Unless you strike it rich overnight, accumulating wealth is like watching grass grow. I don’t mean that in the sense that it is boring, which to some people it may be, the analogy is that building wealth is a process that materializes after stages of seemingly insignificant behaviors.

Little by little, your consistent small contributions and millionaire money habits add up. Although these actions may seem insignificant at the time, they will amount to riches more quickly than you think.

Just like grass that grows too slow to actually be seen but has gone wild after being ignored for a few weeks, wealth accumulation is similar in fashion. Those who check their balances every day or watch each movement of their portfolio will be greatly disappointed. But if you have some patience, understand the laws of compound interest and allow small things to amount to big things will notice impressive results in due time.

Building wealth is a process that takes time, patience and discipline. You have the choice to plant the seed, nurture and care for what you have built, or ignore it all together and let the process die.

Millionaire Money Habit: Commit for the long-haul, realize that time is the investor’s best friend and let the grass grow. Not only will your investments make more money over time, but your money habits and investing skill will improve with practice and accelerate the process. -RT
photo by wili_hybrid

Do you continue to procrastinate on putting a budget together because it just seems too daunting or boring? Or is it just taking up too much time? You know if you want to accumulate more wealth you need to pull the bills and bank statements out and start crunching numbers. Or you can use personal finance software that will download your bank and credit card activity and do all the work for you in a snap.

Mvelopes has been the leading online personal budgeting software program, but why are people still using it when there are free programs like Mint.com now available?

First let’s break down the difference between Mvelopes and all the other personal finance software. Mvelopes is for the most part a budgeting system. The gist of this program is it takes the old school budgeting approach of allocating your money to specific spending “envelopes” in order to be disciplined.

For example, you can have an envelope for your mortgage, car, food, and utilities. Then you allocate your money according to the envelopes before you spend it. That way you know ahead of time how much money you need to cover all of your expenses before you go on a spending spree and end up not having enough money to cover your bills at the end of the month.

In a nutshell that’s what Mvelopes does for you. Is an electronic organization and allocation of your money before you have a chance to spend it.

Other personal finance programs are much more robust and cover all aspects of your personal finances, where Mvelopes pretty much just helps you allocate your funds and will pay bills for you.

What are the Benefits of Mvelopes?

• Mvelopes does a good job of helping you allocate your money and build a budget better than any other personal finance software. The others are much better at analyzing what you have already spent.
• Helps you put extra money towards paying down your debts.
• Very easy to use, where I have found programs like Quicken to be a bit overwhelming with too many features and a higher learning curve.
• Automatically downloads your transactions from your bank and credit cards, so there’s no manual number crunching.
• You can set up automatic bill pay.
• Access anywhere since it is an online program.

The only disadvantage with Mvelopes is the service fee. Where other software programs charge are a one-time fee, up-front purchase, Mvelopes charges you a subscription fee to use their online service. They do claim, though, that they will find hidden expenses and help you save money so that the service fee will pay for itself.

Bottom line, if your goal is to pay down debt, Mvelopes is an easy to use system with a clean interface that can get you up and running in minutes. They do offer a 30-day trial, so give it a shot. Or go pick up some envelopes and start budgeting.

Millionaire Money Habit: Budgeting and managing your expenses is the first step in accumulating wealth. If you don’t have the time to set and manage a budget, or you have difficulty getting yourself to sit down and do the legwork, try a personal finance program like Mvelopes that will do the work for you.

Everyone is freaking out about the volatility in the stock market, but the long-term wealth creator should not even be looking at their portfolio on a daily basis. Nor should they care what the market does today or what it will do tomorrow. Investment fortunes are made over the long run not overnight.

This was explained in my Special Report, 10 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them, which you can get for free by subscribing to In the Money newsletter.

With all of the discussion of the economic stimulus package and the obsessive news about the outlook of the economy, it’s nearly impossible to avoid being influenced by the panic. My suggestion . . . turn off the TV and remind yourself that you make money with equities markets when you go against the crowd.

It’s tough psychologically to act in a way that seems counterintuitive when it has to do with your hard earned money, but if you want to be successful with investing you must take the emotion out of your decisions. Think of it this way, if everyone was right, wouldn’t everyone be rich? More likely nobody would be rich.

While you’re checking your 401k and your heart starts to race from looking at the bright red ink and the big negative numbers, tell yourself this is a good thing. You are now buying more shares with the same amount of money. In other words, where a $100 might have about you 10 shares of a mutual fund, you are now buying 15 shares. So keep plowing money into your 401k. That’s how I’m playing the stock market.

These downturns and fluctuations we’re experiencing, otherwise known as volatility, are a good thing. Without the movement in the market, stocks would never go up in price, and nobody would ever make money. Likewise, they would never go down and present once in a lifetime buying opportunities. Without volatility there would be no risk, which would yield no capital gains.

In the short-term, volatility should be a non-issue, particularly if you have an account set up to invest on a regularly monthly basis. By evenly spreading out purchases, you take advantage of dollar-cost-averaging, which limits your risk. Over the long run, the level of volatility decreases and the trend in your portfolio increases.

As discussed in Looking Forward to a Recession, the downturns in the stock market give long term investors great opportunities to make enormous amounts of wealth. You have the ability to buy equities as they are going down and the luxury to wait it out. Over a period of 10 or more years, the long term investor will be very happy with their earnings.

However, during downturns like these it is even more critical to protect your downside and limit your expenses as much as possible. Thanks to Zecco.com, you can now do this by buy stocks for free.

Millionaire Money Habit: Volatility in the market is necessary and good for a wealth investor. While the violent day-to-day movements in the market and the hysteria created by the media create panic and doubt in the stock market, remember to take your emotions out of your investment decisions and look at the historic data that indicates the stock market increases in value over time. -RT
photo by azrainman