Investing In Your Best Asset

With everything coming crashing down, what can you do to get a great return on investment. The last few posts have focused in on investing in your health. This is always a great investment because if you are not healthy, you can’t generate cash flow and your retirement will be not as enjoyable. Who wants to retire due to health reasons?

Beside investing in your health, another great investment that you can get a great return is your education. What the heck do you mean, Dave? I already went to college and have been working for the last 20 years. Why should I investment in my education?

Green & Growing or Ripe & Rotting

This is an old saying I heard over 30 years ago. You are either green and growing or ripe and rotting. This is a great word picture for you to visualize. If you stop learning, you will be left behind in whatever your field of interest or work is at what may appear to be the speed of light. With the information age upon us, you just have to be in a constant state of learning.

The challenge is that most people don’t want to make this investment. They would rather sit in front of their television and let the news media fill their minds with the media’s version of the truth. They learn how to not think for themselves and become drones for someone else.

Become A Free Thinker

Let me give you an inside secret. No company really wants a “me too” thinker. The people who are willing to invest in themselves and learn how to think outside the box are the ones who will get paid very well for what they do. Those who are up beat and willing to dig in and make things happen are highly sought after. The reason for this is that these type of people are not that common.

The majority of the people don’t want to make the extra effort and are willing to just get by and hope everything turns out okay for them. The challenge is that when you do this, you become a commodity. You are no different than the next person who works for a company. You are highly replaceable for someone new out of college, tech school, or high school depending on the type of work you do.

Become An Avid Reader

Reading will make a major difference in your life. Of course, it may sound expensive, but remember that there are things called libraries that offer free books. I came across a study about ten years ago which stated that 50% of all high school graduates have never read a book cover to cover since they graduated from high school. Seventy three percent of all Americans have never been in a book store in the last 5 years. And the most disturbing of all is that only about 3% of all Americans have a library card so that they can borrow books for free. Is it any wonder why people are drones? No one seems to want to take the time to invest in them selves.

Becoming The Expert

The interesting thing is that if you just spent about an hour a day for the next six months studying any topic, you would become a knowledgeable expert in that field. You may think it will take many years to develop skills, but highly focused reading can make a big difference.

Next time we want to take a look at what you can do with this newly gained knowledge. Post your thoughts on what you think is a great investment.

Until Next Time…

What Can You Do To Fix This?

If you are still employed, you might want to do a great job at work. Show your employer the value you offer them. Provide great customer service to those you interface with in your company. Change your mindset to the point where everyone around you are your customers and you want to support them. This is a much different approach to what a lot of people may choose. However, using this approach sets you apart from the rest. In marketing, it is called a unique selling proposition. Remember that every day you are at work, you are selling your talents and abilities. Make yourself invaluable.

Start Saving More For Retirement

If you haven’t been thinking about your retirement, let the current situation be a wake up call. If you haven’t started, then on Monday, you should be setting up an account with automatic withdrawals. You don’t have to make it unbearable. Look for programs that will let you put in as little as $100/month. The point is to get started. If you are already saving, look for ways to save even more. There is a potential double benefit. First, with investment values down, it allows you to buy more and second, if the values increase again, you can recover even quicker than you may think.

For example, if you invested in a company with a good dividend and the industry was fairly stable, you would not only get more money than putting it in a money market, but you would be able to benefit from the stock price gain as the stock market recovers down the road. When that occurs, no one knows, but you have an opportunity to position yourself.

Start Taking Care Of Your Health

This is something that should be a given. However, the biggest challenge is that we let life get in the way and we look in the mirror and discover how much we have allowed our health to decline. We have gained 30 to 40 pounds, we can hardly walk up a flight of stairs, and we have zero energy at the end of the day. Focus on ways to improve your health. Ask your health care professional the best ways for you to do this as they know your specific situation. You will be surprised how quickly you will be able to recover and be feeling better.

Turn Off The News

I know this sounds radical. However, let me ask you how much good information you hear from the news media? Probably less than 5% of what is reported is uplifting and good. Why put negative crap into your mind? Instead, shut off the news. Don’t listen to it. Most of it is highly biased and not based on the truth any way. It is designed to make you all worried and fretful. How can listening help you? It can’t. Listening just makes you have a bad day as well as damaging your health. Instead, listen to something that is uplifting. Read something that will make your day. Find something good to focus on and you will see a big difference. Worried about missing something in the news? Don’t, because there are people in the world who make it a point to share it with those of us who don’t watch it. They will come and tell you all about it.

