Friday, May 30, 2008

Kill 2 Birds With One Stone

If you want to get yourself pumped and motivated and take care of that $20 burning a hole in your pocket, do I have a deal for you.

At the homepage at www.financialindependenceuniversity.com I have a CD for sale by Anthony Robbins which chronicles Tony's rise to the top. When Tony was young, he was living in a 400 square foot apartment with no money and 38 pounds overweight. A year later, Tony lived in a castle. How did he do it? Listen to the CD sold above. If Tony's story doesn't motivate you I don't know what will.

Go From Rags to Riches

The first thing you want to do, in order to go from rags to riches is set goals.
Set reachable short term goals in every area of your life. Then, set your definite major purpose. Your definite major purpose will probably be to have one or two million dollars in assets.
Take action on your goals every single day. As Dave Ramsey puts it, get “Gazelle intense”, as Tony Robbins puts it, “total focused intensity”.
The next thing to do is live as far below your means as you can. Quit financing things. Do not waste any money. Make a budget. Quit smoking. Tell your mooch buddies to take a hike.
Next, work your heart out. Take on extra hours and extra responsibility. Be prompt. Don’t be a pain. Don’t be a slacker.
Now after you get used to all the stuff mentioned above, start studying, reading, and listening to audio CDs. You need to study small business management, investments, including stocks and real estate, business law, and anything else that will help you in your career or in managing passive assets. Get a library card and enroll in classes if you can swing it. Why should you do this? Because if/when the cash starts to come in, you need to know how to put it to work for you in passive businesses and investments. Don’t do bad deals or get ripped off and lose your hard earned money.
Think about your dreams. Your dreams have to be semi real. What would you love to do as a career or business? Learn all you can about whatever it may be. If you have an idea that could become a real business, then research and test your ideas. If your venture fails, you will still have gained knowledge and experience which you can use over and over. The real losers never take action!
Next, open a Roth IRA or the type of retirement account that is offered in your country. Do not worry if you cannot maximize the contributions at first. Save what you can in your Roth and also start to build an emergency fund. Financial councilor/talk show host Dave Ramsey calls emergency funds “Murphy Repellant”, an excellent analogy. Don’t let Murphy back in your life.
After your little nest egg reaches sufficient size, find an excellent broker. Never touch your principle!
Another thing to do is to improve your peer group. Ditch the go nowhere crowd. Let people laugh at you. You may well be kept down by a bad peer group.
Consider forming a mastermind alliance.
Don’t make excuses. Take responsibility for your life and take action every day. If you need help don’t be afraid to ask for it.
Be different from the masses. Take charge of your life now and get started. Many people never succeed because the afraid to start small.

Go From Rags to Riches

This is an article I wrote a couple years ago. I plan to revise it soon.

If you are stuck in the rat race and getting kicked around by life, I ay be able to help you! There just may be hope.
The first thing is you have to set goals. Set goals that are worthwhile, realistic, but something you must really stretch yourself for. Set short term and long term goals. Set health goals, debt reduction and savings goals. Set any goal you need to set and write the goals down. Take a hard look at what you have to do to improve yourself enough to reach your goal. Be honest with yourself.
The second thing to do is to turn your drive time into learning time and turn idle time into learning or working time. Search for ideas you can apply to your situation. Take notes on your reading. Read about successful people and start to do some of what they do. Having good role models is important.
The third thing to do is to start a long term savings plan. Complement this plan by selling unwanted items and collectibles and then build an emergency fund, and/or invest. Make a detailed budget and figure out what you can save each payday. Don’t put 100% of your spare funds into your IRA. Have an emergency fund. Your IRA cannot be your emergency fund. If your job does not pay a livable wage, start search for a new or second job or start a small business on the side.
One of the most obvious things to do is to try to get a raise. Resolve to always be punctual. Try to improve your appearance. Don’t turn into a neurotic or pathological nut trying to catapult herself to CEO of the business. Just do a good job. Get a little bit better every day.
After saving up some money, having some goals under your belt and having a better reference from your employer, start learning new skills. Learn skills that will help you find your new job. You may want to learn computer programs, sales, Spanish, accounting, get the nuts and bolts of a skill and add the skills to your resume. Focus on something lucrative and focus on a field that is growing.
Be persistent. Don’t let one setback or a series of setbacks stop you! Keep plugging away. Don’t get frustrated or bent out of shape. Good luck!
David K Drews runs http://www.independentwealth.us/ a web site that will help you get out of the rat race. http://www.independentwealth.us/ offers a fairly large online community where you can make contacts and find motivation.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Drews

