Our Indebtedness to the Past

I just watch a wonderful documentary narrated by Robert Redford called The Barnstormers which told and showed some great pictures of the history of how the game of tennis was changed from an amateur to a professional sport and how after that changed its popularity grew at an enormous rate.  I was particularly impressed at the end of this wonderful production when the great world champion Roger Federer said how much he and all the other pro tennis players of today owe a huge debt of gratitude to the players and key figures who brought about the big changes in tennis.

It got me to thinking about how all of us today owe a humongous debt of gratitude to so very may people of the past that did so many things to make the world a much better place and made our lives so much easier today.

Think about it … how would our lives be without those many people who over time collaborated with many others to bring us the automobile, the airplane, advanced medicine and medical procedures? We can cut open and fix a human brain and cure terrible diseases. And just look at the advances in technology.  From computers to cell phones, rockets to space probes, and on and on and on.  I couldn’t begin to build even a basic radio or TV, let alone figure out how to do open heart surgery.  And so much of these incredible advances have come in just the last 100 to 150 years!  Going back 150 years we didn’t have even a simple telephone or an internal combustion engine or even a simple light bulb.

We are so very indebted to so many people that have lived before us. We all could do with being a bit more grateful as well as taking a look at our own lives and seeing how and where we can put our efforts and talents to work to help others and make this wonderful world even better than we found it. Let’s not only do it for those around us now but for future generations.

There is also an extra benefit for you. I’ve seen studies that show that the more a person shows and has gratitude for others, the more it lifts that person’s level of satisfaction and happiness.

In my upcoming blog posts, I will attempt to acknowledge and give thanks to the people that have contributed to my life, both in my financial life, my personal life and in my self-development. Who do you have to thank for the wonderful advantages you have?

 

Risk is Not for Herds

Last week I talked about risk taking and how the willingness to take risk when it comes to investing is critical.  Those people who really want to attain Financial Freedom or FF need to look at themselves to determine their tolerance for risk.

As a real estate investor working towards achieving FF, it’s important to understand your own temperament, and your ability to assume that element of risk.  It’s important to know your limitations and not torment yourself with sleepless nights by taking unnecessary risks in trying to keep up with others whose capacity to assume risk might be much greater than yours.  This decision may slow you down on the road to FF, but what is FF without some enjoyment, comfort and happiness along the way?

Everyone has a level and a threshold for tolerance and excessive and unnecessary risk will only create anxiety and tension and may well shorten your life.  So take a hard look at yourself and measure how much risk are you willing to take that doesn’t make you worry you to the point of causing pain, anxiety and suffering in your life.

But keeping in mind our objective, achieving FF, it is important to remember that the greater the potential risk the greater the inherent reward will be. It is also almost impossible to avoid every risk at any one time in selecting an investment. In order to achieve and maintain high rates of return, which are critical for achieving total FF, one must be prepared both mentally and emotionally to incur a higher than average risk. So look hard at yourself and measure how much risk you can handle.

Remember that “eagles don’t fly together in flocks.”  So if you are going to make it big you can’t just go along with the flock or the herd.  If you earnestly desire to achieve FF today, you must learn to assemble all the facts, calculate the risks, be decisive, and then act accordingly.  Statistics and history prove that the majority of people fail to ever become FF because they do not have a specific plan. They are content and willing to wait patiently throughout their lifetime for Social Security or they are looking for that one super great investment or the lucky lottery number to suddenly become super rich.  Don’t follow those kinds of people. Work on your plan that will take you to total FF over a reasonable period of time and you will reach the level of Financial Freedom that you set as your goal.

Avoiding Your Own Loss Aversion

Statistics indicate that the majority of people are security conscious. This fact has been verified in a number of studies which concluded that many people people’s fear of failure is twice as great as their desire to succeed. Some of these studies also noted that in general, there will be up to 5 times as many people choosing a stable situation than people choosing an option with recognized risk. In order to achieve FF (Financial Freedom) you cannot be afraid to fail or take a risk.

