Education Is The Destroyer Of Slavery

This decade is going to prove to be very volatile. The world is teetering on the edge of a cliff. There are things you can do and there is hope!

You MUST get educated! That is the most important thing you can do. No one can tell you exactly what do. Each situation is different and you must educate yourself and devise your own plan.

The world’s demise could be your biggest opportunity!

Why Gold and Silver Are SO Important

This site is run by one of my favorite mentors, Mike Maloney. He is phenomenal at education and informing people about the upcoming storms.

You can find pretty much anything you need to know on his site. Plus he regularly talks about other people he looks up to and learns from!

Enjoy!

The Death Of The American Dream

Financial Education Blog

Why the Impending Financial Crisis is Creating a New America

Posted July 23, 2013  By Robert Kiyosaki

I believe that the American Dream is dying because many of us have lost our moral compasses. Our schools are not fulfilling the educational needs of our students, nor are they being kept safe. We see so many kids, especially from poor neighborhoods, who turn to street crime and violence.

Rich dad often said, “Needy people become greedy people. Greedy people become desperate people. And desperate people do desperate things.”

The greatest gift my rich dad gave me was showing me both sides of the Employee-Entrepreneur coin. He exposed me to the life of an entrepreneur and offered me an environment in which entrepreneurial thinking could thrive. Today, I do not need a job, a steady paycheck, money, bonuses, government support, or Social Security and Medicare.

Financial independence

The Rich Dad Company propelled Kim and me into financial independence. We do not need paychecks. We work because we love our work, sharing what we know so others can also grow and prosper.

While we make a lot of money, most of that money does not go into our pockets. Most of the money is spent on growing the company, investing in new and better technology, more people, and new product development. That is what true capitalists do.

But Kim and I are the exception, not the rule. Today, in America, we have a growing problem. People are becoming increasingly dependent on the government as the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen.

The rich are getting richer

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the increase in incomes between 1979 and 2007 in the United States looked like this:

Poor: Income grew 18% over 30 years
Middle Class: Income grew 40% over 30 years
Rich: Income grew 275% over 30 years

Then in 2007, the bottom fell out when the boom went bust. Today, incomes for the middle class and poor have stopped going up, yet the rich seem to be getting richer faster.

In 2011, the number of Americans living in poverty grew to 46.2 million people. That translates to approximately 1 in 6 Americans who now live in poverty, and that number is growing. When a person has no property, they join the ranks of the poor and become dependent upon the government to take care of them. Oftentimes this leads to increased violence, both on the streets and in our homes.

Students on food stamps

Nearly 47 million Americans rely on federal food assistance benefits (food stamps), a 12-year high attributed to the weak US economy and high rates of unemployment over the last five years.

A lesser-known fact is that college students are among the fastest-growing segment of our economy to rely on food stamps. As tuition fees go up and financial aid opportunities vanish—and parents who were once a source of financial support have lost jobs or homes and become ineligible for college loans for their children—students have had to fend for themselves.

The next poor

Are teachers headed for the ranks of the poor?

In 2011, the California State Teachers Retirement System, CalSTRS, realized it faced a long-term deficit of $56 billion. A deficit is the gap between assets and estimated
liabilities.

CalSTRS collects $6 billion a year, but needs $10 billion each year to meet its obligations. A shortfall of more than $4 billion a year is a lot of money, especially for government bureaucrats who do not know how to invest or how to make money.

If the California teacher’s retirement plan goes bust, the taxpayers will be stuck with yet another massive bailout. Worst of all, millions of teachers will slide from the middle class and join the poor.

Again, repeating the words of John Bogle: “The whole retirement system…in the country is in, I think, very poor shape and it’s going to be the next big financial crisis in the country….”

The new America

All of these statistics translate to one thing: the American Dream of go to school, get a good job, buy a house, andinvest in a portfolio of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds is dying. Financial crises are creating a new America. Today, the middle class is disappearing and the gap between the rich and the poor is growing.

