Recently as I sat at a local coffee shop in downtown Charlotte recently I couldn’t help but overhear several patrons passionately discussing the Bernard Madoff case.

“He’s such a crook” one gentleman exclaimed. “They should give him the electric chair” another woman protested. It got hot and heavy for awhile and really had me thinking about something my Dad told me years ago.

He intimated that in a crisis situation before I start pointing the finger and blaming someone else for my problems I need to first check-in with the man-in-the-mirror (my dad said it way before MJ, but we love you for that song anyway Mike – RIP).

In the many years since my dad’s death I’ve had the opportunity to reflect and contemplate his statement on many an occasion. My years in the finance business working with client after client revealed a dire lack of accountability on the part of clients who flatly refused to take personal responsibility for their own financial minefields.

Often I’d develop compelling arguments as to why a couple needed to be involved in their financial makeover so as to learn the basics of what to do and not to do. “Can’t we just pay you to do it for us without being involved?” was the answer I would hear more often than not. I became exhausted with “fixing” a client’s situation only to have them present me with a new bag of goodies (debt, late payments, etc.) 6 months later.

When I consider this Madoff case I ponder how all these supposedly-intelligent and savvy individuals could look at that man or woman in the mirror every day and not hold him/her at fault. They blindly trusted this man who really couldn’t be trusted. How could this happen you say?  Where was the S.E.C….(that’s another story).

As far as this situation goes it all starts with poor stewardship. Individuals who, like many of my former clients, refused to take personal responsibily for their own money management. “I don’t have the time”, “I’m not good with numbers” or “My wife handles that” are some of the poor excuses I’ve heard.

Now we are faced with the most horrific financial scam of our nations’ history. And while the victims are applauding the conviction as well as the 150 year sentence they still fail to see the forest for the trees. What Americans still don’t realize is that unless and until we turn off noise of the flat screens, two-ways and I-pods it’s only a matter of time before history repeats itself.

Robert Kiyosaki has preached fiscal responsibility in his numerous best-sellers. However, it’s the same basics grandmom and grandad taught our parents years ago. Have we become so modernized that we can’t do anything for ourselves any more? The irony of it all is that it seems the more sophisticated and advanced we’ve become educationally and technologically, the worse financial decisions we make.

So you couldn’t afford to pursue a degree in finance from Harvard University? Well, that’s understandable. However, for most a Harvard-level education is now availible to the common man or woman today via the world wide web. Never have we in the history of mankind has such a myriad of data and information been available to us right at our fingertips. And the only way for us to change our results is in fact, to change our actions.

Please, please don’t misunderstand my point. There are (still) a few good money managers out there today. However, the magic elixer is YOU. You are the best manager your finances will ever have. There is only one person who’s going to take care of your money like it really matters and that is you. 

Many people had no clue what there precious dollars were invested in. They knew nothing about the myriad of “investments” or the background of the companies. This is a cardinal sin and one of the first and most basic rules of investing. You should never invest in an industry you are intimately familiar with….ever.  

And at the end of the day you should be directing the money manager to a large extent, not he or she selling you on the latest hot stock tip. It’s time to take charge of your finances again. Otherwise we may as well prepare ourselves for a few more Bernie Madoffs to be uncovered in the years to come.

I’d like to suggest it’s time to get back in the driver’s seat and take the wheel of your financial future. One thing i can say for Bernie is that he opened our eyes! You can choose to make a change or do nothing at all. The choice is up to you!

~ Jerry King.  Jerry King is an Examiner from Charlotte.

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Lessons off Bernie Madoff

Wealth creation is probably a new term for most people.

It is hard enough to create something useful for ourselves. Yet, do people really think that creating wealth is possible?

As we can see, in today’s educational system it is rare for universities to teach wealth creation even in business schools. Thus, it might as well be an abstract idea as world peace.

However, inspirational giants and self-made millionaires like Robert Kiyosaki, Tony Robbins and Jamie McIntyre are people who have perfected wealth creation skills.

As the term implies, skill is an action to produce tangible results. One cannot say that he has the skill to do something if he cannot demonstrate it. Thus, developing wealth creation skills is not only a tangible part of reality, but also something that people can develop and enhance.

Following a path towards developing wealth creation skills will definitely help you achieve financial freedom.

Do not Sell Yourself Short

The first step in developing your wealth creation skills is acknowledging your value.  Having the self-confidence to move forward with your strengths will allow you to be valuable to other people.

When this happens, do not undervalue yourself. When you undervalue yourself you project an image where people can manipulate you. Feeling that you do not get equal value for your work is the biggest individual letdown.

In order to develop your wealth creation skills, you must design your launch pad to success by feeling good with your work.

By pushing yourself to live up to your perceived value, you also give yourself the incentive to become a better person and raise your value even higher. Then you can become a critical creator of your wealth.

