Income for Life

"Pssst....Let's Change The World. Pass it On!"

Image by VonCanon

Every once in a while someone pops up into your life that makes you stop and take notice.

Mike Desormeaux is one of those people.

He works with Income For Life Real Estate investors in the Greater Toronto Area. His work ethic is second to none, his desire to make others successful in their investments is unstoppable.

He's like the energizer bunny, no matter what obstacle pops up in his way he just keeps going and going.

Mike is the kind of guy that will take the shirt off his back and give it to you.

You know the type.

Then a few months ago he lets me on on his secret project to spread good cheer one tiny step at a time.

And I almost collapsed.

That's right, almost fell right over.

The idea was that good.

(Aside: I figure Oprah will be calling. Oprah if you are reading this Mike is available for on camera interviews ;)

It's not a new idea. Not by a stretch.

It's actually based on that movie, "Pay It Forward".

Let me explain....

Mike was out with a bunch of friends earlier this year and just as friends do when they get together a few of them were complaining about events in their life. People who had lied to them, cheated them, not lived up to their word. You know the type of conversation. It's the same one that's going on in your local bar or Starbucks right now.

Everyone talks about the same crap.

Mike walked back to his car that night and said to one of his friends that life shouldn't be this way. We should focus on good deeds, good talk, progress, support, encouragement, opportunity, possibilities.

It was too emotionally draining to do otherwise.

And then his friend shared a story that started Mike's "Chain of Action".

His friend's parents owned a furniture store years ago and one night they found someone sleeping in the doorway of the store. Instead of chasing the person away they offered to take them to their house, to enjoy dinner with them and to have a good night's sleep in a warm bed. The person took up the offer.

Wouldn't it be great if the evening news shared these kinds of stories.

The story blew Mike away and started a chain of action...

Mike was pumped up and decided to do something about it.

How do you keep these stories going? How to you create a tidal wave of action that has one person doing a good deed for another and then them for another?

How do you create a domino effect of actions?

He worked away for a few months and has now come up with his idea.

You can find it here: www.ChainOfAction.com

Here's how it works:

1. You do a good deed.
2. You pass on a special key chain that has a unique number on it.
3. You share your story.
4. You follow your key chain as it creates a "chain of action". Watch as the story you started unfolds!

And the neat part.....it's encoded with your postal or zip code so that you can see how far your key chain travels!

Your good deed at the Starbucks in your town may end up resulting in good deeds being done for someone else half way across the country!

And you can watch it happen!

Mike is paying for the start up of this with his own money. No sponsors, no help, nothing. He used eLance.com to help him build the website and that's it.

If you need a key chain go to: www.ChainOfAction.com and grab one.

And let's pass this story on!

Amidst all the chaos in the world right now let's grow Mike's idea on our own.

Let's take matters into our own hands.

Go to www.ChainofAction.com right now to get your key chain.

I have no idea how he is paying for the supplies (I assume it's from his own pocket) and I believe his family is helping him mail out the key chains, so be patient!

"Let's Change The World. Pass it On!"

Tom Karadza
Income for Life Toronto
"Doer of Good Deeds" (as inspired by Mike Desormeaux)
www.TheRealEstateRenegades.com

p.s. If you want to reach out to Mike leave a comment on this blog. Because the site is so new he hasn't even had a chance to put up his contact information yet!

Real Estate Investors: How to Stay Motivated!

With all of the craziness happening in the economy, it is  critical to find was to stay motivated. The media keeps on telling us that we are basically screwed. They say we are headed for a depression here in the States. Now all the "negativity" in the States is slowing down the Canadian real estate market too.

You have to be extremely careful what you allow yourself to believe. You can choose to see all of the problems or you can choose to see opportunity. Let's be real and agree that both problems and opportunity surround us.

Here are two things that I have found true in my life:

1. You get what you think about most:

Think about problems and you tend to get more problems. Think about how to make more money and you get more money. Think about how bad your spouse is and you end up with a bad marriage. I could go on and on with examples of how this works.

2. Your thinking is influenced by what you watch, what you read and who you talk to on a regular basis:

Watch the news for two hours a day, read the newspaper for another hour and then go talk to people who complain about everything and guess what happens?

You start to see problems everywhere. You think about these problems more and more. Then you end up with more problems in your life. Then you lose hope and stop trying. This entire cycle started by watching the news and reading about all of the "problems" in the newspaper.

Now, I'm not suggesting that problems don't exist. They do. 

I'm simply suggesting that you proactively stay away from things that negatively impact how you think. If you are concerned about something in your life, figure out what you need to do to handle the situation and move on. Don't dwell on the problem. Spend more time thinking about the solution. Spend more time taking action to implement the solution.

Control what you see.

Control what you think about.

