Remember Opportunities Always Knock have the Courage to Answer

Your future is bright, reach out and take it!

There is no such thing as a free ride, or everything for nothing. Sorry, but truth is not exciting or sexy or easy. It’s simply the truth, and if you think I’m [...]]]> The way to REAL financial freedom!

Your future is bright, reach out and take it!

There is no such thing as a free ride, or everything for nothing. Sorry, but truth is not exciting or sexy or easy. It’s simply the truth, and if you think I’m here to tell you about the next hot get rich quick scheme, well your gonna be disappointed. Get rich quick only works for the people that come up with the scheme, then they sell it to you and get rich quick. Unfortunately in order for them to get rich, it usually means that your going to lose your shirt in the process. Great for them, not so great for you. There are a slew of these scams out there on the Internet right now just waiting for you to to become so desperate that you decide to take a chance on one of them. Sadly most of you won’t stop trying at just one, most of the time it will take 2 or 5 or 10 of these “tries” and “fails” before you realize that these kind of opportunities just don’t work, they will never work. By this time you will be so jaded that the mere thought of creating wealth on your own will fill you with such anger and thoughts of defeat, that you will gladly hand over the reins of control to the self proclaimed experts without so much as a blink. After all you say “ financial planning is  all together to complicated a thing for me to ever do it myself, why just look at the bad choices I’ve made so far”. Are you really willing to hide behind that? Will you really throw away your future?

HOGWASH

I will NOT allow you to hide behind that silliness. Your financial future is at stake here people. Your future, your kids future, and your grand-great grand and great great grand kids futures are all at stake here.  We as a society have been to willing to hand over the control and responsibility for this, the most important aspect of our lives, to the experts for far to long. It’s time to take them back, it’s time to pull up our boots and learn to do things the right way, and to do them OURSELVES. NO more mutual funds, NO more financial planners, No more get rich quick schemes, and NO believing that the government is going to swoop in on a white stallion to save us when and I say WHEN things go terribly wrong. They didn’t do it this time, did they? The only people the government save are the people that run the big multi-national corporations like GM. You know, the people that give BIG contributions to the political parties. Not people like you and me, correct me if i’m wrong but NOBODY has has offered to bail me out over the last year. How about you? So with that in mind, lets make a promise to ourselves.

From this day forward it is up to us to learn the rules of wealth for ourselves, and implement them for our own best interests, and stop relying on other people to do it for us. Will you make that promise to yourself with me? GREAT! You won’t be sorry. Financial freedom is right around the corner and together we can do this I just know we can.

Right now would be a great time to go and read the rules of wealth pages on this website. Yes yes I know the pages on FAITH and PERSISTENCE are not done yet, I promise they will be before the weekend ok. I will not not post again until they are finished. There is a lot of good information there that you need to read and understand before we continue. So i’m going to leave this here for right now and we will get into specifics next week. Have a great week and remember

Opportunities always Knock have the Courage to Answer!

The Canadian government’s answer to the falling tax base. Over the last 40 years  more and more Canadians have had the ability to put aside money towards “retirement”. In the beginning of this trend people were being very smart about it. They were educating themselves about investing and [...]]]> Registered Retirement Savings Plan

The Canadian government’s answer to the falling tax base. Over the last 40 years  more and more Canadians have had the ability to put aside money towards “retirement”. In the beginning of this trend people were being very smart about it. They were educating themselves about investing and the power of corporations, and were keeping their money out of the hands of the government tax man. This started putting a dent in tax revenue, so the government had to think up a way  to stop this trend. They knew that the people were getting to smart about their financial situation , and any time a population gets to smart for the governments good it’s time to take action. They decided to take advantage of the fact that human beings are basically lazy, and that if given the opportunity most people will take the easiest way out of almost any situation.

