Transcripts
1. What You'll Learn: Hi, My name is Jonathan Robinson. Congratulations. I'm watching this program by watching it and using the simple suggestions I discuss. I'm confident you'll end up with a lot more money and more importantly, a lot more joy and even deeper sense of meaning in your life. So little about me. Professionally. I'm a psychotherapist and author of 12 books. I've also been a frequent guest on Oprah, CNN and many other shows. But personally, I want you to know them basically like you, someone trying to be happy and often challenging world and someone who wants to make a good living without having to sell my soul or work myself to death to do it. I'm grateful to say I've been fortunate making money, but that wasn't always the case. I remember being so poor that I couldn't afford my electricity bills. It was a dark time. Hey, I warn you, there's gonna be some bad jokes like that in this program. Anyway, Soon thereafter, I became homeless, living in my car. Well, nowadays I'm a millionaire, but I know a lot of friends who really struggle with making a good living and having a good time doing it. If you're like them, I think you'll find this course fun, fascinating and most importantly, very practical.
2. Making More Than You Spend: there are many ways to get rich, But almost every expert agrees. At a good place to start is to live off 90% of your income and invest the other 10% in long term investments. Of course, the most sure way to do that is to open up a separate investment savings account so you can make sure you're always saving 10% of your money. The difference between those who are rich and those who will never be rich is the ability to consistently act on such helpful ideas. And while you're at it, you might consider opening up another account dedicated to either charity and or investing in yourself. I call this my betterment account. I take another 10% of what I make on. I use that money on Lee for the purpose of improving myself or helping others. Recently, I took money from that account. I sent some checks toe help refugees from Syria. I also use money from the account to take a class on how to improve my own skills as a marketer. Opening separate accounts might seem like a hassle, and initially it is. It might even take a full hour so I do it because then for the rest of your friggin life you'll have a way to intelligently contribute to yourself and other people and your future financial security. That's a pretty darn good payoff for an hour's work. Also, if you're somewhere cheap like I am, you probably have a hard time consistently giving money to charity or investing in your own skills and abilities on an ongoing basis. But if you have separate accounts dedicated to these things, it's a lot easier to write a check. After all, you have an account set up just for those activities. In a way, the money of those counts starts to feel like they're not really your money to spend, rather their money provided just for specific tasks. To me, that's made a world of difference. Nowadays, I consistently give to causes I value, and I consistently invested my own betterment because I have money allocated for just those things now truly growing well, there are two basic methods. One either make more money or to spend less money. We hear a lot of talk about how to make more money, but learning how to spend less money is of equal importance. After all, even if you're a millionaire, but you spend a lot more than you make, we'll soon you'll be poor. So how can you spend less money? Well, here are a couple of simple ways. First off, don't use credit cards when you pay cash for everything. Studies show that people tend to be much more careful with their money, and besides, you will keep you from racking up credit card debt. If you find you don't have the money to buy something, then good. Don't buy something until you have the money. A second way to spend less is to buy things used. You can get some good stuff at Craigslist or thrift stores that can save you a ton of money . Finally, don't eat out or do it less often. Eating out or going to bars to pay for booze is a big expenditure. Instead, cook and drink at home and use the money saved to work towards your long term financial goals. If you manage to spend less than you make and investing extra money, you'll feel good about your money habits. You'll feel more deserving or the money make, and that will help you to make even more money
3. How To Invest Wisely: in this end, the next couple of sections I'm going to discuss how to invest your accumulated money for maximum returns. Admittedly, no expert on this, but most people know next to nothing, so these sessions will likely be very informative Teoh. But before we go into some technical stuff, the first question is, Why should you care about this? Well, you should care about because knowing how to invest your money can make the difference between never gain rich and getting rich beyond your wildest dreams. So how do you invest intelligently? First, I'd recommend you read a book or two about it. I like Susie Orman stuff, but there are a lot of great books out there, such as the Little Book of Common Sense investing. Next, it's good to understand some basic principles about investing. For example, if you put all your eggs in one basket someday, you probably won't have any more eggs. That's why diversification is the key word you need to know when it comes to investing your money. What is diversification? It's putting certain percentages of your money into different types of investments. The five main different types of investments available for most people are one stocks. Both foreign and domestic stocks, too. Bonds. Three real estate, such as owning your own home, four bank accounts or CD's and five commodities such a gold and silver. Basically, you want to eventually put some of your money into each of these types of investments. That way of one or two