Our tendency to avoid risk is known as loss aversion. It means a person believes that if they lose something, say $50, their level of unhappiness with that loss will be significantly greater than the potential increase in happiness if they gain $50.  Its apparent in our everyday lives. People will order the same thing off the menu every time simply because they are afraid they might not like what they order if they try something new, even when there is a good chance they could find a new favorite. Similarly, people put their money in low interest bearing savings accounts rather than put any of it some kind of investment account that will most likely make them significantly more in interest, primarily because there is some chance of loss. So it sits in the banks making next to nothing.

The problem may come down to a belief that one has no control over the outcome of their circumstances, be it their food or their investments. A class of Harvard graduates was asked what they believed were the necessary ingredients to become financially successful.  Their conclusion was summed up in two words, “Greed, and Luck.” I couldn’t disagree more.

If you consider the statistics I mentioned, you might very well conclude that only one out of five people will ever have FF. But that is just a statistic and has no bearing on what YOU will achieve. You can decide to take the risk and be that much closer to FF. Next week I will talk more about risk taking and what you as an investor need to understand about yourself.

The Risk Hurdle

Financial independence or Financial Freedom (let’s call it ‘FF’ for short) carries many connotations. Ask ten people what these terms mean to them and you will probably get ten different answers.  Many people today have dreams of becoming financially independent, however only a small percentage of the population actually achieves this envied position in life.

FF does not necessarily mean being rich or having a million-dollar bank account.  It simply means having enough money to do what you want to do, when you want to do it. It means you are free from money worries, so you can pursue the things that interest you most in life.  Having FF doesn’t necessarily mean retiring and giving up all your ambitions and goals in life to just grow old.  Actually, quite the opposite is true. It allows you the freedom to put more time and effort into your work or hobbies than ever before, but from a new perspective–that of personal fulfillment and enjoyment from doing work because you want to and not because you have to.  This is true Financial Freedom!

A rather fatalistic poet once wrote, “Life to many is but a constant struggle for a mere existence, with the assurance of losing it at the last.” This is a sobering thought when you consider the United States to be probably the wealthiest country and one of the most productive in the world.

FF does not come easy. Achieving it does require some sacrifices and an element of risk.  It’s human nature to avoid taking risks and who likes to make sacrifices? After all it’s easier to spend your earnings or maybe put some money away in a safe and insured account where your hard earned money is guaranteed a fixed, albeit a very low but stable return. This then, is the great paradox in achieving FF in today’s world.

It is virtually impossible to avoid all risks at one given time, because no matter what course is taken with investment dollars, there will always be a certain degree of risk involved. The real estate investor has to be prepared to take calculated risks and be willing to enter into the unknown, if they truly want to achieve FF.

To state the problem without at least suggesting an answer is unfair. Next week we’ll talk a bit more about this, about why we are averse to taking risks even when FF is our highest desire. Understanding why can be key to recognizing where your hesitation comes from and gives you a chance to conquer it!

Green Up Yourself and Grow Faster

I don’t know about where you live but here in Utah Spring has finally sprung!!  How wonderful it is to see everything turning green and growing.  For me, I find that Spring stimulates me to grow more green stuff. I am actually talking about growing more money but more than that, I want to grow myself in many parts of my life.

As I see more and more people out and about, running, jogging, working on their lawns and gardens or fixing their houses, it pushes me to set more goals for myself.  So my theme for this week is: Let’s get out there and make our lives blossom not only financially but in how we live our lives.

Let’s use this spring time to increase our activities and grow.  We can start by simply getting out there and making this happen.  Like driving through more neighborhoods looking for properties that need a face lift. Look for beat up properties, especially the ones that might have a for sale sign posted by owner or realtor. It might mean that a house just needs the front painted or a beat up lawn needs to be re-seeded and have a few great looking trees or flowers planted with a nice little white picket fence to surround it.

If the house is beat up and shabby plus it looks vacant, take the time to find out who the owner is because it’s quite likely that the owner is a motivated seller. I’m not saying that you should not use the internet to search for properties, because that is a very fast and efficient way to find properties, but sometimes it can be so super refreshing to get out of the office or house and drive around neighborhoods. You may find things you would not have found online as well.

