Month: April 2015

Read Books

You need to get yourself into the millionaire mindset and that means you need to change the way you think about money. Read the classics and expand your thinking. The must-read books are: The Richest Man in Babylon (Clason), Think and Grow Rich (Hill), Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Kiyosaki), The Millionaire Next Door (Stanley), and How to Win Friends & Influence People (Carnegie).

Learn the Value of Money and Ways to Save Money

Advertising is a big business. But the goal of advertisers is to get you to spend money – even money you don’t have. For every item you spend, figure out its true cost: how many hours will you have to work in order to pay for that? Use this question to decide if this is something you really need or that you want badly enough to work that hard for. If the answer is no, then put the money back in your wallet.

Master the Basics of Personal Finance

Knowing how to manage your money – even if you don’t have that much to track – is the best way to start your journey to wealth and financial independence. Use the Internet to find tutorials on budgeting, find calculators to determine loan amounts after interest, or to find the best prices and rates on credit cards, travel, or your next household purchase.

Be a Savvy Shopper

Look for sales, buy at warehouses and if you can find a good deal wait a bit and find an even better deal. You don’t need to be an early adopter for all the new technology. Waiting even six months will net better prices and deals.

Wants and Needs are Different

Once you learn the difference between what you want and what you need, spending decisions will become much easier. The more you can put off your wants, the more money you will have to save or invest – money that will be the vehicle to reach your first millions.

Educate Yourself on the Types of Investments

Which type of investments appeal to you? Are you fascinated by the stock market? Are you more interested in buying real estate? How about starting your own business? Whatever you passion, learn everything you can about the way your chosen field works. Since this will be the method you use to catapult your life, read and study the industries and learn how to succeed.

Surround Yourself with Like-Minded People

There is nothing more energizing than several people who think similarly about how they want to live, their goals and their financial dreams. Spend time with people who also want to succeed, who also have a plan for creating wealth and are determined to accept only the best.

Develop a Philosophy

You need to have your own mantra, something that you tell yourself over and over that will help you stay focused on your goal to become a millionaire. Make it short and simple, easy to memorize and then while you’re driving or completing mundane tasks, you can meditate on it.

Avoid What Everyone Else is Doing

Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it is right for you. Be aware of what lots of people latch onto and look for ways that you can profit on that popularity, but if it’s not for you, don’t be afraid to pass.

Be a Doer

Don’t be afraid to act, to get your feet wet, or to fail. You won’t learn unless you have some failures along the way.

Pay yourself first

If you are working an 8-5 job or providing contracted consulting services, the advice is the same: pay yourself first. Whenever you receive a paycheck, the first 10 percent goes right into your long-term investment fund. Make this your highest priority from your first job and you will set yourself up for a wealthy future. Learn how to invest and make this account your launching pad.

Work a steady job, but find other work that pays better

Your 8-5 job is what is going to pay the bills for quite awhile during your life. Yet your after-hours and before-hours of the day job is when you can be working on other streams of income that may actually be more lucrative but probably not steady streams for many years. Keep your day job while you cultivate these extra streams of income until they can sufficiently support you and keep growing your investment accounts or give you enough seed money for other projects.

Make more than you spend. Many people are living paycheck to paycheck

If this is you, there are a few things you can do: cut down your living expenses so that you spend less each month, or find a job where you are making more money than you are now. For many people, however, it will never matter how much they make, they will always spend everything – if now more – than they earn. But if you genuinely are living below your means but there still isn’t enough to pay the basic living expenses, then you should start looking to increase your skills so that you can earn more.

Look for opportunities

Do you see a need in your community that is not being filled? When you see these types of opportunities, see if you can develop a business plan that would not only fill that need, but make you (and others) wealthy. Keep your eyes open but better yet, be open to the possibilities that are all around you.

Your attitude makes a difference

What sort of attitude do you project? Would people describe you as happy? Content? Energetic? If you are a drain to spend time with because your outlook on life and money wears people down, your chances for success are going to be limited. If you’re going to take on the challenge of creating and building wealth, then do it because you enjoy the process, you’re happy to work hard and you’re excited to see what each new day holds for you.

The richest people in the world all have some qualities in common and these tips are some of the bedrock habits they all subscribe to either consciously or subconsciously. If you want to join the ranks of the millionaires and billionaires of today, you will want to evaluate their habits and model your life accordingly. Sometimes, it’s as easy as changing your attitude and your outlook

I forget exactly where I hear about Harv Ekers book The Secrets of a Millionaire Mind and it doesn’t matter, I’m just glad I did get a hold of it because it changed my life. What I loved about the book; it’s an easy read. It’s practical. What I liked about it even more was a free ticket to the Millionaire Mind Seminar.

