thefinancialfreedomfoundation.org

Work From Home Ideas

Rob — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:14:29 +0000

Work From Home Ideas

When most people say to themselves, “I want to work from home”, they usually don’t know exactly how to go about it. According to the weekly jobless claims, there are an additional 400,000 people who are forced out of the workplace each and every week. There are now 5 applicants for every job opening.

With the huge demand for work from home programs, it is important to note that not all work from home options are created equal.

Of the legitimate work from home opportunities, the main ones fall into the following categories:

selling a product
providing a service
internet marketing
investing

Work From Home Sales

Work from home selling products is one of the easiest to begin, but most difficult to make money in. Most people like to see the products they buy, so selling products over the phone: aka telemarketing, has a very high turnover rate. People get burned out very fast. This is real work from home, but it is really difficult work.

Network marketing companies also tend to push their “business opportunities” onto unsuspecting people who are searching for legitimate work from home, but don’t know how to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. When looking for a legitimate work from home business, look for one whose products are not easily found the internet, or on store shelves. Otherwise, you’ll that people will simply buy from someone else, instead of you.

Work From Home Services

Working the phone of a customer call center, from your home, is another option. In Utah, many women work from home doing just that. Other services that can be provided from home are accounting and bookkeeping services, as well as medical billing and many people do data entry work from home, too. These types of work from home jobs lend themselves especially well to part time work from home.

Work From Home Online

When looking to do internet work from home, the most commonly touted strategies are opening up an online store, or doing affiliate marketing, or getting Google adwords on your blog so that you can get pay-per-click revenue, or doing some pay-per-action technique. The access to information through the internet is amazing, and if someone could find a product on your online store, they can probably find it on someone else’s online store as well, and perhaps at a cheaper price. Many online store owners see their margins shrink as they try to keep their prices competitive, while their advertising costs increase due to the increased bids on their favorite keywords. Unless you are going to create the product yourself, and thereby control its pricing and its availability through competitors, it would probable make sense to not pursue a work from home online career.

Investing

Of all the ways to work from home, the best work from home is to have someone else work for you. That is what investing is all about. Figure out how to make money work for you, so that you don’t have to work for money, in a dead-end job. Some people might not consider this real work from home, because they are stuck in the employee mindset. However, if your true goal is work from home income, instead of work from home jobs, then investing is probably your best bet.

This does not mean that you should learn how to become a day-trader, though. If you do that, then you are still an employee. Instead, you should think like a business owner and hire professional traders to work for you. Find ones with the kind of returns you want, then open up a managed account for them to trade on your behalf. You interface with them using your phone and your computer. Not only is this legit work from home, not only is this genuine work from home, but it is also one of the absolute best easy work from home ideas.

Some people feel that they shouldn’t get paid unless they put in an honest days work. Well, if that is the case, then work in your garden while the professional traders turn your seed capital into a money tree. If gardening is honest work (indeed it is), and your’e doing it at your home (which you are), then you must conclude that you are doing honest work from home, or honest work at home, whichever is your preference.

If you would like more information about work from home ideas and how money can work for you, then visit our home page at TheFinancialFreedomFoundation.org/home.

Residual Income Business Opportunity

Rob — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:13:18 +0000

A lot of people are actively looking for a lucrative residual income business opportunity, but they make critical mistakes. Here’s how you avoid those costly errors. The 3 key main characteristics to consider are:

the amount of monthly income generated
the amount of resources involved in creating that stream of residual income
the duration of the income, including whether or not the amount of income increases or decreases over time

Most people make the error of, first, being introduced to a company and then, second, trying to see if it is a good residual income business opportunity. They fall into the proverbial trap of not being able to see the forest for the trees. They find the tree first, without knowing what kind of forest it is in. A better approach is to identify the ideal forest first, and then look for the best tree in that forest, second. Giant Sequoias are much much taller than pine trees, but you wouldn’t see that if you only look in pine forests.

The kind of forest to look in for the absolute best residual income business opportunity is NOT that of the employee or the self employed. This includes work from home businesses. In addition, some people think that network marketing is a good forest to look in, but there is so much competition in network marketing, both in selling products and in recruiting a downline, that the return on your efforts is almost guaranteed to be low. That is how micro-economics works: high competition = low margins of return. If you are looking for the absolute best residual income business opportunity, the proper forest to look in is that of the investor.

