Hey Guys,
As you might know I am going on a missions trek to Japan in December and it is going to cost me about $4,000 to go and I need to fundraise money fast.
I am asking ALL my readers for their ideas, then I want to put together a post after all this on “great ideas for fundraising”
Leave your ideas in the comments section below

I just want to quickly express the frustration that once again “Money Magazine” has given me. I am an entrepreneur at heart and this is why money magazine frustrates me.

I strongly believe that each and every person has the potential to earn and save significant amounts of money, yet money magazine’s main message is to simply work in the job you are working and slowly save up money until you are 50 or 60 and then retire.

However, I believe this is the wrong attitude to have towards money. I believe we need to ‘grab life by that balls’ as the saying goes and we need to step out of the box we find ourselves in, and begin to make our own money.

The problem I have with money magazine’s strategy for wealth creation is that ‘what if I don’t live until retirement age?’. My great grandfather worked years and years in a job that he completely hated just simple looking forward to his retirement. Unfortunately he died before he was able to retire.

I never want to live my life in a job that I hate waiting for the day when I am old enough to retire. I want to live life to the full, make an impact and do what I can now.

So if you also are frustrated at money magazine please leave a comment below. Or maybe you love money magazine, tell me about it below.

The Other Day I posted a post about the 10 Mistakes My Friend Have Made With Money, and today I want to write about The 5 Great Money Tips I have learnt from my friends.

1. Save and You Can Achieve Many Things
One of my friends is only 21 (just turned 21) and he is saving up to buy his first investment property next year. He has taught me that if you are diligent and you do save then you can achieve great things (like buying a house/unit). (more…)

I have many friends, and my friends have all made mistakes with money. I thought I would list a few of the things I have seen them do poorly so that you can do them well.

1. Buy an expensive car and lose a lot of money on the interest
Many of my friends (being in their early 20’s) want to have expensive cars to drive around. However, they do not have $10,000 – $25,000 saved up to afford to buy their cars. So they get their car on a loan from either the dealership or from the bank. They spend thousands of dollars on a car and decide to pay it off over 2-5 years. This is a bad decision for two reasons.
Firstly it costs them a lot more money in interest they they pay (often at least a few thousand dollars). So they end up paying $13,000 on a car they bought for $10,000 which is now worth $7,000. They just lost $6,000 on the purchase of that car through interest payments and through depreciation.
Secondly it puts them out of pockets (because they spend a large sum of money on their cars each month) and it puts them in a lot of financial stress where they cannot afford to buy the things they really want.

Solution: Buy a cheaper car with cash. It depreciates less as it is older and cheaper and you save money on insurance and you don’t have to pay off your car monthly leaving you more money to invest.

2. Impulse Buy Expensive Items
I have seen many of my friends do this, but one friend in particular. He has recently started working full time and whenever he sees something he wants he buys it with the cash he has. This means he rarely has enough money to buy food when we go out and he doesn’t have enough money to pay for the things that really matter.

Solution: Create a budget and stick to it. Allow some room in your budget for a good impulse buy but not all of your wages.

3. Spending Too Much Money on Clothes
I have a friend who loves clothes. Loves the most expensive designer labels and likes to have new clothes ever month. So they spend all of their money on new clothes so they can feel cool and feel like people like them. This leaves them with no money for everyday activities

Solution: Buy cheaper clothes that are still fashionable, create your own clothes for less, set aside a certain amount you can spend on clothes each week/month and don’t got over your limit.

4. Not Looking for a Job Because They Can’t Be Bothered
I have seen friends often jobless and just don’t look for a job because they can’t be bothered. So they spend their days playing playstation or doing other things and they never have any money for anything

Solution: Write up a good resume (get a friend to help) and then go and apply for a lot a jobs in one hit (at least 20 if not more). This way it builds up confidence doing it all in one day and increases your chances of finding a job

5. Spending Everything They Earn In The First 2 Weeks of the Month
This is one of the biggest mistakes people make, they get their paycheck each month and they see their bank account is full so they go extravagent with their spending. Then when the last week of the month comes they have no money left (because they spend it all in the first few weeks) so they use their credit card to get buy.

Solution: Set a budget of how much you can spend each week. At the start of each week take that cash out (a ‘cash allowance’) and use just cash for the week, then the next week get your cash allowance out and just spend that.

6. Letting Credit Card Debt Just Sit There
This is a mistake many people make. They get a credit card debt of around $2,000 and then when their statement comes out each month they just pay the minimum amount (which is usually just the interest). Then each month the continue to pay interest on their debt when they could pay it off.

