I’ve always been fascinated by people and their perceptions of the world because their concepts and thoughts are reliable indicators and predictors of how they might be creating their realities.

For example, when I’m in the checkout line at my favorite grocery store, the cashier always greets me and asks whether I have found everything I need.

I’ll respond appropriately and then ask the individual about himself or herself. Often the answer I get is something like,”… I’ll be better in and hour and a half because that’s when I get off work …” or “… I can’t stand the weather … I wish it would stop raining …”

Since my life mission speaks to helping people achieve financial freedom and prosperity, I will generally offer a nugget or even a question in response.

You probably already know this, but most of us use expressions that we’ve picked up from authority figures such as parents, celebrities or sports figures.

My mother had an interesting saying that I heard countless times while growing up. It was, “ … that is an up with which I will not put …”

Translated, it means: that is not acceptable to me and I won’t tolerate it.

As you sit there and read this blog post, ask yourself what you are allowing into your life that is not acceptable.

For example, are you tolerating:

• Too much credit card debt and not enough income?

• Too much job and not enough fulfillment?

• Too many personal finance arguments and not enough collaboration?

You’re intelligent enough to know that one of the easiest steps to financial planning is to get an accurate picture of where your money goes. Simply keep track of your spending for a month. That’s right. Grab a notebook or create a spreadsheet and put in everything that you’ve spent money on. Be honest, don’t be ashamed and do it.

After you’ve created this thirty day personal finance ‘lookback’, ask yourself this question:

“Where can I find money so I can get out of debt, invest and build wealth?"

If your answer is, I’m already maximizing my investment opportunities, then congratulations!

But if your answer is, "I’m living paycheck to paycheck and I don’t have extra money", allow me to introduce you to some of your money ‘thieves’.

Picture yourself five years from now … what do you want your personal finance picture to look like?

How much money will you have saved? What will your children have learned from you about financial planning? Where will you and your spouse or significant other be on the path to financial freedom?

These are all wonderful questions to ponder.

As you’ve probably figured out by reading several of my previous Keyboard-Culture blog posts, I’m a big believer in being the architect of your own reality. That’s how I’ve been able to achieve many of the things I’m proud of today.

Let me share a technique that has been proven to help people reach incredible levels of success. I call it creating a prosperity picture™.

Just imagine yourself as a young child standing at the end of a diving board hanging over the deep end of a swimming pool. Your heart is thumping in your chest. You’re terrified because you’ve never been in water over your head.

You think the worst is going to happen and your body will suddenly plummet to the bottom as soon as you hit the water.

Your swimming instructor is standing at the side of the pool reassuring you and urging you to take the plunge.

You have a decision to make. Will you allow fear to prevent you from being successful at something new? Or will you listen to the ‘voice by the side of the pool’ and jump in feet first?

That is exactly the determination I had to make when I was seven years old. It taught me a valuable lesson which was:

Sometimes the best way to face and, ultimately, conquer our fear is to ‘get wet’.

As you are thinking about this story, ask yourself what is preventing you from ‘taking the plunge’ to financial freedom?

One of my best friends owns a gift store in Pennsylvania. He is a very successful businessman who, along with his wife, has built two profitable retail outlets from the ground up.

His current venture has less than 1,500 square feet of selling space, yet my friend has been able to send his children to expensive private schools, save at least fifteen percent of his income and pays off his credit card bills every month.

If you walked past my friend on the street, you wouldn’t think he ‘looked wealthy’, yet he has a net worth of a million dollars.

How did he achieve financial freedom at the ripe old age of fifty?

He didn’t inherit it. And he doesn’t wear his wealth on his wrist or park it in his garage.

Instead, he and his wife were fanatics about saving, and built their seven figure personal finance balance sheet with shrewd investments.

My friend realized from a very young age that the real price of an item isn’t just the out-of-pocket cost. It is the forgone wealth that money compounded over time can earn you.

Noted business author Michael LeBoeuf offers up five reasons why saving is your key to financial freedom. The following examples are based on an index fund investment averaging an 11 percent annual return:

Do you remember hearing the clerks at many of the mall stores offer you 10% off your total purchase by opening a department store credit card with them?

Those hard to resist offers were tempting, especially during the holiday rush. But you might be suffering from self-inflicted personal finance injury if you took advantage of too many of those in-store special promotions.

Here’s the problem …

Retailers love to tell you that you can save an extra 10 to 20 percent by opening a store card account. The problem is interest rates are typically very high for these credit cards. So the 25 dollar savings off the $250 leather jacket could quickly turn into a 40 dollar interest payment, if you carry the balance for even one month. And if you opened several of these store accounts, your credit score most certainly suffered as the result of multiple inquiries over a short period of time.