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!!

14 WAYS FOR HAPPINESS

Happiness is something that everyone wants but I’m sure you know of many people that are not happy. Most of us find ourselves happy for long and short periods at least here and there but we also have many times in our lives that we are not so happy and may even be downright depressed.  For years now I’ve kept a large card in my planner that I look at once in a while. It’s a list of “13 Ways for Happiness”.  I don’t remember where I got it but it’s pretty darn helpful, so I wanted to share it with my readers and I hope you make a copy of it and look at it often and share it with others.

13 WAYS FOR HAPPINESS

1. Buy Experience—it’s so much more satisfying and long lasting if you spend your money more on experience than buying stuff.
2. Get Quality sleep.
3. Take time to write down what you are grateful for and write to others sending your gratitude.
4. Surround yourself with happy people.
5. Tidy up and get organized.
6. Boost your endorphins through exercise and, remember, that if you smile, even if forced, it will boost your good brain chemicals.
7. Give back through volunteer work and random acts of kindness.
8. Learn a new skill.
9. Pay yourself first.
10. Go offline.
11. Be on time.
12. Be true to yourself.
13. Every day take note of 3 positive things in your life.

To this list I would also add a big one that seems to always help me, not only in my financial life but in boosting my happiness factor, and that is to set big goals and little goals and write them down complete with a due date on each. So make that 14 ways to gain more happiness!

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)

Making the Next Year Last Twice as Long

 

Is it just me or does it seem like every year time speeds up?  Today, April 8^th, is my 72nd birthday. It seems like my 71^st birthday was only about 3 or 4 months ago! So now what do most of us do on our birthday? Yep, we celebrate.  But do we actually rejoice that we are getting older and closer to the end of our life?  Or maybe we are celebrating that we survived one more year?

The question really is, though, is there a way to slow down the passage of time?  Before I get to my ideas on that, I must tell you that one year ago I said to my wife without thinking it through, “Ya know honey, I don’t think I want to have any more birthdays,” and she quickly and wisely said, “Oh babe, I really think you do want at least a few more!” Duh. What was I thinking?

I guess when we are celebrating our birthdays what we really are doing, or at least what we should be doing, is some thoughtful reviewing of what we’ve spent our time on and what we’ve accomplished in the past 12 months. It should be rather like what we do around New Year’s eve.  And then after our reviewing we should take time to do some planning and goal setting for the next 12 months.

As far as what I think will work to slow down the passage of time, I have noticed that when I work at becoming totally aware of the present moment, in the ‘right now’, it does seem to slow down the clock a bit.  This last year I kind of moved away from taking notice and enjoying the ‘right now’ moments and spent too much time thinking about what I am going to do in the future.  True we all need to take time to plan and set goals but after we’ve done that we really need to concentrate our efforts to do more of living, enjoying and rejoicing in the moment. And that is what I plan on doing a lot of now before the big 73 rolls around.  Yep I’m going to slow Father time down.  Let’s all try to do that and see if it will make the next 12 months more rewarding and satisfying and, just maybe, those 12 months will seem to take twice as long to travel though. Let’s all slow the next 8760 hours down by living in the great ‘right now’.

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!

 

Make America and You Greater

I think most of us are getting pretty feed up and bored with politics lately.  I mean every time you turn around you see or hear more news about the race for the White House and, of course, the face you see most often is that of Donald Trump.  I don’t know about you but I’ve had enough of that big bully, loud-mouthed Trump to last a life-time.  This know-it-all thinks he’s the smartest man in the world but his campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again”. Every time I see that baseball cap with those words on it, I think, “Wow … when did America stop being great?”

I’ve traveled the world, visiting 84 different countries as well as living two years in the middle east and two years in England and I can say, without hesitation, that we have a great country and it’s constantly getting greater. I fear that might not hold true if Trump became president, however.

Ours truly is a land of great freedom and opportunity where you can start off being dirt poor and still become a millionaire. It happened in the 1930’s and in the 1970’s and it’s still happening today. So how does a person take advantage of our freedom’s and opportunities?

Continuing on last week’s post about the power of the brain and how we can program and teach our brain with enough repetition to act automatically without conscious thought, here’s the beginning key to achieving financial greatness in our great country. Step one is to start training your brain to calculate out at least 10% of every single dollar you earn and then you set it aside and never spend it and I mean NEVER. This is investment money, not spending money. So just keep doing that over and over again until it is such an automatic habit that you don’t even have to consciously think about it.

If you have followed me very long you know what comes next.  You take those savings after months or years and wisely invest them.  And that, my friends, is the beginning of a sure fire way to become wealthy in one of the greatest countries in the world, if not the greatest.

Next week I’ll lay out the best investments to make in today’s economy and the way to make those investments. You get started on the savings part and I’ll get you prepared for investing in the great USA.

 

The Brain and Robot Tennis

 

Sometime ago I read a book about The Secret Lives of the Brain which was actually the subtitle of the great book entitled Incognito by David Eagleman. The part of the book that really grabbed my attention was what he said about the part of the brain that you can teach exactly how to hit a tennis ball almost perfectly every time without even thinking about it.

Being an avid tennis fan and sometimes tournament player myself, and with my own experience pretty much backing up and proving what he was saying, he had my undivided attention. Many times while playing, I’ve surprised myself when I am running full speed to get to a tennis ball coming at me at 65 or 75 miles an hour, then to arrive at the exact right spot and hit the ball back to the place I was aiming. Wow, I’m thinking … how did I ever do that?

Eagleman, a neuroscientist, makes the case that tennis shots are made almost entirely without using the conscious mind. Of course, to get to the point of great non-thinking tennis shots, anyone who wants to be that good needs to use the other part of the brain–the conscious part that is the part that thinks through what goals a person wants to achieve. So with the conscious brain a tennis champion wannabe sets the goals to fulfill their dream tennis performance.

The author of this book is not just talking about these two parts of the brain being used to be a great tennis player either. You can use both parts of the brain to become very good in many areas of our lives, whether it’s to become a great public speaker, great writer of books, making a fortune, or creating super health for yourself and others. It will work for whatever you really want to do and be.

But that’s just the first part, because after you use the conscious part of your mind to set your goals, you then need to practice and drill over and over again. If you do that for many, many hours over a good length of time you will begin to program your unconscious mind so eventually it will perform for you without your thinking about it. It will be automatic. It might take thousands of hours but studies have shown that anyone that spends 10,000 hours doing one thing they most likely will become one of the best in the world at that one thing.

Under the chapter subheading “The Robot that Won Wimbledon”, David Eagleman concludes that, “The competitors at Wimbledon are rapid, efficient machines that play tennis shockingly well. They can track a ball traveling ninety miles per hour, move toward it rapidly, and orient a small surface to intersect its trajectory. And these professional tennis players do almost none of this consciously. In exactly the same way that you read letters on a page or change lanes, they rely entirely on their unconscious machinery. They are, for all practical purposes, robots. Indeed, when Ilie Nastase lost the Wimbledon final in 1976, he sullenly said of his winning opponent, Bjorn Borg, ‘He’s a robot from outer space.’”

Today I would say the same thing about Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. But remember folks these two parts of our brain can be used for many more things than tennis! Let’s all work on that.

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