Dare to Change Life Coaching & Mentoring

Tag: wealth protection

7 Steps to Regain Control Over Your Money: Step #2 – Have Clarity and Purpose for Your Money, Know Your Priorities and Values

CLARITY is priceless whether you consider your authentic career path, your relationships or your money. There are a lot of courses about finding your authentic self – expression and living your purpose. Very important, indeed! But your money management aptitude is also very important and requires clarity and purpose as well!

From my many observations, managing money tends to be easier when you have a certain PURPOSE in mind: Saving for your first house or a car, becoming financially independent or retiring at a certain age, a child’s college education or your own financial education training, a trip to Europe or even attending a concert of your favorite band!

The important thing is to be clear, specific and inspired by the purpose.

You are a spiritual being and succeeding at the Money Game is part of your physical experience. Like with everything else, you may go through rough times and good times with your finances.

Having the skills to help you navigate through the stormy and calm waters of your financial sea is very useful whether you’re already making 6 – 7 figures per year or still on your way there!

Becoming an effective money manager of your own money is a skillset that you can attain!

Do you spend your money wisely?

Do you invest your money strategically?

Do you leverage your money so that the money you already have works for you when you are not working?

These are questions you may ponder on…

Effective money management is a skill that you can learn like any other. Although it’s not rocket science, it requires discipline and a responsible attitude.

If you want to change your money habits, you need to replace them with better ones and practice them consistently. That’s why I like the notion of organizing your money according to its PURPOSE.

And there are other factors you may want to include when you’re organizing your money – your VALUES and PRIORITIES.

For example, if your core value is to have more choices and freedom AND you want to become financially free even before your retirement age, you would prioritize saving and investing vs having a new car every couple of years, or spending thousands on yearly exotic vacations and designer clothes.

Knowing your values and priorities will help you make better financial decisions.

To develop a sound financial plan, it’s helpful to have your financial goals aligned with your values AND have a time frame and a dollar amount.

For example, if you want to become financially independent by a certain time, it’s very helpful to know what monthly amount will cover all your potential financial needs. I call it your “Financial Freedom Number” that my clients calculate during my “Become Financially Savvy” training.

Once you have listed and quantified your financial goals, you need to prioritize them. You may find, for example, that saving for a new home is more important than buying a new car.

Whatever your objectives may be, be clear and specific about purpose for your money.

Figure out how many weeks or months there are between now and when you want to reach your financial objective. Divide the estimated investment required by the number of weeks or months. That’s how much you’ll need to save each week or month to have enough money set aside.

Remember, a goal is a dream with a deadline.

To Your Health, Wealth and Freedom!

P.S. If you are dissatisfied with your current financial situation, feel that you are not where you’d like to be, financially, at this phase in your life, and want to experience more ease and peace of mind about your financial future, come to the wealth retreat I offer in June in the South of France.

CLICK HERE to get specific information about this 4-day private Wealth Retreat

January 25, 2019
5 Tips on How Couples Can Deal with Differences around Money and Investing
Do you fight with your partner every time you talk about money?

Or do you have open, candid “money conversations” with your partner?

Or do you avoid talking about money with your partner so you can avoid fights and frustration?

Research has shown that couples that avoid fights about money, often end up having less wealth and not being prepared for a successful retirement.

No one wants to fight, of course. Howevere, money is the #1 thing couples argue about. And you probably heard that fighting about money is often an early predictor of divorce.

So, why would couples get sucked in into the argument about money when it causes so much stress, tension, and destruction?

While nobody wants conflict, avoiding communicating and working through disagreements with your partner can hurt the relationship and put your future financial security at risk.

I’ve met many women who shared their frustration about not being able to “talk money” with their partner in a constructive and candid way.

“I love my husband and don’t want to get into big arguments over money. So, I stopped talking about money with him all together. And now I have my secret money accounts.”

“I was sick of fighting about money. Now we both avoid these conversations.”

“We can’t ever agree when it comes to investing. He does his thing and I do mine.”

While many couples default to “not talking about money”, this solution usually comes back to haunt them.

Here’s why.

Men in a couple tend to have higher confidence and higher appetite for risk than women.

Because men usually have more risky investments and higher balance, women tend to keep substantial amount of cash in case of emergencies. In other words, to balance her husband’s high-risk investments, a wife often compensates it by keeping a high balance in FDIC-insured bank accounts, which provide safety but little or no return. This allows her to sleep at night and avoid arguments.

While it may work for some couples, this strategy may cost couples loss of opportunities in the end. If they invest $100,000 in a super-safe bank account earning 0.5%, rather than a conservative balanced index fund that may have earned 3.5%, they would have passed up 3% per year in earnings for each year the funds are invested.

On a $100,000 account, that’s $3,000 a year, and $30,000 over 10 years (not including reinvested dividends and capital gains.)

On the other hand, husband’s high-risk investing strategy may lead to significant loss of family wealth that he is trying to build by taking higher risk.

I believe, there are better ways to managing money as a couple than fighting over it or avoiding talking about money. Here are a few tips to get couples started on the road to creating wealth together:
1. Communicate
I believe in candid and transparent communication in the relationship. Have a candid ‘money talk’, be open about your concerns, and share your preferences when it comes to investing ideas. Don’t avoid ‘difficult conversations’ – find a way to have them in a constructive and respective way.

Work through your financial conflicts (rather than fighting about them or avoiding them altogether). If this seems daunting, you may consider talking to a financial planner, even if you are a do-it-yourself investor. If you can’t seem to work through financial arguments and have very different risk tolerance with your partner, get independent help to work through your differences and overcome communications’ challenges.
1. Set financial goals as a couple
Determine the return you’ll need to get on your investment in order to meet your financial goals. You may not need to take on additional risk to reach your financial goals. Calculate your annual lifestyle spending to determine what your rate of return on your investments needs to be, based on the amount you are currently saving. Don’t take more risk than you need, however, don’t be overly conservative either. Your investment returns must be adequate to meet your goals.

