The biggest single number driver to your success is taking control of your spending.

When you don’t know where the money is going, every single day, you can’t account for it to pay down debts, buy food and budget. As soon as you start doing this one simple task, your life will fundamentally change.

You start taking better decisions about where to spend the money, about whether to have that £3 coffee or that £5 sandwich when you have the stuff at home thats already purchased.

Show me someone who doesnt manage their costs properly, and i’ll show you someone who is either poor, or is temporarily wealthy and will become poor soon enough.

It’s a dramatic statement, I recognise that, but it’s also 100% truthfull. For years I complained about not having enough money, only to realise it was there all along but I simply didnt know where it was going.

I was too afraid to look, afraid that the truth might come out (meals, cars and nights out). Even today I budget for everything – (Literally everything) from air flights to petrol to kids weekends – it’s all budgeted. Even my children know the budget that we have to spend and we make a joint decision as to what we want to do.

They’re getting to learn ‘opportunity cost’ very quickly in their short lives. They also have a budget on the pocket money they get and can make their own decisions and choices about what to buy with it, from clothes to new helmets for the bike (because apparently spongebob isnt fashionable for a 10 year old these days), through to new leggings or a dress, hair clips and new gloves for cycling.

The #1 lesson is to learn to budget. And then out of that, start saving a tiny amount each month, over a period of time it becomes bigger and bigger until you can invest it properly (buying some stock and selling it on ebay for example).

Small steps lead to bigger steps.

Everyone wants the bigger steps without realising that it doesnt (often) work like that.

You have to go through the steps first. Budget, budget, budget.

My personal belief system is that It’s the number cause of success in this world.

Daniel Latto