Ready to start the journey back to better all retirement health. You can learn more on how to do that with the free retirement training course. Why not get it today and start building a better life for tomorrow.

Until Next Time…

Good Investments In Today’s Environment

With the market in the tank as we write this today, what can you invest in and have a decent return on investment. One investment many future retirees overlook is their own health. That’s right, what are you doing today to help ensure you are going to be healthy enough to enjoy your retirement. When it comes down to it, we don’t treat our bodies very kindly. We obuse them by over eating, eating things that aren’t good for us, and putting ourselves through high stressful situations. All of these things wear down the body.

What Do We Really Focus On?

The fact is that we are more concerned on how well we look than how much we take care of our bodies. We want to be able to wear skinny jeans and look great at the next high school reunion, but don’t really care what that does to our body. We don’t think about the foods we eat, just that they taste great. Now understand that there is nothing wrong with having a great meal now and again. Just like anything else, too much of anything can not be good for you in the long run.

Long Term Goal

The real long term goal should be to not only have something in your savings to help take care of you, but something in your own health which you are doing now to help you be able to enjoy it. If you look at our main focus for Retirement Cures, it is about enjoying a long, happy, healthy retirement. Working long hard hours to gain a lot, only to ruin your health is not a good end. It is about balance. We want you to learn how to work hard and play hard and most of all, enjoy life to the fullest.

Start by setting one health goal. It doesn’t have to be big or miraculous, but just like any other goal or investment for the long term, it starts out small. Small consistent baby steps. I have been doing this myself and started by eliminating certain things like candy and sweets from my normal routine. No donuts or sweet rolls on a daily basis. Only on special occasions.

I have also added small things to my daily tasks like using my Nordic Track which I purchased 15 years ago. Yes, it still works just fine. Each of these were single goals added to about every other week. Now they are starting to compound and I feel much better than I did at the first of the year. Just like investing your money, investing in your health pays dividends in a very different way.

We want to encourage you to remember this area of your life as well. All wealth and no health makes Jack a very sad person.

Until Next Time…

How Many Times Can You Go On Vacation?

Many people save for the glorious day when they can retire and not have to work again. They think that this is the best of the best. However, once they get done doing some of the things they wanted to do, they run out of usually money to do them or ideas. They end up getting bored (some times to death, literally).

Retire Early, Die Early

A recent study showed that in 2005, people who retired at age 55 died twice as fast as those who keep working. How do you over come this challenge? Easy, don’t stop working. Hey, wait a minute. How is that possible? I had two good friends that I work with who just retired early. Guess what they did? They had other jobs lined up to start the following Monday at consulting firms to offer their services back to companies like the one they worked for.

This may sound crazy, but I am happy to see them do this. I had two bosses who retired early and didn’t have any jobs. They just went home and both died in 6 months of a heart attack. Both were in their 50’s. Getting back to my two friends, in their capacity, they don’t necessarily have to work a full 40 hour week if they don’t want to do so. They take on the jobs that they want and get paid a nice fee each time they do. They are staying in the business, but getting extra benefits from having retired.

What’s Wrong With Retiring?

Where did we ever get the idea that we can sit back and do nothing and that our bodies are going to enjoy that program. We were designed to be useful all of our lives. When we are not, then we stop to exist. Even my dad, who is 85, still works. He retired at 70, but once he moved to the town he wanted to live, he went out and found jobs doing what he loved to do. He ended up working full time, living in the place he loves, doing what he loves. Just how long do you think he will live?

My mother did the same thing. She loved to teach and signed up as a substitute. She is used almost as much as a full time teacher. Again, she is useful in her trained skills and loves doing it. Best health care program out there.

Key To A Long, Happy Retirement

It is very simple…don’t retire. It’s okay to leave what you are doing with the company you work at right now, but make sure you have something lined up after the fact. Keep your mind active in your field of study or in the area you really love. That is what will make a big difference in how long your initial departure from your main line of work will last. The real secret is to find something you love, it will give you the drive to get up and meet the many new days ahead. Before you know it, you may be starting your second 100 years.

