# Chapter 290

Without financial management, there is no success for the business. - Masterminds

Nor success for anything else you are trying. There will be no success for your family or household or retirement or college or investments, etc etc, without financial management. This one has many moving parts and some are more challenging than others. The big one for everyone to grasp is cash flow. You can’t pay for things faster than the cash is flowing. And for some people the cash flows even and steady and for others like me, cash doesn’t flow steady or even. Heck I only get paid once a year in the years I actually take a salary, so cash flow is a big deal. When my wife has some humongous project going on and its gonna take tons of resources, then we have to plan very carefully how often the bill comes. I know you want to put all those lovely things on your credit card this month, but do you have the money in the bank or the cash flow to pay the bill in its entirety at the end of the billing cycle?

And then there are reserves or better yet reservoirs. All the people around me want to spend the principle right away and leave nothing for tomorrow, it seems. If you are like me and you want to help and work and be a blessing for decades or centuries to come, then you need a large reservoir for that Spring! If you spend the principle or the source of all your resources, then you leave nothing to flow down to anyone else.

We have not even scratched the surface of financial management, and we are already out of space, and this is one of the reasons people ignore financial management and the learning that goes with it. Don’t be one of those people.