Solution: When you get your paycheck each week/month put 10% or so on your credit card straight away and live off the rest.

7. Getting a Phone Plan
In Australia you have two options with buying a phone, you can either get a phone plan or you can get a prepaid phone (where you pay for credit and then spend it). One of the decisions a few of my friends have made is getting a phone plan (because then you get a free phone), they then spend over the allocated amount of ‘credit’ and they rack up phone bills which cost between $200-$1,000!! Expensive!

Solution: Buy your phone outright, or buy the phone you want second hand off ebay for a fraction of the price and then pay as you go with prepaid credit. This way you cannot spend over what you want to pay because you run out of credit.

8. Buying Things They Simply Cannot Afford
I have seen friends buying things they simply cannot afford. Like cars, or ipods, or other accessories like clothes etc. This puts them out of pocket or in debt and leaves them no money to invest.

Solution: Set a budget and stick to it. Don’t use credit cards to buy things you want, save up the money and then get them

9. Not Having Comprehensive Car Insurance
This is a mistake my girlfriend made. She bought a car worth $3,000 and then when a drunk driver crashed into it (its ok she wasn’t in it) she couldn’t afford to pay for it to get fixed because she didn’t have insurance on it. She therefore had to buy a new car

Solution: Comprehensive car insurance can be more expensive, but if you have a crash or someone crashes into you and then runs you can afford to pay it as you only have to pay the premium.

10. Failing To Be Generous With Their Money
I have seen many of my friend who are poor stewards of their money fail to be generous with their money. They spend it all on themselves and leave nothing for anyone else. This doesn’t build into the relationships they have and they also miss out on the reaping effects of being generous (that when you give it comes back to you.)

Solution: Give and it will be given back to you. Give to your friends, buy them lunch/dinner every once and a while. Don’t be a scab (taking from everyone) but be the generous one.

In today’s day and age you can use multiple ways of paying for items.

This is a question for my readers

What do you prefer to use when buying something?

1. Cash
2. EFTPOS – Debit Card
3. Credit Card

And why?

I have a cashflow a cashflow problem at the moment. I receive such little cash that it flows straight through me into necessary expenses. I need to fix this problem and build up a bank, like a buffer zone, or excess cash so I don’t just have to live from paycheck to paycheck.

This cashflow problem I have is a short term problem while I am at college and should be gone within 5 months when I get a full time job (or part time job and working part time online). Until them I have a lrge cash flow problem which I need to work at fixing.

This is how I am going to go about fixing it:

1. Working a Few Shifts at My Old Job
Lately I have been picking up a few shifts at my old work (when people are sick or can’t make it) and this is giving me a nice little bit of cash flow with not a lot of work. I don’t have to work every week at a certain time, I can work when I want to when they have free shifts or I can say no if I don’t want to work. This puts a few hundred dollars in my account a couple of times a month and this is great.

2. Buying and Selling
Buying Low and selling higher is the definition of genius. I wrote a post on this here.
In the next few months I am going to be keeping my eyes open for opportunities to buy things cheap and to sell them higher. I have done this with a phone where I bought it for $50 and sold it for $100 and I am looking at doing this with a car I just bought for $500 which I am going to sell for over $1,000.
If I do this a couple of times I can earn a lot of money.

3. Making Some Money Online
I am starting to monetise my website now and make a little bit of extra cash online. Though not much at the moment this is set to increase quite significantly as the traffic to my website increases.

 

Do you have any other ideas on how you can make some extra income (or how I can) post them in the comments below.

I have set some financial (and non financial goals) for the new financial year (July 2008 – June 2009). Just thought I would let you know what they were.

1. Be self employed full time before July 2009

2. Earn $10,000 before 1st Jan 2008

3. Get Engaged

4. Start Investing in the Stock Market with at Least $1,000

5. Grow my small group at my local church

6. Write my first complete E-book and sell at least 100 copies

7. Move out of home

8. Finish college with good grades (and finish my assignments at least 2 weeks early)

9. Increase Traffic on www.foolswealth.com to over 1,000 visitors per day

10. Go surfing once per week on average (52 times this financial year)

 

I encourage you to set some financial goals for this financial year, and also some non financial goals too, and then we want to hear them. Post them in the comments section below.

 

I have had to make a decision about what to do with my time in the next 5 months (while I am still at college). I have to choose between two options.

1. Writing My E-Book – “Creating Money From Scratch”
2. Posting More on the Site and Increasing Traffic and Readership

I have decided upon option 2 which is posting more on the site. I have decided to do this for a few reasons.