For some, this is discouraging. Many people choose each day to give up on their dreams and to be increasingly dependent on the government. They give up their freedom for security—though if CalSTRS is any indication, that’s not security at all.

In today’s new America, there are only two options: increase your financial education and learn to create your own wealth by playing by the rules of the rich, or become poorer and poorer and rely on the government and the rich to take care of you.

Which sounds more secure to you?

I fear our financial crises will only continue to grow. The rules of money have changed and you must adapt. Today, I encourage you to first come to grips with the new America and then to resolve to do something about it.

By increasing your financial education and starting a business or investing, you can set yourself up to thrive while others struggle to survive. Start today.

Putting In The Work

Everything that happens, happens to everyone.

That is life. And the sooner we all realize that the better off we will be.

What we see in the news today, particularly today is a little unsettling. As Jim Rohn said, “for things to change for you, you must change”.

All races, religions, and creeds have been – and some continue to be – persecuted. Stereotypes are predicated on the fact that things continue to happen and create patterns.

You cannot disregard this simple fact.

For things to change and stereotypes to change, people must change and create BETTER patterns.

Humans, whether we like it or not, are judgmental beings. That is how we are built. We judge who will be our friends, who we associate with, who will work for us, etc..

For things to change, you must change. It starts with one person at a time, breaking the trend and creating a better pattern.

It is possible. Hard, but possible.

No Better Time Than The Present

The title of this post says it all..

There is NEVER a better time than right now, this very instant, to make a move, take action, change the direction of your life.

Stop following the crowd. Stop doing what they do. Stop listening to what they listen to. Stop watching what they watch. Stop talking like they talk. Stop working like they work. Unless you want what they have.

The great news is you can ALWAYS change. The door is always there for you to open.

It’s like going down a highway and passing exits, those are all opportunities to get off and change. They keep on coming but it’s up to you to decide to get off the cruise control and make a change.

Now more than ever this country needs business owners and entrepreneurs and creative thinkers.

Those who take the Information Age by the horns will win and those who are stuck in their old ways, old jobs, old “pensions”, looking for government to take care of them will get chewed up and spit out.

Multiple streams of income is the wave of the future – the Information Age.

Network marketing, real estate, coding, startups, inventors. They will make the rules of the future. It’s not too late to start doing any or all of these.

You just need to decide to get off the highway.

If You Take On Risk, You MUST Get Paid

Debt and risk usually go hand in hand. But making sure you are paid for taking risk is not always something one thinks about.

When most think of investing they think of RISK or GAMBLE.

This is not true with a financial education.

You can begin to see how the more investing and/or debt you use the more wealthy you can get.

By adding good debt (a rental unit that someone else pays the mortgage for) you can begin expanding and creating wealth.

If you are taking on a debt you MUST be paid for it. This is making profit in the acquisition of a deal rather than the sell of a deal. A deal must be profitable right away or it is useless. You cannot hope the market changes or that you might get renters. Everything has to be under control when you buy the property.

Same goes with stocks or any other asset class. Leveraging yourself, infinite returns and insurance on your assets is the name of the game.

Most will not take the time to become educated in money. It’s not important enough to them. If that is you, that is fine. But for those who take it seriously, there is a world of financial education waiting to be had.

The game is stacked against you. You can keep getting the game played on you or you can play the game. It’s your move.

Passive or Residual Income!

Passive and/or Residual income. You MUST add these words to your vocabulary.

To become truly wealthy one must add to their portfolio on a continuous basis. That means income coming from 3 different angles, then eventually just two different types of income.

Passive/residual is the easiest of the wealthy incomes. This is income that is coming in from assets every week/month without you having to do anything. It is often said that your true wealth is defined by the amount of a days you can live with no money coming in from a “job”.

