Casting Call: 70 Future Millionaires Wanted!

So far, this blog has covered – in a random way – perhaps 10% – 20% of what I have to offer, and over the next 2 years you can expect that to double again … so, if you can wait 4 or 5 years (and, can unscramble the order that I deliver this content in) you will know at least half of what I have to offer.

IF you can wait …

But, now I am offering another way to learn what you need to learn – quickly and in a totally ordered/guided way – AT NO COST TO YOU … NOT NOW … NEVER … EVER … really 🙂

Why?

It’s another way for me to share my ideas … and, more fuel for my next book [AJC: my first one is finished and is being hawked to publishers and agents as we speak] 😉

So, what’s this all about?

If you have been around – reading this blog – for the past two years, you will already know about my Other Site, which was host to a unique online experiment where a real multi-millionare (that would be me) offered to mentor just 7 people to make their own fortune.

Scott, Ryan, Josh, Debbie (who volunteered to leave the program to help me write a book about their experiences with this experiment), Jeff (who replaced Debbie), Diane, Mark and Lee (a retired Police Chaplan!) all participated and you can read about their experiences on that site.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, and meet a couple of very small criteria, ALL of this content is – and, will always remain – free to you!

But, I am offering you even more .. also for free / for ever …

You see, I am opening up this site to just 70 more Millionaires … in Training! and, will be offering memberships to qualified applicants for a small monthly fee … but, not for you – as a reader of this blog, I feel morally obligated (seriously!) to keep my promise that I would NEVER ask you to pay a dime for my online services.

This won’t stop me from advertising the hell out of this re-launched site elsewhere, looking for paying customers … but, NOT HERE.

[AJC: This is about as good an offer as you will ever receive in this life, so maybe you should take advantage of it]

Foundation Membership (this is exclusive for the first 70 QUALIFYING $7million7years readers) is just like the Premium Mmbership that others will need to pay for – but, you get it for LIFE and for FREE.

Joining will enable you to find:

EXACTLY how much money YOU need in order to be rich [hint: this will be different for everybody]

WHEN you need to stop working full-time and WHAT you will be doing with your new-found freedom

WHAT steps you need to take in order to amass the fortune that you need

HOW to find your passion and turn that into cash

Most importantly, you will find THE ONE THING – more than any other – that helped me move from $30k in debt to $7 million in the bank in just 7 years … and, how it is virtually guaranteed to work for you.

This is no scam or Get Rich Quick system that tells you how to invest in real-estate, stocks, online businesses, or any other method that made the author rich [or, was it just selling you the information that made the author rich?!] …

… no, this is a NEW and UNIQUE Guided Learning Experience that will show you how to get as rich as you need to be, doing whatever it is that you are most passionate about.

Haven’t found your passion?

Don’t worry, that’s one of the first things that we will cover 😉

If you want to become one of the 70 Millionaires … In Training! click here now, before 70 others jump in ahead of you!

Still reading?

There’s nothing more to know!

Just click the button … I’m offering you – just 70 of you – the Keys To Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, perhaps you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth? 🙂

Good Luck!

Adrian.

Your Number

Nowadays, somebody only need to write “The” and “Number” next to each other and we automatically know what it means: the amount that you need in your nest-egg so that you can finally throw off those corporate shackles and ‘retire’ …

… well, do anything other than ‘work’ for your daily crust.

The only problem is that nobody tells you how to find The Number!

I should know, I read books on the subject and they all focus on rubbish like: “multiply 75% of your pre-retirement’ salary by 13”.

Which has some obvious problems:

1. How do I know what my pre-retirement salary will be?

2. What if I spend more/less in retirement than when I was working?

3. How will I know my money will last?

The reality is that – for most people – there is (and should be) a total disconnect between how you make your fortune and how you spend it!

In other words, just because you earn $x before you retire, it doesn’t mean that you will spend 75% of $x to 125% of $x (as most financial authors assume) in retirement.

So, I came with my own method – and, it worked for me!

Here’s how:

1. Complete a simple spreadsheet of your major (non-investment) personal purchases, income, and living expenses now and over the next 1, 5, 10, and 20 years. Don’t forget to apply the Inflation Adjustment Factors!

2. To help I have listed the typical expenditures of a $100,000 a year lifestyle, a $250,000 a year lifestyle, and a $550,000 a year lifestyle. These should provide some reference points to calculate your own future living expenses.

3. Use the spreadsheet to calculate Your Number and Your Date.

That’s it!

… and, I’m betting that it won’t even resemble your expected final salary – in fact, I’m betting that the number is so damn big’n’scary that you won’t even get there just on any typical salary – even with your 401k maxed 😉

To each their own …

You’ve heard about the so-called Debt Free Revolution?

Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey are the most famous proponents of the pay-down-all-debt approach to personal finance.

But, just because something is called a ‘revolution’ doesn’t necessarily make it right!

… I’m sure that plenty of good French aristocrats also lost their heads during the French Revolution!