I’ve taken quite a few seminars but I must say that Harv Ekers Millionaire Mind Intensive blew my mind. The energy in the room and the teaching techniques were amazing. Harv states that for us to become wealthy and financially free we must change our money blueprint. We all grew up with certain beliefs around wealth and money.

Whatever our parents, family members and teachers thought about money and wealth has subconsciously become our belief. Beliefs like “it takes money to make money”, or “money doesn’t grow on trees” or “rich people are greedy and corrupt” or “money is evil” and whatever else.

As long as we have these beliefs inside of us we won’t be able to change our financial situation even if we really want to or trying hard to do so. The change must come from the inside, from our mind. There are a lot of exercises in the book that help us understand our money beliefs and ways to install a new belief system around wealth and money. I realized that the more we buy into the news, the more we talk about “recession”, the more we find an excuse to justify WHY we are not financially free. It’s not our fault. It’s the economy. Or; We were never rich; it’s never going to happen. I was meant to be poor or middle class.

Everybody has different goals, not everyone wants to become a multi millionaire but let’s face it, we all would like to have more of the green stuff.

The more we have, the more we can give and contribute to the world. We all deserve it and actually owe it to ourselves as well as to our friends and family.

Secret 1: The #1 Reason People Don’t Succeed

People tend to not finish what they start. What’s your chance of winning a race if you don’t cross the finish line? No matter what you did prior to the finish line, you can’t win the race if you don’t cross that line. Completing what you start is the key to success, and frankly I think people don’t give it enough credit.

And guess what? When you repeatedly fail to finish what you’ve started, this behavior becomes a HABIT.

Secret 2: Millionaires make it a Habit

Integrity. This simply means that you have built trust with yourself. You know that you will do what you say you are going to do.

If you make commitments to yourself that you don’t keep, you train your mind to not do what you say you’re going to do… which means you’re training yourself to FAIL, and to fail habitually. To be a success, you must build a habit of integrity… In other words you have to do what you say you’re going to do

Secret 3: Fail to plan and you plan to Fail

Rule # 1. Know your objective!

In the very beginning, before you take any action, take some time and get really clear what your top priority goal is. Don’t listen to the urgencies in your life… try to listen to your inner voice and figure out what is most important. Don’t become busy running around losing track of where you are going. CLARITY leads to POWER.

Rule #2: You must have a plan

Now that you know what your goal is, you need to develop a plan of how to get there…you must have a sense of where to focus your energy and in what order to begin taking action. Can you get help with all of this? Yes. Getting people to support you and work together as a team. You can formulate a much better plan using the knowledge and skills of a whole team of people than you can by yourself. You have to do a plan, concrete and written, and start with something.

Rule #3: Know Your Obstacles Up Front

What challenges or obstacles may come up on the way to reaching your goal? If you don’t know plan for these, then when they come up – and, believe me, they will – they could take you out. Knowing your obstacles ahead of time will help you manage them and find away to overcome them rather than throw you off track, stop you and make you fail.

Rule #4: Start Small

There’s another secret that is so simple that it’s often overlooked… That secret is the importance of “starting small” when setting goals and building your plan for success…if you can’t handle the small things, how will you be able to handle the bigger things? Take one step at a time.

Rule #5: Get In The Game and Make A Decision

You need to know how to get in the game and start taking action… be willing to mess up a bit and correct along the way. You must realize that it’s never a straight shot to your goal… the universe doesn’t work like that.

Rule #6: Don’t Give Up

You have to make a commitment to yourself to not give up on your dreams. Sometimes the going may get rough, and you may need to change course… but persistence will ultimately bring you to your goal.

If you are willing to do what’s hard, life will be easy. But if you are only willing to do what’s easy, life will be very, very hard.

Secret 4: How to Conquer Procrastination, Regardless What Your Mood Is

Procrastination is one of those cases where your own mind takes you out. You say you’re going to do something and your habitual mind takes you out of the game. What does the mind (or Lower Self) always say?

“I don’t feel like it.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Maybe later.”

