Archive for the 'Wealth Building' Category

Investing In Your Interests

When you first start investing, it’s a wise decision to first make a plan on exactly what type of investment you want to start.

Since there are a lot of investments you could make, there’s no point in putting your money into an investment that you really don’t care about in the least bit. Of course you probably won’t be in love with the investments, but you should at least be a tiny bit interested.

You should first figure out exactly what type of investment you’d like to make. Do you want to invest in a business? If so, online or offline? Or would you rather invest in something that you have to do pretty much no work for, such as a money manager?

Some of the options for investing in offline business include candy vending, franchises, brick-and-mortar business (such as a clothing shop),  and buying existing businesses.

Online business investments can include things such as becoming an affiliate, building an information blog or website, wholesaling,  starting an eBay business (which could also be considered offline), or even a mix of a few of them. For example my website is an information website, but I make money when other people click through my affiliate links as well.

For some reason some people have a problem with website owners making money by promoting products, but I’m not exactly sure why. I’m always glad to help someone make an extra buck.

There are other ways to invest that could be considered the “traditional” ways, such as investing in Real Estate, Stocks, Forex, Mutual Funds, or Tax Liens.

No matter what you’d like to invest in, you need to make sure that you have some type of interest in it. You’re going to be spending considerable amounts of time, especially in the beginning, in order to do well from these investments. Therefore you need to have the interest so you stay on top of your game and keep studying on how to make even more money.

Some are more passive than others, but I would suggest investing in something you care about more than something that’s purely passive.

Why Should You Be Interested In Your Investments? 

If you aren’t interested at all in your investments, chances are that you’re going to either make almost no money or very little. You won’t put the needed research into it, stay on top of your financial statement, or really care what happens.

For example lets take 2 people:

Person A is a person who doesn’t want anything to do with their investments. They would rather have someone else such as a mutual fund company handle all their money for them. They start off with $10,000 to invest and invest it into a mutual fund. Since an average mutual fund returns about 8% per year, they receive $800 for the full year in returns. They did no work, but only made $800.

Person B also has $10,000 but they decide to go a different route. They first decide to purchase Site Build It for only $300 since they love talking about a subject they are interested in (maybe a hobby?) and want to share their knowledge. They work a few hours per week putting the website together, and by the end of the first year they have 100 pages on the website, making them about $400/month in income. Let’s pretend that throughout the whole year they’ve averaged $200/month, since they make nothing in the beginning and more towards the end.

Since they still have $9700 left to invest, they decide to put it into a stock account. They spend $200 and spend 2 months learning about stocks and how to make the right picks, so by the time they actually start using that money they’re down to $9500. Now since they’re knowledgeable and are managing their own money, they get a return of 20% for the year.

Breakdown At The End Of Year 1

Person A - $10,800 (8% return)

Person B - $11,400 from stocks.  Another $2,400 from the website, and a continuing $400/month from the website which rises almost every month. Total - $13,800 (21% return)

Now that may not seem like much, but lets add that up for the next 10 years.

Person A - $22.196.40

Person B - If he invests that $400 per month and continues to average 20% per year returns on his stocks, his total will be an astonishing $ 221,993.84! It’s amazing how compound interest works isn’t it?

Of course an average person might not be able to see those types of returns, but if you’re focused on achieving financial independence and are willing to stick with something your interested in learning about, it’s definitely possible.

If you’re just starting out investing, please invest in something you’re interested in already or wouldn’t mind learning about. It’s always better to manage your own money rather than letting another person do it.

As of right now, I’m investing in my website ( I write about tea, which I love), and I just started to invest in candy vending, which I will officially start when I get back from vacation on the 31st. I’m also studying stocks which will be my next investment probably towards the end of the summer, and real estate will most likely follow that.

These are all areas of investing that I’m interested in and love to study because I know that for every new detail I study, it’s a chance to make me a better return.

Invest in something you’re interested in, and be willing to do a small amount of work in order to create yourself much higher returns on your money. It might only take a few small hours a week, but it’s well worth it!

As a little side note, I’m leaving for Myrtle Beach with my girlfriend and her family tomorrow so I won’t be able to post until I get back. I’ll probably post again around the first of July. Enjoy the next week!



Financial Independence Series #4 - How To Get Started

Now that you’ve learned about what financial independence actually is, why you need to achieve it, and how to track it, you are probably wondering how you can actually get started. This is the concluding article to our 4 part series of financial independence.

Taking 1 Step Can Make You Financially Independent

In order to begin your road to financial independence, you first need to get started by actually doing something. It doesn’t matter if it’s a great investment, something that hardly gives you any monthly return, or if it turns out to be a flop. By getting started it’s like standing on top of the mountain and letting the snowball start to roll down for the first time.

Here are a few suggestions on how to get started:

