As budding millionaires it is necessary that we understand the fact that money is not bad or evil. Money is simply a tool that becomes whatever the holder decides. For example, if money is in the hands of a drug dealer then it can become harmful addictive drugs that will cause devastation and ruin, however that exact same money in the hands of an ‘enlightened millionaire’ can become life saving penicillin which could save millions from dying in Africa or other 3rd world nations.
It is not money that is evil or good but what we choose to do with it that makes all the difference.

So what is an Enlightened Millionaire?
The term ‘enlightened millionaire’ was first coined by Robert G. Allen who himself is a multi-millionaire.
This is his definition from the book “The One Minute Millionaire” – To become an Enlightened Millionaire is to be free to be, do and have whatever you desire as long as it hurts no one and simultaneously helps others.

The Enlightened Millionaire pursues a principled approach to wealth:
First, do not harm. Similar to the oath a doctor takes to preserve life an Enlightened Millionaire commits to avoid wealth building activities that harm or impoverish other people. Create only abundance, never scarcity. This means creating wealth in an ethical, honest and win-win manner.

Second, do much good. The Enlightened Millionaire enjoys creating wealth that improves the lives of many people. The goal is to enrich oneself whilst enriching others.

Third, operate out of stewardship. Enlightened Millionaires are stewards over their financial blessing – enjoying the privileges of financial success while creating an ongoing legacy to bless others. The first proof of your commitment to make money to bless other people is to give at least the first 10% away to charities, communities etc.

I am a writer, and everything I do flows from my creativity and my ability to write. If I cannot be creative then I have nothing to write about and my career becomes non existent.
I have been starting to experiment lately with finding my creative space; that is finding the place in which my ideas flow the best.

The art of being creative is often illusive for many people. Many people find it extremely hard to find their creative side, however everyone has one, often they just don’t think that they do. A lot of the reason many people believe that they are not creative is because they have not found their space.

In a creative space your ideas flow a lot easier than anywhere else. In a creative space your distractions are minimized and your focus is increased. In a creative space the ideas that change lives and change the world are discovered. In a creative space you can have those “Ah ha” moments when something finally clicks in your head and things make sense.

I want to share with you a few of the creative spaces I have been exploring and what I think about them. (more…)

Have you ever asked someone “How was your day?” for them to reply to you “It was busy.”
For some reason we in the western world have this idea that if we are busy then that must mean that our lives are important and that we are being effective in some way or another. Because if we are doing so much, and we are so busy, then we must be doing something good.

But this is not true, busyness does not equate to effectiveness. In fact I would go as far as to say that if you are busy then you are not being effective and are wasting a lot of your time.

This is a financial blog and I want to provide financial advice, but often all of the advice I can offer you is useless because you do not have the time to implement these strategies because you are too busy.
Recently in my life I have found that a lot of the time I have been busy but I haven’t been effective. Often the next step we need to take to becoming more successful and becoming more wealthy is not taking on more things and filling up our schedule more but actually doing less things and putting a greater focus on the main things we want to do.

For me I am taking a look at my schedule and cutting out everything that doesn’t have to do with Relationships (Family and Friends), Writing, Teaching and Preaching and Building Leaders. This can be a hard thing to do but I believe that I need to refine my life in order to make it more effective in the long run.

So here are a few of my tips which I believe you can use to make your life more simple, yet more effective.

Write down the important things you should be doing. I call this an ‘effective list’.
Write down a list of the things that are most important in your life. For me ‘making money’ is not on my list. Making money will come out of the things I have written on my list such as writing, teaching and preaching and building leaders.
So sit down and write out a list of what is most important to you. I don’t believe you should have more than 5 things on this list…but you might. Remember this is about refining and becoming more simple and focused. You may want to do everything, but it is good to do a few things really well than a lot of things poorly.

Look at the things you are currently doing that are NOT on your effective list, and do your best to cut them out
Now go ahead and take a look at your diary, does the things you are doing match up with the things you have written on your effective list? If they do not can you cut them out? Do your best to cut out what you do not want to be doing and replace it with those things you do want to be doing.

Focus on doing the things on your effective list well
Like I said before, I believe it is better to do a few things really well rather than trying to do a lot of things and doing them poorly. Me, I have a natural talent and desire to communicate both in writing and speech, I want to do them well and let someone else who is good at music do that well, instead of me trying to do all of them and doing them poorly.
So focus on doing the things you love to do and doing them well. Get educated, get lessons, get mentored, get trained and do them really well.

Try to combine things you HAVE to do with things on your effective list
For a good example of this, if I have to do the shopping then what I can do is invite someone to come with me and I can build into them to help them become a future leader. That way I do what I have to do (shopping) and I do what is effective to do (building leaders).

Now I want to hear you guys write in the comments section below what you have on your ‘effective list’.

6 Ways to Earn an Extra $1,000 in the Next 6 Months

We could all use an extra $1,000 in our pockets. $1,000 to invest, $1,000 to spend or pay bills. Take a look at my previous post of If I Gave You $500 What Would You Do With It? Where I talk about doubling your money in 6 months.