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Things You Can Do Right Now to Achieve Success

There is a lot of talk today about "the Secret" which has led to a great discussion about success in general. People often don't realize that "the Secret" was just meant as an introduction to the "Law of Attraction" and as such left out a lot of information. Many people are trying to fill in that gap. Here are some success principles that I have found useful in my life. Hopefully they will be helpful to you too.
1) Never complain, or blame anything. When you complain you are making yourself into a victim. You are effectively saying that you are helpless and can't do anything about the situation. You are also focusing on what is wrong with your life. Since, as many authors have pointed out "what you focus on expands", this means that you are actually attracting bad situations into your life because you are focusing on what you don't like. You are also convincing yourself that you are powerless to do anything about it. That's not a good situation to be in. When you blame someone or something for what has happened to you, you are again making yourself into a powerless victim. You give any control over your situation to the person or thing you are blaming. That's not a good place to be in either. You need to know that you can change your future and then take responsibility for your life.
2) Know who you are. You probably think you already know who you are, but do you know what you really want to achieve in life. Most people don't know what they really want. I didn't. Likewise, most people couldn't tell you all their strengths and weaknesses. Life happens to people, and they're so busy coping with it that they never really sit down and ask themselves what they really want, and what personal resources they can utilize in order to get it. If you don't know what you want, it will be pretty difficult for you to achieve it. To achieve anything, you must have a clear goal. If you don't know where you are going, you probably won't arrive, and even if you do you won't know it.
3) Believe in yourself. The single biggest thing that prevents people from being successful is fear. They think they won't be able to achieve success, or if they do that they won't be able to handle it. They give up before they even get started. As several teachers have pointed out, however, we really are children of God, and we can achieve anything we want to. It is our fearful, doubting, ego that gets in our way, making us see ourselves as being "poor me". It is our ego that reminds us of all the times in the past that we have failed (exaggerating our failures), and forgets or trivializes all the times that we have succeeded. You need to start focusing on your strengths and all your past successes, and gain confidence from those. You need to talk back to your mind when it starts reminding you about how difficult success is, and why you will fail.
4) Take action. Many people decide on a goal and then research it and try to find out everything that could possibly happen if they start trying to achieve it. They spend so much time researching that by the time they are ready to do something, the window of opportunity has already passed by. A much better plan is to get as ready as you can in as short a time as possible, take action, and have faith that you can correct along the way as needed. Just get started with whatever you've got from wherever you are.
5) Create successful relationships. The first thing you want to do is to eliminate negative, complaining people from your life as much as possible. You want to spend your time around successful supportive people, so that you can learn from them, and also be motivated by them. Since you can't learn from someone you don't like, you need to practice admiring successful people instead of being jealous and resentful of them. You don't want to bring them down to your level, you want to bring yourself up to their level. Try to create a way to get together with rich successful people and maybe become personal friends with them. As they say "it's not what you know, it's who you know".
If you take action to follow these five principles, you should be well on your way. Good luck.
For more ideas on how to achieve success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tracy_Crowe

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Can I Retire Early?