  1. Real Estate - Real estate is one of the most stable and lucrative investment opportunities in the world. It has made more people wealthy than any other investment. All you need is a little knowledge, a few bucks in the bank (or none if you have a lot of knowledge), and some determination to get started.
  2. Build a Business - Whether you would like to run an online or offline business, it doesn’t matter. Just get something started that only takes up a few hours of your time each week so it doesn’t interfere with your current job. As it grows and exceeds your job income, you can replace the job with your business.
  3. Start an Information Website - This is possibly one of the best things you can possibly do. It doesn’t take very much money to get started and you can start today. When I started my first website, www.crazyfortea.com, I was a total beginner with absolutely no website experience. However, the company I went through eliminated all my fears and now I’m making a substantial income.The company I went through is Site Build It (Click On That Link For A Brief Tour Of How It Works). They provide every resource you can possibly need to build a money-making website. If you can type in English, you can own a website! The best part is, it’s almost unbelievable how cheap it is to get started. After only about 6 months of having the website online, I can now pay off the yearly fee in 1 month’s income. That means 11 months of free income for me for writing about something I love!If you have any kind of passion or hobby, I strongly suggest you try out Site Build It to start your quest towards financial independence.
  4. Invest In Stocks/Forex - Although investing in something like a mutual fund won’t give you a great monthly income, it’s still better than nothing. I personally invest in higher risk/higher rewards and have a trading adviser who takes his cut at the end of each month. I just started it this week so I won’t give a recommendation, but if you sign up for the RSS Feed or put your e-mail address in at the top of the page you can find out whether this trading adviser is worth the money.
  5. Invest In Other People - If you have a lot of money and don’t know where to put it, consider being someone who invests in others. For example, if I wanted to borrow $100,000 for a real estate transaction but didn’t want to go through a bank, I could get it from what are called “hard-money lenders”. These people lend their money out at high interest rates (generally 10-20%) and the other investor pays them that money back. If they default on the loans, you would pick up the property they owned in most cases (consult your attorney on how to properly set this up) - so it’s a win-win either way!
  6. Prosper - www.prosper.com is an online community in which you lend people other money, very similar to the example above. However, this is done through the Prosper company and it involves you loaning other people money for things they need, such as money to pay off loans, adding additions on to their houses, etc. I suggest only investing in those who are in groups because if the person defaults, the group will pay your loan back to you. I don’t believe this happens if they aren’t in a group.
  7. Invest In Yourself - Although it might not seem like it, investing in yourself can be one of the smartest things you’ll ever do. If you are still stuck in the mindset of “saving is the best thing to do” I recommend you read the books by Robert Kiyosaki. You can also read books or listen to audiotapes on real estate, trading stocks or Forex, or any other investing opportunity which will increase your likelihood of achieving financial independence.

Investing in any of those 7 examples is a great way to amplify the money you currently own. If you have a high risk tolerance, you might be better off investing in only 1 or 2 which can bring higher returns. If you don’t like risk, don’t feel as if you’re cheating yourself by diversifying - at least you’re doing something!

As I mentioned earlier, I personally believe starting a website is one of the easiest and best ways to start gaining passive monthly income. It takes some hard work, but the faster you grow your site the easier the work will get because of the amazing magic of momentum. To see why Site Build It is so amazing, go to this link - www.quicktour.sitesell.com

No matter what your preferences are, the important thing is that you start today.

Your perfect life awaits,

Jeremy

Read The Rest Of The Series:

Series #1 - What Is Financial Independence?

Series #2 - Why You Need To Be Financially Independent

Series #3 - Tracking Financial Independence



How To Track Your Financial Independence: Series #3

After reading my first post and second post on the basics of financial independence and why you need to achieve it, you should have a good grasp on the concept.

You’ve probably realized that becoming financially independent is something that needs to be a necessity in your life, and hopefully you’ve already started to take action in achieving it!

In this post I’m going to be talking about how to track your financial independence so you can keep focused and work on improving your status every single month.

Tracking Your Financial Independence

Without keeping track of your expenses, income, and passive income, you are going to have a very hard time keeping focused and improving your wealth each month.

Here are 2 different suggestions that you might try to keep track of your financial independence:

1) Go to www.richdad.com and look around for the “cashflow 101 game sheets”. They are made for the game but are perfect for a beginner in keeping track of expenses and income.

I’ve been using these since I started my road to financial independence, and they are a great motivator. I simply put my name at the top, and the previous month (for example, today I just filled out exactly what happened in April).

You can put down what you’re making at your job each month, how much passive income (if any) you currently receive, and what’s in your bank account, stock account, mutual fund, CD’s, etc.

You also fill in all your monthly expenses, including things like credit cards, mortgage payments, what you spend on your children, car payment, school loan, etc.

Then you add everything together and subtract your expenses from your total income to see how much monthly cashflow you have. However don’t mistake monthly cashflow with passive income, because it’s not the same thing.

Becoming financially independent means that your passive income is higher than expenses, not that your monthly cashflow is higher than expenses.

For a beginner this is a great exercise to do each month, but I would recommend doing it with an excel spreadsheet, which is described below.

2. You can also do this using an excel sheet if you don’t feel like spending $10 or so for the cashflow sheets.

Open up a spreadsheet and put the current month in bold letters at the top.

Make 3 different columns - Expenses, Income, and Passive Income.

Then simply go down the rows and list each expense and how much it’s costing you each month.

Do the same for income and how much it’s bringing in each month.

Then again the same for passive income.

At the bottom add up your income and passive income and subtract it from your expenses to see how you stand financially.

You can also divide your passive income by your expenses to see exactly how far along you are. For example, my passive income for last month ended up being $345, and my expenses were $655. Therefore last month I ended up being 52.6% financially independent.

Comparing that to March, my passive income was $286 and my expenses were $706. By reviewing my expenses and figuring out ways to cut them down, I ended up reducing them by $51 per month. Last month I was only 40.5% financially independent so I made major progress in the month of April.

No matter which method you use, please make sure you start today. It’s the first of the month so it’s a perfect time, no excuses. By reviewing your financial status each day and thinking creatively on how to reduce your expenses or increase your passive income, you will gain momentum very quickly in becoming financially independent.

If you have any questions on how to set up an excel sheet, feel free to make a comment and ask. Sometimes they’re a little tricky to figure out so you might need some help.

Your perfect life awaits,

Jeremy

The Rest Of This Series