Millionaires are not cheap

Most successful people will tell you that success comes with a price. Sometimes the price tag for success is something that we can afford.

However, we still don’t have the will to spend it anyway. Self-made millionaire’s spends on things that they can’t afford because they know that they can be better off with it.

Remember that the world millionaire and cheap will not come together. If you want to be a millionaire someday, start getting rid of the word cheap.
Remember that every benefit always comes with a cost. Go for things that you feel will benefit you the most and be daring enough to supply the necessary effort for it.

Finding your craft – then get paid for it

People find confidence if they do what they really love doing. However, people tend to leave the things that they love in order to work hard for money. When this happens, one finds it harder to become confident.

They end up forgetting their dreams while they fall into pitch black.
To find enthusiasm, people should start asking a different question instead. Why can’t I do the things that I love to do and get paid for it?

Developing sound wealth creation skills involves putting passion in your work. Invest in yourself first and you will see the dividends pay off.

There is Wealth

Finally developing wealth creation skills is acknowledging that wealth abounds. Traditional education has been talking about a world of scarcity.

As defined, economics exists because we need to find ways to distribute scarce resources. How about the other way around? Jamie McIntyre said that if we divide the world’s wealth to all the six billion people in the planet, we would get $3,000,000 each. It is our job to get our equal share of world wealth.

True wealth creation knows that the world is abundant. This way, we can develop ourselves to look at different trials and come up with different opportunities. Knowing that there is wealth will put your wealth creation skills to good use.

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Developing Wealth Creation Skills

Recently released numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis show that the US once again has an increasing personal savings rate. Unfortunately, this rate has been declining for decades as Americans began living increasingly beyond their means.

On more than one occasion the savings rate even dipped into negative territory, meaning that America’s population in aggregate was borrowing more than it was saving. This high consumption rate in turn has led to excessive borrowing, which was the ultimate cause of the financial crisis that occurred last year.

Generation Y, my generation, seems to have particular difficulty saving money. First off, we’re still relatively young, and young people in general are less inclined to think long term. However, young adults today are worse than previous generations in that they see disposable income and no need to save a portion.

This inability to save is partially the fault of parents. Many simply never taught their kids to save. Mine was the generation of the allowance. Parents thought they were teaching us a lesson and that by giving us a defined amount for any given period, we would learn to budget. Instead, kids got their allowance and viewed every cent as spending money.

To people who never think about the benefits of saving, allow me to introduce the 8th Wonder of the World: Compound Interest. Consider the following examples:

1. Let’s say that at age 25 a person had accumulated $10,000 to invest. If they can earn, say 10% per year for round numbers, on average, how much will he have at age 60, assuming he never contributes another dollar?

2. What if that same person waited until age 30? How much would they have at 60 then?

3. And if they waited until age 35, what’s there at 60?

The answers can be found at the end of the blog. Keep in mind that those results reflect growth with no additional savings. To see even more phenomenal results, consider the following:

4. Let’s say I have a friend who’s 25 years old and has little or no savings to date. Realizing the predicament he may face in the future, he has decided to adjust his spending habits to start saving $100 per week. While this is no large sum, let’s say he continues this pattern of saving for the next 35 years. Assuming 52 weeks per year and an average annual return of 10%, how much will my friend have when he’s 60?

The real concept here is to let your money work for you. For continued reading on the subject, we strongly recommend Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, which explains accounting and saving in terms that are much easier to understand than textbooks.

The lesson here is simple: Save early. By putting money back early on, you allow it to accumulate over an extended period of time with little or no extra work. The reality is that the young adulthood comprises some of the prime saving years. It’s the time before we start our own families and have kids, while living expenses are relatively lower. This is the time before diapers, toys, babysitters, Disney World, and, if they’re lucky enough, kid’s college tuition, room and board, etc.

The bottom line is to save early so you can afford to live better later on. And, perhaps most importantly, when you do have kids, pass the lesson on. Don’t make them learn the hard way.

Answers: 1. $ 281,024 2. $174,494 3. $108,347 4. $1,550,259

Dock David Treece is a stockbroker licensed with FINRA. He works for Treece Financial Services Corp.

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Living beyond means

I think that I’ve always been attracted to the prospect of increasing cashflow because of what it represents. To me, it’s always been a symbol for life leverage: the ability to increase one’s options for action.

We feel alive when we are free – to feel free is at least closely related to feeling alive in the sense of feeling an excitement for living. Recall the last time you were travelling to a new country or location you’d never been to, or the thrill of meeting someone special, or finishing a story or painting of your own creation, or the simple pleasures that come with having an unexpected, free day to spend exactly how you want it, or the thoughts you had after seeing a powerfully moving film, or receiving an unexpected but welcome windfall of money.