There are many factors that will help you determine whether you’ll be able to retire early. Here’s how to figure it out. Question: I’m 50 years old, my wife is 44 and we would like to retire by the time I’m 55, if not sooner. We have a little over $600,000 in 401(k)s, IRAs and other retirement accounts and another $250,000 or so in stocks, mutual funds and cash that we can draw on once we retire. Our mortgage will be paid off shortly and we have no other debt. Do you think we can pull off early retirement?
—Anonymous Answer: The fact that you’ve saved a considerable sum and aren’t going into retirement saddled with debt, certainly increases your chances of being able to retire early. Still, I can’t give you a definitive answer to your question. I would have to know a whole lot more about your finances to even begin to take a reasonable stab at it. But I can tell you how to assess your situation so that you can figure out on your own or with help from an adviser whether it’s realistic for you to call it a career within the next five years. As I see it, you’ve got to size up your shot at an early retirement from two different perspectives - a financial and a lifestyle point of view. The two are related, of course, but we’ll tackle them separately, starting with the financial side. Whether you’re evaluating your prospects for retiring early or at a normal retirement age (whatever that may be), the fundamental financial question you face is this: Can the retirement savings you’ve accumulated in 401(k)s and other accounts generate enough sustainable income combined with Social Security and any pensions to support you for the rest of your life? You’ve provided a rough sketch of one aspect of your finances - namely, the assets that you can draw on during retirement. But in order to tell whether that nest egg is sufficient, you’ve also got to consider the other side of the ledger, which you haven’t mentioned - i.e., expenses. You need to know how much money you will need on an annual or monthly basis to live comfortably once you’ve left your job. I’m not talking about a guesstimate here. I’m talking about putting together a detailed retirement budget that lays out the actual expenses you’ll face at the time you retire and projects your likely spending even into the later years of retirement. Only after you do that can you judge whether the size of your savings stash will be large enough to support you throughout a retirement that, in the case of you and your wife, could last upwards of 40 years. Unless you’re some sort of a math wiz, this isn’t an assessment you can do with a pencil and paper. There are too many variables and uncertainties.
So you have two options: go to an adviser who can crunch the numbers for you, or run the numbers yourself using an online calculator, such as Fidelity’s Retirement Income Planner. One of the features I like about this tool is its interactive budget worksheet that allows you to break down your spending into nearly 50 different categories. You can even assign different rates of inflation to different expenses if you think, say, your health care costs will rise faster than what you spend on travel. What’s more, you can even budget for expenses that you know will disappear at some point in the future, such as a car loan or home equity loan that you’ll pay off. By plugging in this information along with details on your retirement investments and other resources plus an estimate of how long you’ll live (I generally recommend planning at least until your early ’90s), you will come away with a forecast of how many years your savings and other income sources will likely support you. http://asktheexpert.blogs.money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/can-you-retire-by-55/
I found this posted at the Raddr-pages.com by Wanderer.

Wealth Warning 2008: Obama

Your wealth is at risk if Sen. Obama wins the presidential election in November.
Why? I will give you four reasons:
1) Obama will raise the capital gains tax, when it needs to be eliminated.
2) Obama will let the Bush tax cuts expire.
3) Obama will side with trial lawyers and not with US corporations.
4) Obama will raise corporate rates. Our corporate tax rates are the second highest in the world. If you want the US to be competitive against The UK, India, China, and Japan, raising corporate rates is a stupid idea.
I'm not going to mention Obama's view of what caused the Great Depression. What the hell are they teaching at Harvard these days?
Also, I am sure Obama will pressure American teenage students to seek government jobs rather than careers as an entrepreneurs.
America's entrepreneurial spirit needs a boost, not several kicks in the groin.
FIU endorses John McCain for president.

A Useful New Age Idea

Years ago I listened to a hypnosis tape. In this tape the hypnotist ( Bernie Konicov? ) told me to say "cancel cancel" when I thought or imagined something negative.
The cancel cancel technique works surprisingly well. I found it so effective I added a blurb about it to http://www.financialindependenceuniversity.com/ .
If you have another effective little technique, leave a brief comment here.

The Buyback Letter

When a publicly traded company buys back its shares it is usually very good for stockholders.
The Buyback Letter is an online newsletter that tells you which companies are likely to buy back their shares. I have had very good experiences with stock buybacks. If you can handle the risk of buying shares, I highly recommend trying out the buyback letter.

I have more investment ideas at www.financialindependenceuniversity.com

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Getting F You Money

If you want to get started generating some FU money, visit
www.financialindependenceuniversity.com (FIU).
In FIU, you have a page of easy money saving ideas that will help you keep up to $5000 a year.
In the Secrets and Articles sections, you will find a lot of excellent ideas that will help you accumulate even more FU money.
In the Mastermind section, you will find three articles on creating and running a mastermind alliance. Mastermind alliances have been known to be very beneficial.
In the bookstore at FIU, you can buy the best financial books and audios available and at the best prices.
There is no wasted space, spam or scams at www.financialindependenceuniversity.com . Everything at FIU is designed to help you.

Investing for Beginners

If you take a look at http://www.financialindependenceuniversity.com/ you will find some help getting started with investing. Click on the tab called "Secrets" and take a look in the "articles" section for an article I wrote on choosing a stock. The "Secrets" ebook has a lot of common sense wealth creation ideas that are often overlooked. The "Secrets" section also has some good specific investment ideas and strategies.
Don't waste time and money in the school of hard knocks, read what a graduate of the school has to say. And take a look in the bookstore for the best financial books available at the best possible price.
Anthony Robbins Financial Freedom CD is a good deal too.