As an investor, you are able to leverage other people’s time and other people’s money, while retaining control. You don’t have to sell any products or services in the midst of fierce competition. The amount of income created is directly related to the rate of return you are able to generate. You can even hire high-performing professional traders to do the active investing for you, on a pay for performance basis, so that you don’t have learn how to become a full-time trader yourself. The amount of personal resources involved can be minimal, especially if you are using other people’s money. The most valuable resource is specialized knowledge, which can be learned, from the right source. And the duration of income can be multi-generational, recession proof, and increasing every year, due to the power of compounding returns.

One excellent, yet relatively unknown source for gaining the specialized knowledge, and careful guidance on how to apply it correctly, is The Financial Freedom Foundation. We are a non-profit organization dedicated to showing people how to become financially independent. With the resources we provide, you can grow your own field of Giant Sequoia sized money trees with $100 dollar bills coming off of each branch, for you to use at your convenience. We’ll show you how to create up to $100K residual income within 12 months, and give you the knowledge of how to grow that to over $1M per year, within 5 to 10 years… all this using other people’s time, talents, and money. That is the absolute best residual income business opportunity around. We even have a FREE REPORT that you can download from their website, to get an inside peek as to how you can do it on your own. To access this information, visit our Home Page at TheFinancialFreedomFoundation.org/home .

Passive Income

Rob — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:53:30 +0000

Passive Income Guide

Ideas for passive income: You might find several different definitions online, but in the simplest terms, passive income defined is: any sustained income that you receive without putting in any hours of additional work. Granted, it might require some work up front, but once the income stream has started, it does not require additional effort to continue earning money (additional effort might help to increase passive income). With this definition, something like having a rental property and being the landlord or writing a blog even, would not be conducive to passive income, since both of these require continual work in order to maintain the income stream.

How to Get Passive Income

Generating passive income for life is an investment of time and money now, in order to free-up time later. The end-goal has more to do with freeing up time than it has to do with become mega-wealthy. It’s about putting assets to work now, so that in the future, you can be living off passive income and do not have to continually spend time working in order to maintain your desired standard of living. Creating a passive income really is quite simple, once you know your preferred source of passive income.

Traditional Forms of Passive Income

How To Build Passive Income With Dividends

One of the most popular ways to generate passive income is to buy stocks that pay dividends. These are usually shares of very large, mature companies that are cash cows, but do not have many growth prospects, so they pay out a large percentage of their yearly earnings as dividends. The more shares of stock you own, the more dividend income you receive. However, the percentage return (dividend yield) is usually very low, and the company is not contractually obligated to pay dividends. As such, this is not necessarily one of the best sources of passive income.

Low Tech Businesses

Some people view a vending machine as a place to buy a snack or a drink. Others view a vending machine as a passive income machine. Most vending machines are owned by small business entrepreneurs, as one of their favorite ways to create passive income. One managerial headache is the need to continually re-stock the machines. Another managerial issue is the lack of barriers to entry. If someone else puts a competing vending machine nearby, you can expect your volume of sales to dramatically decrease. While you can create a passive income with vending machines, the annualized returns can be low, because of the commodity nature of the products and the vast amount of competition.

Huge Passive Income Through Billboards

This one might have caught you by surprise, but billboards is one of the few forms of real estate that can manifest passive income. How are billboards different from rental properties and apartment complexes? Simple… you don’t have any tenants. The only trick is to continually have someone advertise on your billboards. The nice part is though, all you have to do is put the words “Advertise Here” on your billboard, and you’re good to go. In times of recession, however, many companies cut back on some of their less effective marketing strategies, resulting in an increase in the “Advertise Here” signs you might see as you drive along the highway. Therefore, billboards do not provide recession proof passive income.

Mortgage Notes

A less traditional way to make a passive income is through owning mortgage notes. In this scenario, you basically replace the bank as financier of the purchase of a house. People may know the term “seller financing”, but you can actually buy mortgage notes from other people, at a discount. That is how you increase your percentage of return. The only problem is that if the tenant does not pay, then you have to replace the bank as the “bad guy” and you have to initiate the foreclosure lawsuit yourself. In addition, mortgage notes are not traded on the public markets, so if you want to sell your notes for any reason, you have to find the buyers yourself, and maybe sell to them at a discount, too. While it is possible to make returns in the teens with this strategy, it takes a lot of expertise to do so. Building a passive income with this strategy is possible, but not without its hazards.