Where do these thoughts come from? Generally, they’re based on some type of fear… or, frankly, maybe you’re just being plain old lazy. Do some self-talk. Tell your mind, thanks for sharing, I know we are not in the mood but we said we would do it, so let’s get it done. Once you start, it will be easy. But you have to get yourself started. Set up a specific time frame for the task.

Not in the mood” is not present moment; in the present moment you’ll be in the mood for whatever you are doing, because present moment is Higher Self and with Higher Self there’s no “I don’t feel like it.” So, you get into action and start no matter what your mind is saying!

Secret 5: How to Increase Your Productivity by 400% (The 80/20 Rule)

People throw out their big dreams either because they don’t identify what their big dream is, or if they have, then they’re “too busy” to take action.

“As soon as I get this done…” That’s the habitual mind doing its thing… and next week it’s the same words.

To get beyond this, you must understand and be able to apply the 80/20 Rule. It goes like this: 20% of what you do gets you 80% of your results.

This is sometimes referred to as the Pareto principle.

This applies to your finances, business, happiness and relationships. Only 20% of your actions will give you 80%… so the goal is to figure out what those 20% activities are and focus on them and stop focusing on the other 80% that are getting you nowhere.

By simply applying this principle, you are able to put four times the time and energy into the things that get you all of your results… This means that you can get a 400% increase in your results!

Why would you spend 80% of your time doing things that don’t get you any results?

Bottom line: Decide what you want, determine what stops you from doing it and then focus your efforts on doing the 20% THAT GIVES you 80% of your results.

Secret 6: Keep Your Energy High

To be successful and achieve your goals, you’ve got to be able to generate and manage massive amounts of energy

Physical Energy

Your physical energy can be managed by making sure you’re in decent physical condition.

Another major factor in raising your physical energy is managing your breath. You need to breathe. Breathe, breathe, breathe, and breathe.

Our lungs have the capacity to hold 7 pints of oxygen, but most people only have 1 pint of oxygen in their lungs at any given moment… They’re simply not taking deep breaths.

Our life force is energy and breath is the connection to our life force. (You can live weeks without eating, but only minutes without breathing.)

Mental and Emotional Energy

Your energy level is very strongly affected by your mental and emotional state. It can quickly be depleted by upsets, anger, disappointments, sadness, boredom, long meetings or mental fatigue from working on a tough problem.

It irks my imagination that in a world blessed with streams of wealth; many are still living below poverty line. Every human being who reaches the age of understanding of the purpose of money wishes for it. Wishing will not bring riches. But desiring riches with a state of mind that becomes an obsession, then planning definite ways and means to acquire riches, and backing those plans with persistence which does not recognize failure, will bring riches.

Before you desire anything, you have to dream. Dreaming on course is the first step to acquiring riches. Our dreams should first and foremost be realistic. We should dream great dreams because if you want to be a hero, think heroic thoughts.

Dreaming alone will not fetch us the needed riches. Rather it will propel our longing for it. As such, a burning desire should be the next step. Great men like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, William Jefferson Clinton, Bill Gates, etc had a burning desire to reach the zenith of their ambition. For instance, when Bill Clinton shook hands with president John Fitzerald Kennedy in 1962, he had the burning desire to become a president. He immediately saw Kennedy as a role model and had the ambition. It should be noted that he (Clinton) did not wish to be a president but desired to be one. History has it that Mr. Clinton was one of the greatest presidents of the United States of A.

Had it been Mr. Clinton had only desired, his dreams would have been short-lived. Rather he had faith in his ambition. He believed completely in his ability to get what he dreamed and desired. This faith is a necessity in times of hurdles and set-backs. “Quitters are never winners. And winners never quit”. The surest route to this is never take no for an answer. Keep on keeping on. I once bought a dictionary for myself and blotted out the word “impossible” to me there is nothing like impossible. If I am confronted with a great task, I ask myself how can this be done? Rather than saying it can never be done. One is a question and the other is a statement. One propels your brain into action while the other disrupts your thought flow. We should believe in our ability between the wealthiest and the average is their believe patterns.

The last but not the least of these principles is determined actions. Our desire to be wealthy or powerful cannot be complete without a determined action. We should have a sense of focus and work towards our goals. Our actions must be enthusiastic. We must act with passion and determination towards our worthy goal. Note that if we follow these principles accordingly, the sky will be our starting point.

This article can be summed up with this dictum that “whatever we vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass”.

Desire a life that will keep you wealthier, happier and stronger.