1. I want to offer my readers more information on a more regular basis
2. I want to increase readership through search engines
3. I want to offer RSS subscribers more to look forward to
4. I want to increase the involvement of my readers in each post
5. I want to put my focus into building traffic so that when I do release my e-book it will be happily received by a larger audience

So what does this mean for you?

1. It means I will be posting at a minimum 6 days per week (no posts on sunday), but I could be posting more than 6 days per week if I get ahead
2. It means that the posts I do give I would have given more thought and research to
3. It means that you will be receiving more great information for free!
4. It means traffic and readership will increase so the comments on the site will also increase offering you other reader’s views on certain items

I am also going to make sure that The Newsletter and The Challenge, which are my email programs to help you guys excell in your financial situations, continue to improve and go well.

So I look forward to writing more and posting more in the coming months and seeing a variety of new faces reading and commenting on all of the posts.

Last month I earnt a total of $0.22 in advertising…I know not a very amazing figure. But hey, I am still learning the ropes of earning money online and I am happy that every month my income from my website is increasing.

Just thought I would share with you guys how I have already made over 10 times what I earnt last month…in 1 day!

1. I changed my template to include different ad zones
The old template of my site was lacking in advertising space so I decided to change to a template that had some great ad spaces built into it. This includes a 468 x 60 pixel ad in the top of the screen and 6 lots of 125×125 pixel ads in the right hand toolbar. This allows me 7 easy (already inbuilt) advertising spaces which I can sell to people wanting to promote their product/site.
If you are looking to maximise your revenue on your site make sure you have the space to place the advertising where people will see it and click on it

2. I started selling private ads on my site
I started to then offer a variety of advertising options on my site (which are all layed out on the advertising page). I am offering the 7 advertising spaces for different prices (prices are based on my previous month’s traffic) and I also included the options of a paid ‘plug’ or site review. This is a full post where I review someones site and they pay for the exposure they will get.

3. I sent emails to people in my niche
I then decided to get on the front foot and email people who already had fairly successful sites within the finances niche. I realised that at this stage they were unlikely to find me so I had to go to them. I sent them an email talking about the new advertising spaces on my site

4. I gave them an offer hard to refuse
I decided that because this is my first month of advertising I want to get as many ads up as quickly as possible. So I decided to offer bargain rates at which people could advertise on my site. I offered up to 50% off advertising, which was amazing cheap compared to what you would usually pay for advertising.
I also offered them FREE extra advertising when they decided to advertise with me.

 

For these reasons I made over 10 times this month what I made last month in advertising revenue in 1 day! Before I wasn’t utilising my traffic effectively at all, now I believe I am starting to.

It is important to have multiple streams of income in your life. Most people just have one stream of income (their job) and if they lose that then they have no money. Having multiple streams of income means that if one of them dries up then you still have other streams pouring income into your life.

Today I want to offer you 5 ways you can add an extra stream on income into your life so you start earning TODAY!

1. Save and Invest
If you saved $10 in a high interest bank account earning 7% per year, you would be making $0.70/year or about $0.06/month. Now this doesn’t sound like a lot (and it isn’t) I mean you can’t buy much with 5 cents. But say you had $100 invested, or after a few months you have $1,000 invest or after a few more months you had $10,000 invest. Then you could be earning an extra $700/year or about $60/month for doing nothing.
So start saving and investing your money today to get a nice little extra stream of income

2. Rent Out Your Granny Flat or Spare Room
Do you have a spare room in your house? Or maybe a granny flat at the back or side of your house. Why not rent it out and earn a nice little extra stream of income.

3. Start an Internet Business
Starting an internet business can start making you money from day one (as long as you get people to visit your site). You can make money through selling products and getting a commission or by placing advertising on your website and making some money there. www.blogger.com offers free blog hosting and it is built in with google adsense (which is an advertising program which can make you money).

4. Buy Things Cheap and Sell Them for More
Yesterday I bought a cheap car for $500 and I am thinking of reselling it for $1,000 (but I might keep it). The other month I bought a phone for $50 and sold it 3 days later for $100. Buying things cheap and then selling them on can make you a nice extra stream of income (which you can invest to make you even more income). Garage Sales, Ebay and Friends are a great way to source cheap products. Then selling to friends or selling on ebay is a great way to make some extra cash

5. Tithing
Ok this one may confuse you a little bit, because it is giving money away not getting money back. But I strongly believe in the principle of tithing, that what you give you will get back plus more. Give at least 10% of all your income to a church or charity of your choice and watch as it comes back to you 30, 60, 100 fold both in the area of finances and in other areas (things that money cannot buy).

 

So there are 5 ways I believe you can begin adding an extra income stream into your life today. Any questions or other ideas please post them in the comments section below