Spend, Don't Save: How to Improve Your Financial and Physical Health by Powerspending: How to Improve Your Financial and Physical Health by Powerspending: How to Improve Your Financial and Physical Health by Powerspending

By M.D. Frederick W James

Many things in life are more important than money. Just about all of them cost money. If you want more of these things in your life than you have right now, author Frederick James offers methods to help you get there.

Learn how to apply est

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frederick W. James, M.D.
• Release date: Jan 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781962502160

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$ P E N D,

DON’T SAVE

How to Improve Your Financial and

Physical Health by PowerSpending

Frederick W. James, MD

SPEND, DON’T SAVE

Copyright © 2024 Frederick W. James.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in the work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN 978-1-962502-15-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-962502-16-0 (E-book)

Printed in the United States of America.

Dedication

To my wife Charlotte Jan, my daughters Freda Annette and Anne Elizabeth, and sons Frederick Roberson and Gregory Keith, who contributed by their sacrifices, challenges, content, and whose support did not waver in the development and writing of

SPEND, DON’T SAVE.

Also, to my mother (deceased) who introduced business concepts and finance to me at an early age, my sisters, unconditional support and wisdom, and the James Family

Those who really desire to attain independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do regarding any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done. But easy it may be found to make money. I know many of my hearers will agree it is the most difficult thing in the world to keep it.

P. T. Barnum: The Art of Money Getting.

Foreword

It is indeed a pleasure and deep honor to write the foreword for this outstanding work. As a Financial Life Planning Coach and Consultant, I have accumulated over 35 years of experience. Over the years, I have known Dr. Frederick James as an experienced professional in his field. As one of his advisors and a beneficiary of his wisdom, I have had the pleasure of working with him for over 20 years.

I am a firm believer in principles. In this book, Dr. James has captured some universal principles of human behavior and provided a road map for how these principles govern the results of our actions. As a Financial Advisor and Life Coach, I understand the importance of human emotions in helping people to get in touch with their innermost selves and being a source of internal strength.

Dr. James shows us it takes more than information for a person to have the knowledge to get solid results. Overcoming psychological blocks that impede health and financial well-being requires a strong emotional commitment to developing healthy cash flows than an emphasis on savings.

This is not a book to be read simply for the information, but it used as a handbook or manual for the person who desires an understanding of the impact of your beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and actions are having on the circumstances of your life and how you can have more control.

For the past ten years, our firm has been working with clients and employees on a program of Wholeness, Wellness and Well-being. I can truly say that Spend Don’t Save–How to Improve Your Financial and Physical Health by PowerSpending is the only book I have found to capture these principles in a single source.

I view this material as a compendium of some of the most important principles developed by humankind, and organized in a format that integrates the spiritual, physical, intellectual, and emotional nature of human beings through physical and financial health strategies to help people experience a life of significance.

Preface

Some may presume that this is just another self-help book saying the same thing about the power within and all needed is to set a goal, act and execute discipline. The book advises on how to use your resources of money, time, and energy to enhance the value of your life and avoid being influenced by the dreams and desires of others.

A television program influenced the title of this book in 2007 during the beginning of the meltdown in our economy. The program comprised a panel of experts, a financial planner, business person, real estate investor, and portfolio investment adviser, giving advice and suggesting strategies to the audience on how to conduct their financial affairs and prepare for what is coming.

Obviously, their opinions were of great value, but the overwhelming recommendation from two of the panel members was that each person must save, save, and save more. Suddenly, a woman in the audience stood and said with dominant emotions, But I like spending, and immediately, one panel member responded, And so do I.

Thinking about the reaction of both the audience and panel members, it became clear, for instance, that parked dollars may be called savings, but the act of parking or saving is an act of spending.

For example, when you open a bank savings account, you are purchasing a bank product or service which provides storage, agreed access to your money, security, and a competitive interest for your deposited funds.

Further, the deposited funds are there for future purchases, which are acts of deferred spending. Most of the time, you use the saving accounts as a nest egg to help overcome the next perceived crisis. But we fail to monitor often enough to determine if we are receiving the best value for the bucks deposited or investigate other available alternatives that can yield a greater return.

So, the term PowerSpending which is spending of your resources, whether money, time, or energy, according to your preset goal(s), and the book titled Spend, Don’t Save became a reality.

You will read how theoretical models of behavior and habit transformation and predictable success of good fortune apply to everyday life. You’ll learn how many are already using these models but are unaware of the theoretical construct. I have pulled from authors, professionals and my experience with patients and clients in establishing the framework and writing of this book. It is my sincere belief that following the guidelines and principles in this book ensures a high degree of predictable success as compared to waiting to receive good fortune by luck alone.

I arranged the progression by chapters for continuity of thought, application and to give a step-by-step approach to take control of your resources. Now you are free to live a life that is both physically and financially healthy.

I encourage you to read the book completely and then take a break, but not for too long. Let’s say about a week and then return to study and apply each chapter. Principles remain the same, but the application and outcome of the applied principle may differ for each person; therefore, the goal is that you develop and gain control over your life and live it with purpose and confidence.

