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I learned this technique from Brian Tracy. It applies to a lot of decisions that we have made in the past and it’s especially applicable to your Money Marathon. Zero-based thinking is not about changing your mind after you have made a decision that you’re having some second thoughts about. It’s about learning from the past and taking definite action.

The question that Brian Tracy asks is: Knowing what I now know, would I ever make this decision again?

The answer to this question is either yes or no. If yes, continue with that same decision and develop it further. If no, then you ask: how can I get out, and how fast?

When training for a race, you end up spending a lot of time on training or other activities that take you away from your normal daily life activities. To free up time for training, I had to ask this same question about many of the things that I was habitually giving time to. Knowing what I now know, would I ever start these habits again? After going through different areas of my life, I ended up cutting many things completely and reducing the time that I spend on others.

For your Money Marathon, you need to ask the same question to achieve the results that you have set for yourself. Look at every part of your life that involves money, finance or work and ask yourself: knowing what I now know; would I ever go into this again?

Here’s a sample of questions for you to consider:

• Knowing what I now know, would I make the investments that I’m invested in?

• Knowing what I now know, would I take this job? Or would I hold out for something that I enjoyed better?

• Knowing what I now know, would I save my money in the bank? Or would I go for bigger returns by lending out it with p2p lending?

• Knowing what I now know, would I continue leaving the thinking about my money to other people? Or would I become actively involved in my own personal finances?

If any of these questions are answered with “yes,” you should ask yourself, ”How I can opt out, and how fast?” This will free up many of your resources to let you focus on making better decisions and winning your Money Marathon.

In order to achieve any big goal, such as running a marathon, or winning at your Money Marathon, the actions have to be broken down into small steps – the smaller the steps the better. Breaking the goal down into daily action items is better than having weekly or monthly steps.

When I was training for a half marathon, I adopted and used a program that broke training down to a ½ hour per day during the initial weeks. The ½ hour is a unit that was easily measurable, easily achievable and binary. By binary I mean it has a yes/no answer to the question, “Was the task completed?”

You should do the same with your approach to your Money Marathon. Break it down to a unit that you can easily measure, achieve and report on. Initially you’ll need to focus on your daily habits. How much do you save per day? How much do you invest per day? How much do you spend? What are your daily food, transportation, housing and other costs? How much do you pay towards credit cards per day?

In race training, because of the daily focus, you can spot trouble areas right away. You can prevent serious injuries and find areas where you might be stuck. If you only focus on big goals and half a season goes by, and only then do you notice a trouble area, it might be too late to even compete in the race.

For your Money Marathon you can monitor your daily money health and adjust your finances accordingly. It is also easier to focus on saving and investing a very small amount per day than having to come up with a huge amount at the end of the month. On Lending Club, for example, you can add funds to your lender account daily, and you can reinvest P2P loan payment proceeds daily in $25 increments.

Thinking about your big goals and breaking them down into small chucks allows you to see how you can achieve a much bigger goal which otherwise might have seemed overwhelming.

Once you have figured out where you are starting from and what resources you have to work with, the next step is to figure out where you want to be. In real running races, you would pick your next race to be a stretch from what you have done before, and have bigger goals for the long term such as a marathon or even the Ironman competition. For your money race, you need to have small goals that will lead you to the ultimate Money Marathon.

There are several ways to do this.

The progressive way is to start small and increase your goals by small amounts each time. This might entail setting it as a goal to increase your income by 10% each year or to increase your savings from your current 5% to 10% by putting this amount into P2P loan portfolios on Lending Club, for example. With the progressive plan you take small incremental steps towards something bigger or better.

With the think from the future way, you start with the end in mind and work backwards. Your final Money Marathon might be to retire as a millionaire. So you set that as the goal, calculate how much time you have to work with between now and then, and breakdown how much you need to earn, save and invest between now and then to reach this goal.

In physical running it helps a lot to determine where you want to be. Do you want to be a casual runner that once in a while runs a charity race and otherwise just runs for fun and exercise? Or do you want to be racing the ultra marathons in a couple of years? Once this is determined it will make other choices and decisions easier, such as how much time to devote to this and what needs to be done.

For the Money Marathon, you need to look at your life and determine if you just want to approach the money race in a casual way, spending only a couple of hours a week on it, or if you are going for that ultra Money Marathon and will dedicate time to it every day. The choice is yours, as are the results that follow.

In my previous article, I talked about defining and setting goals when undertaking your Money Marathon. Another key aspect of preparing for your Money Marathon involves understanding your starting point.

When getting ready to train for a marathon it is wise advice to visit your doctor for a checkup and receive an assessment from a physical trainer to get a clear picture of your current state. You do not want to set yourself up for failure by signing up for a long and exhausting marathon when you are only in shape for a 5,000-meter run, or just a long walk. The same idea applies to your Money Marathon.

Before you set off racing to make millions, it is wise to find out your current financial health and fitness level. This will insure that you do not overwhelm yourself and totally quit on your goals. You do not want to be too overly optimistic, so it’s best to start off with conservative goals, and if they prove too easy you can increase them incrementally.

Money is a very tricky matter, and most people are not good at judging their spending and management accurately. That is why it is best to track your spending, saving, investing and other money decisions and habits in a written format or electronically, and not in your head.

Here is what you should track and review on a regular basis:

1. Personal Financial Statements – This includes your income/expenses and assets/liabilities worksheets. To start, you should download this personal financial statement (Excel work sheet) from SCORE. Just like you would constantly monitor your physical training times and activities, you should do the same with your financials and update them on a regular basis. Monthly is best.

2. Expense Tracking – Do you know where you are spending your money? Are you getting the best return on your investment? The only way to know for sure is to keep track of where your money goes and then look at what you can cut and where you can save. A service that can help you do this automatically is Mint.com.

Set small goals. If you cut your monthly bills by $150 and automatically put that money into a savings account or lend it out in p2p loan portfolios on Lending Club, you can go out and celebrate with a nice dinner. This will help you reinforce this type of behavior within yourself.

Listening to the radio and watching TV reports on the stock market, we often hear market and business reports. This news has become more of an entertainment than actual meaningful information. It can be mind-boggling to listen to everything that is going on in the financial world. Sometimes this overwhelming feeling sets in because of information overload and a lack of directed action.

When I was researching long distance training, I came across many different training strategies, running methodologies, eating plans, schedules and other information. I was lost and kept thinking that I might be doing something wrong. Then I talked to an experienced trainer and he told me, first, to pick a goal, such a half-marathon race, and then to look at all of the options that will support the goal. And third, which is the most important tip, stick with the plan until you feel like you have mastered it, and only
then work on tweaking it or changing the plan.

This same advice applies to financial training.

The first step to winning the Money Marathon is finding out what marathons are available and signing up for one. In money terms, this is a goal that you set and put a date on. As in running marathons, it doesn’t make sense to sign up for a 100-mile ultra marathon if you are only just starting out as a runner. And it doesn’t make sense to set a goal of making a million next year if you only made $50,000 this year.

Once you have a goal set, pick one strategy that you will work with to win your Money Marathon. For example, if you want to save $200 per month, open a p2p lending account on Lending Club and start investing your money at a higher rate than you can earn at the bank.

When you have defined your Money Marathon goal and an action plan, stick with it until you achieve your goal. Switching to different goals and plans will only frustrate you and keep you from achieving any consistent results that would lead you to set bigger Money Marathon goals going forward.