Money 01 (Sep 08 - Mar 10)

[winston]

It's Fun to Know: About Paper Money

No trees are harmed in the making of U.S. currency. Bills are 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen.

Counterfeiting devices are becoming more and more high-tech. To thwart them, the latest $5 bill has a security thread with 650,000 microscopic glass domes that create an optical illusion that cannot be copied (at least that's what experts tell us).

A 2008 study found more cocaine residue on U.S. bills than on any other world currency. (The researchers also found a significant amount of staphylococcus bacteria and fecal matter.)

(Source: Discover Magazine)

[winston]

How to Create a Wealth Abundance Mindset By Tristan J. Loo

While on a vacation with some friends one week, we ended up getting invited to dinner at a very expensive restaurant than none of us could afford. The man who invited us insisted that we join him and he covered the bill, which came out to be about $200 per person.

In the beginning, my scarcity frame of mind began to challenge the gentleman’s generosity as arrogance, but I began to become curious as to how he was able to become so wealthy. I asked him, “What’s your secret for wealth?”

http://www.synergyinstituteonline.com/d ... ?artid=397

[winston]

The Law of Abundance by Brian Tracy

The Law of Abundance- there is ample money for everyone who knows how to acquire it and keep it.

We live in an abundant universe in which there is sufficient money for all who really want it and are willing obey the laws governing its acquisition.

You Can Have All You Want
There is plenty of money available to you. There is no real shortage. You can have virtually all you really want and need. We live in a generous universe and we are surrounded on all sides by blessings and opportunities to acquire all we truly desire. Your attitude, of either abundance or scarcity toward money, will have a major impact on whether you become rich or not.

Make a Decision
The first corollary of the Law of Abundance says that, "People become wealthy because they decide to become wealthy."

They become wealthy because they believe they have the ability to become wealthy. Because they believe this completely, they act accordingly. They consistently take the necessary actions that turn their beliefs into realities. And you can always tell what your beliefs really are by looking at your actions. There is no other way.

The second corollary of this law says: "People are poor because they have not yet decided to become rich."

Decide to become rich and Get Out of Debt

Examine Your Own Thinking
In the book, The Instant Millionaire, by Mark Fisher, the old millionaire asks the boy who has sought his advice about becoming a millionaire, "Why aren’t you rich already?"

This is an important question to ask yourself. However you answer this question will reveal a lot about yourself. Your answers will expose your self-limiting beliefs, your doubts, your fears, your excuses, your rationalizations and your justifications.

Review Your Reasons
Why aren’t you rich already? Write down all the reasons you can think of. Go over your answers one by one with someone who knows you well and ask them for their opinion. You may be surprised to find that your reasons are mostly excuses that you have fallen in love with.

Whatever your reasons or excuses, you can now get rid of them. The world is full of hundreds and thousands of people who have had far more difficulties to overcome than you could ever imagine, and they’ve gone on to be successful anyway. So can you.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to apply this law immediately:

First, imagine that every experience you have ever had with money contained a special lesson that was designed just for you to help you to ultimately become financially independent. What are the most important lessons you have learned so far?

Second, analyze yourself honestly and determine your biggest block, your major self-limiting belief that holds you back from becoming more successful financially. Resolve to act from now on as if this block no longer exists.

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/The_ ... dance.html

[winston]

The Way to Wealth by Brian Tracy

When I was growing up, my dream, and my fantasy was to be a millionaire by the age of 30.

I soon found out this is a common dream; everyone wants to be a millionaire by the age of 30.

Throughout my twenties, I traveled and worked all over the world, touching down in eighty countries on five continents. I worked at a variety of different jobs, from washing dishes and running barbed wire on a ranch all the way through to factory work, construction work and finally into sales and sales management. But by the time I reached the age of thirty, I was as broke as I was at the age of twenty.

Then, I really got serious. I began asking, “Why are some people more successful than others?”

In the Bible it says, “Seek and ye shall find, for all who seek, findeth.”

