No matter which way you look at it, if you want to increase your wealth, you have to increase your cash flow.

But how do you do that when you have a job, a family and all sorts of other stuff going on in your life?

I know it’s tough, but whichever way you look at it, you have to increase your cash flow.

But you already knew that, didn’t you?

For most folks, their primary source of cash flow is of course their job. And here’s typically what happens…

Over time, you increase your cash flow, but you also increase your expenditure… And usually, it’s with items such as a bigger house for the family, a nicer car,  an overseas holiday or two and a stack load of Noel Leeming goods (I see all of this in my Financial Services businesses).

Not only that but most of those acquisitions are non tax deductible debt for most folks… Ouch!

Unless of course you get educated on how to creatively (and
legally) make it tax deductible…

I’ll leave that for another time but its no wonder so few of us are self funded in retirement and so many have to turn to the government for assistance.

So here’s the problem.

You can go from $50,000 a year to $100,000 a year and the reality is that you’re not creating any wealth… Even though your cash flow has increased by 100%.

What you’ve effectively done, is tragically locked yourself into your current form of income, which of course for most people is their job.

The problem that you’ve created is you’ve made it impossible to leave your job, because leaving your job now represents dramatically changing your lifestyle. Sound familiar?

Here’s what I’ve found after years of owning businesses in Australia and New Zealand. You can’t go back!

You’re on the lifestyle treadmill, you’re addicted to those holidays, that car and the huge home.

What I mean by that is, once you’ve tasted a bigger house, better car, you’ll never compromise with a backward step…
You’ve locked yourself in to your job for a very long time.

Now, if you like your job, that’s cool. But if you don’t, it’s tragic. From what I have heard most people don’t like their jobs.

Bosses love it when you buy a bigger house (I know I do when my staff take out that big mortgage), the buggers know that they’ve got you exactly where they want you. You’ve got to turn this situation on its head and put the balance of power back in your court.

The solution?

Build yourself a second income whilst you’re still at work. I have been exploring options for this for years and offering solutions to my clients that allow them to create alternative streams of income away from their job.

Imagine if you could earn exactly what you’re earning right now via a totally different source, and you could do it within the next 12 months.

Who would have the balance of power then? You, of course.

In this instance I’m not talking about property or shares, you know that I am a big believer in both of those methods of wealth creation, after all I still own a Financial Services businesses in Australia and New Zealand.

How ever to replace your income using both of them takes time and application, as well as what most people don’t have… and that is a chunk of money sitting around to get started.

So here’s what I am talking about…

The perfect replace-your-income without having to leave your job strategy.

…The Internet.

Most baby boomers have totally missed this little gold-mine.
Simply because they’re just not computer-literate. I’ll let you in on a little secret… Neither am I.

The great thing is, you don’t really have to be an absolute genius at computer-stuff. You’re not going to believe this right now, but once you start to research it you’ll know this is true… Being computer savvy is actually more of a disadvantage than an advantage. (My brother in law is probably one of the worlds most talented software programmers but that has not helped him replace his job)

Sounds too good to be true – I know. After all, I often get asked if anybody is really making a cent on the internet selling things other than sex, Viagra or ‘how to get rich on the internet’ type information.

But just take a look at these undeniable statistics and you’ll see the internet is not some ‘blip’ on the radar screen or some ‘fad’ that’s going to fizzle out:

FACT: There are 1,668,870,408 (1.6 billion) internet users in the world as of today according to data published by Internet World Stats (that’s a heck of a lot of people to sell to)

FACT: Over 75% of online consumers do not care whether an online store is run by a large or small company. Source:
TNS, 2004 (good news for all of us)

FACT: $1.6 trillion was made via e-commerce in 2003; $7.1 trillion is expected in 2007. – Source: IDC, 2004 (I couldn’t get recent stats but wouldn’t you like a small share of that?)

FACT: Nearly 100 million adults made purchases after doing online research last year, coming close to the number of adults who purchased through catalogs, direct mail ads and telemarketing calls combined

FACT: Small businesses who use the Internet have grown 46% faster than those that do not. (American City Business
Journals)

FACT: More than 724,000 people say that eBay is their primary or secondary source of income. Another 1.5 million individuals say they supplement their income by selling on eBay, according to the July 2005 survey. Survey conducted for eBay by ACNielsen International Research.

FACT: According to Package Facts, rich consumers are more likely to shop online. Overall, 34 percent of respondents said they made an online purchase over the last year while 50 percent of mass affluent respondents and 57 percent of the highly affluent used e-commerce. (wouldn’t you rather be selling to people who have money?)

Well, that certainly confirms what we already knew and that is that there’s no doubt that the World Wide Web is huge.

According to the World Fact Book, 223 million (2008) Americans, roughly 66% of the population now has web access. In Australia, if you’re wondering there’s over 11.2 million (2007) and growing faster than any other segment.

Throw in the rest of the English-speaking world and millions more who are fluent in our language and it’s a pretty good bet that well over 300 million consumers and business people are out there.

300 Million Not Enough For You? OK…

Translate your message and websites into Spanish and you’ll pick up about 100 million more prospects in the US, Mexico, Central America, South Africa and of course, Spain.

Add French, German, Russian and Portuguese sales messages and you can talk to 116 million future customers.

And if you can figure out a way to make your sales message readable to web nerds in China and India, you’ll pick up another 136 million prospective customers.

That’s about 650 million people world-wide, and still the web is just getting warmed up.

Here’s an interesting fact. In 2006, about 136 million new folks joined the internet community for the first time.
That’s 248 NEW web users every minute… more than 15,000 per hour and more than 372,000 per day, 365 days a year.

At that rate, the number of people on the Internet will DOUBLE again, to about 3.2 billion users in the next 4 years.