Also, don’t forget to do a ton of asking around … you know, that thing called networking.  Do it in every circumstance you can think of. At parties or over lunch or at work, be sure to ask people if they know of any properties in their area that are for sale, especially houses or apartment buildings that look like they are in disrepair or have sellers that are anxious to dump the property.  You can leverage yourself, big time, by tapping into other people’s brains and connections.

And while you are at this ‘greening up your springtime’, be sure to set some personal goals for yourself, whether it be for better personal health or to be a better parent, friend or spouse.  Let’s all make this springtime thing a growing and greening of ourselves and those around us!!

Compounding People

“The most powerful principle I ever discovered was compound interest!” –Albert Einstein

I relayed that quote in my blog last week. It’s a pretty amazing that here’s this brilliant scientist and thinker saying compound interest was his most incredible discovery. The thing is, the incredible power of compounding applies to more than just money. Many smart people have figured out how to expand or compound themselves or their business. To do so, they compound people.

Many religions figured this out years ago. Realizing that if they encouraged followers to have a lot of children they could grow their religious cause very, very fast.  Do you realize that if you had 10 kids and each one of your kids had 10 kids and each of them had 10 kids and that continued on for 10 generations or about 250 years, that would produce an amazing, almost unbelievable 10 billion human beings! That’s 3 billion more people than are on the planet earth right now, and all those 10 billion came from just you and your partner. That probably would never happen but it does demonstrate that huge power of compounding.

But now here is real life and modern example of the power of people compounding. In February 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and 3 of his classmates at Harvard came up with the concept of what we all know now as Facebook, which they introduced only to Harvard students in the beginning.  Within 24 hours of launching Facebook they had over 1200 students register.  Two years later in September 2006 they opened it up to everyone 13 years and older who had valid email addresses and would you believe that by August 2008 they had over 100 million signed up?

It certainly didn’t stop there and by April 2009 their numbers totaled 200 million which doubled to 400 million less than a year later and at the end of 2014 that number hit an amazing 1.39 billion.  How did all that happen?

If you use Facebook at all you know that answer.  You contact 10 of your friends who make contact with 10 of their friends and that continues on and on again, just like having those 10 kids.  And Zuckerberg sure did cash in on that power of compounding of people.  He’s now the 4th richest person in the USA with a net worth of 44.6 billion dollars and growing.

In other words, if you can get a few people behind you who are willing to recruit a few more each who are also encouraged to bring in a few more, you could have a team or group or army to help build your dream. I would encourage all who read this, as well as myself, to strongly consider how we can expand our reach and/or our business by using the power of compounding with people.

Truly Smart Money

One of the smartest people in the entire world said this about money: “The most powerful principle I ever discovered was compound interest”.  Who said that? Can you believe it was none other than Albert Einstein?

I had forgotten that wonderful quote until the other day when I came across a booklet titled “Being Smart with your Money” written by my very dear friend and my money mentor of years ago, Paul J. Meyer.  Paul was a man who truly went from rags to riches.  As a young man, he was making a few bucks by picking fruit in California, but by using his brain and wisely using his little bit of money with leverage and compounding, he eventually amassed close to a half a billion-dollar fortune.  He was considered the pioneer of the self-improvement industry and also made tens of millions in real estate. I must give him credit for much of my own fortune.

My other mentor was Larry Rosenberg from Denver, Colorado. Both Paul and Larry basically gave me the same advice when it came to making millions with Einstein’s powerful discovery figuring into the equation as well, big time!  I was taught that, to begin with, a person who wants great wealth needs to pay himself first.  That is, no matter how much or how little money you make, set 5%, 10% or more aside and then (and this is critically important!) never, never, never spend it!  This money is not for buying nice things, it is for investing!

When you’ve built up enough from those savings, go out and invest it wisely.  Most of the time that wise investment is going to be in good ol’ real estate.  The big-time, huge key to this investment, however, is to keep at it, reinvesting the money you make on the first deal in another deal and then another deal after that and so on and so on. That is what compounding is all about.

