One of the most difficult aspects of getting your finances in order is finding the motivation to do so. Such a task can seem a massive endeavor to undertake. And even if you jump-start yourself into action, it can be daunting to maintain focus.

Here are some basic steps you can take to help motivate yourself to move from merely thinking about improving your finances to actually taking action to improve them.

[b1. Write a list[/b]. While this may seem obvious, it's often the hardest step to take. Thinking about all of the different tasks you need to do can paralyze you into doing nothing at all. If you can write down all of the things you need to do, then you have a list from which to begin tackling the tasks, and it will become easier to motivate yourself to work toward them.

2. Set financial goals. Once you have made your list of the financial tasks you need to accomplish, spend some time turning these into financial goals. One of the most important points when setting goals is to make them specific and to place a time limit on them. For example, "I want to have $25,000 in my retirement account within five years" is a much

While there is no perfect place, the better countries are easy to choose: they must have banking secrecy, no withholding taxes for foreigners, or if there is a withholding tax, it must be easily avoided as it is in Austria or Switzerland by means of a "fiduciary account". A fiduciary account is simply an account established for you at another bank by your own bank, and kept in the bank's name.

Also important , is political stability, an unblemished history of honest dealings with foreign investors, and a long tradition of no government confiscation of private assets. There must be no information exchange treaties or other arrangements with your home country and none on the horizon. Obviously the bankers of your banking country should be fluent in your language. Fortunately, English is the universal language of international banking, business and the airways as well. So unless you bank strictly locally, any major international or offshore bank will have officers that you can communicate with in English.

Outside of Europe, it is probably best to deal only with a branch of a major bank whose home base is not your home country. Your offshore bank preferably has no branches in your home country that could be pressured to force them to

Over the years, banking secrecy has been seriously eroded, even in tradional banking havens like Switzerland, where banks are now required to be aware of the benificial owners of secret accounts, and under pressure from the U.S., almost 900 court ordered breaches of banking confidentiality laws have taken place since 1991. Banks in 'off-shore' tax havens like the Bahamas, Luxembourg, Cayman Islands etc have also been pressured to disclose the identity of their clients. Should a local court in a particular jurisdiction refuse outside pressure for information where the alledged crime is tax evasion, authorities in several countries may apply to that court with allegations of drug involvement in order to gain information on which of their citizens might have undeclared holdings.

Now that Switzerland has lost its tradition as the ultimate confidential tax haven, all is not lost. Its neighbour, Austria has something to offer those who seek confidentiality from a bank account. In fact the Austrian banking laws, where disclosure of client details to a third party by banking officials is an imprisonable offence, are likely the most confidential in Europe if not the world.

Often called 'Europe's best kept banking Secret' the Austrian Sparbuch is as old as banking itself. The Sparbuch, literally translated is 'savings book', and accounts can be held in either German Deuchmarks or Austrian schillings. The schilling is closely pegged to the German Mark and is therefore a very stable currancy, not