A few weeks ago, I was looking over previous years’ tax returns with a view to preparing for this year’s taxes (I expect a refund). Those numbers never seemed that big and significant before but now, with a more modest income, it finally hit me how much money I once brought home each week. You see, I have been lamenting a recent change in career which resulted in a significant pay cut, further resulting in significant debt and a serious lifestyle change. This realization, combined with my new reserved lifestyle, was actually quite upsetting. It meant that I spent it all. It meant that, while I had arguably been considered “rich”, I had no wealth. This meant that I had let ten years of great opportunity to establish wealth pass by in favour of designer clothes, a big house, a couple of Mercedes’, a BMW, extravagant vacations, big parties, plasma TVs, and the list goes on. I had, in fact, blown almost $500,000 in four short years.

Now, I do take some comfort in my new ability to live conservatively and happily. My assets are minimal, with the bulk having been sold to cover my debts, and I’m learning new ways to save money from day-to-day and, more importantly, I am overcoming my desires to “display” apparent wealth through material items. In fact, I have two new mantras – “less is more” and “quality over quantity”. The problem with money, however, like food with an over-eater, is that you still need to make it, spend it and deal with it on a daily basis. And, while that old adage may ring true that money does not buy happiness, it does certainly help deflect misery. An alcoholic can, at least, cut his or her addiction completely from their body.

Wealth vs. Riches

To learn to deal with money, I have been trying to accept the different between being rich and being wealthy. Being rich is easy – it means having the means to acquire whatever you want, when you want it. It ends there. I was no longer rich and that has ended too. Being wealthy, on the other hand, incorporates a whole lot more.

True wealth, first of all, is a culmination of daily love, respect, good living, laughter, joy, contentment and, yes, money. And each one of these areas is a separate component of wealth and complicated in their own unique ways. For example, do you both love and feel loved each day? Are you respected by others and do you show others respect?

Money is no different. It much be treated severally and seriously. The purpose of money is to provide the means to acquire the necessities of life, to alleviate the stress of providing for ourselves and our family, and to create a financial foundation which can be passed along from generation to generation. Does your money help to alleviate your worries? Are you successfully working towards this end? Money does not cure all ills, but it plays an important role in creating an environment in which your mind can turn to practical solutions for them. Therefore, money does play an essential role in acquiring true wealth.

So how can a population, so visibly concerned with outlandish displays of their riches, turn their mind to turning their money into a real element of wealth?

Steps to Creating Wealth

Remember my mantras, “less is more” and “quality over quantity?” It sounds really silly and, probably self-fulfilling anyhow, but once I thought long and hard about what I had done to myself…I become quite frightened of slipping back into old habits. What I didn’t like about my old lifestyle had become a question I thought of daily. Mostly, I just felt bogged down by my possessions, physically, emotionally and financially. Here are the steps I have taken or am taking to creating wealth:

• Minimize – keep consumer debt to a minimum or non-existent; think long and hard about what you need (vs. what you want) to make you happy; look for alternative options (repair vs. replace); treat your inanimate possessions with care and value them to get the most return from them;
• Learn the difference between need and want – (for example, do you really need a new car or are you looking for reasons to get one because you want one?)
• Spend extra money on quality – quality items that are taken care of can last a significantly long time.
• Pay cash for everything – consumer credit has, unfortunately, earned a rightful place in our society, but learning when to utilize it responsibility is not a skill that most people have honed. Keep consumer debt limited to necessary and big-ticket items – most obviously a house and unexpected repairs – and keep it clear and available for unanticipated expenses or those for which you have not had adequate time to prepare for – such as the funeral of a loved one, a law suit, etc.
• Spend less than you earn – this is a really difficult concept to understand. Most people, and until recently myself included, do not fully appreciate how much they rely on their credit as part of their income. The end result is that many people actually suffer a large deficit in spending each month – charge a few new outfits ($500), weekly dinners out ($400), a movie for two ($50), order pizza ($50) – that’s one thousand dollars you need to bring home each month on top of your regular bills and expenses. That is a substantial amount of disposable income on items that may or may not be part of your budget.
• Keep track of money – but don’t become too obsessed. Money comes and goes, so get used to it. But, you can do your part to keep it from waving good bye.
• Set goals – life is in the details and, by no means, should some luxuries and experiences be forfeited but understanding the ones that you value personally goes a long way. Set a goal for these items such as an amount, a date and a regimen to reaching your goal. A soupcon of sacrifice makes the rewards even sweeter.
• Pay on time – getting on track and staying on track sometimes means sacrifice, but saves an enormous amount of money in late fees and interest. Once you have established that you can stay on track, it will no longer involve sacrifice.
• Give – give generously of your time, talents and money. This is important because people remember your generosity and return it one day.
• Learn to ask for help and learn to graciously accept it. Other people have time and talent to share – from physically demanding or how-to jobs around the house to teaching you to stick to a budget.
• Learn things for yourself – helping yourself is the most rewarding return on investment there is so learn some things, be open minded about financial planning and budgeting and look for ways to make your knowledge save you money.