of these investments are doing poorly. You'll still be okay because the other ones will likely be doing well. This is called Investing in UN Correlated Assets. Studies show that investing in assets that are not correlated, meaning when one is doing poorly the other one is likely to be doing well, will help reduce your risk and actually increase your ray return over time. Now, if this is sounding like gobbledygook to you already, you especially need to become more educated. Admittedly, I avoided learning about this stuff for a long time, and it costs me a lot of money. But just by reading a single book about investing for two hours during the next few years, I probably made an extra $200,000. That's $100,000 an hour for reading a book on investing. You can't live on that. But, hey, it's a good start. So if you already have money to invest, be sure to not only listen to my lectures but become even mawr educated on your own. At some point, you may even choose toe higher what's called a certified financial planner or CFP. You can Google certified financial planner to find one near you. Another key principle about investments is that the higher the risk of an investment, the higher the likely return you will receive. If it does well, of course, high risk investments can also do very poorly. So you want to be sure to offset them with safe investments such as a bank, CD account or perhaps some bonds. Whether you like it or not, you are a money manager. If you don't know anything about money management, the chances are you would do very poorly with your investments. Now the good news is that you don't need to invest a lot of time to know how to do this right. In fact, studies show that people often get the best returns when they stick to a very simple investment strategy and forget about it as opposed to constantly buying and selling different investments. What has made investing much easier in recent decades Our where are known as low cost index funds. In the next lecture, I'll discuss what these are and which ones I recommend. Some people ask me, Why can't I just put my money in the bank or a CD accountant? Forget about. Well, you can. But over the long term, that laziness will cost you a lot of money. The reason is that most banks or money market accounts offer somewhere between two and 3% interest. On the other hand, over a long period of time, the stock market as a whole has averaged about a 10% return. That means that on average, money doubles when invested in the stock market every seven years. Whereas if you're earning 2% of bank, it would take 36 years, not seven, to double your money. That's why learning how to invest properly is moved to important now. To keep this a simple is possible. In my opinion, you need at least four asset classes. They are one a. U. S large Stock index fund number two ah US Small Stock Index Fund three ah foreign stock index fund and four a short or medium term bond fund. And if you have the money, it's often a good idea to invest in real estate, such as your own home. The next lectures will talk more about how to easily find and grow your money through these types of investments.
4. Stocks Bonds and Low-Fee Funds: for most people looking to invest wisely other than buying a house, the best place to invest is in low fee stock and bond index funds. Now the good news is that in general, the less energy you put into the stock market, the better you typically do. People who try to pick individual stocks or who try to time the market almost always do worse than people who just choose an index fund and keep their money there for a long time . Why is that? Because 90% of professional money managers failed to beat the stock market over long periods of time. So you're better off just putting your money in index fund and letting it grow year after year. Now, in case you don't know what an index fund is, it's an investment that attempts to replicate a certain group or type of stocks or some other type of investment. For example, if you want to invest in the 500 biggest stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, you could invest in a single fund called the S and P 500 index fund. The advantage of an index fund is that it offers much more diversification over buying individual stocks and the fees toe own. The fund is very low. On the other hand, most mutual funds are managed by a person who guesses what will do well. The downside of managed funds is that they cost mortar own than index funds. And as I mentioned before, they tend not to do as well as index funds over the long period of time. There is so much you can learn when it comes to the stock market that many people devote their entire lives to it. Yeah, if you're like me, that's not where you want to spend all your time and energy. So what do you absolutely need to know when it comes to buying stocks and bonds? Well, most experts will say it's a good idea to buy three or four index funds from a low cost fund company such as Vanguard. By doing this, you lower your risk of losing money and you raise your chances of making a good return on your investments. I will recommend four index funds to buy, But first, let me assure you that I have no financial ties to anything I'm recommending. Also, you should know that I'm not certified financial planner. I'm merely summarizing what many experts suggests. If your situation is untypical, what I say may not apply. So to be safe, it's always a good idea to read a book or higher financial advisor. All that being said, who are four funds, I can highly recommend Number one, the Vanguard 500 Index fund. I suggest you put the bulk of your investment money in this fund. Number two, the Vanguard International Growth Index Fund. This fund is good. Just so you have some global diversity. After all, sometimes other countries are doing well when the U. S economy is not number three. The Vanguard Total Bond Market Index fund. Putting 20 to 50% of your money