Whenever you start looking for the answer to an important question, you will start to find that answer, and sometimes in the most remarkable places.

My first realization was that I didn’t know anything about millionaires. For many years, I had dreamed of becoming a millionaire, but I didn’t know how people achieved that magic number, starting from nothing.

Over the next few years, I read everything I could find about self-made millionaires. I discovered that this type of person had been exhaustedly studied and researched, interviewed and questioned, and very definite profiles of people who become millionaires had emerged.

The bottom line is that fully 80% of self-made millionaires started off in sales or entrepreneurship. Most of them came from average or humbled beginnings. Many did not graduate from high school or go to college. Many were immigrants who arrived on these shores with no friends, no contacts, no money, limited education and no language skills. And yet somehow they went on to become millionaires within one generation.

What they all had in common was a combination of vision plus courage. They had a clear vision or dream of becoming financially successful, although most of them started out with no idea at all how they would achieve this goal.

Most importantly, they had the courage to step out in faith, into the unknown, risking the loss of time and effort, with no guarantee of success.

Most people who become millionaires achieve their wealth in a way that is completely different from the way that they first anticipated. In a thirteen year study at Babson College, they found that successful entrepreneurs and business builders had one quality. They were willing to “launch” toward their goal, and then make continual course corrections as they got feedback from their activities.

Today, there are 26 million businesses in the United States, and entrepreneurs are forming new businesses at the rate of about one million per year. Unfortunately, 95% of entrepreneurs earn less than $50,000 per year, no matter how many years they had been working, or how many hours they worked each week.

Why is this? Why is it that intelligent, ambitious, hard-working men and woman, who have the vision and courage to start their own businesses, struggle year after year, often earning less than they would if they took a salary job? Why does this happen?

The answer is simple. People who succeed in business and become millionaires are those who “know more” about their business and the market than other people do. People who become millionaires invariably focus and concentrate with laser like determination on mastering the essential skills necessary to build a profitable enterprise.

Fortunately, all business skills are learnable. You can learn any skill you need to learn to achieve any goal you set for yourself, as long as your goal is clear.

You can learn how to market and sell, how to negotiate and persuade. You can learn how to do costing and pricing for your products and services. You can learn how to select, interview and hire the key people you need to grow your business. You can learn how to borrow money from your bank and from twenty-five other sources used by successful business people.

You can learn how to do joint-ventures and form strategic alliances. You can learn how to correctly analyze a business opportunity before you get into it, thereby saving you enormous amounts of money and time.

Today, there are more opportunities for you to achieve financial success, and to become a millionaire, than have ever existed in history before. And even though the economy goes through ups and downs, fluctuating like the stock market, the overall trend is positive in more than 90% of cases.

Begin today. Set a goal to become financially independent and determine the exact amount of money that you want to have to achieve this objective. Sit down, make a plan. Set priorities. And then launch toward your goal with complete commitment and determination.

Resolve in advance that you will never give up. You will learn from every experience. You will study every aspect of your business so that you are considered an expert in your field. You will continually make new plans to replace the old plans that don’t work. You will except feedback and self-correct as you move forward. You will never give up.

If you will do these things, including reading my series, “The Way to Wealth” books one, two and three; there is nothing that can stop you from achieving your financial goals in the months and years ahead.

[winston]

What’s The Secret To Building Real Wealth by Brian Tracy

What would your life be like if you doubled your income this year?

What would your life be like if you doubled your income this year? What if you doubled your income AND you doubled the time you spend doing what you love with the people you love?

How can you go from dream to reality?

Think it’s impossible in this economy? It’s not! In every shift of the economy — down or up — there are winners and losers.

Even in the Great Depression, people came out new millionaires. Today will be no different.

The Secret You Need To Know
The key to being successful in life and with your business is focus.

Focus? What am I talking about?

The key to being truly successful is knowing how and where to focus your time and efforts. For example, just yesterday I was talking with someone who sells fiber optic cables and computer hardware. He wanted to know if I thought it was a good idea to diversify and try to resell self-improvement programs online.