Managed Accounts

An even less commonly known tool, but perhaps more powerful than all the above mentioned, when it comes to building excess passive income, is that of using managed accounts. Simply put, you hire a professional trader to trade your money for you in your own account. This is also sometimes referred to as “professionally assisted trading.” Just look for trading professionals that have track records of generating the kind of returns that you want to get. You do not personally have to learn how to become a trader. You only need to find the really good traders to work for you. Once you find them, it does not require any further personal involvement on your part, except to withdraw your trading profits. If you hire multiple professional traders, then you’ll have multiple passive income. Some of the key benefits of passive income from this source is that you do not have any tenants, not products to stock, no advertising services to advertise, and your investment is very liquid. You can access your funds at any time. Through this method, you can realize the full power of passive income.

In summary, there are several ways to generate passive income. These include dividends, low-tech businesses, billboards, mortgage notes, and managed accounts. Each has unique attributes that make it more or less attractive than the other methods. If you want smart passive income, then the preferred strategy would be that of managed accounts.

Visit our home page if you would like to find out more by going to TheFinancialFreedomFoundation.org/home

Financial Freedom

Rob — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 06:24:47 +0000

Ever hoped to get out of the rate race and retire early? Ever wanted to travel the world? This is a goal that many desire, but few accomplish. How would you support yourself anyways? No matter how hard you might try, the “job” always seems to pull you back into its grasps, right? Is there a way to turn the tables on life and not have to trade your time for money anymore?

The key to having enough money to retire early is to increase your income and reduce your expenses. This may not be as hard as you might think. All it takes is some discipline, some desire, some planning, and a few tips.

1) Live Frugally

Live within your means–without chasing after stuff that will just end up in a garage sale. Make your won meals instead of eating out. You will be surprised at how much money you will have saved.

2) Reduce Your Expenses

Be conscious of your cash outflow. Track your expenses and compare them to a pre-thought out budget. You must commit to managing your expenses if retiring early is your goal. Do you really need the most expensive option for cable? Do you really need yet another pair of shoes?

3) Get Out of Debt

When you reduce your expenses, you will free up some cash for other things. Increase the payment on your credit cards with your extra cash flow. Start with the credit card with the highest interest rate. This will significantly reduce your cost of debt, and it is like earning your credit card’s interest rate on your own money, since you no longer have to pay them that interest.

4) Save For Your Retirement

Once you start repaying your highest interest rate credit cards, there will be an even bigger increase in excess monthly cash flow. Start putting that money into investments that can create additional cash flow. It is best to find investments that are scalable, so that you can add money to them at will, and have your next dollar earn the same return as the previous dollar. Make money your slave, don’t be a slave to money.

5) Invest In Your Retirement

Look for investments where you can take risk off the table fairly quickly, while making an attractive return. The main risk to control for is risk of loss of investment principle. As soon as you’ve removed your original investment principal from the investment, you’ve effectively taken risk off the table and your money in that account now growing for you practically risk free.

6) Have a Goal For Your Retirement Date

What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. You main financial levers for getting there are amount of investment capital and the return on your investment. When planning, start at the end and work backwards, to calculate how much return you think you’ll need to get, and how much money you’ll need to start with. Once you know those two things, you can then start looking for ways to get access to that amount of capital and that target rate of return.

7) Control Your Retirement Expenses

If you have your house and cars paid off, you might not actually need all that much cash flow in order to retire. This is especially if you retire in a place like Costa Rica. You can live very well there, on a modest budget. The more passive income you’ve been able to create, the more places you can live, for whatever length of time you choose. This is financial freedom. By following the above plan you will be amazed at how much you passive income you can actually create.

By living on a modest budget, you will notice an reduction in your expenses and an increase in your monthly cash flow. Then use that extra money to rapidly lower your debt expenses. Always set aside an amount for investing. Plan your retirement goals by beginning with the end in mind. Stick to a living within your means and financial freedom leading to retiring early will become your reality.

Your financial independence will have a direct impact on your level of happiness. Debt causes unnecessary stress. It has been demonstrated that financially independent people are more generally happier than people in the same age group, but are not financially secure.

Some people may argue that money is the root of all the evil. That is not true. Love of money is the root of all evil. If you become a slave to money, and you try to buy happiness, then you will be hollow and unfulfilled. However, if money becomes your slave, and you utilize this resource for generosity, then you can do a lot of things to ease the burdens of others while still providing for yourself. It is generally understood that if you are financially free, then you will be less stressed and happier than those people in your age group who are not financially free.

Money cannot buy happiness. Money can only buy pleasure, but pleasure is not lasting happiness. Even so, financial security is very important. Many a person is scared of not having enough money to retire, and for many, that fear is well founded.

In the USA, people are more likely to stay awake at night worried their debt rather than Heart disease or diabetes. However, people who are financially free are not worried about such financial uncertainties. This is one reason why they are happier than others in their same age group.

