How would you
define financial success?
Having
the ability to retire whenever you like without any financial deprivation?
Becoming wealthy - like, seriously wealthy? Having enough passive
income to replace all of your active income?
Wherever
you are in the journey, you must be able to master money and its
management. Money needs to have a proper place in our lives and
we need to treat it with respect and wisdom.
By the
same token, money, and its acquisition, simply can't be the focus
of your entire life. Life is more than a bank account.
I
have no doubt that giving a proportion of your income to either
charities, or church, or individuals that you personally know are
"battling" is paramount in money management as it gives
money a proper place in our lives - you have to get your priorities
straight. Don't try to skip this fact - it IS important. Elsewhere
on this site I have written about that magical thing called "karma".
Whether you choose to believe in it right now or not, it is TRUE.
All
too often I come across fellow punters who want to talk up the amount
they can make from this delicious sport - obsessed about how they
can " increase their take" - at the same time having no
idea about controlling the money they already have, no idea about
interest rates, car loans, mortgages and whether or not they have
a workable retirement plan.
If
you don't really know how to manage the resources you already have
- GET HELP - ask the experts - do a TAFE course in debt management
- ANYTHING is better than blundering along doing nothing about it.
IMPORTANT
POINT 1: It is absolutely pointless trying to set up a
passive income stream from racing if you cannot manage the resources
you already possess.
IMPORTANT
POINT 2: You must exercise self discipline and self restraint
in ALL aspects of your financial life - not just punting.
Now
I know some of you will be saying "oh here he goes off another
rant about self discipline". Friends of ours ( not punting
friends) were bemoaning the fact at a recent dinner party about
how they simply couldn't live on $750 a week that the husband's
"normal" job returned. Now I know it's not 'de rigueur"
to live within your means. Every second ad on Sky Channel is a Harvey
Norman ad offering no deposit, no interest, pay in a 1000 days etc
etc etc. That's fine for some people. Not for me. If I haven't got
the cash I don't buy it.
If
I don't have the cash I don't punt it. If I don't have the cash,
I try not to want it. Simple as that. When we analysed exactly what
their money went on and where it was spent, we were able to identify
$150 a week that didn't HAVE to spent straight away - had we spent
more time, we probably could have turned up more.
What
does this mean for a serious racing investor - well, for starters,
another $150 a week that could have financed a substantial bank.
Note Well: I KNOW this is very easy to say when the kids are all
grown up. I fully accept that in raising a family it is not as clear
cut as this. Been there - done that!
Being
a master over your financial destiny far outweighs the disappointment
of not having the latest 2 million centimetre plasma hi def TV (the
losing horses look just the same on a smaller screen by the way
- and they win an lose just as often!)
IMPORTANT
POINT 3: You must make a household spending budget BEFORE
you allocate money to your racing hobby / income/ investments.
Life
costs money.
Clothes,
food, accommodation (renting or buying), children, schooling, education.
It all costs money. You have to know exactly how much your basic
needs are or you will never know how much you can SAFELY allocate
to your interest of racing without it causing great arguments with
your partners in life. They always take precedence over punting
- or should do. If they don't you are probably with the wrong partner
!!!
This
little business I run is called RaceRate ( and have done for over
a decade) It exists so I can make a passive income from my interests.
It is here to make a profit. Therefore I have a budget for this
business so I can gauge the effectiveness of it. You would not be
reading this page if this business was making a loss. In the same
way, if you are out to make a profit you have to have a budget and
spending plan as well. I KNOW it is boring - I KNOW it takes time
and effort. You are worth it aren't you?
IMPORTANT
POINT 4: You will only EVER make a profit from racing by
doing the hard work.
There
are many days when I don't feel like getting up and sitting down
for a few hours at 5am to plan out my attack for the day on the
tote and Betfair - or, if you like, on how I hope to get YOUR money
- after all, that's all the tote or Betfair are, a method of exchange
between punters where the winning few get the losses of the many
( less the government/ Betfair rake of course). So when I win, I
know that somebody had to lose. If that's you, sorry, but that's
business and that is EXACTLY how I regard this business of punting.
Make no mistake it is a business.
In
a recent survey of American high school students a majority of them
told the interviewers they expected to be wealthy as adults. But
here's the kicker - over half of them declared they'd get rich by
winning a law suit. (Good grief!!!)
YOU
GET NOWHERE IN THIS BUSINESS WITHOUT HARD WORK. The more time you
spend revising your own ratings and making them as perfect as they
possibly can be or fine tuning a methodology (hopefully that
you have purchased from this site), the more success you will
have. There is no other option - unless you trust in, and occasionally
receive, the blessings of blind luck.
The
old principle that hard work is how you earn money seems to be going
the way of the dinosaur. Perhaps the great computerisation of the
21st century is to blame but the fact is, hard work is the only
form of investment guaranteed NOT to fail. Even allowing for the
occasional stories of "overnight millionaires, it is an absolute
truth that the majority of people will only be able to provide for
their needs through hard work.
IMPORTANT
POINT 5: If you have a mortgage, pay it off as quickly
as you can.
Understand
this: your property is ONLY and investment and asset when it is
paid off and you own it outright. An asset makes you tax free money.
Your HOME won't do this until you stop paying interest and fees
on it to the insatiable banks. It is way more important to pay off
your mortgage than it is to punt on the horses. You would need a
VERY reliable method of punting to make the reverse true.
IMPORTANT
POINT 6: Always strive to learn more.
If
you are striving to make money from racing, learn everything you
can about it. Devour the racing pages on the internet, try and see
how others are making a living from this great industry. Always
open your mind to new (an old) ideas. Old ideas do become new (and
profitable) again when the countless thousands of punters who supported
the "old idea" got disheartened by the shrinking dividends
(because everyone was "on it") and moved on to something
else. Thus the old idea, which probably worked fine all along, returned
better divvies again when the "mob" went on to something
else, newer, and glitzier even.
Combine
knowledge and mix in to something you believe in and apply with
consistency and persistency and discipline, and you may just finish
this year in a much stronger financial position.
Horse
racing systems and research