Here was someone who was doing fairly well with one business and about to take his eye off his primary source of income and try something he knew nothing about. Bad idea!

If you want to be successful, the key is finding something you’re good at and focusing your efforts to help people…and become rich doing it.

For example, every successful business owner knows they need a marketing strategy to attract new clients and make more money. But most don’t know how and where to focus their marketing. They try a little of this and a little of that and get little in the way of results.

Knowing how and where to focus your efforts is the key to success.

With a proven system for getting prospects’ attention, generating leads, converting leads to clients, maximizing sales and generating repeat sales you can easily double your income while cutting your time on the job in half (or even more).

4 Options For Achieving Your Dreams

Try copying what others are doing
This could work. Anything is possible but most new businesses fail. Even if you try copying one that appears to be making money, it’s impossible to know what’s working for them and what’s not. You could easily end up copying one of their failed strategies.

Wait for lightning to strike in the form of a revolutionary product or service and then hope you get featured on Oprah. Your odds are slim but again, this could happen. Counting on it would be a mistake.

Maintain a positive attitude
I’m sure you’ve heard it before: your chances of success are higher when you focus on creating opportunities…but at some point you’re going to need more than just a positive attitude. You’re going to need guidance and tools to reach your dreams.

Find a proven system, one that shows you exactly how to become a sought after expert, how to grow your business, and how to maximize your profits so you have a steady stream of leads, sales and profits (so you can make more money).

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/What’s%20The%20Secret%20To%20Building%20Real_Wealth.html

[winston]

The Major Obstacle to Financial Success Posted by Brian Tracy on Dec 23, 2008

The major mental obstacle to financial success is that some people believe that they don’t really deserve to be rich.

The Biggest Demotivator of All
They have been raised with a steady drumbeat of destructive criticism, as I was, that has led them to conclude, at an unconscious level, that they don’t really deserve to be successful and happy. The worst effect of negative experiences in childhood, which are all too common, is that when people actually do succeed as the result of hard work, they feel guilty.

These guilt feelings then cause them to do things to get rid of the money, to throw it away. They spend it or invest it foolishly. They lend it, lose it or give it away. They engage in self-sabotage, in the form of overeating, excessive drinking, drug usage, marital infidelity and often dramatic personality changes. To change your results with money, you have to change your attitude toward it.

Treat Money With Care and Attention
The fact is that money is very much like a lover. It must be courted and coaxed and flattered and treated with care and attention. It gravitates toward people who respect it and value it and are capable of doing worthwhile things with it. It flows through the fingers and flees from people who do not understand it, or who do not take proper care of it.

Become Skilled With Money
Sometimes people say that they are not very good with money. But being good with money is a skill that anyone can learn through practice. Usually, saying that one is not very good with money is merely an excuse or a rationalization for the fact that the person is not very successful or disciplined with money. The person has not learned how to acquire it or to hold on to it.

Be A No-Limit Thinker
The starting point of accumulating money is for you to believe that you have an unlimited capacity to obtain all the money that you will ever need. Look upon yourself as a financial success just waiting for a place to happen. And see yourself as deserving all you can honestly acquire.

Open Any Door
Money is good. Money gives you choices and enables you to live your life the way you want to live it. Money opens doors for you that would have been closed in its absence. But just like anything, an obsession can be hurtful. If a person becomes so preoccupied with money that he loses sight of the fact that money is merely a tool that is to be used to acquire happiness, then money becomes a harmful thing.

Money is Neutral
The Bible says, "The love of money is the root of all evil." It doesn’t say, "money is the root of all evil." It says, "the love of money is the root of all evil." It is the preoccupation with money, to the exclusion of the really important things in life that is the problem, not the money itself. Money is essential to our lives in society. It is also neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It is only the way that it is acquired and the uses to which it is put that determines whether it is helpful or hurtful.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, recognize and accept that virtually everyone who has money today at one time was broke and probably broke for a long time. Then they learned the skills of accumulating money and they are now financially independent. Whatever they have done, you can probably do as well.