5 Ways to Generate Free Traffic

Quite often the best ways to get traffic to your website are the free ways. You can get some serious amounts of traffic for free or very little cost. The real power in generating your own traffic is in the fact that you are in complete control of it quite often allowing you to choose more accurately who to target therefore generating higher conversion rates. People quite often overlook these methods and there are some real gems. Below I will outline the 5 best ways to get traffic to your website for FREE:-
1. People are spending more time watching video's online than doing anything else online. Video marketing is huge it's not all about YouTube although obviously YouTube by itself is massive but there are also loads of site that you can upload your videos to including Google, Myspace, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. It is not that hard to do and you can download some screen capture software for free. Although if you wish to get serious about Video marketing then some investment in software will improve the look and feel of your videos.
2. Searh Engine Optimisation (SEO)' I know its obvious but it's probably the best way of getting more traffic for your website. The three most important things to consider are:-
2.1. Choice of keywords - Most people choose keywords that there is too much competition for and do not give themselves a chance of getting to the top of the rankings.
2.2. Content - You need to have loads of relevant content that you update frequently to make sure that the search engines see your site as a current one.
2.3. Links - Not the quantity but the quality. You need one way links that are relevant and from other sites with high rankings for similar keywords. The best way to look at SEO is to try and look at it from the search engines point of view. When somebody does a search they want the best results to be displayed (if a load of irrelevant sites with no real content ie spam sites are listed then its not a very good search engine)
3. Articles and Press Releases just like the one that you are reading here are great for generating free traffic for several reasons:-
3.1. You will get high quality one way links from the article directories that you submit to right back to your site. So they are great for SEO. Imaging if you write 2 articles per week and get them published on 10 sites you will be adding roughly 80 high quality one way links to your site per month or just under a 1,000 in a year.
3.2. If you do some keyword research then your articles will very likely get good rankings in the search engines and be found that way.
3.3. People just browsing the article directories find your article and read it.
3.4. The best thing that can happen is an Ezine or magazine can choose to publish your article including the resource box with the link back to your website in it. Some magazines and Ezines have hugh readerships and your article can go out to the whole list generating massive traffic for FREE.
4. Harnessing the power of web2.0. Write a review or a short description about a page on your website that you wish to promote and then submit the review to the social sites. There are loads of the including, Digg, Furl, Stumble Upon, Reddit and Propeller to name a few. Using this method you again generate those one way links from high ranking sites so its great for SEO and people can find the link when browsing these social sites and click through on the link to have a look for themselves. The more interesting and intriguing your review is the more people will click through on your Link.
5. These are excellent ways to tap into highly targeted groups of people. You can also learn so much from other people in these groups or forums. Just go out and find a group or forum and start participating in the conversations and answering questions. You will have a signature file attached to each post that you make and this is where you have your link back to your site. Again building those one-way links and if you write a good signature file that is interesting people will click on those links. With this type of marketing it is best only to give responses if you know the Answer rather than just to get your link up there. It is easy to loose credibility and be seen as a spammer if you are not careful.
The most important thing to do now you have some knowledge is to Take Action without it you will not get any Free Traffic. It's best to focus on one way of getting traffic and get good at that before moving on to the next. So good luck and above all enjoy what you are doing.
Mike Goodchild has been Making Money Online for 7 Years and is the author of a 10 Day FREE Email course about how to generate Traffic to your Website for Free or very little cost.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Goodchild