Below is a video I recently shot which will show you one of the ways I stay motivated. I do have to warn you... This video was shot before I took a shower. In other words, I don't look very pretty! (Note: if you're receiving this blog post via email, you may have to visit the actual blog to watch the video. Go to: http://www.IncomeForLifeBlog.com)

By the way, the "makeup" comment  in the video was a joke!

Rob Minton

How to Pay for College/University...

I just read an article about how expensive children are to a family. Recent estimates indicate that it costs $204,060 to raise a child through the age of 18. This doesn't even include college. Rather expensive little buggers, aren't they?

If this isn't enough, college could add another $100,000 to $200,000. Yikes...

In today's blog post, I'll share what I believe is the best way to pay for college/university. The answer might surprise you. The drum roll please...

The best way to pay for college education is to not pay for it at all.

Yep.

Well, a better answer would be - to have someone else pay for it on your behalf. And I'm not talking about scholarships or grants either.

Let's say that you believe college will cost you $100,000. To save $100,000 for your child's education, you would need to save around $210 a month and earn around 8% a year on your savings. This effort would result in $100,818 twenty years from now.

Couldn't you simply buy a nice single-family home with a monthly positive cash-flow of $210 a month?

You could then invest this monthly cash-flow into a low cost index fund and bingo, your child's college education is paid for - by someone else!

You simply buy the rental property and use the rental income to save for your child's college education.

Now, the key to this strategy is that you must setup auto-withdrawal for your $210 a month college savings. Have this money automatically sucked out of your bank account each and every month.

At the end of 18 years, you keep the single family home and your kid goes to college. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

Or you could go the traditional route and scrap together $210 from your paycheck each month. This strategy gets harder and harder as the cost of living increases.

I used this simple strategy with my two kids and each year their college savings continues to grow. The best part is that it is being paid for by my rental properties.

In the past, it was a little challenging to find properties that generated $200 a month cash-flows. This challenge has all but eliminated in the States with the soft real estate market.

In fact, if interest rates go down any further, it would be fairly easy to generate this monthly cash-flow on multiple properties.

To get started, apply for membership in Income for Life at http://www.IFLApplication.com

As a member, you'll have access to the absolute best investment properties in your area. You'll also learn how to collect higher monthly rents, which will help you reach your college savings goals faster.

Remember the old saying:

Work smarter, not harder?

Well, this saying can be applied to saving for college too.

Rob Minton

P.S. The photo used in this post was captured from an online calculator at www.math.com.

Up the Creek Without a Paddle?

This picture was taken by my wife. After a storm one day, she found a leaf floating in our pool. Sitting on top of the leaf was a big ole spider. Poor little guy didn't have a paddle! Sooner or later he was going to get sucked into our pool filter.

This summer I learned that spiders can't swim. How so? Because I sucked 30 to 50 of them out of the bottom of the pool with our handy, dandy pool vacuum. This little guy somehow got onto a leaf. He was one of the lucky ones.

All of this led me to think about how important backup plans our in life.

Too many people live without backup plans. They somehow think everything will work out as planned. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I recently wrote an article in the Income for Life newsletter about disability insurance. An alarming number of adults go day-to-day without this protection. The statistics are very scary on the number of people who are disabled and unable to work. No backup plan. Instant financial turmoil.

Or how about the current foreclosure crises? Why is this happening? Because many home owners didn't create backup income streams to protect them financially.

How do you avoid being up the creek without a paddle like the spider on this leaf?

By asking yourself one simple question:

What would happen if ________________?                                                       

You can fill in the blank from any area of your life.

What would happen if I fall off the roof of my home cleaning out the gutters and I'm unable to work for two months? (A family friend fell off a ladder working on his home and became paralyzed from the chest down.)

What would happen if I lose my job and my main source of income? (A good friend of mine was fired from his company and didn't have any money saved. He lost his house to foreclosure and his marriage crumbled. He is now divorced)

What would happen if my retirement savings plan drops 50% in value? (This happened to me back when I was a CPA for Deloitte & Touche)

What would happen if my government retirement plan benefits disappear? (See my recent post where I analyzed my actual future retirement income as proposed by the government.)

This is a very scary question to ask yourself. I know because I ask myself questions like these questions all of the time. What questions are you afraid to ask yourself?

• What would happen if I get cancer?
• What would happen if my spouse leaves me?
• What would happen if I die tomorrow?

These questions are critically important because things do go wrong in life. You need to ask yourself challenging questions and then create backup plans to protect yourself and your family.

Rob Minton

P.S. Income for Life Members should listen to the audio CD included in September's newsletter where I interviewed Alexis Martin Neely. You will find it extremely helpful!

Message to my children: Work on "Future Value" Instead of "Now Value"

(image ski_sarahjane)

Recently we've been reading The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch, and it has stirred a lot of reflection.