The three types of income:
1). Earned/Ordinary Income – trading time for money
2). Passive Income – money coming in whether you “work” or not
3). Portfolio Income – your money working for your money

You must understand all three but passive will be your best friend in the short, medium, and long term. It is something that you should be actively learning about everyday.

Taking your paycheck and turning it in to passive income will help earn more and keep more. Doing things like starting a network marketing business or acquiring rental properties are some of the easiest and fastest ways to do this.

Who wants to work hard for their money their whole life? Why not have your money work hard for you?

You spend money 24/7 so why not make money 24/7. Earning a paycheck is fine. And that’s how you have to start. But, learn how to pay yourself before you pay the bills. Deposit that money in to assets that will give you cash flow or tax shelter.

The options are many and are greatly rewarding! Financial education is the wave of the future. We are entering unprecedented times like this country (and the world) have never before seen.

By giving yourself a financial education you are giving yourself a massive advantage compared to the 99% of people who don’t take time to educate themselves.

Assets VS Liabilities

Your banker tells you, no I take that back, EVERYONE tells you that your home is an asset.

They are wrong.

Your home is your liability, it is your banks asset.

You are paying the mortgage to the bank. It is not making you money. It is taking money from you. Most will argue that their house will go up in value and this and that. Ask them what happened in 2008.

You can’t predict what will happen in the markets. Some can make very educated guesses, but that’s all they are, guesses.

Banking on appreciation – your house going up in value above the purchase price – is a recipe for disaster. The housing crisis in 2008 should have made you realize that. If you haven’t, it’s not too late to recognize before you make the mistake again.

If you are looking to add to your asset column you need to be adding things to your portfolio that are putting money into your pocket each month/week. These things can be real estate rentals, businesses, or stocks giving you a yield.

Commodities such as real money: gold and silver or food (sugar, wheat, rice, oil) are ways to preserve your wealth in times of economic hardship or in present time.

Are currency is debt. Every time you save money in the bank you are losing money to inflation and low interest rates. It is smarter to preserve it or spend it on real assets that will hold your wealth and give you a return.

After 1971 our currency became debt. Richard Nixon took the US and the world off the gold standard. Savers became loser and debtors became winners. The rich go in to good debt like assets and middle class/poor get in to bad debt like consumer or retail debt.

This is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to note. This is why rich become richer and the middle class and poor become poorer and poorer.

Every time you hear someone say “tax the rich” or “fair share” they aren’t sure what they are talking about due to a lack of financial education.

When taxes are raised they are raised on earned income/ordinary income. This is what the poor and middle class earn: a paycheck. The rich aren’t affected because they earn passive income and portfolio income. Their taxes are lower and never get raised.

If they somehow get taxed more which is rare, the taxes simply get passes on down to the poor and middle class – in the form of higher rent and more expensive products from their businesses.

You can never take out the rich. Mainly because they don’t work for money, they work for skills and for assets. They will always find a way around whatever economic conditions are in front of them. The middle class and poor will always feel the brunt of bad economy and higher taxes EVERY TIME.

Financial education can help you move up in to the rich class and be the group who makes the rules and legally lays less taxes. It is all due to financial education. It’s up to you.

Just in case you are really interested in taking out the rich though, the only way that could conceivably happen is if the economy collapses along with the dollar. But don’t get on your high horse, the rich (or financially educated) will be in commodities like gold and silver and will come out on the other side richer than they were going in.

Financial education and studying money will be your pathway to freedom. Your education doesn’t stop when school ends. It can but it shouldn’t. Do you and posterity a favor!

Blackjack Rule: Playing With House Money

Investing is a mystery to most people. To most it seems like a gamble. When I was younger I know that whenever I would hear the word, investing, I would automatically think gamble.

To most you would be correct to assume that.

To the individuals who study and learn continually and read the books that are available to all of us, you begin to realize its more about control than it is about gambling.

Knowledge is the key to life. And reading is the key to knowledge. Anything you want to learn about is right down the road at your local library and for many of you it’s one click away on your iPad or tablet.

