How much a person actually needs in order to retire?

• Author: Kenneth
• Filed under: Manage Money, Money Idea
• Date: Jun 29,2008

What do you see yourself in age 60, retired and finish rich. I have heard that only 1% of the people retired rich and 60% of them finish rich because of business, the rest are either inherited or from high management position (CEO, CFO, etc…). Ever wonder how to be part of the 1% of people to finish and retired rich. Recently I read a book - How You can become A Multi Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Milan Doshi. There's an idea from the book that suggested you can become a Millionaire getting 1 property every 5 years by saving as little as RM450 a month. The idea is pretty awesome and is good if you start from NOW. Since I am in the late twenty group, it would be a good time to start to set a goals for this.

It may sounds strange for a person not reach thirty to have such thought of thinking retirement, but I have been thinking about retirement and visualise them lately, I think I am getting older and older and need to start something. Seeing some of my friends, in their early thirty still partying all night long and not ready to settle down financially, I am not sure if they had any plan but what I know is that many of them are planning to get out of Malaysia to earn more Money. Is the grass greener on the other side?

If you happened to visit some of the seminar about wealth, you may notice, all walks of life is there to look for a change in their life, some are fourty and fifty, some are doctor, businessman and millionaires (no kidding). Sometimes, I was wondering what are they doing here, they shoud enjoy the high pay salary or income. I was wrong, they are having good pay and income but felt insecure and no freedom. It's not passive income but active income, if they stop working today, the money will not be coming in. What they are looking for is multiple source of income which mean the number of days they can survive if they stop working today.The true wealth to retire rich is to live rich with lots of freedom.

So, the next time when someone ask you, how much a person actually needs in order to retire? The answer should be the number of days I can survive in infinity if I start to stop working now.

Discover 6 GREAT Ways to Invest in Yourself

• Author: Kenneth
• Filed under: Personal Development, self education
• Date: Jun 22,2008

If money can earn money, can time earn time? You only live a life for age 18, 28, 38, 48 and 58 once. Do you make any investment to yourself? Please remember that your future is your best investment.

Do you sit down and think about what is your goals? Do you want to get promoted? Do you want to make multiple source of income? Do you want to start your own business? Do you want to get fit? Do you want to live healthier? Once you know what you want and where you are, its easier to figure out where you want to be. Start developing your business plan now and work it through. Why now? because you can't afford to take the risk, you are not immune from job loss, you are not immune to recession, high inflation and laid-off. Investing in yourself is a great way to build up a Plan B if or when you find yourself looking for new ways to pay the bills and support your lifestyle. If you do not know how to spend time for yourself, it is possible others will spend your time for you.

However is not too late, here's 6 ways to rediscover investing in yourself:

1) Eat healthier and exercise to get fit - Health / Fitness

The first thing to invest in yourself is health and fitness. Without them you would not be able to do the rest of the things. Your energy level is largely based on the amount of exercise and what you eat. Eat nutritious food and easy to find food diet for your health. Check out 7 superfoods to enjoy now. Where else exercising give you a healthier body because after exercise your brain releases some chemicals to make you feel alert and feel good mood.

Your Rewards for Health / Fitness:

• Improved energy, strength, endurance, health and body fitness.
• Feels confident with a better body image.
• Stay out from illnesses and disease.

2) Reading more books and enroll in seminar/course - Knowledge / Skills

"Knowledge is power" - You will not waste time reading books, quit watching television and start reading. Reading more books make you more expertise and know more. Make yourself read a book a month.
"Upgrade your skills" - Education is very important if you would like to stay competitive, you should be a life-long student. Invest in yourself taking courses to learn a second language, a Master's degree, professional certificate or joining like minded seminar or class.

Your Rewards for Knowledge / Skills:

• Enhanced your creativeness and generate more ideas for further benefits.
• Explore and rediscover your ability towards what you needs and want.
• Confident and stay competitive in others areas of life and perhaps you can do more that what you are now.

3) Do more charity and meditate to feel good - Morals / Emotions

Do you believe that the more you give the more you will receive, give a hand to someone that needs help, either monetary or expertise. I am sure you will feel good and will receive more than what you give. In fact, you are not just feeling good but earning yourself a life long friend.
Have you thought of meditating for just 10 minutes a day? If you are feeling disturb either emotionally stress. Get yourself meditating and is a proven method to keep your mind at rest and you will see things clearer after the session.

Your Rewards for Morals / Emotions:

• Stay happy most of the time.
• Understand your emotions and keep you focus on the goals you want to achieve.
• Cultivate good attitude being a positive soul mate that everyone love to be friend with.

4) Spend time with family to stay happiness - Family / Spouse

While eagerly pursuit's your goals, you may sometimes feel something is out on your way and you may feel pretty bad about it, negativity came in and sometimes could be overwhelming. You should get rid off all this negativity and charging up positivity by spending time with family because it takes away the negativity and brings in the happiness.

Your Rewards for Family / Spouse:

• Improved family and spouse relationship.
• Avoid misunderstanding through better communication and feels happiness and closeness as 1 family.