You do not have to be a millionaire, or even a multi-millionaire, in order to be financially free. Financial freedom is when your passive income is greater than your living expenses. Your monthly passive income can come from a variety of investments, including stocks, bonds, life insurance products, gold, real estate, whatever residual income businesses opportunity you might own, or other more profitable investments. The measure of your financial freedom is the length of time you live comfortably if you stopped working today. One month, one year? If you can live for the rest of your life on the passive income generated by your investments, the you have achieved true financial independence.

Financial independence is financial freedom. If you would like to reduce your stress and boost your level of happiness in life, then create your plan to become financially free.

Are Your Financial Goals Clearly Defined?

What would be your answer? Many people would say “Yes”, but then cannot explain their goals in a sentence or two. Let’s take this to a different level. What if I were to ask you, “Do you have a clearly defined monthly, annual, and lifetime financial goals?”

Most people , in this case, would have to answer “No”. That is due to the fact that most people simply do not understand the importance of having monthly financial goals. Millionaires control 55% of the wealth of the United States. If you were to ask this question to them, most of the millionaire households would answer this question with a resounding “Yes”.

Wealthy people have clearly defined their financial goals, monthly, yearly, and lifetime financial goals. Remember, financial freedom will not happen by accident. Financial freedom will only happen if you plan it carefully, then execute your plan. One secret to becoming rich is simply having clearly defined financial goals.

Those who clearly define and write down their financial goals on paper or an Excel spreadsheet will become more wealthy than those who do not set any financial goals at all.

In order to become a financial success, it takes hard work and focus on how you will manage your money. If you want to achieve financial freedom, you must first learn how to manage your money well. You can only do that if you have clearly defined financial goals, written down.

Credit Cards of Millionaire Household Members

Here are the top 5 Credit Cards that millionaires love to own:

But I tell you, guess which credit cards millionaires in America prefer to own? Of course, you’re going to say that since they are millionaires, they will prefer the fancy cards: American Express Platinum, Diners Club, and Carte Blanche credit cards, right?

Not so. Most millionaires prefer simple, cheap credit cards because they are money savvy, just like the regular US household.

1st Choice: Visa
2nd Choice: Master Card
3rd Choice: Sears
4th Choice: J.C. Penney’s
5th Choice: American Express Gold

In reality, less than 5% of the millionaires in US actually prefer to use the high cost credit cards, the luxury credit cards, such as American Express Platinum and Diners Club.

The root of bad money habits is lack of financial education, financial intelligence. Poor and middle class people often think that rich people use luxurious credit cards, and they want to appear rich, so they themselves use those expensive, luxurious credit cards. When the parents have high income, but a low net worth, then it is likely that their children might develop bad financial spending habits as well.

Households with high income, but low net worth, are guilty of living beyond their means. This bad financial habit is often passed on to their children. They make up the upper middle class that never seems to be able to get beyond that.

High Income Low Net Worth

Most people with really nice cars and the nice house have high income, but low net worth. These people consider their incomes as wealth. This is the primary reason behind their continual financial struggle. Income statements and balance sheets are two separate things. It is dangerous to confuse the two.

Income is the salary you take home every month, plus income from investments, as interest, capital gains, dividends, business income, rental income, and so on and so forth. Net Worth, or wealth, is something that you accumulate over time, if you don’t live beyond your means. People with high annual incomes are not necessarily wealthy.

Let take 2 examples: Mr. Jones and Mr. Wilson. Mr. Jones earns $ 50,000 a year. Mr. Wilson earns $ 100,000 a year. Mr. Jones’ net worth is $1 million. Mr. Wilson’s net worth is $250,000.

You might ask this, “If Mr. Wilson makes twice as much as Mr. Jones, why does he have so much lower net worth? Why the difference in wealth? Even though Mr. Jones earns half as much as Mr. Wilson, his net worth is 4 times greater.

The reason is that Mr. Wilson’s lifestyle matches or exceeds his income. He has become a high income low net worth wannabe. He spends almost all of the money he earns, trying to appear rich. The government loves him, though, because to fuel his luxurious lifestyle, Mr. Wilson has to earn more income each year, and therefore has to pay almost twice as much in taxes than does Mr. Jones.

The people who achieve financial freedom are those who legally pay less in taxes and at the same time, accumulate more wealth. Wealth must be accumulated over time. Having income producing assets is the secret to becoming both rich and wealthy. That is the true road to financial freedom.

For more information visit our Home Page by going typing TheFinancialFreedomFoundation.org/home into your browser.