Paul says this about what a $1,000 investment can grow into: “If that $1,000 were in an investment that brought 10% interest per year, in 73 years, I would have over a million dollars from my original $1,000 investment!  If you put another $1,000 dollars into the pot each year, it would take only 47 years to hit the million-dollar mark.” Keep in mind, that’s compounding at only 10%. As my previous blogs have demonstrated, you can do much better than that. I, and many others, have compounded money at 25%, 50%, and even 100% which turns $1,000 into many multi-millions.

Paul Meyer also gives this excellent advice in his “Being Smart with your Money” booklet: “Only when you develop confidence in a principle will you exert the effort required to change your behavior and put this principle into practice.” That means, you won’t be able to put these ideas to work for you until you take the time to look carefully at them and come to understand just how well you can do with this plan. That understanding should motivate you into acting on these principles. Paul has these great bits of super money advice to get you going as well:  “Set goals, live within your means, get on a budget and stay there, pay yourself first, put your money to work …” and, I would add, use lots of leverage and reinvest for that wonderful compounding effect.

Although Paul’s booklet is no longer in print, I do have a number of copies that I would be so happy to share. Simply write me here with your mailing address and I will send it to you. Paul’s wise words are too good to keep to myself! (Free offer for booklet is limited and will be given to those that respond first while supplies last)

Build Your Wealth with the Help of Inflation

If you’ve been reading the last couple posts, you may be asking, can I get more specifics on this 15% rate of return morphing into a huge 60% return? Well, let’s go over some specific examples.

First of all, let’s have a quick review of what I call natural inflation vs forced inflation. Natural inflation is what our general economy goes through over time. It lifts the price of everything especially assets that are in limited supply, like land and houses. Because of this natural inflation many people, if not most, find that owning their own home has increased their net worth by a huge amount without much effort on their part. The average price of an existing home in America increased in value by $56,200 dollars from 2012 to February 2016 or from a price of $154,600 to $210,800 on average. So, without much effort on the part of the home owner, homes increased in value by 36% over those 4 years or 8% per year compounded. Not a bad investment with so little effort made.

Now let’s take an example to demonstrate what so called ‘forced inflation’ can do even if you don’t count on natural inflation. Let’s say you bought that $154,600 house back in 2012, or even last week for that matter, and put 20 % down or $30,920 and then spent another $7,730 or 5% to fix it up. If you found a house that needed a good bit of fixing up plus you did the kind of improvements that really lifted the curb appeal and the overall value, you most likely would have lifted the value by 15% percent which would raise its market price to $177,900.

If you sell it at that price, you would pull $23,300 out of it plus your personal investment of $38,630 (for down payment and fix ups) as well. That 23,300 is 60% of your personal investment. Where else can you get that kind of return? And remember, if you keep up that kind of investment and return over 20 years you could turn less than $40k into a whopping $459 million! I’m pretty sure that’s well worth your efforts.

If you feel uncertain about what improvements will really increase your investment return, take a look around and see what houses in the area are bringing in top dollar and figure out what they have that the slow and low selling houses don’t Also, pick the brains of those people that are good at seeing what brings in high prices. Do your research to find where your efforts will be most heavily rewarded.

You should also research the home prices in your area before you buy. You can go online and search your city or state and see what the average or median price is for existing homes. Many sites will even tell you what the natural inflation has been in the past. If you get the right deal, that natural inflation might well add on another 8% to the 15% you added to the value of your investment. And let me tell you, those kinds of returns over the years will blow your mind even more!

 

SUPER MONEY MIRACLE

Ever wonder why many smart, hard working people end up making only $40,000, $50,000 or $60,000 a year while others who don’t seem to be any smarter or work any harder, make millions and even billions?  Years ago when I was advertising my first book, How to Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You, I used as a tag line, “Millionaires are not 100 times smarter than you, they just know the wealth formula.” So, if you are making $50,000 dollars a year, that very rich person, who is no smarter and is not working any harder than you, could be making $5 million.