5) Start personal finance and investment for wealth - Investment / Finances

Get out of debt, start planning your personal finance and start your investment portfolio and let money work for you. Find new idea and generate multiple source of income from the idea, in today's world, it may be hard to survive only on 1 income source. Spending small amount of time daily to for your personal finance will get your hard work pay tremendously.

Your Rewards for Investment / Finances:

• Cultivate habits of budgeting and smart spending.
• Stay out of debt, give your passion to generate multiple source of income.
• Improved financial IQ leading towards financial independent.

6) Networking and get support from your community - Society / Community

The power of 1 mind is limited, you need to get more like minded mate to give you strength and support. Self-improvement can be built on your relationship with other people to share their views and to get advise/support from someone who has already been there and you can avoid the common pitfalls and save you time to go through once again. Spend time and keep in touch with friends and strangers will gives you a big difference in pursuing your goals.

Your Rewards for Society / Community:

• Stay out from common pitfalls and gain important information you may have missed out.
• You can get emotional support and help when you needs - mentoring, masterminding.
• Improved social skills and leverage your friends for encouragement and ideas.

I hoped this post will give you some insightful information to invest in yourself, however I have 2 FREE complimentary tickets to a Mastery Asia seminar by KC See, you can start to investing in yourself and this is a very good seminar, you can read more here. If you are interested please leave a message here and I pass you the FREE ticket.

Reasons why good personal finance fail

• Author: Kenneth
• Filed under: Manage Money, Personal Development
• Date: Jun 17,2008

How many times have you heard that "money is not enough and I am not happy with my finances"? Alright, this is actually the voices from my heart. I use to blame the government because our education system does not include financial education classes for us to manage money well, sometimes I would blame my parent for not managing their money well enough for their kids to live better in future. But wait a minutes, is it their responsibility? This really got me thinking.

When something is at fault, there is always someone to be blamed. Let's think about it, before pointing finger to others, look at yourself what have you done. Let me share with you, recently I open a poll in a well known finance forum asking about how many people who has emergency fund on their hand if they do not work for 3 or 6 months. I wasn't surprise with the results, there are only 5 persons out of 53 that have emergency fund on hand. This is so common I was not shocked. From the 53 people that responded to my polls, I am sure they are smart and disciplined person. Emergency fund is essential in personal finance and why do this people not following? Perhaps it was just one example and I can't justify overall about personal finance but why do this good personal finance fail in the first place?

It kept me thinking for awhile and I think you may know how important it is to budget and manage your money. No doubt that there are still many people I know still don’t keep track of their expenses. Hmm…I use to think, if everyone is practicing, personal finance would not exists and this blog will not exists neither. Probably this is what I want it to happen.

To get a picture why these good personal finance idea is hard to follow and fail, I would use myself as an example and additional feedback from the poll that I had gathered. Here's some of the reasons and obstacles:

1. Not taking action and lazy to get started

Lazy could be the number one reason. They simply do not want to take action to get it started, all sort of excuses popup such as lack of time or rather spend the time in leisure to rest or do things they always wanted to do. In fact, the first step to get started will not take you long to plan and budget your day-to-day financial affairs. Despite doing all these planning will enable you to do the things that bring you satisfaction and enjoyment in later days. After all, it is completely up to you to take the first step. In my opinion, I think everyone should track where their money goes and I have not met people who is good in their finances that don't need to track their money unless they have a personal finance adviser.

2. Get lazy along the way

I know I know is lazy again. The second big obstacle required discipline and you may lost focus follow through. At this stage, even though you have make the right move to get started, but along the way you get lazy and the intention to give up is strong.

Since many will give up at this stage, if you continue to sticks to your goals, you'll will be better off others. You can cultivate good habits to keep you stay focus, for example, writing journal to remind you to sticks to your goals like I did, to blog about personal finance, and each time I wrote and reread what I wrote, it will automatically entered to my subconscious and keep me stay focus all the time.

See, this works for me, there is other ways to stay motivated, such as keep yourself a to-do-list all the time to force a daily routine to track your expenses. You can take about a minute or two a day after dinner or before you go to bed to list down what you had spend for the day.

3. It is not the right time yet

I know you may have a better important things to take care, you may thought of it is not important enough to take care personal finance now . But let me ask you, when is the best time? It is always the best time to start right now, start it small and you will eventually formulate a plan for yourself in long run that works for you. What's more important than paying attention to yourself. As with anything else in life, without financial goals and specific plans for meeting them, we drift along and leave our future to chance.

I always heard this anywhere in self development books or website -> "most people don't plan to fail; they just fail to plan." So, it reminds me that if I fail to plan, I will fail to reach my financial goals.

Given all the reasons and obstacles, the next step is all depends on you to get kick start your personal finance. It's easy to get started and practicing makes easy. The only courage you need is the first step. Here's a suggestion, you can read this book that I introduced before in my previous post - The Automatic Millionaire. Even J.D. Roth (world's most inspiring money blogger) recommending this book in his latest post - Personal Finance Made Easy: Pay Yourself First.