Focus on being wealthy and wise, of developing a total wealth package for your life. Typical financial advice is only one portion of true wealth accumulation that must be considered in conjunction with healthy values and attitudes towards yourself, others and the role money plays in contributing towards total wealth. Ignoring money matters is a poor decision but keep money in perspective and you will be rewarded with peace of mind, better health and greater security.

When I changed jobs a few years back, I also took a very large pay cut. Having earned a very good income for many years, I soon found myself swimming in debt and devoid of savings as I had not been able to adjust my lifestyle to my new lower income. After learning several ways to curb my spending, I still had the daunting task of dealing with the debt. I found I could live within my means and service my debts, but I could not reduce them.

First, I approached the bank. The bank is not your enemy if you are upfront with them. I owned my house (with a reasonable mortgage) and had been able to keep my credit rating in good shape so I was not too surprised when they were happy to help me. I applied for a new low interest credit card to consolidate all previous cards. It was cheaper than a standard consolidation loan and it still afforded me the flexibility to pay more or just the minimum each month. I took this one step further. My banker estimated that I was saving about $300 per month in interest, so I increased my mortgage payment by $100 each month, set up retirement savings plan contribution of $100 per month and set up an automatic payment against the new credit card of $100 per month.

Then the banker changed my mortgage payments from monthly to every two weeks to coincide with payday. This has the effect of making one whole extra mortgage payment each year which is applied directly to the principal. Because I had only a few years left on my mortgage, these extra measures meant I could expect to own my house free and clear within two years.

My banker looked at my insurance portfolio. I had my mortgage balance insured at a cost of $35.00 per month. A few phone calls to some outside insurance agents and I discovered that I could get a better and bigger policy for $35.00 per month elsewhere that even had a small savings component.

Next, at my banker’s prompting, I looked at my personal assets. As it turned out, she was right. I had quite an inventory of stuff that was of value but not particularly important to me. I arranged with some friends and family to consolidate items and we hired an auctioneer, instead of a garage sale, to get rid of it. This little exercise was not only fun and cleansing but earned me $3300 after paying the auctioneer. This money was used to purchase a good used car and my leased car was returned, saving me $479 per month. I allocated $150 per month some of this savings for incidental car repairs to the used car and still had an extra $329.

I directed $200 into a new account for vacations and holiday shopping and the balance of $129 was reapplied back to my credit card balance. At the end of the year, I had paid off about half of my original credit card debt of $16,000, and reduced the remaining life of my mortgage to 2 years. Surprisingly, my cheap used Toyota Corolla did not cost me anything in repairs and at the end of the year I decided to apply the money I had stashed away against the credit card debt instead.

By the end of the following year, I was debt free, including my mortgage. The best part about this learning experience was that if aside from the auction proceeds, this was all done by reviewing my current spending and reallocating everything in a more appropriate manner.

Do not be afraid to let your banker review your financial situation. Another set of eyes can see things completely different and if you are open minded enough to let them help, you can be pleasantly surprised.

If you are a teen, here are a few ways too save some cash so you can have a lot of money when you are in your 20s.

• First get a job and put half of it in a bank account. Do not touch this money. You might want nice things but it will be worth it when you get older.
• Keep putting money away when you get paid and when you turn 18, do not get any credit cards and I wouldn’t even get a loan to get a car. Trust me, the banks will screw you over with payments.
• Wait till you are 21 too get loans. If you start saving $100 a week when you are 17 and save and do not touch your money by the time you are 21 you will have over 16,000 dollars and you will be able to buy a lot of things and if you haven’t gone to college and you want to, than you will be able to afford it.
• So if you save when you are 16 or 15 and you do 100 dollars a week, than by the time you are 21 you could have enough money to buy a small business or a franchise and by the time you are 40 you might be able to retire.
• You never know, so try to start saving now and think about how good the future could be for you.