There is a simple rule to live by while investing: play with the house’s money.

You should always be getting something for free or using something for free in any investment deal.

When investing money in the stock market, put your initial investment in and then take it out as soon as your investment grows beyond what you initially put in. This way you are using house money.

When selling real estate make sure you roll that profit in to another bigger and better investment known as a “1031 exchange”. This way you do not have to pay a capital gains tax, you are using the money tax-free for a larger investment.

Using OPM (Other People’s Money) or debt is another way to use house money. When you know how to use credit and loans (OPM) on assets not on liabilities (bad debt) then you are using the house’s money.

There are many ways to use the game and have it play in your favor. It is up to you to study the language of money and find out how to make it work for you.

Making debt work for you and making the tax system work for you are two of the most important things you can do to attain true wealth. Currency is debt now so you might as well get good at making it work in your favor rather than keep you poor paying interest your whole life.

The choice is yours.

A Theory About Cyprus

This may be a month or so after the bank deposit raid that took place in Cyprus but it is STILL relevant because it hasn’t happened here yet, but will in due time.

I believe one of the big reasons it got such little media coverage in the western world is because that is the plan going forward here. The media dictates what they think the public can handle – just like the government gives you just enough money left over for what it thinks you need to live on.

I think the biggest reason for this silencing of the raid was due in large part because the heavy-hitters are not ready to show their cards yet. We are on the “turn” and the powers-that-be are not ready for the “river” quite yet. They are still gathering all the gold and silver they can find and stashing it away while the public blindly believes that the economy is on the road back to recovery. I mean hey look, the Dow is well over 15,000 and continually setting new highs, right?

We have seen ebbs and flows, recessions and depressions before, but we have never seen anything like what is coming in the future; an economic collapse on a global scale.

All the past hiccups were between only a handful of countries. Now, nearly every country in the world minus some African countries are involved in this debacle. Add to that, this is one of the first times the gold and silver market has had such a massive audience.

When things start hitting the fan people will ultimately turn to the world’s only real money: gold and silver. When they do its going to be the same gold and silver we have been trading around for thousands of years. Yes, we have obviously mined more in that time but the quantity still remains fairly low – a little over 5 billion ounces.

To put that in to perspective, we are about $17 trillion in debt as a country alone. Then you look at the world and we are on the hook for quadrillions of dollars in derivatives. See, governments can print money, they can’t print gold and silver.

When it all comes crashing down you are looking at nearly the same quantity of gold and silver being ravaged by a consumer base hundreds of millions of people larger than the last bubble in 1980.

Talk about a bidding war.

We are going to see prices in the stratosphere for people who want to preserve their wealth and not be totally wiped out by the reset that WILL take place.

And it WILL happen.

We are printing $85 billion a month, have been for years and will continue to do so for another 2 years. This makes the money you have worth less and less each day, don’t believe me just watch:

What has the price of gas been since 2008?

What has the price of milk been since 2008?

What has the price of sugar, wheat, rice, etc. been since 2008?

This isn’t something that happened because of which President came to power in the last few years. I mean some helped more than others. But George W. Bush and Barack Obama were focused on bailing the “too-big-to-fail” guys out while you were footing the bill.

This really started once we created the Federal Reserve in 1913 (Woodrow Wilson) and compounded it with Social Security (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Medicare/Medicaid (Lyndon Baines Johnson) and then ultimately coming unhinged when the U.S. (Richard Nixon) took the world off the gold standard.

This is when savers became losers and debtors began to win.

Financial education will help you through this mess and give you a fighting chance to survive the decade or two of turmoil we have ahead of ourselves.

 

Some recommended books to start off your education:

“Why ‘A’ Students Work For ‘C’ Students and ‘B’ Students Work For The Government” by Robert Kiyosaki

“The Creature From Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin

Your Financial Plan

Jun282010

Written By:The WealthCycles Staff

“The secret to your financial success is inside yourself. If you become a critical thinker who takes no ‘Wall Street’ fact on faith, and you invest with patience and confidence, you can take steady advantage of even the worst bear markets. By developing your discipline and your courage, you can refuse to let other people’s mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.”

