money in stocks, bonds, real estate or other financial devices, you have to understand one simple thing: emotion.  Investing involves risk and risk engages your basic emotions of fear and greed.  Remember people jumping out of windows during the great Crash of 1929?  That was investing with your emotions all the way down. 

Before we get to the details, watch There's Something About Mary, a comedy about obsessive love.  I like to re-name it There's Something About Money, because people fall in love with their investments.  They buy because the stock is sexy or hot and then they never sell or they sell too early, all emotional decisions, all bad decisions.  The key to investing is controlling your emotions and making logical decisions.  Easy to say, hard to do.  Read an article about my investment philosophy in The Globe And Mail.

And remember, do not get emotionally attached to your investments like the poor guy in There's Something about Mary.  Watch it again and remind yourself how long you held onto that tech stock you so dearly loved as it dropped 40%, 60% and then went bankrupt.

Spending money is an emotional activity just like going to the movies.  If you love movies, your spending habits are influenced by the movies you see.  You like the clothes movie stars wear, the exotic locations inspire your next vacation and your home renovations revolve around the installation of your big screen TV.

Spending money is all about choices, wise choices based on accurate information.  There is also a process you have to follow: you have to save money, prioritize your needs and then choose the best spending option.  Remember, you are draining your Marching Dollars when you spend so don't slaughter your troops foolishly.  You are the General of your Marching Dollars army.  They look to you for leadership.   

Now, the best movie to control your spending is a comedy about con artists called Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and it teaches a valuable lesson about marketing.  Marketing is the way that corporations get you to buy goods and services by preying on your emotions.  Making you want things you don't really need.  Every time you see a commercial or consider an impulse by, consider the dirty rotten scoundrels that are manipulating your emotions in an attempt to separate you from your Marching Dollars.

MarketBOB - The Market Box Office Barometer is created and updated by Sportscar Projects Ltd. 

It is part of the IDEAriffic.com  network of lateral thinking web sites.