Until Next Time…

This is a very important question because the challenge is that most people just go through life and they think that everything is happening to them. It’s hard to convince them of anything else, because they are just going through the tough times and just attempting to survive. You probably have heard someone close to you say how bad things are in their life or they seem to over react to some of the simplest of things. They seemed to have developed a paranoid complex.

How To Overcome Challenges

The first thing you have to do is know that things are NOT happening to you. Instead, you should understand that they are just happening. Fate hasn’t sought you out over any one else. You have to understand that their will be both feast and famine as you go through life. Some times the bad can arrive in the best of times for the rest of the world which can give you the idea that it has sought you out, but that is not the case.

The thing you should do is focus on what you can learn from the experience whether it is good or bad. How can you grow into a better person, better friend, better parent, better, spouse, better employee, better…you get the idea. Let me give you an example. There were times when it seemed no matter what I did on buying a house, I had stupid written all over my face. I would purchase a home only to be transferred in two years of less, many times having to take a loss on the home. It looked like I had no investment savvy when it came to real estate.

How Bad Could It Get?

Well it really got bad to the point that I had to empty out all of my life savings (6 years of consistent savings) just to get out of my house. The worse part about it was that shortly after closing on my home, the stocks I used to have in my savings almost doubled. Talk about a double whammy. Now I could have just gone through the experience and given up on buying a home or saving money for th future, but I used that and many other investing experiences to learn how to do it better the next time around.

How Can You Learn From Bad Experiences?

I used these types of experiences to become a better decision maker when it came to money. Yes, I still messed up and things didn’t always go the way you would like. I even got to the point of being flat broke with literally no money in the bank. However, through those life experiences, I saw the futility of debt, of having the best or newest thing, of thinking I had to have the fanciest house to be part of the “IN” crowd. I gained what you might call “common sense”.

In applying this commons sense, I was able to go from a point of desperation to one where I have no debt, I can save more in a month than most people would in a year. If something breaks, it’s no big deal; instead, it’s a minor inconvenience. I have cash to invest in a down market, so I can buy stocks really cheap. I don’t say this to brag, but just to illustrate that by using your experience to grow into a better, smarter person will give you great benefits than the person that just whines when things don’t do their way.

Life is too short to be worried about how to make the next payment. Learning to follow my debt reduction program has made a big difference in my family’s life and it can yours. It is free. Just go to our main page for Retirement Cures and request your copy. It’s my way of giving back so I can help others gain this freedom.

Until Next Time…

Reality Check

Please do not follow the example set by our government. They don’t have to operate under the same rules as its citizens. It’s okay for them to borrow excessive money they don’t have and give it to people who are totally irresponsible in handling their money because they aren’t worried about how they are going to pay for it. If you or I invested in the same way, we would be called reckless and would end up in a worst financial situation than before.

What Happened To Being Responsible With Our Money?

This may sound like a rant and it is. Free enterprise is what made this country so great. In fact, it was out low tax base that caused many companies from other countries to want to do business here. There once was a day when people had to be responsible for their actions. If they started up a company and it didn’t succeed as they thought, the company went out of business. Those people took that opportunity to learn from their misfortune and in many cases would make another attempt to succeed. No one stepped in to bail out their bad business idea, bad business practices, etc. It was an ongoing process to learn and improve one self and their business abilities.

How Does This Apply To My Retirement Woes?

Quite simply you need to make sound investment decisions and set up consistent saving practices. In fact in today’s environment, there are a lot of great business investment opportunities both for starting your own as well as investing in ones that already exist. There are many stocks if you take the time to research that have a great dividend yield that would beat out any money market account as well as offer a great potential long term growth. These are sound companies that aren’t going to be bailed out, have good cash flow, and would probably be deemed unfavorable in today’s economy.

Many people focus too much on the news and think that the end is near or even worse that the government will be making their house payment and paying for the gas and groceries. Please! The real question you have to ask your self in this “perilous times” is what can you control. What can you do, today, right now to help your future be a little bit brighter. Well, here are a few suggestions.

