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When we were children, our responsibilities were nonexistent. The only thing that concerned us was when our next meal was and how much play time we could get away with before our parents made us do homework or go to bed.

Now, as adults, everything is different. We hold all of the responsibilities, and for many this includes being responsible for their own children. The financial responsibilities added to all of the other responsibilities might give us the feeling of being overwhelmed and not in control of our lives.

I have been faced with my own responsibilities, and since I don’t like the feeling that comes from not knowing what to do because there is too much to do, I have stumbled upon something that has helped me get a grip on everything. Maybe it’ll help you, too.

The answer is to systematize as much as possible of your life. Now, the word “system” might seem cold and remind us of industrial machinery, so feel free to substitute your own name for it, but I think the idea of systematization works and is the only way to manage a life in the 21st century.

Many of us have been using systems without realizing it. Getting Things Done is a system, person-to-person borrowing and lending with Lending Club is a system, and working with any exercise “program” is a system. According to the dictionary, a system is “a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole.” Doesn’t that describe your life? Which is a group of interacting and interrelated elements, or areas of life forming your complex life as a whole.

Now that we have determined that your life is like a system, it’ll be easier to break it down into different compartments, processes and responsibilities, which are much easier to work with than having to manage the entire life at once. Once we realize that we can work and manage our lives just like we can any system, and break it down into its most atomic elements, we’ll no longer be overwhelmed. Because now, to change anything, all that is required is one tweak here or another there.

We can look at our finances as a system within the bigger system of our lives. By looking at personal finance with logical thinking, we can break it down, analyze it and change it accordingly to get the results that we want. Because the goal is to retire wealthy, we’ll work on our financial system in this next series of posts to see how to achieve this goal.

There are support programs for everything in life. They are there for a reason, and the reason is that it is much easier to accomplish something when somebody is there with you who has gone through it, understands what you are going through and wants to you to pull through it and win.

In sports, support is readily available – from other people that are doing the same thing, from coaches and from trainers. In training for a half-marathon, the best support that I found effective was having a friend who was constantly there when I didn’t feel like showing up for training.

When training for your Money Marathon, it is important to use as much help as there is available, and there’s a lot of it available if you know where to look and what to look for. Here are several types of support that might be available to you:

1. Unbiased Professionals – These are the lawyers, accountants, advisors, SCORE counselors, and other veteran professionals from your field. For example, sometimes when you’re in a financial bind, you can call your accountant and ask for advice. Because of his or her unique position you may be able to get some general advice to keep you moving further.

2. Biased Professionals – There are many professionals out there, from bankers to brokers to insurance agents, who are willing to explain everything about their products. However, you should keep in mind that they are looking for your business and might not tell you the whole story. It’s best to approach them when you already know what you are looking for and only need them to fill in some details and start the ball rolling on what they are offering.

3. Fellow Marathoners – There are always people that are in a similar race to you who are local. It might help to ask around and research other people who are on the Money Marathon and would be interested in talking about saving, investing and related topics.

4. Online help – Since you are reading this on the web, it is safe for me to assume that you have access to the Internet on a regular basis. There are thousands of sites and groups dedicated to providing support and sharing information on savings tips, investing in stocks, real estate, p2p lending, cost cutting and pretty much anything else you can imagine. Start with a search on Google Groups and Google for forums such as “investing forum” or whichever topics interest you.

We here at Lending Club remind you: don’t go racing off on your Money Marathon alone. It is much easier to be running with somebody or even as a group and having fun along the way, while at the same time supporting each other and sharing information.

In any competition, there are always ways to measure competitors. You could look at the time it takes them to finish, the distance they compete in, and the level of difficulty, just to name a few. The world’s best athletes set their first priority as competing against themselves and trying to better what they scored before. Competing against other people will only make things worse, as there will always be somebody that appears who can do one thing or another just a little better than you can.

When I’m looking at any run, I don’t look at the top winners from previous years and try to beat them. I look at what I have done before and set a target of several percentage points better than I have done before. Setting benchmarks against other people will only frustrate and disappoint you, eventually leading to giving up or doing things you would later regret.

This can be called “the keeping up with the Joneses” phenomenon.

In your Money Marathon, you’ll want to avoid competing with the Joneses or anybody else for that matter, and only compete against yourself. There are many ways to do this. Look at the previous year. How much money did you save? How much did you invest? How much did you spend? How much did you earn? How much did you keep for yourself? How much time/energy did it take you to do all of the above?

