Must beat inflation: A dollar now is not worth a dollar in 30 years. This is because inflation. Inflation averages about 4% a year. If your money earns less than 4% a year, you are actually loosing money in the long run. The problem is that most saving accounts earn less than 4%. This brings up an interesting idea. Your money might not be save in the bank.

Solid Retirement Plan with a bit of luck: Unexpected expenses hurt more now than later. This is because of the money that is spent now does not earn intrest. The interesting fact is at some point the money you put into an retirement investment does not compare to the intrest that it makes. For a quick reference if you are able to put away $500 a month into an investment that earns 9-10% within 10 years the intrest is more than your monthly comtribution.

The easiest way to make more money is to get promoted. Going into the office and demanding a promotion is not the way to go. There are some small changes that can be made to make yourself more promotable.

1) Get to work an hour earlier. -This simple change will show to the boss that you are motivated. The best thing you can do is beat your boss into work.

2)Ask for a performance review and constant feedback. -This allows you to some feedback before the annual or semi-annual pay increases. If you are able to improve your work, you have a better argument for when you ask for a raise or promotion. This also shows that you care how you are performing without the instant gratification of a salary increase.

3)Volunteer for presentations -This will work for two reasons. It is a known fact that public speaking is a major fear for most people. If you can conquer this fear you can climb the corporate ladder. The other reason this works is because you recieve face time with the "higher ups". If you are recognized by inportant people in the company, you can climb the corporate ladder more easily.

The best piece of advice is to not spend any more money and save. Consider this, every time you spend money you become poorer and any time you save money you become richer. Lets say you have an anual income of $40,000. This means that after taxes you might have $28,000 to save and spend on house, food, ect. After you get a raise, lets say 5%, you will now have an extra $1,400 after taxes. If you remain on your original budget while you were living on $40,000 a year, now you have an extra $1,400 a year into savings and investments. This money adds up quickly. Just think you could eventually make $75,000 a year and only be living off of $40,000 a year. Retirement may only be a few years away.

Money markets(MM) offer a higher percent yield than a standard saving account and in some cases infinatly higher than some checking accounts. The average savings earns about 1% a year and some checking accounts don't earn any interest whatsoever.

There are some rules that come with a money market. Most only allow for a limited number of withdraws each month. With the limited number of withdraws, 2 or so can be made from a MM check. This can be easily bypassed with a little budgeting. I personally have a 3 account system. The savings account is the intersection point. The direct deposit from work goes into the saving account which allows me infinite withdraws a month. The money market account is used for "long term saving". I have to physically transfer from my saving to the MM account. This allows me to have access to the money I need. This works because only unexpected expenses will come from the money market. The gamble is that there will not be more than 5 unexpected expenses a month. The third account is the checking. Because this account earns the least amount of interest, I keep only the minimum amount of money in that account.

Prosper is an online lending and borrowing service. If you sign up as a lender you can lend money to other people and in return you will recieve intrest on your loan.

With any oportunity there is risk. Prosper tries to reduce the risk as much as possible. They allow the lenders to access important informatons about the borrowers like Debt to income ratio (DTI) and their credit score. They also recommend that you only lend $50 to each borrower to spread out the risk.

A new feature they have is the portfolio plan. This is probably the best idea prosper has come up with. You define the risk you are willing to take and the money you wish to lend and prosper goes ahead and bids on loans for you.

The reason a hobby is important is because after a full time job any extra work must be enjoyable otherwise motivation may be a factor. Some ideas that have been given to me include:

1)Weekend handyman -Work around the house can be laborious. Which means other will be willing to pay for some odd jobs to get done. Having the know how to fix or repair small think around the house can bring in a fair amount of extra cash. Just because the neighbor does not know he/she does not need any work done you can convince them to reconsider.

quick tip: offer to paint; interior or exterior -Painting can increase the value of the home. If you ask for only a small percentage of the increased value of the house, it seems like everyone wins.

2)Real estate -It is not to say that over the course of a year or so you can utilize real estate to become richer than Donald Trump. If you do have some extra money, buying a fixer-upper may be the way to go. As long as there is not too much work to be done, you can work on weekends and sell the house for a profit.

warning: Any type of real estate can be more work than it seems. As long as you plan to be above budget and behind schedule there will be no surprises.

3)Get into stock trading -Again this can be risky and if you do not know what you are doing, you will porbably end up loosing money. However, if you have some stock experience this can be an easy way to get some extra money into savings.

This is because the future is hard to predict. If one day you are working and the next you are not, it is hard to rebound from a loss in an investment. Keeping 10-20 hours a week working builds a safety net that can be relied on.

Just Remember-redundancy is not a bad thing in a retirement plan

Once you believe you have all the answers, you are leaving yourself open. Pick up a financial book from time to time and see if you can learn anything new. Educations is the most powerful weapon in the quest for financial freedom.

Below are some good books I have found that are easily bought from Amazon.com. Do yourself a favor take a peak and make sure your financial plan is complete.