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1). Can You Protect Your Portfolio from the Sales Teams? When you make an investment – from a simple bank certificate of deposit to a large shopping mall – you are going to be buying from someone whose greatest skill is employing sales closing techniques. Their skill in closing a sale will not include safeguarding your money or earning you any profit. And their number one priority is to make their sales ... 2). Car Loans & Leasing Are Your Biggest Hidden Expense I get a lot of questions from people about car financing. And it makes me wish that more people were educated on how owning new cars can be the biggest destroyer to their personal net worth. I don’t mind automotive manufacturers earning a lot of profit, and I know of one that earns the majority of their money by financing and leasing cars. It just ... 3). Compound Interest Doesn’t Add Much To Your Wealth The biggest gripe that I have with a few famous financial planners is their myth and awe of compound interest. They say, “compound interest is the 8th Wonder of the World according to Einstein, and will make you a million for your retirement if you’d only skip a few trips to your local coffee shop!!” In my opinion, compounding your return on invest... 4). Curing Yourself from Leaky Wallet Syndrome Financial stewardship of a business empire or $100 bill require a particular psychology if they are going to survive over time in the same hands. The lack of this same psychology is why most lottery winners cannot hold onto the giant sums of money they receive; and I call this psychological mind-set the “Leaky Wallet Syndrome”. The dif... 5). Developing a Successful Home Budget This is probably the most requested topic that I receive, normally after someone gets a large unexpected expense, or they start thinking about retirement and realize that they have saved a woefully inadequate amount of money. I recommend using a monthly time-frame to look at your cash inflows and outflows, because most bills are monthl... 6). Different Gambling Arenas For People At Different Income Levels Everybody is trying to get more money, keep more of the money they have, and, at the very least, pile a little up for retirement. But lower income, middle income, and upper income groups have a different approach to multiply their money. Casino patrons visit in order to quickly turn a tiny amount of money into a large amount of money. People from e... 7). Higher Returns With Entrepreneurial Investing Long-term investing in the stock market can offer a passive return around 5-8% if you remain invested for 30 years; but, unfortunately, that return is before taxes and inflation. This is so low because the company founders, backers, early investors, investment bankers, etc., have removed all foreseeable profit from the company before it is ever off... 8). How A Millionaire Manages One Dollar If you don’t know how manage a million dollars, I guarantee that the money will quickly disappear if I wrote you a giant check right now. Precisely like 90% of lottery winners that go bust within five years, they didn’t have the basic discipline or the formula to handle the money that would have created a financial foundation that would last for ge... 9). Investing vs. Trading: Who Cares Anyway? The mutual fund industry requires customers that buy their funds and never sell them. So naturally, they disseminate a lot of editorial decrying any trading, market-timing or re-allocating that includes selling their mutual funds. This non-selling concept gets more ridiculous and hypocritical every year as scandals continue to trickle into the news... 10). Investing Without Brakes Is Hazardous To Your Portfolio The business of investing in stocks is an inventory “buying & selling” business. Naturally, the companies that sell stock to the public want you to buy and hold it forever in order to maintain its value. But if you are buying without any selling, you are literally driving without any brakes. That is a horrifyingly unsafe position for your principal... 11). Leverage Is The Only Way To Wealth To build any serious income you have to use leverage. You accomplish this by spending your time creating and managing levers. I’d bet that if you are creative enough, you could probably create a lever on anything that can provide an income. Let me explain this with several examples. If you do not have an employee, you are not leveragin... 12). Maximum Return On Your Credit Cards There has been an explosion of credit cards that specialize in certain benefits over the last five years; reward points, cash back, 0% transfers, credit monitoring, discount gasoline, money-market savings, etc. So how do you get the most return from your card, particularly when their plans change? (Presuming you never, ever carry a cre... 13). Monitoring Your Finances Reveals Priceless Lessons A most important element for building wealth is to measure it. The people I know that have continually increased their net worth track it in order to direct it and stay motivated to reach ever higher financial goals. Seeing the quantifiable results of your spending and investing decisions is the first step to take control of them. Contrarily, the p... 14). Navigating the College Savings Programs As a parent, the big financial concern with a newborn is how to set aside enough money to assist for a college education. Universities and state governments have developed many different financial savings plans to encourage parents to save money for college. Some of the plans include 529 accounts, Coverdell accounts, Roth IRAs and prepaid/guarantee... 15). Poor Man's Access To Foreign Currency Trading By far, the largest trading market in the world is the foreign currency market. Speculators make up only a small part of the spot (cash market) and forward (futures market) currency exchange transactions. So if you are considering speculating in this area, be aware that you are trying to out-guess the brightest minds & supercomputers at large banks... 16). Saving Money Is The Slow Path To Financial Freedom Getting a job and not spending all the money each month is the slowest, hardest, and least efficient way to build up a big pile of money. Saving money is a worthwhile net worth building activity, but it doesn’t offer much more than that unless your goal is only to have a little cash at the ever-increasing age of retirement. This is be... 17). The Flip-Flop Asset Allocation Method Do you put all of your money into some safe CD’s to earn interest, or buy a biotech index fund to grab the next big move in genomic cancer drugs; or something in between? The world of investment options and strategies grows every year, so I’ll provide a simple tactic to boost your returns over the course of your investing career. The f... 18). The Four Golden Rules Of Personal Finance Many successful people have mentors to guide them in learning the skills that lead to achievement, and I’ll do my best to offer you some critical personal finance perspectives. They say that life is a school where you learn the lesson after the test. The same thing applies to money, but you can’t go back in time to fix catastrophic financial mistak... 19). The Retirement-Savings Vs. College-Savings Dilemma Before a child is born, every parent considers (even if briefly) the cost of raising a child and to put them through college. And the question about saving money that you’ll consider at some point is: how do I evaluate whether I should be saving for my own retirement or saving for the kids’ college? The obvious answer is to save for bo... 20). The Threshold between Wealth Creation & Destruction Wealth is simply the accumulation of money, and it can only be created by the amount of money that is received and never spent. If you want to build wealth, then anytime you receive money: don’t spend all of it. Sure it is a very simple concept, but it is very difficult to continually achieve. Luckily there are readily available allies to help you:... 21). The Ultimate Tax Planning Strategy The taxes that are withheld from paychecks amount to about 25% of your gross pay (including federal tax, state tax, social security tax and medicare tax). But these taxes that are withheld could be working for you as investments if you employ what I call the ultimate tax strategy. This tax strategy consists of how you plan to pay no taxes just like...