Stop Wasting Your Life & Do Something (9 page)

Insurance is designed to protect you from the pitfalls that can naturally befall us all. Home insurance protects your home, car insurance protects your car, and financial insurance protects your finances.

You should always make sure you have enough insurance to put you back into the same position you are in now.

If you own gold – insure it.

If you own properties – insure them.

If you own jewellery or stamps – insure them.

If you own ideas – insure them. Get them protected.

If you own shares in companies – you’ll need to be your own insurance agent and keep an eye on them. You can’t insure them unfortunately.

Life insurance is one of the most important things you can do for your family. I’ve known of two men that were the parents of friends that died with zero life insurance. Their families were already devastated that they had lost their husband and father, so having no income, or way to pay the mortgage added to the woe and heartache. Losing a loved one is the worst thing that can happen, but being forced out of your home because there was no insurance in place just compounds it.

Life insurance can be purchased fairly cheaply, and you should always have enough to look after your family and pay off your mortgage if you have one. If you don’t, you should make sure you have enough insurance to pay your family’s bills for several years.

Whilst insurance can be seen as boring, you can’t underestimate how valuable it is in the event of a loss. Unless you’re so wealthy you could just replace anything you own out of your bank balance, you need to get some!

Chapter 25

Time

Time is something we all have in equal amounts. There are 24 hours in the day for the wealthy, and there are 24 hours in the day for the poor. You cannot get any more, and once you’ve spent it, it’s gone.

This is why it’s important to start the process of building your future security TODAY! Don’t wait and put things off like I did at the start of my adulthood. If you’re 16 years old and just started out making money, and if you follow the simple steps in this book, you could be wealthy and debt free by 40. If you’re 40 and reading this book and you haven’t started yet, you need to get on with it.

Just as a couple of examples, let’s look at how money compounds over time.

If you’re 16 years old, and you start saving £150/$150 per month now, and invest it at a return of 6%, by the time you’re 40 years old, you’d have £96,167. You’d have only actually saved £43,200, so you’re getting £53,000 interest on your money.

If you carried on investing that £150/$150 per month until age 65, you’d have £533,333. Your actual savings were £88,200, so £445,000 was interest! How good is that?

If you started investing at 16, and stopped investing at age 40, and left your £96,167 in the bank and forgot about it until you retired at age 65, how much do you think you would have? £429,382. Now can you see why you should start immediately?

If you’re 40 years old and you start investing £150/$150 per month now until retirement age of 65, you’d have £103,949. £45,000 was the value of the actual money that you put aside yourself.

Can you see why it’s better to start young? For a 40 year old to accumulate £533,333 by retirement age, they’d need to invest £770 per month at 6% interest until they retire.

The other thing about time is how you spend it. I’ve already mentioned in this section that wealthy people don’t waste time. They spend it wisely. What if, instead of watching TV for six hours per week, you used that time to find some good investments? If you could turn your 6% interest to 9%, your £150/$150 invested over 49 years would grow to £1,598,535. Would that extra million pounds be worth spending a few hours a week on?

What if you spent those few hours per week making, and investing £100 extra per month? Still investing at the lower 6%, your pot would now be £888,889. It’d be worth an additional £350,000 to you.

So here are the key messages from this chapter on time:

Start NOW

Use your time wisely to maximise your returns.

Chapter 26

Wills

Here’s another boring but important subject.

Wills.

Approximately 55% of people in the US die without a will. I would imagine that the numbers in the UK are fairly similar.

If you die without a will, the government will decide who gets your money. How do you feel about that?

If your parents have died, and you’re not married, and have no children, your siblings will get your money. If you have no siblings, and nobody legally has claim to your estate, the government can take the lot.

Does this sound like an ideal situation to you?

If not, I recommend getting a will.

You can actually purchase legally binding wills in the newsagents for a few pounds. Solicitors offer will-writing services for very low fees these days as well.

If you go onto Google, and type in will-writing services in “your home town”, you will find countless solutions. I’ve just found one for £36, which is less than it costs for a decent meal out for two people. Again, this is a small fee, but could save your loved ones a lot of hassle and pain later on down the road.

Chapter 27

Multiple Sources Of Income

One of the habits of the wealthy is to create, or have, multiple sources of income.

If you have one job, and that is where you earn all of your money, there are only a few ways you can increase your earning capacity.

One – Work more hours. Do you REALLY want to do that?

Two – Get a promotion. This is a good idea, but the extra money could come with more pressure and more time commitment.

Three – Earn bonuses or commissions.

All three of these require you to be at work in order for you to make more money. If you’re not there, you won’t be making more commissions, you won’t be getting paid for more hours, and you’re less likely to get that promotion.

What if you had a website that made you money whilst you slept? You wake up every morning and discover that you’ve made more money. What if you had a book out that was selling copies all over the world whilst you were out having fun with your family? Would that be a good idea? What if you had invented something that paid you a commission every time it was used or sold. Would that be useful?

There are so many ways to make additional income these days that I’m not going to list them here. Needless to say that once you decide to do it, you just need to get on and find out how.

I’ve built several websites and I didn’t have a clue how to do it. So I learned. I’ve written several books. Before I wrote my first book, guess what… I wasn’t an author and had no idea what people would think of my writing. Now I sell books every day whilst I’m asleep, and I don’t even think twice about it. What was once the unknown soon becomes the common place.