The wild-card is India and China. When they get going, and they will eventually, the number of users will probably double again.

So what? I hear you ask…

My friend, listen up. Today the average wage in New Zealand is about $48,000…

A close friend of mine has a website that produces a $49,000 per annum income that sells an eBook on a subject he knows nothing about. He literally spends 2 hours per month monitoring it. That’s mainly to look at his sales figures anyway. That friend also has a website that he told me he has not touched in 2 years but it still pays him over $12,000 US dollars per annum. Thats a nice bit of change and when I compare it to the real estate purchases I have made over the last 20 years and the share portfolio I have, I have to say I am very impressed with what James has done (he actually has a dozen sites bringing in similar numbers to the above 2 because he said he doesn’t want any more than that, he prefers spending time with his wife and daughter)

So I’ll let you in on a little secret…

My final point is this… It’s just too good of an opportunity to simply pass it off.

Don’t just sit around with your head in the sand and tell me why you can’t do this. Get educated first, get as much information as you possibly can and jump on board as I and others have on the greatest replace-your-income-trend that I’ve ever seen.

I am happy to meet and chat further about opportunities I have been nurturing right here in New Zealand.

Flick me a message if you are interested.

You know it suddenly dawned on me that people often have no idea what I do or my company does for people.
Over the years we have jokingly called ourselves the millionaire makers because so many of our clients require over $1,000,000 in retirement to be able to provide them with what they want in retirement.

I know lots of you will shudder and say that’s unrealistic etc etc, however the reality is that the only reason people make those comments is because they have been conditioned to think that a million dollars is a lot of money. It’s not.

If you think about it though it’s not hard to figure out that needing a million dollars to retire on is not so far fetched, think about it. At the moment you can get say 6% at the bank on a fixed interest account. So if you and your partner earned say $40,000 each per annum that’s $80,000. you decide you want to live on that same income so work back, how much do you need to give you $80,000 if you are getting 6% from the bank? It’s about $1,350,000. See not hard to find out you are going to need a large lump sum for retirement.

But wait you say, we only need $40,000 when we retire…… oh really? So you are immediately saying you will take a 50% pay decrease, imagine if you had to do that today ….could you? Probably not but we won’t have the mortgage you say….. no you won’t but you will have an awful lot of time on your hands and most people tell me they want to spend that money traveling…Is traveling cheap….nope.

Anyway lets say you did decide you could retire on half what you are earning today and you could travel on the cheap or do whatever it is that you decide you will do in retirement, you still have to factor in inflation.

That’s right, unless you are going to retire tomorrow inflation is going to get you. So the $40,000 that you decide you could drop down to is now $40,000 in 10 years time which means it’s more like to be around $60,000 that you need (find a inflation calculator somewhere and pop in figures like 4% per annum over 10 years) so again we get to the calculation….. $60,0000 needed, 6% earning rate so money in the bank needed….$1million.

Anyway enough harping on about that. When we do the numbers 99% of people have needed more than $1,000,000 in income producing assets for their retirement, which is why we jokingly called ourselves the millionaire makers.

So why did I start this post? Because I just finished a strategy for a couple who have 19 years until they retire.

As I completed the strategy and looked at what we will accomplish for them it dawned on me how much value we provide to our clients.

You see this couple have 27 years to go on their existing mortgage (does that sound familiar?) and they needed $1,500,000 in income producing assets for them to be able to complete all their goals including overseas travel, $60,000 in today’s income, a yacht and various other goals.

When I completed the strategy we achieve the following for these lovely people.

Home paid off in 10 years and 8 months.
Interest saved on mortgage…. over $200,000
Tax saved……over $80,000
Wealth created for Retirement $2.1 million dollars.

Now don’t be shocked…this couple have 19 years to achieve this and the combined income is $100,000 however the monthly surplus they can put towards their strategy is only $150 per week.

So I thought I might brag a little.
We have helped so many people accomplish the same thing over the 9 years I have owned Financial Gain Australia and now Financial Gain NZ (which trades as Professional Investment Services), that I thought it might be time to let people know that this is possible and the service is out there for people who want it.

So a week away in Australia surfing and enjoying the warmth has me fired up to get ready for the next trip over there in about a month.

I saw Michael Hill receive great honors at the world entrepreneur awards and it was interesting listening to him talk about what he would like to do next.

Our share market was off to a flying start this morning in the wake of rallies in stock markets around the world on improved global factory activity.

Our dollar powered to highs not seen for many months against major currencies, boosted with other commodity-related currencies because of a jump in oil prices and a rise in United States stocks.

The property market has received mixed commentary and in my opinion the worst is yet to come.

One of the biggest concerns I have with the current markets and the mixed talk that is about is the fact that people will forget or become “too scared” to invest for their retirement.

For many years I have been passionate about helping people create wealth for their retirement and it is times like now where you really need to stick to your plan. That is if you have a plan.

One of the scariest things facing our aging population is the fact that in a short space of time there will be more people who are eligible for government assistance than there are people working. Do you really think our tax system can continue to pay for these pensions? Think about it….we have a deficit now when we have more people working than are on pensions so how could the system work when this particular statistic changes. The only thing that can happen is that the government will either remove the pension system altogether or they will reduce the amount or they will increase the eligibility age.

Do you really want to be working when you are 75?

At Professional Investment Services (powered by Financial Gain) we make it easy for you to create wealth, save tax , reduce debt and minimise risk using the Lifestyle Builder program (c).

Drop in and check us out at the main site. It costs you nothing to look around and it costs you nothing to book a meeting with one of our Wealth Coaches. If we can not help you we will let you know. If we can help you we will also let you know how we can help and then we will put our recommendations in writing. You can then decide if you like what we are recommending and join our very happy group of clients or say no… that’s OK too, at least you will be making an informed decision.