in a bond fund like this is a good idea in case stocks aren't doing well or if interest rates are going downwards. Number four. If you don't own real estate, you might consider putting some money in what's called a real estate investment trust index fund, such as Vanguard's First Trust S and P R E i. T. Index fund. That's fun to say. Anyways, if you invest some portion of your portfolio in each of these funds, you have some diversity and an almost guarantee good return on your money over the long term. Of course, as they say, nothing in life is guaranteed except death and taxes. But by taking the very simple steps I've outlined in this section, you'll very likely do better than the vast majority of people who put money in the stock market. Remember, at typical long term rate of return of 10% in the market, your money literally doubles in seven years. That means if you put in just $25,000 into the market and simply let it sit there for 28 years, you'll likely end up with about $350,000. Probably not enough to retire on, but not bad for doing nothing. So make sure you put some money into some low cost index funds as soon as possible. There's no time like the present, even if you only have a little money to invest, so do it soon
5. Real Estate: The Road to Riches: you know, it's always easier to become rich in a field or career where there's a lot of money to be had then in a field where there's very little money flowing through it. For example, I have a friend who struggled for decades trying to make a living as a spiritual coach. Then one day he decided he'd use his skills as a coach. Apply them to entrepreneurs well, within a year, his income tripled just by focusing on people who tended toe have money rare than people who did not. Well, the field, a real estate is one in which a lot of people both have money and make money. In fact, it has been estimated that over 90% of the millionaires and billionaires in America became that way. By investing in real estate, you can also lose a lot of money in real estate, especially if you don't know what you're doing. Now. This isn't a course, and buying your own home or other real estate investments, you can find plenty of books and online courses about real estate investing. Yeah, I do want to give you some common sense advice. If you hope to make money by buying your own home or other properties. First, it's important to consider why so many people make a lot of money through real estate. For one, you can often pay just 20% of the cost of real estate, such as your house, and borrow the rest. So let's say you buy a house that costs $300,000. You may put down as little 60,000 tone that home. Then over a decade or so as that home's value goes up to $800,000 you've basically made $500,000 on the initial investment of $60,000. That's about 100% return. And that's exactly what happened to me when I bought my first home in the 19 nineties. There are virtually no other relatively low risk investments where you can sometimes make 800% on your money in a decade. In addition, told those benefits, you can get great tax savings by deducting your mortgage payment when you pay your taxes. Now, another reason why so many people get rich through real estate is that the money you make tend to come in all at once. Why is that important because when you make a salary, a funny thing tends to happen. You tend to spend whatever you make, so if you make $30,000 a year, you tend to spend about $32,000 a year. But if you make $300,000 a year, you tend to spend about $320,000 here. Therefore, making even a really good salary rarely leads to riches. Where is when you sell a successful real estate investment? You tend to get a boatload of cash all at once. Voila. You may find yourself suddenly wealthy. Now, making that kind of money were easy and a sure thing. Everyone would do it. So you should know. It's not easy. It's not a sure thing yet. The more you know and the more you follow the other principles outlined in this course, the more likely you'll get good results. The first key to investing in real estate is toe have some money to invest with. That's why saving 10 to 20% your income is so important. The era of no money down real estate is probably pretty much over. If you want to buy your own home, you better have enough money for a 20% down payment. Another thing to consider when buying a house or a real estate investment is how the market is moving. Our house is going up in your area. Is the economy moving in an upward direction? Of course, these are impossible things to know for sure. But the more you read and the more you talk to knowledgeable people, the better your chances of finding a good investment. You know, a good mentor or real estate investment seminar or even a good real estate agent can help your long way. But if you don't do your homework, there's a good chance it won't go well. Now there are basically two different types of real estate investments. One type is owning your own home. On the other type is everything else. First, I suggest you try to buy a home that you'd enjoy in which you think it's price will go up over time. If you managed to accomplish that goal, then buying investment properties as a whole other type of endeavor when investing in properties, you're no longer looking for a nice place for yourself. Instead, you're looking for deals, usually crappy homes or apartments that you can easily fix up and hopefully sell for more later on. But once again, you got to know your market on Do your homework. You can easily get burned. Don't even consider investing in properties until you have taken courses or read books or found a mentor who you can trust. If you do that, then you can someday join the Millionaires Club. As a real estate tycoon. It takes time and focus, but if you do it right, there's a lot of money to be made in the field of real estate. So once again, if this is a path you feel called to pursue, do your homework.