Acknowledgments

Having this book now to read is a consequence of many people working and contributing their valuable time, energy, and experiences to convert an idea into reality, share information that can change your life, and assure a sense of physical and financial well-being.

I thank all who helped from the idea stage to the framing of the presentation, gathering of data, inputting of content, writing, illustrations, and preparation for publication.

Some names bear mentioning because of their special contribution to organization, writing, and continuity, and attention to clarity. They include Charlotte J.R. James ED.D., and Seth Czerepak Vice President of VQ Success LLC. Illustrations made by Drew Hartel President of DrewDesigns.

The shared goal of all involved is to give facts and information and introduce the application of known theoretical models to empower willing persons to take control and claim ownership of their lives and have better physical and financial health.

Introduction

Your Financial Health and PowerSpending

Many things in life are more important than money. Most of them cost money. If you want more of these things in your life than you have right now, this book is for you.

Since you’re reading this, it’s safe to assume that you’re looking for a way to build more financial security. You might even look for a way to build wealth and prosperity. The good news is that there has never been a better time for you to make this happen than the time you’re now living in.

You might remember in 1971, when President Richard Nixon decided that printed money would no longer represent the physical commodity of gold. Instead, printed money would represent the commitment of the American government to support the value of the dollar.

For many people, this marked the beginning of the end for our economy... and it did for the old economy. This, with the power the Federal Reserve had to print money to bail our banks out of financial trouble, has caused the currency of money to develop into an idea.

Nearly a century ago, Napoleon Hill wrote his excellent book Think and Grow Rich, based on the principle that ideas can turn into cash. Today, currency is free floating, unhinged from the commodity of gold and free to develop into something of far greater value.

Free floating currency is the foundation of the new economy. Those who learn and apply the proper principles of financial education will have one of the greatest opportunities in history to become financially secure and build wealth. This book provides you with the tools which will make this possible.

The learning journey starts by applying two fundamental principles for achieving financial success in the modern economy...

Principle 1 - Financial Health: Spend Don’t Save contains practical strategies and educational principles for improving the condition of both your financial and physical health. You might wonder what place advice on healthy living has in a book about financial success.

They are inseparable while living in our society. Each affects the other at such a profound level that attempting to address one from the other is almost impossible.

If you have poor physical health, you’ll end up crippled by health problems in your later years. Some of these problems may be severe, others more subtle. For instance, fatigue is a health problem which comes from a worn-out metabolism because of poor eating habits, and lack of muscle tone due to lack of physical activity.

Fatigue makes it difficult to focus and to be productive, which can have a direct effect on your ability to add value to your organization as an employee or an entrepreneur. On the more severe end of the spectrum, poor physical health can lead to diabetes, heart disease, stroke, dementia, and a variety of other health problems.

Considering the compounding problems with Medicare, the rising cost of health care, and that medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, it’s easy to imagine the impact that severe health conditions can have on your financial security.

If you have poor financial health, you’ll be crippled by a lack of money. You’ll likely have anxiety and stress, because of feelings of insecurity that come from having your life controlled by money problems. This stress and anxiety will overflow into your relationships with others: the people you depend on to help make your life more enjoyable and meaningful.

As this stress and anxiety spread, they affect your emotional well-being. Medical research reveals that this kind of stress weakens the immune system, causes the metabolism to be unbalanced, promotes unhealthy fat storage, and even encourages the growth and proliferation of cancer cells.

This downward spiral of physical and financial disease detracts from the quality of your life and can even bring it to an untimely end.

But the cultivation of sound physical and financial health will have an equally impressive impact on the quality of your life. Not only will you live longer, but you’ll also enjoy a greater abundance of energy and vitality from the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed.

You’ll be less likely to be overwhelmed by health problems and medical bills, both now and later in life.

You can focus and produce in everything you do, which will increase your value at home and in the marketplace. It will empower you to pursue your dreams and hobbies and to enjoy extracurricular activities with your children and their children.

You’ll have the money to purchase the things you need to be happy and healthy: natural and healthy foods, comfortable clothes, attractive and dependable vehicles, a safe and well-furnished home, a good education, and vacations to the most interesting and exciting places in the world.

All of this will have an invigorating impact on your emotional well-being. Medical research reveals that good emotional health strengthens the immune system, balances the metabolism, promotes healthy cell growth, and even helps fight off life-threatening illnesses like cancer.

This harmonizing of physical and financial well-being is the primary focus of cultivating good financial health. This occurs through the application of the second principle...

Principle 2 – PowerSpending: PowerSpending is the strategy we’ll be using in Spend Don’t Save to develop the habits of good financial health. Saving money is no longer adequate for the achievement of financial security or the accumulation of wealth. Inflation is making it more and more difficult for anyone to build financial security simply by saving. Instead, cash flow has become the method for cultivating wealth and prosperity in the new economy.

Those who develop a healthy cash flow have all the financial security that they need. Those who don’t will watch their money flow toward someone who has developed a healthy cash flow. PowerSpending encourages positive cash flow by focusing spending on what will add value to your life, instead of to someone else’s.

