Help me to Retire

Check out Michael Yardney’s latest tele-seminar of his interview with wealth consultant Roger Hamilton.

Well worth a listen for all you budding investors out there.

You can grab the MP3 download of the session here 

How would you like hundred’s of years of investment advice from some of the greatest investors and smartest people ever scaled down to a list of twenty that you can read in a few minutes?  Sounds pretty good to me.

You are about to read some timeless advice from greats such as:

• Benjamin Franklin
• Warren Buffett
• Confucius

To warm you up here is one of the quotes: “The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.”
-Peter Lynch
Well I won’t keep you any longer, head on over and read the full article here.

So what should you be doing today?

Well the greatest piece of advise I can give you is SOMETHING. Thats right, at least do something in preparation and start today as time literally means money when it comes to your retirement.  You have the basic things such as add as:

• Add as much extra $ into your Super / 401k plan as you can
• Look into salary sacrifice to top up your super before you pay tax on it
• Make sure you have some life / permanent disability insurance just in case – you have to think of your family! (Most super funds offer this free with their account.)
• Save up an emergency fund – enough to get by for several months

Then we have the more serious things you can do:

• Educate yourself – such things as reading this website – taking an investing course etc
• Get your self some property – or more property – and then some more
• Decide what path you want to take – either pay more off your home – or borrow to the max and buy more properties
• Start a stock portfolio or learn to trade or put some money into a high performing fund
• Invest in a business or franchise – remember work on your business not in it.

And my favourite:

• Stash some cash away that your partner doesn’t know about to get that toy you always wanted! ( I can’t be held responsible for recommending this one)

Steve McKnight and the friendly crew over at propertyinvesting.com have set up a new free tool for us to use. It’s called Wealth Score and is basically for you to see how well you are doing financially. You input your current income, your personal assets, your investment assets and your debts and it will calculate a score for you. The score you get is the amount of days you could survive on your assets alone. Also given with your results are averages from others that have used this tool.

Wealth Score is a handy tool to help track your financial progress. I suggest you go back to it every 6 months to a year to make sure you are heading in the right direction for financial freedom.

Try it out now!

Someone / some entity has recently bet a large amount of money that global markets will fall between 30% and 50% before the 21st of September 2007.

Do these people know something we don’t know, or are they just covering their tails with the recent market volatility.

Have a read of the full article here.

Don’t get too caught up with the American fear tactics. Markets go up and down and over the long term always recover.

Happy Investing.

What do I mean by this?

A study recently completed proved that the smarter ones amongst us (IQ wise) where generally the same as the more average ones in the areas of net worth and financial distress. Interesting isn’t it? You don’t need to be super intelligent to get your self wealthy, you just need to start investing.
Investing really is a simple sport so being dumb is no excuse what so ever. And being too smart for you own good could hold you back over analysing. Learn what you can and give it a go. You’ll find it’s very forgiving over time and very rewarding.

To read the IQ article check it out here.

I found a great article on ‘things I wish I knew when I was younger’. It has some great tips for all you people out there who have a lot of living and learning left to do.

One of the points mentioned in the article is “Waiting to do something until you can be sure of doing it exactly right means waiting for ever”. This is the exact point I was talking about in my last article here on perfect timing.

There are a lot of great tips in this article, but one that I have found to be very true in recent years is the first tip they mention: “Most of it doesn’t matter”. When you think about that point and apply it to many areas of your life (especially towards negative people and all the fears you may have) you’ll be surprised by the freedom and happiness it brings you.

Give it a go and check out the article here

I was once caught in this trap. The feeling that there will be a divine signal and everything will come into alignment. It would trigger the ‘do it’ in me, ‘the time is right’, ‘buy it now’.
When I started seriously looking into property investment in 2005 and 2006 I said to myself I have time. The big boom has just finished, I can now take my time and learn everything there is to know about property and once prices have come back down a bit I can get in there and get some. The learning part was great and it helped me avoid making some serious investing mistakes, such as not using a Trust to buy my properties, but the waiting for prices to come back down was a mistake.
As I waited for prices to level off, time went by, followed by some more time. And while this time was going by, strangely enough in most places property prices were going up (of course some places faster than others).
In the end I saw the error of my ways and stopped waiting for the planets to align with the perfect property deal. I bit the bullet and hired a Buyers Agent. That in many ways took the pressure off me as I knew I had an expert working for me. And when the time came to get the biggest loan of my life I felt great!

Remember the saying… . the best time to buy property was 10 years ago.. the next best time is today!

Here’s an article I found on waiting for the perfect time. Read it, it applies to many things in your life!

Waiting for that perfect moment in life to do something is wasted time! Trust me. Just do it. Making mistakes is the greatest way to learn in life.

If you became suddenly ill or hospitalised or even dead would your family know what to do with all your affairs?
Do your family members understand all your financial dealings? Would they know where to start in paying your bills?
These are all important questions that you should sort out now while you are fit and well. I’m sure we’d all hate to see our hard earned investments disappear or go down the drain just because we hadn’t planned for the unexpected.

Heres a list of some things you should have easily on hand in case the worst should happen:

• Up to date medical insurance information
• An updated will
• Power of attorney information
• Life insurance information
• A basic guide to your bank accounts – numbers, passwords
• A basic list of bills in case someone else needs to help you pay them
• Spare keys for both house and car
• Details of all your investments and what needs to be done to look after them

Also think about people to notify of where these details are stored. Either papers stored somewhere accessible, on a certain computer or USB drive or even somewhere password protected on the web.

Anyway its something to think about. Sure you might think I’ll be dead so I won’t have to worry, but think about making life a bit easier for your loved ones left behind.

Check out the full article on this subject here.

Following on from one of my earlier articles (10 new ways to make money online) this one gives you what are some of the current best online earners. And surprise surprise if good old eBay isn’t number one…
Ebay is a great place to start online. You can start by selling things around the house you don’t want anymore. Maybe you have some movies you don’t watch anymore, or a game you don’t play or a book that you have read. All of those items will sell on eBay. Once you have gotten the hang of things you can then move into getting your hands on some wholesale pricing and starting your eBay store selling new items. Give it a go, it really is very easy. The eBay site gives you step by step instructions.
Here’s the list:

1. Selling Ebay Items
2. Turnkey Sites/Basic Promotion
3. Tweaking tip #2 to make even more money
4. Write a blog
5. Pay Developers to code you a 100% original website
6. Learn SEO (Search Engine Opimisation)
7. Creating a directory
8. Start a paid service website
9. Create a content rich newsletter
10. 10 Do PPC to CPA

Check out the full article here.

The internet is a great teacher, so if you don’t understand anything above, use your friend Mr Google.