If you’re scared of the unknown, you have to move past the fear and take action. If you want to create things that make you money, then you have to START. If you don’t start, then you’ll never do it.

Also, you have to accept the fact that a lot of what you’re going to do won’t work. But that’s normal. That’s how it’s supposed to happen. If it can be fixed, then fix it. If not, just say “Next”, and move on to the next idea. Get some help, get some coaching, and keep working on it until you find something you can be successful at. If you find a way to make £0.10 in passive income you’re on your way to growing that number.

Most people will never do these things. Here’s a quote that I saw on twitter the other day, and it sums up everything in the last two sections.

“Today I will do what others will not, so that tomorrow I can do what others cannot”.

Memorise this and make it your mantra. Most people won’t take the action. They won’t take the failures and learn from them. They won’t take the pain of spending hours or days on a project to see it not work. They won’t spend the hours building something worthwhile, instead of sitting in front of the TV. Are you one of them? I didn’t think you were!

One word of warning. Be careful of scams that promise you’ll get rich quick. If they offer a ready made website, guess how many other people have that exact same website? If they say that their system involves no work, then it probably involves no income either. Always check reviews of opportunities you find online. My advice is to create your own opportunity by using your awesome mind!

Chapter 28

Reading – Find The Solutions

The information I’ve provided here is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many different strategies to becoming wealthy, prosperous, or whatever term you prefer to name your financial freedom.

And here’s what’s interesting; Hundreds of wealthy or financially successful people have written their stories down in books. All you have to do is go and read them. Would a book that cost £10/$10 be a good investment if reading it helped you to make £10,000/$10,000?

I’d say that it would.

Here are a few books I’d start with:

7 Strategies For Wealth And Happiness – Jim Rohn

Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki

The Richest Man In Babylon – George Clason

The Millionaire Next Door – Thomas Stanley & William Danko

The Millionaire Mind – Thomas Stanley

How To Get Rich – Felix Dennis

One Hour To Managing Your Money – Simon Smith

Risky Is The New Safe – Randy Gage

The Snowball – Warren Buffett

The Real Deal – James Caan

Anyone Can Do It – Duncan Bannatyne

What You See Is What You Get – Alan Sugar

Anything You Want – Derek Sivers

One Simple Idea – Stephen Key

Above are 14 books. If you read one per month, do you think you may have a few more ideas next year? I think you would have lots! Could you pick these books up fairly cheaply? I’m going to go onto Amazon right now and find out! Be back in a minute.

Whoops, shouldn’t have done that, I’ve just purchased another 8 books, for the grand sum of £2.32 plus shipping for the lot.

So here is what you would pay today for the books I’ve just mentioned (today is the 9
March 2013)

7 Strategies For Wealth And Happiness – Jim Rohn - £2.99

Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki - £0.01

The Richest Man In Babylon – George Clason £0.33

The Millionaire Next Door – Thomas Stanley & William Danko - £0.03

The Millionaire Mind – Thomas Stanley - £0.01

How To Get Rich – Felix Dennis £0.01

One Hour To Managing Your Money – Simon Smith £2.97

Risky Is The New Safe – Randy Gage - £8.20

The Snowball – Warren Buffett - £1.50

The Real Deal – James Caan - £0.01

Anyone Can Do It – Duncan Bannatyne £0.01

What You See Is What You Get – Alan Sugar - £0.01

Anything You Want – Derek Sivers - £4.32

One Simple Idea – Stephen Key - £7.45

So for the grand sum of £27.85 (plus shipping) you could have a years worth of books that are written by people with a collective wealth of over 30 billion dollars. In these books, they tell you exactly what they did, and do to make money. Two of the books are written by a professor that spent 15 years surveying millionaires to see exactly how they think, and what they do. Could that be a good exchange? 30 Billion dollars worth of ideas for less than £30?

Start building your library!

Section 4

Inner Peace

Chapter 29

Inner Peace

Inner peace comes to those that are happy with who they are, what they do, and what they have.

This can be summed up in one word. Gratitude.

Now I’m not saying that you shouldn’t strive to have, become, and do more as that is what the majority of this book is about, but what I AM saying is that HOW you go about this is what’s important.

The Buddha said that inner peace would only come about when we could get rid of desire, as desire leads to craving, and craving leads to dissatisfaction and worry. If you’re grateful for what you have, whilst working positively towards what you want, then you may also achieve inner peace. If you’re working to achieve more but stressing out about it, hurting people in the process, and worrying about not getting what you want to, you will never have inner peace.

If you worry about money, you will never have inner peace. Work to create your streams of income, but don’t worry that they may not work. Concentrate on the process of DOING and LEARNING, not of getting.

If you worry that you’re not losing weight quickly enough, you will never have inner peace. Concentrate on the process of exercising (doing) and the process of saying NO (being present enough to realise that you are making a choice) to the things you know you should.

If you worry that your husband/wife/children aren’t exactly how you want them to be, then you will never have inner peace. Concentrate on the things you love about them. Think about how loving they are, how kind, how appreciative, how fun.

If you focus on how you’re not perfect, you will never have inner peace. There is no such thing as perfection in a person, so why should you be any different? Everybody makes mistakes, and everybody has things about themselves that they don’t particularly like. Just focus on your positives. Make a list of them, and refer to them whenever you feel yourself feeling down about yourself. Read One Hour To Positive Self Esteem for more ideas.