But, Money Monk was just voicing the view that’s it’s OK for debt-averse people, or those who know nothing about investing, to pay off their mortgages early when he said:

To each their own. In my parents case it was wise for them to pay off their mortgage because they have no knowledge of stocks and investments.

In my case it maybe be wise not to pay off my mortgage. Some people just like the simple no risk life. Younger people tend to take more risk because time is on their side.

Unless more people are educated about the market, many will go the debt free route because it take no risk

Firstly, if your parents were born in the US, MoneyMonk, they didn’t want a mortgage because they (or their parents) saw how the banks pulled mortgages to try and fund the run against their cash deposits during the Great Depression.

Their view was simple: “if I don’t have a mortgage, then the Bank can’t take my house away”.

But, this can’t happen any more. The bank can’t take your house away if you continue to make payments on time …

Secondly, having no knowledge of “stocks and investments” is no excuse: you can get that knowledge … even if it was a valid ‘excuse’ for your parents, it certainly isn’t the case today. Blogs such as your and mine are just one example about the sources of information out there today …

But, I agree: if time is running out, and you have less than 10 years left to retirement, then it’s probably too late – and too risky – to change course. The volatility of just about any investment over a time frame of a decade or less makes them simply too risky to bet your financial future on.

But, if you do have time on your side, then the risk is totally on the side of NOT investing. Because not investing guarantees a poor financial outcome!

And, if any of my readers think that getting a 6.5% – 8.5% after-tax return is ‘investing’ then they should be reading Pensioners’ Weakly instead of this blog 🙂

The 401k revisited …

I’ve written a series of posts about 401k’s with the intention of encouraging each and every one of you to assess why you are choosing to ‘invest’ in your 401k over-and-above any other investment choice.

I received a comment from Timmers that I wanted to address here because he raises some interesting points … I will break up his comment into the relevant pieces:

As a person who invests in both 401k and Roth IRA as well as residential real estate …

Let’s stop it right there and understand that we are talking about three totally different things here:

1. 401k is not an ‘investment’ as I have previously defined it … it is a limited, tax-efficient savings strategy with benefits (e.g. employer match). Limited because the underlying investments are usually (not always) costly and relatively inefficient ‘products’ packaged for the employer by their 401k provider.

2. A ROTH IRA is not an ‘investment’ … it is a tax-advantaged vehicle in which it may be possible to make investments. Interestingly, you can usually use one to invest in a wide variety of means including: funds, stocks, real-estate.

3. Residential real-estate may be a good or bad investments, depending upon where, when and how you buy … coming off the top of the ‘bubble-and-bust cycle’, I doubt whether I need to explain this further, here. However, it is important to realize that residential real-estate is not the only form of real-estate investment available to you.

Anyhow, on with Timmers’ comment:

… I have to also add one other Major argument for real estate as a retirement strategy. That is, if investing right and long-term, real estate is much more of a sustainable investment. That is, if you have held it long enough to pay down the mortgage, you simply can live off of the rental income. After drawing out the rental income for one year—guess what? It hasn’t gone down in price but usually up—at least maintaining parity with inflation if not more (sometime much more if you invest right). AND…(the best yet)….you still have the same amount of money available to you as the year before plus a little more (if you haver raised the rent).

This is a masterful strategy of the Making Money 301 kind i.e. something that you want to consider when you have already made your pile of money and are considering (a) how to keep your principle (‘nest egg’) safe and (b) have a safe amount that you can withdraw to live off every year without worrying about inflation OR your money running out.

However, paying off the principle as a Making Money 201 strategy (i.e. building your ‘nest egg’) may not be wise as you then need to think about what you are going to do with the excess cash that the property is spinning off … you will need to invest elsewhere anyway.

That is, the simple difference between real-estate as a wealth-building activity and a wealth-sustaining activity is how much equity you allow yourself to have in each property that you own:

i) Wealth-building: more properties, with less equity in each.

ii) Wealth-preserving: fewer properties, with more equity in each.

Finally, Timmers switches back to 401k’s:

The problem with 401K investments is that unless you have enough to live off of the dividends (out of the question for the vast majority of people), you are drawing down your investment every year. It is not sustainable like real estate. Granted, you must maintain your residences, which is an ongoing cost, but a smart investor always plans for the major repairs/renovations and has money set aside for the smaller ones. To be honest, I am so tired of the constant 24/7 blather of the stock market investment complex that has its tentacles in every media outlet. They want to keep spinning a song that hasn’t produced for most mainstream investors the past ten years (but has for their jobs and income). I am grateful for AJC’s contrarian and no-nonsense approach to most of their blather.

To this, I can only say ‘thanks’ and add some recent comments from the Tycoon Report:

If this market were a horse, I think we would have shot it already to spare it further misery … we have to readjust our perspective of the US equity markets. This is not a buy and hold the S&P 500/DOW 30 market, and it probably won’t be so again until about 2015 – 2018. This is a sector driven market brought about by a slowdown in profit growth and driven by spiraling commodity costs. Index investors get crushed in markets such as these …

If you are a diversify-and-save-via-your-401k kind of ‘investor’, this Kind of makes you sick, doesn’t it?

Good Luck!