In the next 6 months I actually have to find a way to earn an extra $4,000 in order to fund a short term missions trip I am going on to Japan. Hopefully most of it I can get sponsored, however I need to begin thinking of ways I can get an extra $4,000 to fund my trip.

I thought $1,000 would be a more reasonable target for everyone who reads this post. We can all do something to earn an extra $1,000 in 6 months. That is about $160/month which we will need to raise. I have come up with a few ideas which I will be implementing in the next 6 months to earn some extra cash. (more…)

I recently was in a leadership class at college with a man named Scott Wilson and he was talking to our class about the value of having goals. He told me a story which I cannot confirm but he told us that a study was done on a class of university students.

They asked the students the question of whether or not they had life goals. 3% of all the students had goal and they had them written down, 13% of all the students had goals hadn’t necessarily written them down, and then 87% of all the students did not have any life goals.

They then came back and did another study on those same students. They found that the 13% of students that had goals earned combined 10 times more than the 87% of students combined. So if you have ever believed that goals are not important to your wealth and your success then you are wrong. Goals are extremely important; if you have goals you have a greater chance for success.

I want to offer you a different view on goal setting today. Because we all know about having a to do list for the day or the week or having a goal to be wealthy. I want to challenge you about the way you think about goal setting when it comes to your finances. Often we set goals that do not stretch us to grow. They may stretch us to sacrifice and to go without, but they do not stretch us to grow. For example someone may earn $40,000 and they have a goal of saving $10,000 in one year in order to invest in the stock market. This is a good goal but it does not teach us to grow, it teaches us to go without. But I believe that we should set goals that force us to grow. (more…)

If I gave you $500 what would you do with it?

I am sure that most people will say that they would put the money onto their bills, or their credit cards, or they would go shopping or pay their rent. Most people would have little to show for that $500 in 6 months time.

I have a second question for you and my question is this. If I gave you $500 what you do with it to double it in under 6 months?

Now we all know that many people would say “Well I would play the stock market and try to double my money” but lets get more creative than that.

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“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” – Henry Ford

This is a guest post from leo over at Zen Habits.

One of the biggest challenges in meeting any goal, whether it be related to productivity, waking early, changing a habit, exercising, or just becoming happier, is finding the motivation to stick with it.
If you can stick with a goal for long enough, you’ll almost always get there eventually. It just takes patience, and motivation.

Motivation is the key, but it’s not always easy, day in and day out, to find that motivation.
What follows is a guide to motivation using what I’ve learned over the last few years in a series of successful accomplishments, goals and habit changes. I’ve had many failures, but also many successes, and I’ve learned a lot from all of them. Motivation has been a particularly important topic of exploration for me.
What Motivation Can Achieve

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We have all heard the saying “practice makes perfect” but often when it comes to success we try to get it perfect first time around and we forget that it is practice that makes perfect.
When I started trying to make money online in 2006 I just assumed that it would be simple and that I would ‘get it’ first time around and make a whole bunch of money. Turns out this is not how it works in business. More often than not you will not ‘get it’ in the business world first time. You will fail, and then re-assess and then become successful.
Many of the world’s best entrepreneurs have been bankrupt in their lifetime. Robert G. Allen who is my mentor and teacher has earned over 500 Million Dollars in his lifetime, yet he has become bankrupt before.

I learnt the hard way that it takes practice to become perfect and to become successful. Here is what I have learnt about practice over the past few years trying to make money online. I failed, failed, failed, but I kept trying until I was successful.

Try your best, but be prepared to fail
Always approach a task giving it your best, but know that maybe it might not turn out as you have wished. Learn to not be afraid of failure but embrace it knowing that you can learn from it. Every time I have failed making money online it wasn’t really failure… I discovered many way how NOT to make money.
Failure is an opportunity to learn and grow and do better next time. So try your best but be prepared that you may fail and then you can learn from your failure.

It is hard work
Creating wealth and becoming wealthy is not exactly a walk in the park. Many people buy programs hoping that the information will mean that they will never have to work again, which is possible although it takes a lot of work to never have to work again.
Be prepared that as you practice and try things it will take hard work. One of the hardest things is to learn and not get stuck in one way of thinking. Continually be open to new ideas.
It is better to work hard now for a better future than to do nothing now and then complain when your future doesn’t look like you want it to.

It takes time
Becoming wealthy is not a get rich quick thing that you can implement overnight and then you will never have to work again. It takes time to build wealth and learn the habits that millionaires implement. It takes time to learn how to save, to learn how to invest and to learn how to make money through your business ventures.

So remember, practice makes perfect. You will never get it right first go. It is all about refining what you are doing to make it more and more effective. So remember to learn from your mistakes, work hard and take the time to build the skills and wealth you want.