Enter the RRSP. Why go to all the trouble of managing your own wealth creation and retirement savings, just let your friendly neighborhood tax man do it for you. After all we all know how the government always has OUR best interests in mind right? All you have to do is open an RRSP account at your favorite bank or investment brokerage house, put X amount of money into it over the coarse of the year,  and bingo your done. Your money grows TAX FREE until you reach retirement age, when you convert the RRSP into a RIF ( retirement income fund) and start taking money out to live on for the rest of your life or until the fund runs out of money whichever comes first. Isn’t that easy boys and girls, you don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to learn about investing, you don’t have to research different investments and make decisions for yourself. Just give over your money to the banks and mutual fund managers, and they will do whats best for you. As an added bonus, just for playing ball on this one the government will allow you to use your contributions as a tax deduction, every year that you participate in their little game.  Oh by the way, all  you Americans reading this. Your 401K accounts work very much the same way as our RRSP accounts so you may want to pay attention too.

Lets take a closer look shall we.

Number 1.  TAX FREE. Most people are under the impression that these accounts are tax free, this is just not true. They are TAX DEFERRED. Big difference. What this means is that in return for not paying any taxes while the fund grows, you will pay taxes when you take the money out. So while your mutual fund manager is having fun buying and selling billions of dollars worth of stocks on a daily bases, and raking up millions of dollars a year in brokerage fees ( which he is allowed to take directly out of your fund I might add ).   You don’t have to worry about all the capital gains and losses he/she is creating. This is a very good thing for them, because if the mutual fund companies had to pay capital gains taxes on these funds they would very quickly go out of business. So ok we have given them all our extra money, all of our working life. Now it’s time to sit back and enjoy our golden years. Listen very carefully, NO matter how your money is invested at the time your fund becomes a RIF ALL THE MONEY YOU TAKE OUT IS SUBJECT TO INCOME TAX! Don’t believe me? Ask your accountant. How many of you think income tax will be the same or lower when you retire than it is today?

Number 2. Banks and mutual fund companies have OUR best interests at heart. Please, is there anyone out there in the real world who actually believes this? Banks and mutual fund companies have one goal and only ONE goal, and that is to make money for their shareholders, period end of discussion. They don’t give one jot or tittle about your retirement except to the extent that you continue to give them control over your money. How do these people make money? The only source of money these companies have is charging you service fees. Thats right whether you make money or lose money in their funds, they get to charge you fees. Most of these fees you don’t even know about. The biggest of them is brokerage fees. Every time they buy or sell a stock within your fund they get to charge a broker fee, thats why they trade stocks so vigorously, the more they trade the more fees they get to deduct from your fund balance. You never notice this because it come out directly from the fund itself, so they don’t have to list it on your yearly statement. In Canada alone this accounts for billions of dollars. Don’t believe me? Ask your accountant.

Herein lies the reason for the TAX DIFFERED status. By encouraging you to invest in mutual funds within an RRSP or 401K  the government has assured itself of a safe and secure source of INCOME TAX for the rest of your life. EG. Lets say you retire with a RIF worth 1 million dollars. You decide to leave the principle in mutual funds at an annual rate of return of 5% ( we will be nice and say the fund averages that for your life time ). This means that the fund itself is generating $50,000.00 a year in income. Is that enough for you and your household? Not mine. I figure the average North American household needs closer to $150,000.00 a year for a decent retirement income, because remember INCOME TAX comes off first. $150,000.00 a year will put you in an approx. 40% tax bracket so this will leave you with roughly $90,000.00 to live on, $60,000.00 going to the tax man. In this example your RIF will decrease in value by $100,000.00 per year or more and you will be out of money in roughly 10-15 years. If you retire at age 65 this means you will be broke sometime between age 75 and 80. If you plan on dieing before then, great if not, what then? This system is designed to have you die penniless, giving as much money to government along the way, over as long a period as possible.

Depressing? Not to worry there is a better way.

Stay tuned

Remember Opportunities Knock have the Courage to Answer.

