There is no way to prosperity. Prosperity is the way.

Dr. Wayne Dyer

My mission at REThink Real Estate begins with provoking the mindset shift that real estate is not just a house, not just an investment, but perhaps the most impactful tool most of us have for lifestyle design. But the rethink is just the first step of the mission. The actual end goal is to raise the prosperity level experienced by women all over the country, by helping them begin to think of real estate as a tool for prosperity and designing the lives they want.

The only way to go from the rethink, the intention and the awakening to living better is action. As Dr. Dyer’s quote implies, prosperity is not an end goal.  It’s a set of lifelong practices, values and mindsets. It starts in your head and/or your heart, but it must translate into your actions in your relationship with money, your self-talk, your relationships with those around you, your finances, your work and your real estate decision-making.

To nurture our collective path, as a community of smart, prosperous women, from the rethink to action, in 2010, I’m initiating a series of prosperity projects.

These projects are all designed to cultivate efficient, conscious, action in the right direction, and to shatter obstacles (mental or otherwise). Some of you simply don’t know what to do or are always looking for new tools and practices. Many, many others, though have experienced stuckness in the past in the prosperity realm of your life. {I certainly relate, as it’s an area in which my own path has been complicated and, at times, severely troubled. } So every Prosperity Project contains not only the substantive money and real estate tasks to complete, but also the mindset and energy tools to help you act and execute.

For general guidelines and tools for executing all the Prosperity Projects we take on this year, visit the REThink Real Estate Guide to Setting Deliverables You’ll Actually Execute.

And, use the REThink Real Estate Guide to Getting Unstuck, whether you’re stuck on on your largest life endeavors or on the most minute, procrastination-inducing task or project.

And for our first Prosperity Project, Fiscal Health Day, click here.

The inaugural REThink Real Estate Prosperity Project is a Fiscal Health Day, a concept I borrowed from New York Times money columnist Ron Lieber. Inspired by his high school habit of taking a mental health day, Lieber decided to take one day – 10 hours, during the week, when all your service providers, financial planners, utilities, etc. are open – and devote the entire day to taking on his “never-ending, ever-multiplying list of undone money tasks.”  Lieber’s rule was no interruptions allowed, except to check email.

If you’re a smart, modern chick, undoubtedly you have a list like this, too. I know I do:

• my cell phone bill seems chronically high, despite my unlimited minutes,
• I notice a $5.99 or $9.99 subscription fee here or there on my checking statements that I don’t use anymore, have meant to cancel for months, but never quite have the time, and
• My cable bill?!? I’d rather not discuss it.

And that’s not even accounting for the front-end attention you need to give your 2010 money resolutions/deliverables. If you want to buy a house, sell your house and move up, remodel or even invest in real estate, these journeys must start at the very beginning, which is creating order.  If your goals are more around prosperity than real estate per se, like demanding and creating your true value in the marketplace, your most critical prerequisite is still order.

Your Fiscal Health Day is the time to create that order and sort yourself and your finances out on an action plan to manifest whatever your personal prosperity aims for this year may be.

Now to logistics. During Lieber’s fiscal health day, he did the following:

• Used Merrill Lynch’s handy (and free) Financial Life Organizer to put all his crucial financial facts in one spot for easy emergency access,
• Sorted out health insurance forms and prepped for reimbursement
• Hired a nanny tax service to manage his nanny’s payroll taxes, and set up her payroll direct deposits from his bank to hers (for free)
• Spoke with several estate planners to kickstart the process
• Got a new, lower-interest credit card and a new, higher-interest savings account
• Saved about $650/year on cheaper phone and internet services and wedding ring insurance.

Then, at the end of the day, he gathered up all his about-to-expire gift cards and went on a sock shopping spree at Barney’s.

The REThink Real Estate version of Fiscal Health day includes attending to all of these items, plus some real estate-specific tasks, including (but certainly not limited to):

1. Any task on the smart women 2010 deliverables lists that is relevant to your situation {especially applying for property tax reduction due to reduced value, owners}
2. Setting up a digital bookkeeping system and monthly spending plan, eliminating financial paper clutter (past and future, by signing up for digital statements), setting up autopays and so forth – if this loses you, I beg you to consider taking a teleclass with Bari Tessler at Conscious Bookkeeping
3. Getting a clear sense for your current money snapshot (basic income vs. expenses, using recent bank and credit card statements), including financial obligations or issues you want to bring to completion, and enacting a timeline for completing them
4. Obtaining referrals and appointments with a realtor/mortgage broker to put in place an action plan to buy, sell, refinance or invest, if that’s your gig – including setting up savings and debt reduction targets and starting the savings accounts/autopay arrangements to do that
5. Working with your mortgage broker to do some mortgage planning (see if you’d save enough with a refi to current interest rates to make it worthwhile)
6. Writing out your Vision of Home – what do you want your life to look like after your next real estate move, and moving toward a clear action plan (even if it’s 5 years long) to manifest that
7. Researching your entrepreneurial dreams and putting concrete follow-up action steps on the calendar for manifesting them
8. If you want to buy this year – check savings statements, traded asset account statements and credit card statements to see if there have been any significant changes that might impact your purchasing power since you first got qualified for your mortgage
9. If you bought a home or had a short sale or foreclosure in 2009: get referrals to a CPA or other professional tax preparer – your neighborhood storefront tax prep franchise is no longer sufficient. Also, find your HUD-1 settlement statement and have it ready for them (email your agent for a copy if you can’t find it or don’t know what that is).

Lieber’s a writer, so he has a lot of control over his time. You might need to plan for a personal day off work to do this, or do it on a weekend and schedule any follow-up calls for the following weekday. (Although most banks and credit card companies are now open at least on Saturday.)  The goal is for this not to be a one-off item – once you invest a full day (or two, if you’re a businesswoman) into creating order up front, you might need to plan to attend to these things on an ongoing basis for an hour or so once every week and then once a quarter for a few hours. I’m making this full day (two for me) every year an annual ritual.

Note: I recommend you plan a post-Fiscal Health Day treat for yourself, like:

• a scrumptious massage
• a carrot cupcake with cream cheese buttercream frosting,
• some Trader Joe’s olive bread with balsamic and EVOO,
• shoes, or
• anything else that floats your boat, but by all means,
• not socks, like Lieber did.

I’ve calendared my first of two Fiscal Health Days (one personal, one business) this month for January 8^th – I’m putting it out there, so I’ll have to report back and you guys can keep me accountable for that.

When are you calendaring yours? Please share your experience, your tips, your stumbling blocks and – most importantly -  your treat ideas!

Oh – and if you struggle at all with this, use the REThink Real Estate Guide to Getting Unstuck.