                                                                       – Benjamin Graham

 

With stock-picker Jim Cramer on CNBC shouting buy and sell like a lunatic, you would think all professional investors are just looking for the next quick fix to ride. Astute investors actually have well thought-out plans based on sound financial advice. By creating a document that lists your financial goals and a roadmap to getting there, you create a lasting plan that you can stick to through thick and thin, regardless of what the talking heads on CNBC are shouting about.

As you may have learned by now, the heart of my financial philosophy is based on investment cycles. That means I’m in it for the long-haul, for the duration of the cycle. I don’t shift my capital around every time I see a news headline or hear a dire prediction. I have a well-researched, thoughtful plan of action I believe will secure my financial future, and I stick to my plan.

You’ll sleep better at night knowing that the path to your future is based on sound research and advice. Here is my step-by-step recipe for developing your personal financial road map:

1. Understand where you are right now (define Point A)

The process begins with taking stock of where you are and understanding how that fits into your greater investment goals.

a. What assets do you have? What is the monetary value of each asset?

b. What are your liabilities (debts)? What is the total amount you owe?

c. What skills or level of financial literacy do you bring to the table?

d. Do you have the time to be actively involved in managing your investments?

e. What is your level of risk tolerance? How much can you afford to lose? Are you financially and emotionally equipped to handle the wild swings of the market?

f. Are you young (with many years of earnings ahead) or are you old (most concerned with a comfortable retirement and protecting your wealth)?

2. Lay out your goals (define Point B)

a. To have X

b. To do Y

My personal goal is to have 100 high-cash-flow apartment buildings that generate plenty of cash while I relax and educate people on the benefits of cycles investing.

3. Develop a strategy (how you will get from Point A to Point B)

My strategy for achieving my personal goal is to invest with the cycles and identify the top-performing investments in each cycle.

4. Develop your tactics (the details of how you’ll get from Point A to Point B)

a. Study the markets. My research convinces me that precious metals will be the top performer in the current cycle, so that is where I am investing. When this cycle ends and another begins, I will need to determine what the next cycle is and what I should be invested in.

b. Plan your attack. Once you have figured out where you want to invest your money, how will you go about it? Will you invest heavily in one market, but keep your hand in elsewhere?

Based on my research, the core of my investments will be in physical metals, heavily weighted toward silver.

Stay alert to and informed about other types of investment and market cycles. Think ahead to the next cycle and be prepared to take advantage of new opportunities for profit.

5. Write it down!

Having a tangible written plan you can refer to when the talk show demagogues and guru bloggers get exercised will help you maintain the discipline and patience to stick to the plan. Remember, you have done your research, and you’re in it for the long haul. When I first began investing, I did not write my plan down. Because I didn’t have that written plan to refer, I was easily spooked and led astray.

6. Stick with it!

Before I had that written plan, I started listening to some analysts I thought pretty highly of when they began predicting a drop in mining stocks. I pulled out of mining. Lo and behold, the market went the opposite direction, and I paid a steep price. Had I stuck to my plan, I would have come through the whole thing several dollars richer!

7. Modify it.

Just because your plan is in writing does not mean it’s set in stone. Warren Buffett once said, “Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket very carefully.” Sound advice.

I have invested heavily in precious metals, thereby putting all my eggs in one basket. But I continually monitor my investments, carefully analyzing any potential opportunities or changes in market conditions. If something comes along that makes sense and fits into my strategy, I modify my plan to incorporate the new opportunity.

The only time my plan has not worked for me is when I didn’t follow it. Map out your path from Point A to Point B, figure out what investment vehicle (strategy and tactics) will get you there, then stick to the map. I’m confident you’ll go far.