Now, you can add 5% to 10% to those numbers for the next year. Aim to earn 10% more this year, to save 10% more than you did last year, to increase your savings rate by 10%, invest 10% more in P2P loans on Lending Club, and so forth.

If you are comfortable and you have previously achieved 10% growth across the board, you might aim for 15% or more improvement. But don’t try this the first time; you want to see how you initially compete against yourself first and then set bigger goals.

As long you as you improve performance from year to year, you will never lose. You will always be winning, while others will be chasing the next big thing. Stick to the basics of bettering your numbers each year and then you’ll look like one of the “Joneses” to other people.

When I first started exercising on a regular basis, there were many things that could throw me off of my training routine. It could be that the weather was wrong, or I forgot my clothes, or my friend canceled or a number of other reasons.

Then one day I decided to sit down and look at the entire process and see where the decisions were made and where things could go wrong. After this, I removed any point in the process where I could stumble. For instance, just in case a friend didn’t show up, I always brought my iPod. Or if I forgot my clothes, I made sure that I always had extras in the locker room. This way, my training became pretty much automatic.

The same can be applied to the Money Marathon.

1. Set up as many accounts as you need – Look for banks that make it really easy to open up as many accounts as you want. Some banks let you open up a new account online with a click of a button.

2. It’s proactive saving – You should take money and put it towards your savings before you have to worry about bills, your mortgage and other expenses.

3. Look beyond savings accounts – You can set up automatic transfers to your savings accounts. Most of investments companies have automatic withdraws and transfers also.

4. Automatically reinvest – Set up your accounts so that any interest or income you receive from investments and savings are automatically reinvested for you. This way you will start compounding your investments and they will grow at a faster rate.

5. Continue paying after paying off debt – If you are paying off your credit cards, here is a good strategy to save money. After you pay them off, keep on making the payment, but now redirect it towards your p2p lending account on Lending Club, with a small portion going towards your Fun Fund.

6. Predict unexpected costs – If you drive a used car, plan for having one major breakdown per year that’ll cost $500 and set aside the money. Set up an emergency account to automatically handle any kind of a cost that might otherwise throw you off your Money Marathon plan.

The goal of automating your Money Marathon is so that human nature or any emergency will not appear in the middle of it and stop you from crossing the finish line. How is your training progressing thus far?

Continuing with our Money Marathon series, today we’ll go over something that is more fun instead of more work.

When training for a race, it is essential to maintain at least 100% desire to go out there and train. One of the experts once said that if you ever feel yourself falling below this threshold you should immediately take a week off from training and just relax. This would allow you to reenergize and be ready again to train with full enthusiasm.

I’ve turned this around for the Money Marathon and call it the Fun Fund. Everybody should have a fun fund to make personal finances more fun and to have a way to reenergize your desire to continue with the Money Marathon.

What is a Fun Fund? A Fun Fund is an account you set up to hold money that you can do anything fun with and feel zero guilt about it. Do you want to buy that big toy? Do you want to take that weekend trip? Do you need that gizmo you wanted since childhood but never received?

You can use the Fun Fund money to do any of the above.

How do you set up a Fun Fund? You should set up the Fun Fund as a savings account with no restrictions. Look for an account that has no minimums, no limits on how many times you deposit or withdraw money, and lets you set up withdrawals from your other accounts. Once you have set up this account, write down the account number and the transfer number and keep it handy.

How and when do you contribute to your Fun Fund? As a general rule, you should add to the Fun Fund whenever you have any kind of windfall. Let me give you some examples:

• If you receive a 4% raise at work, take .5% and automatically redirect it to towards your Fun Fund and the rest to your investments account

• If you sell used stuff on Craigslist or eBay, and accept payments via PayPal, you can transfer this money into your Fun Fund

• If you find a way to cut 5% of your monthly costs, then redirect 4% to your investment accounts and 1% to your Fun Fund

• If you’re refunded $400 on your taxes, enter your Fun Fund account number to have the money sent straight there

Why set up a Fun Fund? Setting up a Fun Fund will allow you to be more enthusiastic about savings, investing, cutting costs and so forth, because you’ll be sending a portion of the proceeds to your Fun Fund. Another big reason to do this is that you will not destroy your budget by making impulse purchases, because you know that you can always buy something that you really want from your Fun Fund. Having this ability to reward yourself will help keep you on track with your money marathon training without derailing your efforts.