Maybe a different situation comes to mind to you. I’m guessing you may have felt thrilled and quite inspired. To be inspired, etymologically speaking, is Latin for “having the breath of God inside you.” The Greek equivalent is to have enthusiasm – from entheos, “to be in God.” “God” can refer to however you conceive a higher power or higher intelligence ordering things – whatever turns out to be above beyond the realm of mere human consciousness and human life.

To create life leverage is to access more of this feeling of inspiration and enthusiasm. It is to move closer to that part of you that feels this way or is “in touch” with your own “divine spark” so to speak; the part that leads you to take – as Joe Vitale has said – “inspired action.”

Imagine feeling that way all the time? Of course you’d have your ups and downs, too, but in general the more actions and options that are open to us, I think, is one of the key ingredients for how good we can feel.

One of the worst feelings is to “feel stuck” in our lives – we must be in a certain place at a certain time for other people so we can please their clients and customers; or how about the feeling of having absolutely no time or space to oneself? That can really wear down your health after a while.

So here are some quick thoughts on how we can better get in touch with or create more of this life leverage.

(1) Have a plan. You might not have a huge global plan that you can fit over all parts of your life just yet, but I think it’s probably a good thing if you can at least have a plan running and working within certain aspects of your life, such as finances and investments.

Having a plan might help you “keep all your ducks in a row,” so to speak, so that instead of squandering your energy in various places or on various methods, your energy, resources, and money are all lined up and moving in the same direction. This cuts down on drag and resistance to where you need to go.

(2) Work as much as possible from a place of inspired action. I’ve noticed that with the accomplishments I’ve been proud of, and the great people that I have met, that these have all flowed outwards from an original place of inspired action that I once took.

For example, deciding to take a certain class “on a whim” because you feel attracted to that topic – and lo and behold, you meet a great friend there, who later introduces you to someone else who teaches you about something else you had been looking for for quite a while.

I’m sure you get the idea here. These chains of connections, I’m guessing, tend to happen when we originally move from a place of inspiration. When we’re stuck in our “same old, same old” routines and mindsets we act, think and perceive in the “same old” ways.

(3) Stick to what’s essential. A simplistic way to put this is to call it “focus,” but what focus really means is this. Cut out (or put on hold) the unnecessary parts of your life. Block out distractions (first you need to figure out what the distractions really are).

Figure out what 20 percent of your actions are giving you 80 percent of your results. Focus on this 20 percent first and foremost, before moving on to that other 80 percent.

I remember starting to put this principle into play when I was in my final year of undergrad (yeah, maybe I should have implemented it sooner). Between applying to grad schools, commuting two hours to teach a course, and taking 6 courses of my own, on top of all the day-to-day errands of living, I really needed a way to feel like I was still moving ahead and getting stuff done.

(4) Follow your muse(s). This is different from #2. When you work from a place of inspired action, you’re already inspired. You’re acting, you’re an agent of inspiration. You’re not looking outward for things, you are just creating, so to speak, from inside yourself when you decide to take a different walk today, or try a different restaurant, or take a spontaneous vacation because you’ve been getting really strong signals lately about all things Costa Rica.

Following your muse, however, is about knowing what inspires you and staying in touch with it. It’s the place where you can go for your “fix.” A voice that reassures you, “yes, there’s a way out of this. You can get ahead. You’re doing it. Keep going.” Whatever you find yourself returning to over and over.

Lately, for me, it’s great financial books. More generally, though, whenever I travel I get the feeling. It’s so easy to wake up at 4am. with enthusiasm for making it to the airport on time in order to head off to a place I haven’t been to yet.

Another way to put this is to ask what will wake you up again when you’ve been sleeping for a while in your life? Have you seen the recent film Flawless starring Michael Caine and Demi Moore? Remember the scene where Laura Quinn is sitting at her office desk and reading the old “self-help” notes she wrote to herself? Coming across one of these reminders again when you’re feeling “stuck” can be the burst of energy you need.

But what about cashflow?
These are four ingredients that I know have worked for me. I’m sure there might be others. I am not sure about the place of cashflow in all of this. I don’t think that cashflow is merely a means to an end – i.e., just a way to be able to do the things you want. I think that in the beginning, increasing your cashflow can be much, much more beneficial than that. If you’re a student or anyone else living below the poverty line, for example, boosting your cashflow can help you make significant advances with your life and your energy. If you’re a multimillionaire and you’ve pretty well got the basics of what you need to be happy, more cashflow isn’t going to be as beneficial (unless you’re operating a vast charity network, or something similar).

I wonder if this all sounds very vague or if it creates any new connections for any reader. We’ve all read some of the same inspirational texts and have shared many of the same experiences, no doubt. I think that the next thing to do is to bring them altogether and work on synthesis and synergy. Oftentimes, progress in my own thinking occurs when I’m able to see two things side by side that were previously known only in isolation. So I’m going to try to work harder at that here, too, and draw more bits together that were previously left in scattered array.

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How To Create Life Leverage

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