]]> http://opportunitiesknock.biz/why-i-dont-like-rrsps-120/feed 5 http://opportunitiesknock.biz/thursday-november-12-2009-109 http://opportunitiesknock.biz/thursday-november-12-2009-109#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:29:42 +0000 phantome http://opportunitiesknock.biz/?p=109 As long as your going to be thinking anyway, think big.

Donald Trump

I love this statement. It is why his book is on my recommended start reading list. That and the fact it’s the lowest priced motivational book, on my start reading list ( find the list here ). One thing I notice, [...]]]> As long as your going to be thinking anyway, think big.

Donald Trump

I love this statement. It is why his book is on my recommended start reading list. That and the fact it’s the lowest priced motivational book, on my start reading list ( find the list here ). One thing I notice, is that all wealthy people share the same attitude on life. Think big or go home. It seems that the bigger the thinker is, the richer they are. Money just seems to gravitate towards people with the capacity to think big.

So how can we harness the power of thinking big? On my goal setting page, I talk about making a dream wall in your bedroom and filling it up with pictures of the things you want out of life. I believe this is a great first step, because when you look at your wall in the mornings as you get out of bed, over time they become imprinted on your subconscious mind. Your mind starts to believe that you deserve these things and will work on ways for you to earn the funds to acquire them. This is so important, if you believe that you deserve something then you do. It’s part of the whole FAITH thing, you know the one, it goes like this. A person can do anything he or she wants to do in life as long as they believe they can. As long as they believe they deserve it. So here is the question. What do you believe that you deserve?

Do you deserve to be rich or do you deserve to be poor?

If you want to be rich, then you must believe that you deserve to be. Otherwise you will always be poor because if you don’t deserve to be rich then you must deserve to be poor. There is no middle ground on this, either your rich or your poor. ( and don’t tell me about the middle class, the middle class are just poor people who don’t know that they are poor, because they have been tricked into believing in the “class” system. ) If you cannot pay all of your expenses and all of your entertainment and buy all of your wants, without getting up in the morning and going to WORK, then i’m sorry to say this but you are poor. When you go to that job in the morning you are selling yourself and your time to someone else, for money. The only way to become rich is to invest that money in stocks, real estate or starting your own business. Then and only then can you become truly rich. In all the history of the world I doubt you can find one person who has become rich through working for someone else. You can see this in your own family, look at your parents and grand parents. Have they spent there lives working at jobs, and if so would you consider them wealthy? Those of you lucky enough to have had family who own businesses know what I am talking about. Those of you who come from “hard working” families, look at the retired members of your family. They worked hard all of their lives and now the are retired. Do they live in a big house? Do they drive a fancy car? Do they take expensive trips eg. skiing in Europe, month long cruises to the Mediterranean? Do they own a summer home and a winter home? Trust me I mean no disrespect to hard working people. I was a hard working person before I learned there was a better way. I never completed school, in fact I dropped out half way through grade 9 to go work on the oil pipeline. I have moved furniture, sold cars, drove heavy trucks and machinery, and I can tell you without hesitation that I never came close to getting rich doing any of these things. None of my family has either. It was only when I made the decision that I was going to believe that I deserved to be rich that my brain kicked into gear and started to create ideas for becoming wealthy. Yours will to. All you have to do is make the decision. Do it. Do it now, decide that from this moment on, that no matter what your life has been in the past, that you deserve to be wealthy. Go to a mirror right now, look yourself in the eye and say ” I deserve to be wealthy” say it 3 times with feeling, every morning after your shower, and 3 times at night before bed. 6 times a day, give yourself permission to be wealthy. Then listen for the ideas to come, they might come fast and furious or they might take a while to surface, but come they will. It’s your job now to listen for them, and act on them immediately when they come. If you don’t act immediately, you might not act ever.

Good luck to you, I wish for you all the wealth and happiness this world has to offer. Stand up and accept it.

Remember. Opportunities always knock Have the courage to answer