Attending a weekend Mastermind meeting with Gerry Robert, Publisher of Black Card Books

As I write this, I am sitting in the Dallas Fort Worth Airport on a Monday morning, flying home from a weekend workshop that I attended. Prior to what might be considered a personal development “awakening” I never would have spent money to fly to a different city and spend a weekend at a hotel for back-to-back days, trying to learn something new. Often, these workshops involve being “upsold” to another more expensive product, which in the past for me would have been further justification for me not to have gone.

I don’t feel that way now.

In one of the budgeting models that I have learned, we are encouraged to live on 60% of our net income. That breakdown is as follows:

10% — Give to Charity

10% — Passive Investments

10% — Active Investments

10% — Personal Development and Education

60% — What you have left to live on

Most of us would go into financial shock, if we weren’t already living to a financial model like this. How can you go from living on 100% of your income (hopefully not more) to living on 60%? There’s no question it is a difficult transition. But here’s the surprising secret. If you follow a model like the one above, you will see your income go up.

That may seem counter intuitive, but it will go up. It makes sense that if you start investing passively and actively, then you would increase your net worth, but what about the 10% on personal development? Does it really pay back more than the investment over time?

So far, my experience is proving this to be true.

Just for fun, ask yourself, what is your current annual income, or what did you report as income on your taxes last year? Take 10% of that number and ask yourself, “If I were to spend that money on personal development, how would I do that?” Say you made $50,000 last year. That means you would plan on spending $5,000 on personal development. If you were to pay air fare and accommodations for a remote weekend workshop, you could go through that with just a couple of workshops, or perhaps even stretch it to four or more.

On the other hand, you could look for local options and stretch it much further. Just using it to buy books or audio programs that you listen to on your commute or during exercise will stretch it tremendously. All of these are different ways to start spending 10% on personal development.

A quick internet search for available seminars turned up this site, which provides information. If you haven’t done this, I encourage you to do it.

Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, “If you empty your wallet into your head, no one can take it from you.”

If you are not in the practice of continuous learning, I encourage you to start allocating a portion of your resources, (not just your money, but your time and brain power too), to learning a new skill, or getting better at a current skill.

It is very likely that the 10% invested into personal development could pay a much greater dividend than the 20% allocated directly for investments.

Take this 10-question survey to see how you’re doing on your personal development.

Keep learning!