Thursday, May 15, 2008

A Gargantuan Myth

Would you like to:
Make of your life anything you want it to be?...
Free your days of the deadly monsters of boredom and monotony fill your days with things of interest to you; pleasure, health, and love?...
Banish irrational fears and to make happiness a habit with you?...
Use every hour of the day to add life to your years and years to your life?...
Claim or re-claim control of your mind power?...
If you will remember, those were promises to you from the first article in this series as rewards for controlling your mind power; and as you have probably concluded by now, I am absolutely convinced that you can have all of those things and much more.
I am now going to introduce you to what I think is one of the most gargantuan, life limiting myths ever perpetrated on humanity. You hear it in some form nearly every day of your life.
You use it in some form when chastising your children or the children of others while they are in your care. It comes into disagreements between you and your significant other. Others have mentally slapped you around with it time after time.
The effect of this myth on humanity has been and continues to be enormous. It makes you feel terrible. It literally makes you sick, both physically and mentally.
It is the cause of suicides too numerous to count. It has pushed addictions to drugs and alcohol to epidemic proportions. It has helped place over 2 million citizens into prison cells.
Most people who are not affected to degree previously mentioned, live lives in fear of it in quiet desperation. They are mere shadows of what they could and should be.
Once you really understand this myth to the point where its negative influence no longer pushes your buttons, your life will never be the same again. You will find yourself accomplishing things as if by magic. More of what you desire from life will seem to just come to you.
Here is the key that once grasped will unlock your mastery over your self image and put you in control of the power of your mind.
THERE IS NO SUCH REALITY AS FAILURE. I repeat: There is no such reality as failure.
Now, before you fall out of your seat from shock, or throw something at me through your computer monitor in disgust, hear me out.
Nearly half a century ago, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of Psycho-Cybernetics, described the human mind as A GOAL SEEKING MECHANISM. Now I carried that analogy around in my mind for most of that half century.
It was not until I was introduced to the Law of Attraction and Quantum Physics that a light went off in my mind that made Dr. Maltz's analogy crystal clear to me.
This I know for sure. You are the most miraculous of all living beings on earth. You are the owner of a mind that is so stupendous, that as you truly begin controlling your mind power and consciously using it, there is no dream that you can dream that you cannot achieve.
Harold L Lowe retired at age 62 when his six-figure income position was eliminated. He now wishes to share some of what he has learned since then and some of his experiences as well through articles. He is now studying The New Think And Grow Rich with the author, Ted Ciuba, a founding member of the World Internet Summit. To Claim A FREE Copy Of The Book That Inspired The Movie/DVD/Book, The Secret, Go To: http://www.MasteringYourMindPower.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Harold_L_Lowe

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Become a Millionaire - Develop These Habits

Becoming a millionaire is not easy, but fundamentally it is not very hard either. Learn to develop these habits of millionaires and you will become rich automatically.
There are actually no secrets on how to become a millionaire, but that's because self-made millionaires were born with a preconditioned mindset that allowed them to become rich. Along the way, they simply have developed particular wealth creation habits that have allowed them to create income streams and accumulate wealth faster than the average person. Nothing they do is by any means rocket science, they are just determined, have a vision and have the patience to realize that wealth is created and built over time. They have simply programmed themselves to become millionaires. Here's how:
Millionaires Don't Carry Bad Debt: Self-made millionaires realize that in order to become a millionaire, you cannot accumulate money fast enough if you have outstanding debt. Most investments will not come close to beating a 22% interest rate on a credit card. Therefore revolving debt must be paid down before it is possible to get ahead.
Millionaires See Long Term: When you look at how powerful compound interest really is, and understand the time value of money, you realize the importance of being a long-term investor. The longer you are in the market, the more often your money will double, and the greater the chance to become a millionaire.
Millionaires are Risk Takers: Self-made millionaires have the tolerance to take some managed risk. When they see opportunities that have an upside potential that far outweighs the potential loss, they jump on those opportunities. However, they learned to become a millionaire by limiting their risk in order to reduce the chance potential losses and accelerate their wealth creation.
Millionaires Realize the Importance of Income: Obviously the more money you can make, the wealthier you can get. But in order to become a millionaire, you really need to embrace this concept by finding ways to create income streams. They spend their time setting up systems or purchasing investments that will produce income without much involvement, which allows them to spend their time creating additional income streams.

Learn more about how to become a millionaire and transform debt into wealth by visiting Millionaire Money Habits. A free report to teach you how to become rich is waiting for you.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ryan_J._Taylor

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Watch This Video!!

http://www.webcastgroup.com/client/start.asp?wid=0650222083993
Why are England, India, China, and Japan growing faster than the US?
This video will tell you why. This video is called "Achieving Prosperity for American Workers".
Take a look and spread the word!

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Team Building

In order to provide yourself and your coworkers with a better working environment, I advise the following ideas.

First, watch each others backs, don't stab each other in the back. Second, rather than ripping each other, build each other up.

These are simple ideas, but consider this: 50 plus percent of Americans hate their jobs. These ideas are overlooked.