If you haven't heard about the book it's the last message a man dying from cancer leaves for his family. He pasted away this past July (2008).

It's a fantastic book and a heart warming story.

And it really got me thinking.

I have a six your old son and a two year old daughter. After reading this book I started formalizing some messages that I would want to make sure were passed along to them.

Now listen up!

I'm not dying and I plan on being here for a very long time so don't get the wrong idea! But what this book did was make me formalize some messages.

Some of them are very private and I may share them down the road, however, because we're here to talk about real estate and wealth strategies I want to share one of the messages with you because it directly applies to this theme.

It's this:

You will have much more freedom in your life if you always work for "Future Value" instead of "Now Value".

Let me explain with a story...

A very good friend of mine is accumulating some very big wealth in his life.

He was recently telling me how he was confused after speaking to a Senior Vice President in a software company.  This VP was making an exceptionally high salary but had no freedom and was living "paycheck to paycheck" (we've all heard this before, I know...but hang with me).

This friend of mine started from nothing six years ago and is now on track to have millions (yes, millions, plural) of dollars in equity and very strong cash flow in his life.

He doesn't have a higher education, no university, no college. He doesn't have all the "right" connections. And he didn't have a helping hand in creating his wealth.  If anything, I think he had some hurdles that most people don't have (maybe that's a topic for another time).

But he did have a strong work ethic. Very strong.

And he is able to magically handle any problem thrown his way.

Literally, anything. Nothing is a problem for him.

He just continues moving forward. It's jaw dropping and inspiring.

So he was confused by this VP because growing up in his working class family he figured if you were a Vice President of a company you wouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck. And you would have a big mansion with gates and maids and stuff!

He had always assumed that people with advanced degrees and big job titles had it made. And because he didn't have a fancy degree or hang out in the right social circles he worked terribly hard.

And now over the next 24 months his income and wealth is set to explode. Massively.

And you know why?

Most people work on things that have a "now value". He always worked on things that had a "future value".

This is the biggest lesson I want to pass on to my children.

So what do I mean by this?

When you are working at your job everything you do has a "now value".

You work and you get paid.

There's no future benefit for you.

Nothing.

Even if you are in sales at a big software company and work 2 years to "land that big account" and earn a mega commission check it's still just "now value". There's no recurring revenue and there's no built up equity in anything for you.

You've spent two years of your life to create income at one point in time. If that big account comes back to buy more stuff in a few years the commission or benefit of this will go to the company. You may be long gone.

But if you work to create "future value" then the benefits begin to multiply.

For example, if you work to create your own business you create cash flow and create equity in the business for yourself.

You are creating "now value" and "future value".

Now starting your own business has its risks of course, so lets look at what my friend did and still does.

For the last six years he has been working of his real estate portfolio. He was buying houses, working on those houses and then selling them for a profit. He was also buying houses and getting tenants to rent the houses from him.  He was doing all this "on the side" while maintaining his primary income source.

He was creating "future value". And he didn't even know it.

Because when you start out everything seems difficult. The light at the end of the tunnel seems so far away. It's hard to see the "big picture".

But because the type of work he chose to focus on has a future value built into it he was set to benefit massively from his efforts.

Now all the work he has been doing over the last six years is coming back to him in multiples.

The equity in his real estate portfolio has grown dramatically (we're talking big dollars) AND he has positive cash flow from his rental properties.

So he worked once and he is getting paid multiple times.

It turns out that the work he was doing on the side, for "future value", is going to serve him much much better than his "now value" income has.

With some of the real estate he generated income by selling it, he gets appreciation from the real estate he has kept, he gets cash flow from his rental properties, he gets tax advantages that allow him to pay less in taxes and his equity in the real estate continues to build and compound.

And after accumulating a bunch of real estate things start taking off.

For example, if you went out and picked up 4 small income properties for a grand total of $1,000,000 and then the market goes up 5% your net worth goes up $50,000. You didn't work any harder for that. Your asset base of real estate delivered it to you.

And if the market goes up the next year your net worth goes up again, compounded. You didn't have to do anything else. You worked to acquire the properties once and you are reaping the future rewards. And the whole time the properties are producing positive cash flow for you.

This doesn't all happen in a straight line. The market moves sideways sometimes but if you are getting positive cash flow from your properties its no big deal.

Positive cash flow properties are easy to hang on to in any economic climate.  Obvious, but true.

In bad economic times positive cash flow real estate pays for itself. It's like a mini little business working away for you.

So back to this VP....

I mean no disrespect to him. None at all.  I worked in software sales myself so I understand his mentally because I once thought the same way....work hard, get raise, make more money.

I'm just pointing out that when you focus all the productive hours of your day on work that pays you only once you are not leveraging yourself. That VP can easily continue doing what he does and start working on some "future value" on side.