Second, become a student of money from this day forward. Study it, learn about it and apply the lessons you discover toward your own financial life until you begin to attract more and more money in your direction.

http://www.briantracy.com/blog/category ... l-success/

[winston]

The Law of Accumulation
Posted by Brian Tracy on Oct 6, 2008

The Law of Accumulation: how your financial fortune accumulates slowly over time and then becomes enormous, like a snowball.

The Law of Accumulation: Every great financial achievement is an accumulation of hundreds of small efforts and sacrifices that no one ever sees or appreciates.

Develop Discipline
The achievement of financial independence will require a tremendous number of small efforts on your part. To begin the process of accumulation, you must be disciplined and persistent. You must keep at it for a long, long time. Initially, you will see very little change or difference but gradually, your efforts will begin to bear fruit. You will begin to pull ahead of your peers. Your finances will improve and your debts will disappear. Your bank account will grow and your whole life will improve.

Build Up Momentum
The first corollary of the Law of Accumulation says: "As your savings accumulate, you develop a momentum that moves you more rapidly toward your financial goals."

It is hard to get started on a program of financial accumulation, but once you do get started, you find it easier and easier to keep at it. The "momentum principle" is one of the great success secrets. This principle says that it takes tremendous energy to overcome the initial inertia and resistance to financial accumulation and get started, but once started, it takes much less energy to keep moving.

The Universal Laws of Success and Achievement will help you accumulate all that you desire!

Start Slow, Finish Fast
The second corollary of the Law of Accumulation says, "By the yard it’s hard, but inch by inch, anything’s a cinch."

When you begin thinking about saving 10 or 20 percent of your earnings, you will immediately think of all kinds of reasons that it is not possible. You might be up to your neck in debt. You might be spending every single penny that you earn today just to keep afloat.

If you do find yourself in this situation, instead of saving 10 percent, begin saving just 1 percent of your earnings in a special account, which you refuse to touch.

Increase As You Go Along
This small amount will begin to add up at a rate that will surprise you. As you become comfortable with saving 1 percent, increase your savings rate to 2 percent, then 3 percent, then 4 percent and 5 percent and so on. Within a year, you will find yourself getting out of debt and saving 10 percent, 15 percent and even 20 percent of your earnings without it really affecting your lifestyle.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to apply this law immediately:

First, decide upon your long-term financial goals and then resolve to work toward them one step at a time. The first steps are the hardest and you must discipline yourself to avoid backsliding into old habits.

Second, practice the law of accumulation in other parts of your life as well. Resolve to master a subject one page at a time. Lose extra pounds one ounce at a time. Learn a language one lesson at a time. The cumulative effect can be enormous.

[Chiron]

The Law of Accumulation
Posted by Brian Tracy on Oct 6, 2008


Develop Discipline
The achievement of financial independence will require a tremendous number of small efforts on your part. To begin the process of accumulation, you must be disciplined and persistent. You must keep at it for a long, long time. Initially, you will see very little change or difference but gradually, your efforts will begin to bear fruit. You will begin to pull ahead of your peers. Your finances will improve and your debts will disappear. Your bank account will grow and your whole life will improve.

Personally 100% in agreement that discipline is the most important skill set to achieve financial freedom.

[kennynah]

i, too, agree...

this concept will sink in sooner to some and later to others...but saddest to those who never know...

[winston]

Understanding Your Relationship with Money by Anne Hartley

Whenever we say that we want more money, less debt, or more possessions, what we are really saying is that we want a feeling. Money and possessions have no power. Power comes from the feeling we get from having money and possessions. In order to determine your money values, you need to determine what feelings are most important to you.

If you want to have a lot of money so that you can do what you like, when you like, you’re seeking a feeling of freedom--this is your value. If you want to live in a beautiful home and live an affluent lifestyle, then you want to feel prosperous. If you want to know that there will always be enough money to pay the bills, retire in peace, and know you’ll never have to worry about money again, you want to feel secure.