I have a dream, a dream that I will be a millionaire. My dream is that I will be able to make a lot of money online, and that with the money I would be able to give a lot of it away to help people and change the world. That I wouldn’t HAVE to work but I could be a full time pastor because I didn’t have to worry about the money.

However, I am a college student in my final year of college and my assignments are almost due, also I want to marry my girlfriend and I need to start saving up for it (I am not making enough money online yet). Maybe it is time that I put my dream on the shelf and just get a job so that I can afford a ring and a wedding in the future?

There will be times in your life when you might need to put your dreams on the shelf. Maybe you will need to get a job just to pay the bills instead of a following a career path that you are passionate about (like me working online and writing).

If you need to put your dreams on the shelf and you cannot run after them at the moment let me give you some tips:

Have a good reason
If you are going to put your dream on the shelf then you need to have a good reason to do it. For me saving up for a ring for my girlfriend is a good reason for me to put my dreams on the shelf for the moment. She is very important to me and I love her.
Maybe for you, you will need to get a job to pay for your electricity bills. Darren from Problogger often had to get a ‘real job’ in the past before he became a full time blogger. But he needed to pay the bills and honour his wife.
So don’t feel bad if you ever have to put your dreams on the shelf for a while, but have a good reason for doing it. Don’t just do it because you can’t be bothered.

Have a time frame
If you are going to put your dreams on the shelf have a time frame for when you are going to get it back down, otherwise you run the risk of it staying up their too long. Have a time frame for when you want to get it back down. Do what you need to do and then work on your dream after that. Always remember that it is your dreams and your passion that will make you successful, don’t choose money over your passion. That is why having a time frame will remind you when it is time to go back to work on your dream

Do not discard your dreams
Don’t discard your dream, keep it on the shelf for another day. Maybe you can work on your dream part time while working part time. Personally for me I am choosing to focus on college so I am only working on my blog/website part time. I am posting 4 times per week instead of trying to post 2-3 times per day. This way I can post better quality information for my readers and I can also have more time to work on my assignments.
Don’t forget about your dreams, keep them for another day. The day your forget your dreams you forget your purpose and your passion.

So if you ever have to put your dreams on the shelf then don’t feel bad about it. There is a time and a place where you will need to, but let it just be for a time and not forever. It is your dreams that are going to change the world and make it better.

I want to hear what your dreams are. I told you my dream, I would love to hear your dream…please share it in the comments section below.

Recently I bought a PDA/Phone off my friend for $50, I then sold it 3 days later for $100. I made $50 in 3 days for almost no work at all. I was telling my friend Michael about this and he said something to me that I thought was very interesting “buying low and selling high is the definition of genius.”
This thought struck me mainly because buying low and selling high is such a common thing, and everyone knows about it. So why isn’t everyone rich if they know they can make money by buying low and selling high?
Maybe they don’t know how to do it effectively, or maybe they think it is too hard or takes too much time. I really wanted to share with you guys how you can make some extra money (or even a full time income) from buying low and selling high.

Ebay
Ebay is the world’s garage sale. You can pretty much buy anything off ebay, you can also sell almost anything on ebay. Recently a friend gave me a kitesurfing kite. I have no use for a kite surfing kite, nor to I know anyone I could sell it to. But ebay gives me an instant market of people who want to buy a kite. They find my product on ebay and they bid for it as they please.
You can easily find bargains on ebay where something goes for less than it is worth, and then you can resell it on ebay. However hunting out and finding these bargains can take you a long time to do. Personally I don’t want to be sitting on ebay all day trying to find things I can resell.
However, there is another way. If you can somehow find a way to buy things from a distributor for a cheap price, then you can buy them in bulk and continually resell them on ebay. One of my dad’s friends buys stock from China for cheap and then sells it on ebay in Australia.

Clickbank
Why buy things for cheap, when you don’t have to buy them at all. You can just sell someone else’s product and get a commission. This is the real reason why Amazon.com became so well known, they offered people a commission for selling their products for them. Every time you send someone to their site whatever they buy while on that site you get a commission for.
www.Clickbank.com works similar to www.amazon.com. You send people to a site through a link and then if that person buys something while they are on the sellers site you earn a commission for it. Clickbank offers up to 75% commissions because many of the products are online products and cost the seller nothing to sell.
You don’t even need a website to sell things through ebay. You can use Google Adwords to direct people to an affiliate site through a link, then when they buy something you earn a healthy commission.

Have a Website
You can also sell items through your own website. You can either sell them directly through you website (paypal offers a shopping trolley service for a commission of all your sales) or you can use clickbank or amazon to sell products and simply use your website to link people to the affiliate program and then whenever they buy a product you can earn a commission (like described above).

Sell Them to Your Friends
Maybe you could find out what your friends want and then find it for cheap and sell it to them for under market price (for them) but you get to make a small profit. That way they save money from buying from you and you make money. It is a win win situation.

So, the definition of genius is to buy low and sell high (or to mot buy at all but sell and get a commission). Let me know some of your stories and way of buying low and selling high in the comments section below.