6. The Art of Accountability: In our last session, I talked briefly about the power being accountable to someone. Let's go more into death about that. There are different levels of accountability. For example, you might have a friend that checks in with you every now and then, or you might have a coach to talk through every three days. I think having a coach is great. If you want more information about my coaching services, just email me. I am John. Are a well dot com. I am J o N R a well dot com. I'd be glad to answer any of your questions. The great thing about coaches is that when they're good, they can pinpoint a problem or keep you moving forward at a greatly accelerated rate. The down side, of course, is that they cost money. Now, if you'd like to have accountability without paying for a coach, fortunately, there are some good alternatives. For example, I currently belong to a group called Action Coaching Team, in which you pay just $8 a week to have accountability with someone else on the team. You check in with each other for half an hour once a week. If you fail to meet your agreements, you actually have to pay $5 for each missed agreement. It's a great program. And once again, if you'd like information about just email me, I'd be glad to tell you more. For many years, I maintained accountability with a friend named Mike. We call each other every Tuesday morning, and we need basically answer two simple questions. Question number one. Did you break any of your promises or commitments from last week? And question number two? What new commitments have you promised to complete by the end of this next week? Let's go through each question. In turn, The first question was, Did you break any of your agreements from last week? The reason we asked this question to each other is that each week we'd come up with a brief contract of a few items we promised to do by the end of the week. A typical contract might sound like this. I, Jonathan agreed to do the following by next Tuesday at eight AM Number one read three more chapters in the real estate investment book. Number two. Ask my accountant about how deduct more expenses Number three go to the gym to times for a minimum of one hour for each item I failed to complete by Tuesday. 8 a.m. I agree to rip up $1 now. You may be surprised by that ending, but there for good reason. No one likes to rip up money. It's painful. But because I failed to go to the gym two times last week, there's a consequence. Ouch. No, I won't be restoring. This is not magic. By doing that and keeping the word of my contract, you can bet that this next week I will go to the gym. Over a 20 year period. Mike and I have probably ripped up about $90. But during that time, we've each more than tripled our income just by consistently keeping our word to ourselves and our clients. If you use such contracts to make small but consistent progress towards your most important goals, you too, will soon be making a lot more money. Now, even if you decide to not rip up money when you failed to complete your weekly contract, it's still a good thing to write out. Mike and I simply email each other our weekly contract. Before we talked on the phone. The whole thing takes 10 minutes a week, and yet the results have been amazing right in a weekly contract. And having a buddy that keeps you accountable makes a world of difference. You can decide toe, put just a couple of items on your contract, or you can this more than a dozen items do. It works for you. However, it's a good idea. Toe only put items on the contract that would normally not get done. For example, if you always go in the gym, you don't need to put that in your contract. Now, if you don't have a person in mind who you think would like to do this with you, then you might try a free website online called stick dot com, and that's spelled S T. I. C k k dot com at stick dot com, You tell them what your goals are for the weak. If you fail to meet them, you pay whatever price you previously decided to pay to a charity of your choice. It's a nice resource to keep you accountable to your goals When other people are not available, however, you create accountability in your life make sure you get it in place without it, you'll likely lose focus somewhere along the way. So my advice is to decide right now how you plan to be accountable. Do you have a friend who you can check in with each week? Or perhaps you'd like to hire coach? Or you may choose to create online accountability through the action coaching team I talked about earlier or stick dot com from where I stand. The decision as to whether or not you create accountability in your life is a decision between getting the same results you've had in the past or rocketing forward to a new level of success. Be sure to choose wisely and be sure to decide now.
7. Taking Consistent Action: Final Words of Advice: Unfortunately, information and inspiration are not transformation to experience. True transformation. You need to do some work you need to make some goals. You need to do the exercises and take small steps week after week. One more thing that can help you on your path is to find friends and family who also know of these principles and can support you in your efforts. Therefore, be sure to tell people about this program. I'd love it if you would write a quick online review and recommend it to friends. Of course, that would be helping me out. But if you can surround yourself with folks who have taken this course, you'll be better able to support each other to encourage you to recommend this program to others. I'll even offer you a reward. If you write to me telling me that you recommend it to friends, I will send you a document called 10 Trends for Making Money in the Future. This document details how changes in the world and technology are impacting careers and how we make money. Just email me. I am John are a well dot com that's I Am Joo In our air will dot com, telling me you've recommended this program and I'll be happy to send this bonus to you as a token of my gratitude. Although it may take some time before you have a lot of money, just taking the first steps in the right road can feel really good. Have you ever been lost driving around and then you finally get clear on where you are When you first realize where you are, you're no closer to your final destination. But at least now you're headed in the right direction, and just being headed in the right direction feels really good. If you like this program, you may want to learn some of the best ways to tap into a balanced, rich life of love and happiness. For that, I can highly recommend a couple of books, and by some strange coincidence, they just happen to be books that I wrote. What is called Find Happiness now and the other is called More love Less conflict. You can learn more about my books and other programs at my website finding happiness dot com. You may also enjoy my other online course called Triple Your Memory and reading Speed in one hour Once again. Thank you for watching. And remember, getting rich is more like a marathon than a sprint. So stay balanced for the long haul and enjoy the process. I'm personally wishing you the very best of luck and hoping that you give it your very best take care.
Jonathan Robinson