Recently, I moved into an old home, which I intend to renovate. My house has a very old but functional kitchen, which I don’t like much but which I know I can live with for a while. This old kitchen has turned out to be one of life’s blessings in disguise as I’ve learned quite a lot about money values from it.

When my eldest daughter, Lisa, first saw the kitchen, she said, “The first thing you have to get rid of is that kitchen.” Lisa likes nice things and doesn’t like to wait for them. My youngest daughter, Laura, is more security conscious, hates spending money, and likes to save, and she said, “There is nothing wrong with that kitchen. Why would you want to change it?”

The kitchen evoked three different responses in three different people, and that’s the way it is with money. We are all different, and how we earn, manage, spend, save, and invest our money depends on our money values. The key to achieving your financial goals and living a life you love is to know your money values, then find a way to manage your money that respects these values.

Once I realized that my kitchen was a gauge for assessing money values, I decided to make the most of it. I started listening to what people were really telling me about their money values when they made any comments. A carpenter commented, “Nice kitchen.” When I asked him if he was being sarcastic, he looked genuinely surprised, and I learned from subsequent conversations that he is very security conscious.

When my former secretary, Lisa, came to visit and said, “Good size kitchen,” I recognized this statement for what it was—a nice, neutral comment that was more about politeness than real feelings. So when I said that I disliked it and intended replacing it, she said, “Well, I didn’t want to be rude by commenting on it.” Another friend said, “Don’t worry about the inside, what’s important is to get the outside of the house looking good first.”

What all these people told me is how they feel about money and what is most important to them. The most common money values are freedom, prosperity, and security. Although it is important to honor your money values, it is equally important how you do this. When you pursue a feeling to the exclusion of all else, you may find yourself in financial difficulties.

It would be easy to assume that everybody with the same money values has the same need, but they don’t. One person’s desire for freedom may mean that he simply cannot work for an employer, while another person may be quite happy working for an employer provided he is not tied down by financial responsibilities. One person may want more money so he can do what he likes, while another may not care about money but wants the freedom to be creative.

To discover your own money values, ask yourself these questions:-
1) If I was really happy and money was no object, what type of home would I live in?
2) Who would I live with?
3) Where would I live?
4) What work would I do?
5) What would I do with my leisure time?
6) Who would I share my leisure time with?
7) What would I look like?

When making your choices, write down everything you think, and don’t discount an idea because it seems too grand or too small. Once you’ve completed this exercise, look to see if one value is more dominant than any other. This is the value that you need to honor in a responsible way. Usually, one value will stand out, but this isn’t always the case—some people can have two values that are equally important to them, and in this case you need to honor both values.

All money values have a positive side and a negative side, and learning to balance the two is the key to success. There’s a lot we can learn from security conscious people because they are good with money. On the negative side, though, they can be overly cautious and as a result miss out on opportunities.

In contrast, if you value prosperity, you know what’s important to you, and quite simply, beauty is something that makes you happy. However, this needs to be balanced with being responsible and making choices that are going to help you over the longer term.

Whatever your money values, there is always a way to earn, manage, and achieve goals in a way that honors what’s most important to you. If you are in a relationship with a partner who has different money values than you, you have an opportunity to learn, grow, and prosper.

Couples with differing money values who work together are often the most financially successful because they balance each other. Sometimes, in a relationship, one person gives his power away to his partner, giving up his own desires for the sake of harmony. In an equal relationship, both parties have an equal say. If your partner refuses to respect your needs or to take responsibility for himself, then you need to look at what opportunity your relationship is presenting you with.

You may need to love and respect yourself more. You do this by setting standards and letting other people know what you will and will not do.

You also need to be aware that if you are not prepared to change your behavior in any way, and that applies to the really extravagant as well as to the extremely security conscious, what is behind your behavior is fear. In this case, money problems are just a symptom of a deeper issue that needs to be dealt with.

Your money values hold the key to financial freedom, so rather than cursing money, start loving it, and look for the gift in your current situation.

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Unde ... Money.html