Perhaps a little side business selling a product on-line or some cash flow real estate.

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Little aside...

I may upset people with this but what the heck...saving 10% of your income in an index fund or ETF doesn't get the job done.  I don't know anyone who has created time freedom in their life by doing this.  I'm sure there's an exception to this but I really don't know anyone who has create a substantial asset base saving 10% of their salary.  I don't, sorry.  I'm not saying is a bad thing, it's just not the "future value" I'm talking about here.  Maybe in another 30 years some people I know will achieve wealth this way but who wants to wait that long?  After you've created a pool of wealth if you want to park it in some of these things that may be OK - but to create your wealth, don't think so.
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When you focus on putting your efforts on work that has "future value" the benefits multiple.

You earn income today and you will earn income again from the same work in the future as a bonus. You don't actually have to put in much effort to gain the future value.

If you are reading this blog and these posts then you're in the middle of some "future value" of my own.

This posts can be used again and again (as articles on our website, in our email newsletter, as guest posts). We're creating this once and it will be used many times.  And hopefully my children will find this and read it and take action from it (that's some cool future value!).

Focus on future value in everything you do.

Or at least ask yourself where the "future value" in your current opportunity exists.  Then work on growing it.

"Now Value" is a quick fix. But like everything that is a quick fix, it's likely not worth it in the long run.

So the message to my children is this:

Do what makes you excited. Life is obviously too short for anything else.

And to really leverage your efforts, to really create some personal freedom, build some "future value" into the work you do.

What "future value" work are you doing these days?

To your success!

Tom & Nick Karadza
Income For Life Toronto
www.TheRealEstateRenegades.com

The Real Road Less Traveled

This post is a guest post from Dan Kennedy on why people fail:

Sticktoitiveness” is a strength of character, a philosophical position, a consciously valued and directed behavior, a habit. In any business category, fewer than 5% of the owners create extraordinary incomes, wealth, security and independence; 95% flounder, frustrated for life. If you spent 25 years chronicling the behavioral differences between the mediocre majority and high-achieving minority as I have, the most striking distinction you would find is this: winners stick to things, losers give up easily, flit about randomly. Losers waste all the years of their lives looking for the unicorn of modern fantasy, the easy button. Winners find winning strategies and stick to applying them.

Sylvester Stallone was rejected as an actor by every Hollywood studio. The script he wrote for Rocky was also summarily rejected by all but one – and they agreed to buy it for a flat fee; Stallone, broke at the time, refused to sell it unless he could star in the movie and receive customary compensation. He made the rounds again and again. He persisted until he finally got his way. There must be thousands of better actors and thousands of better script writers who were working as waiters then and are still working as waiters now. The difference is not talent. In my 30 years’ business experience, I’ve found talent to be the most overrated of all things, less likely to lead to success than most things.

By comparison, staying stuck like super-glue to an objective; acquiring the needed know-how at any cost; ignoring others’ criticism; refusing to take no for a permanent answer, fighting, scrapping, studying, figuring out one more piece then one more piece; these behaviors are behind the true stories of the rich and famous. Sadly, most people don’t stick. At much of anything. Their grade on life’s report card is “Incomplete”. Their home has books purchased but never read, how-to courses with the outside plastic wrap unbroken; projects begun but never finished. Their business’ files, nooks, crannies populated with worthy ideas still-born in procrastination, strangled in disorganization. They, themselves, displays of poor discipline: intellectually uncurious, uninformed, in poor physical shape. Turns out, the rewards for good intentions are small. The rewards for unfulfilled talent just as small.

The reasons people don’t stick to anything long enough to succeed with it are many and varied. Some are psychological, revealed in a book I recommend, The New Psycho-Cybernetics, which I co-authored with Dr. Maxwell Maltz. It and the prior, original edition combined have sold more than 30-million copies worldwide. Some are circumstantial; people who permit themselves and their time to be ruled by others’ priorities, events as they occur – antidotes offered in my No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs and No B.S. Guide To Ruthless Management of People And Profits books. Some are sinful, like sloth. Too many people lust for rewards without personal responsibility. Whatever the reasons for the losers’ lack of sticktoitiveness, the winners’ reality is refusal to be deterred or distracted from their objectives and aggressive pursuit of them. Successful pursuit and achievement of exceptional objectives usually involves two key elements: sticking to a course of study, acquisition of information, learning relevant methodology even if, at first, uncomfortable, foreign or difficult; sticking to self-imposed requirements for implementation of what is learned.

The WHY PEOPLE FAIL articles are provided by Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series (www.NoBSBooks.com), and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. WE HAVE ARRANGED A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including a 2-Month Free Membership in Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, newsletters, audio CD’s and more: for information and to register, visit: FreeGift.com