On last week’s blog, I just touched on the basics of this formula. So if you read it, you may remember that I told you if you go out and buy a property that needs fixing up with a 20% down payment, putting another 5% into the fix up, you could improve the value of that property by 15%. That 15% would equal a 60% return on your actual invested dollars. But just how does that happen?

The million-dollar miracle part of that simple example, which I and others have done may times over, is a matter of leverage. You see, you leveraged your 25% (your 20% down plus that 5% to fix the place up) which allowed you to borrow 75% of the money so you could acquire the property. But your return is on the total value of the house. In other words the 15% increase in value of the property would equal a 60% return on your down plus fix up cost. Then by doing basically the same thing again on another property, you would be doing what is known as ‘compounding your return’.

Now here is the shocking and exciting part of this thing called compounding. Are you sitting down? If you keep getting a leveraged return of 60% on your investments, you can start with just $4,000 and build that into $48 million dollars in just 20 years! Now that’s what I believe is a super money miracle.

It really is that simple. Mind you, I didn’t say easy, I said “simple”. You really have to work your buns off to first find the deals and then fix them up to a point that increases their value. I’ve made a 60% return on many, many properties. I have also received thousands of letters, emails and phone calls from people who have told me that by following what I have been doing for years, they have seen, not just 60% returns, but even 100%, 200% and more.

However, you will no doubt find, as I did, that it usually is easier to get those fat returns on smaller properties.  As you move into larger and larger properties it does become more difficult but it is not impossible to get high returns on your dollar there either. I had one $2 million deal that made me more than a 100% return and even a new $27 million deal that returned more that 60% on my invested dollar.

I hope that this kind of huge potential will motivate you to keep working on deals, even the small ones you’ll have in the beginning. Remember those baby steps are necessary and very important. They show you what you can do. Those huge numbers I spoke of don’t happen overnight and that can be discouraging. Just focus on your success and build on it as you go and just like compounded money, your compounded efforts will also build into huge returns for you!

Control Your Wealth

Last week I ended my blog by talking about the huge importance of saving a minimum of 10% of your income as the first step to achieving total financial freedom and making that savings plan an absolute habit so you do it automatically every time.

But now what to do with that money? Where do you invest it for the best possible return with a reasonable low risk?

One rule that I’ve kept for life in investing is to never turn over total control of my money to someone else. As a stockbroker many years ago, I played in the market and usually lost money or just broke even. Part of the reason was that not only did I have no say or control over the company I bought into but I also had absolutely no control over the stock market and the direction it went.

But then I met a guy who became my wonderful and brilliant coach, Larry Rosenberg. He convinced me that improved rental real estate was the safest and most consistent way to build a fortune. Why? Because if you buy right and buy a property that needs improvement, you can reap huge returns and much of what happens with your investment is in your control.

First of all, you have the power of leverage you can apply when you have the right assets. In other words, if you fix up a property and raise its value by, say, 15% then that 15% improvement in value can turn your investment into a fat 60% on your money! That huge return is based on your choices. In this case, you would put a 20% down payment on it and keep fix up costs at about 5%. These are your decisions to make and therefore you have some control over how well you make out on the investment.

Even today, after 40 years of experience, I still say the best investment that allows you the most control, especially in today’s market with these very low interest rates, is real estate. I started with a small house on the wrong side of town and after I fixed if it didn’t sell right away I usually could rent it out so I had a tenant whose rent I was able to set so that it was paying off the mortgage, usually with a little left over for me. Then I moved on to larger and larger properties which I was able to work pretty much the same way and I still use this strategy today.

The other thing I do to keep control besides investing in the right property and making smart decisions to keep money flowing in, is to be careful with how I set up any partnerships. When I do deals and have a partner or two they always have their name on the deed showing the percentage interest they have in the property with everything spelled out clearly. If all investors insisted on doing it this way, it certainly would cut down dramatically on all the scams and Ponzi schemes. But it also means all the partners know what to expect and there are no out of control surprises later on.

So if you are smart and want to make those big bucks you’ll get out there, take and keep control of your investments, and keep focused on the great power of compounding and leveraging. Next week we’ll go into those subjects a bit more to keep you focused on your goal!

 

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