Intro
Why the marathon? What is the meaning? The marathon is a great analogy for explaining any ambitious task. In a marathon, you start an action (the race) leverage time (also distance) and then subsequently finish an action (race/task completed). It can be a daunting task when thinking about any ambitious task. You cannot complete any task by simply visualising it and you cannot complete a marathon by simply looking at the long journey ahead, to complete any task, like a marathon you need to take the steps needed. Eventually before you know it, you will be looking back questioning how you got so far and with that hopefully have the inspiration to keep going. This blog will take you through the RISE methodology using the analogy of a Marthon with Financial literacy.
The road to financial literacy
The concept of ‘The Marathon’ and the steps that are going to be discussed later can be applied to any task you perceive to be challenging, for this blog, however, the steps will be applied via the idea of Financial Literacy. What is Financial Literacy? For me, it means understanding how finances work for you. For example, understanding what a debit/credit card is. If you understand the meaning of this, one thing that you may come to realize is that depending on the situation having a credit card is not a bad thing which is something I was told growing up.
The name of this blog came to me, whilst listening to one of my verses on a song called Fountain of youth by the late great Nipsey Hussle. I will always be grateful for the inspiration from his music and energy he provided. Never forgotten.
Dedication
Disclaimer
To be clear I need to state that I am not a qualified financial advisor what I am simply doing with this blog is, conveying points from a logical standpoint and for my Object Orientated Software Developers, I simply have an interface which can apply to any application whether it be finance, coding, fitness or embarking on starting a new task.
RISE
RISE. This is an acronym I came up with to put a series of steps together to ensure you are on your way to financial literacy or whatever journey you are on. The idea being once you follow these steps you will be able to rise to the occasion of the task you are trying to accomplish. The following will be a breakdown of the acronym RISE.
Research
Whenever you embark on anything new or challenging preparation is key and this should be done with research. Research can take many forms. Ultimately research enables you to have the information needed to go to the next stage which is investment.
You have the research; you now discover that there are many methods to help you achieve financial literacy or at least start the journey. For example you realise that there are not huge barriers of entry to enter the stock market, there are government incentives to help young people onto the housing market called (UK) LISA (long-term individual spending account) and a credit card is useful even though you do not need it, you can use it to help build your credit score for things such as a mortgage. Now it is time to put some skin in the game and invest.
Invest
Invest is a very important stage because it is the moment when you begin the marathon as you start to put things into practice.
Going back to the example of financial literacy, let us take a mechanism for helping you reach that goal like investing in the stock market, there are some suggested principles with regards to investment which is to diversify and also leverage your interest and invest in something you have a personal interest in, a topic discussed here.
Once you have research and invested i.e. applied information, you now hold newfound knowledge and to go back to the marathon analogy this would be the process of exercise. Now you are starting to exercise, it is important to have a routine for your knowledge to grow and be healthy and this is where the third letter of the acronym Structure comes in.
Structure
Now that you have acquired that knowledge you now need a plan, some sort of structure to go with this new built knowledge. If nothing is stressed enough with this site, take the fact that structure is an essential part of any successful journey. Structure could be for example planning your breakfast/lunch in-line with the stock market to take advantage of the swings in the market; it could also be planning to ensure you can pay off your credit card in full by the end of the month. The answer to how this can be figured out is through your newfound knowledge you have received via the prior stages.
Once structure is put into place you may want to think about automation, which is key ensure that you setup the infrastructure to ensure you do not need to manually pay for things, mistakes happen, people have busy lives and automation may be a solution which is something as simple as setting up a direct debit for payments. Structure is one of the pivotal steps in the journey of success.
Evaluate
Now structure is in place it is important to evaluate your plan and access whether you need to adjust whether that means further research; a change in your investment strategy or even the plan itself. Change is an inevitable constant in life which means we shouldn’t be unaware of the fact we need to make changes.
Conclusion
There you have it, RISE with steps and use this to help yourself complete your ambitions, like a marathon or a dissertation or to use as a mechanism for financial literacy. Hopefully, you can see with just a few adjustments you to can come along this journey and reach a point where you can take a victory lap.
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