For example, most people spend their time working for a salary or an hourly wage. This spending of hours to earn dollars adds more value to the employer’s life than it does to theirs. It also keeps them from earning money fast enough to cover their expenses, invest their disposable income, and beat taxes and inflation so that they can build wealth.

To add to this, most people spend their extra income on things that add value to other people’s lives instead of to their own life. These are depreciating assets such as three thousand dollar high definition big screen televisions, new cars that lose nearly half their value in the first three years, meals at sit-down restaurants, and other things that take money out of the spenders’ pocket and put it into the pocket of the vendor.

Many people often purchase these things using credit, a product designed to cause money to flow away from the borrower and toward the lender. Finally, most people who do have money to invest spend it investing in company stocks and helping those companies to become wealthier, instead of investing in starting their own companies.

These examples show cash flow strategies that control the direction in which the money is moving. These strategies are making one group of people prosperous, while the other group is supplying the capital that makes wealth and prosperity possible.

As long as money exists, these types of strategies will exist, and so will people who benefit from them and people who don’t. Cash flow is inevitable. The only thing you can do is make sure it is flowing toward you instead of away from you. PowerSpending is a practical strategy for steering your personal cash flow in a positive direction.

The principle of PowerSpending develops habits of good physical health by developing a healthy energy flow in your body. Your body is a highly organized organic system which is constantly spending energy on two things:

Construction: The expenditure of energy used to build your physical body: your bones, muscles, organs, and other tissues.

Function: This is the performance of the activities and functions necessary to keep your body alive and help you enjoy your life.

As you know, poor health results from spending your time and energy doing things which don’t promote the construction of a healthy body. It is also the result of eating foods (another kind of energy) which do not promote the construction of a healthy body, and which makes it more difficult for your body to perform certain functions.

PowerSpending is a practical strategy for developing a healthy energy flow in your body through the cultivation of good eating habits and a proper level of physical activity.

The PowerSpending Process bases its financial and physical dimensions on four key pillars...

The Four Pillars of PowerSpending

As with any behavior-based strategy, the practice of PowerSpending requires the development of habits. In his best-selling book: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey describes a habit as the intersection of three things: knowledge, capability, and desire.

Knowledge is the education needed to develop the habit, capability is the skill required to execute it, and desire is the motivation to put those skills into practice. In PowerSpending, we will use four principles to develop the knowledge, skills and motivation needed to form good habits:

Knowing: You cannot take action without first knowing what to do. For example, you can’t improve your eating habits without proper knowledge of what foods to eat. You can’t develop multiple streams of income and promote positive cash flow without understanding the difference between liabilities and assets. Therefore, the first pillar of PowerSpending is the gaining of proper knowledge.

Unknowing: Einstein said we cannot solve a problem using the same thinking that was used to create it. Many times, when we gain new knowledge, it contradicts a previous conditioned belief. So, before we practice new knowledge, it’s important to get rid of the beliefs which cause these inner conflicts. Therefore, the second pillar of PowerSpending is the unlearning of our improper knowledge.

Skills: You might have heard it said that knowledge is power. However, knowledge is only a potential power. It also requires skills to put that knowledge into practice. Without skills, knowledge has little value and is difficult to keep for long. Therefore, the third pillar of PowerSpending is the development of tangible skills for the execution of good habits.

Desire: Knowing what to do and being good at it gives no assurance that you will do it. You must also possess an intense desire to achieve what you want. This requires being invested in the outcome you hope to achieve through execution of the habit. Therefore, the fourth pillar of PowerSpending is becoming emotionally involved in the achievement of what you want.

A Two Way Commitment

Before we get started, it’s important that we agree to meet halfway. I’ll provide you with what you need to get more of the best things in life through the principles of financial health and PowerSpending. That’s as far as I can take you; the rest is up to you.

As this book is being written, millions of people are looking for their government to bail them out of financial trouble. These are not bad people; they are just average people. If there are people, there will always be average people. You picked up this book because you want to be above average.

So be above average.

Put this book to work and I’ll consider it well worth the effort to meet you halfway.

Let’s get started.

CHAPTER ONE

Behaviors and PowerSpending: The Science of Habit Transformation

Good financial health begins with changing the consistent behaviors regarding your financial and physical health. These consistent behaviors are your habits. Whether your goal is to get out of debt, build wealth, develop a positive cash flow, or just want something different from what you currently have, you must adopt new habits to get it.

In his book The Speed of Trust, Steven MR Covey said that every family and organization alignment produces the results they are already getting. The same is true with your organism. This is because organizations and organisms function the same way. A collection of individual processes which work together to achieve a common goal control both.

Just as there are organizations which are better aligned than others, so there are organisms (people) which are better aligned than others. You’ve probably known at least one person in your life who worked to create a good life for themselves while engaging in behaviors which were sabotaging their success. You’ve probably known people who managed all the areas of their lives well and whose habits were all aligned to send their life in a positive direction.

Either way, each of these individuals was getting results in their lives which were consistent with their habits. The same is true with you and me and every other person on the planet. Your current behavior cannot get you anything different from your current results. This means that