Stop Watching The News

Most news broadcasts are based on negativity and many times mis-information. How many newscasters actually know how a good business functions? They cannot be an expert in all the topics that they report and many times they misunderstand what is being told to them. In the few times I have been interviewed by the news media, they have misquoted what I said and taken the words and used them to report on the story that wanted people to hear. So if you want to avoid being puked on every day, turn it off. You will brighten your day.

Take Time To Read or Listen To Good Books

Instead of filling your mind with all the crap the news media dumps on you, fill your mind with things that are uplifting and motivating for you to take action and start down the right path. I guarantee that the only way you will have a better situation in life is if you take control by learning new things and then applying them in your life. Since money may be tight, go to the local library and you may be amazed at the volumes of information that is free and available to you. There are whole sections on investing, starting a business, building strong relationships with others, etc. that can make your life more enjoyable. There are free audios and videos you can check out that you can use to fill your mind with good ideas that can make a difference in your life.

Take Time To Help Others Less Fortunate

Even though we may think everything is going down the tubes, another good way to change all of that is to invest in others. Join a local organization that helps under privileged children, spend time in an elderly care center reading or just brightening someone’s day. Help clean out someone’s yard that is not able to do so. While many times this may not cost you much financially, it is one of the best investments you could have that will help turn your life around as well as some one else’s. And who knows, if enough of us did this, it must might be the best stimulus package available in our country.

Go make a difference. You’ll be glad you did.

Until Next Time…

Setting Up A Personal Budget

Last time we were discussing what’s the best way to save for retirement. Part of that training showed you the power of automatic withdrawals to savings. This week, the topic will build on the other. To be able to save for retirement in the first place, you got to know where you money is going. Just as you would in a business, you have to keep track of what comes in and where it goes out. Unfortunately, you can’t run your finances like the Federal Government and just spend your way out of your problems. (Note: This never has worked and to think it will ignores all principles of finance. Kind of like saying if I step off of a taller building, I won’t fall to the ground this time.)

Developing Your Balance Sheet

Ready to develop the You, Inc. balance sheet? Here goes. Start with all you income streams. For most of us, this is very simple. You have one, maybe two, depending on how many jobs you are working or if your spouse is working. This goes on the income side of the balance sheet.

Next comes the expenses. These are the tough ones, because if you haven’t done one before it might seem a little overwhelming. Actually it is quite simple. Here’s what you do. Carry a piece of paper with you through out the week and write down every thing you spend money on including the use of your credit cards. Do this consistently for 4 weeks or for the whole month depending on whether you are paid every two weeks or once/twice a month.

Expenses Can Be Shocking

Once you complete you tracking process, list everything out and set up various categories which make sense to you. Remember, this is your money and your own You, Inc. Typical categories might be food, utilities, gasoline, clothing, car payments, house payments or rent, credit card payments, credit card purchases, amount put in savings, etc.

Totaling Your Balance Sheet

List Income first and below that list the various categories of expenses second. The subtract all of your expenses from your income and see if you have a positive or negative number. If it is positive, you can at least say you are already headed in the right direction. However, if this number is negative, you may have some challenges ahead and some immediate action is required.

Correcting A Negative Balance Sheet

How can you right the ship and get your balance sheet showing positive? The answer is easy but not always simple. The answer is to cut your expenses. Review what you are spending your money on and look for the easy things first. The easy things are things like how often are you eating out instead of taking your lunch to work. Could you take your own coffee from home and not spend it on a high priced cup at a local coffee shop? Instead of buying soft drinks from the vending machine, maybe you could buy a 2 liter off brand for half the price of a smaller vended one? One of the easiest yet hardest ones would be to leave your credit cards at home in a safe place and not carry it with you. That way it will require you to have to make an extra trip before making a purchase giving you time to think about your purchase to see if it is something you really need or just want out of convenience.

Taking swift action in many of these areas could save you any where from $5 to $10 a day. That totals to $150 to $300 a month. This is newly found money not to run out and buy more stuff, but to help you work with making your balance sheet even more positive. Remember that the more positive your balance sheet is, the better your retirement can be if you follow the simple approaches to creating an automated saving system.

Hope this issue of Retirement Cures has helped. To learn even more details on this whole process, you can get the free retirement savings plan from our main web page.

Until Next Time….