Set goals as a couple and develop investment strategies around those goals. For example, are you going to invest in the stock market? Rental real estate? In your growing business? If so, what percentage of your total assets you want to invest in each asset allocation?

If one of you wants to trade or invest in high-risk investments, limit the amount you allocate into high-risk investments and integrate these investments into your overall plan.
1. Compromise
I like to remind women that they should “pick their battles.” While some things are definitely worth fighting for, some things aren’t worth the argument. Your financial future is definitely worth fighting for.

When you have a “money talk”, listen to your partner, really hear his point of view when it comes to investing family money, and see if there is a way to find a common ground. Willingness to compromise is important for the healthy relationship. However, never compromise on your core values in life.

For example, if Freedom is your core value and you feel that your current employment is totally draining your energy and health, although paying you a very good salary, leap your way out of this situation even if your partner feels it’s wrong for your family finances.

When you force yourself to do something that you utterly resist, you compromise on something that is deeply important to you and can make yourself seek. Money is important, but your health and vitality are more important than money.
1. Dream together
Your money talks don’t need to be only about bills you have coming up and debt you need to repay. These conversations do need to take place, of course. But you can also share your aspirations that require you to save and grow you money – maybe a new house, or a trip, or a business that you’re passionate about. Whatever it may be – dreaming together, having common goals will help you get closer and inspire you as a couple to work toward your goals.

Do the “Five-Year Exercise.” If you only had five years to live, what would you like to do, have or experience?

Don’t overthink or censor yourself. Just start writing it down. If you are married or in a relationship, each of you should write your lists separately. Then, as a couple, choose what you’d like to do, have or experience, both together and individually. It’s hard to fight or argue about money when you are working together toward important goals. Don’t give up on your dreams!
1. Become Financially Empowered
Invest in yourself – let go of your inner blocks, become equipped with knowledge about strategic investing. Although having a MBA in finance might be nice, you don’t need it to be financially successful. Having a solid base of financial knowledge will take you a long way. Couples who both understand financial fundamentals, can make better financial decisions, especially when they make them together.

Besides, it’s quite likely that at some point you may be 100% responsible for your own investment and money decisions. Now is the time to upgrade your skills and knowledge about savvy money management and investing.

To Your Health, Wealth and Freedom!

Millen

p.s. Download my wealth building tips-packed book “A Shift Toward Abundance” HERE
February 15, 2018
Bitcoin, Blockchain and Your Investment Strategy

I recently heard about a report that stated that 30% of millennials would invest in bitcoins instead of stocks (I refer to established, successful publicly traded companies) in order to secure their retirement. Not only that… they would be willing to use their credit cards to buy the bitcoins! This information was quite shocking to me and I felt compelled to write this article.

But before I get into specifics of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies world, I want to curb your ambition to become a cryptocurrencies millionaire. I am not saying it’s impossible (yes, there are Bitcoin millionaires). I just want to show you a bigger picture of where Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fit into your investment portfolio.

Role of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies in your Investment Portfolio

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ether, dash, blah, blah, blah can be considered to be chaos hedge. Chaos hedge is a portion of your investment portfolio that acts as a form of insurance against things like market crashes, financial system collapse (when banks are closed/insolvent), global economic shocks caused by wars, massive natural disasters, etc. Having some chaos hedges, such as gold, silver, and cryptocurrencies, provides downside protection for your investment portfolio.

However, most cryptocurrencies are very speculative investments because out of 1000 or so existing cryptocurrencies, likely over 90% are Ponzi schemes according to a few savvy investors I follow. So, you’ve been warned: If you want to dive into a super-speculative world of cryptocurrencies, especially outside of Bitcoin (which is currently considered to be the most recognized, “reserve currency” for buying other cryptos), you must do your due diligence before buying them.

On the other hand, there are setups in the cryptocurrencies’ market that could give you high gains within next six to 12 months. I call it smart speculation. When used correctly, smart speculations offer the opportunity for substantial gains, even in conservative investment portfolios. The key here is to allocate a small percentage of your investment portfolio into the smart speculation holding.

Now, a brief overview of what Bitcoin is and why you may want to consider owning some.

Bitcoin: Brief Overview

Bitcoin is the most widely used open-source (not proprietary owned) peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that you can send over the Internet without a bank or a middleman. It is also a storage of value, finite value to be precised. Only 21 million bitcoins will ever be created. They have value somewhere between zero and a very large number (some predict $500K per bitcoin) and the value is determined by the demand of the Bitcoin network users.

Bitcoin is a “native of the internet”, and thus it is digital in its entirety, although very few physical bitcoins were manufactured by Casascius, the coin company, before they were stopped by regulators. There are technical reasons why it doesn’t make sense to use bitcoin to pay for small transactions. However, owning bitcoin does make sense as an asset for people who want to store value of something that can be traded for something else in the future.

For example, you don’t trust banks or you’re worried about a natural disaster and want to have some cash available. Some people put cash in a mattress, or in a safe. But you can also put it in something attributed to you that shows that you have something of value that you can use in the future. Yes, it’s somewhat similar to gold, the traditional storage of value. And similarly to gold, you can store value in bitcoin by converting fiat currencies into bitcoin.

With Bitcoin, the original alleged developer Satoshi Nakamoto, set out to create a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system”. There is much mystery around the true identity of the original Bitcoin creator. There are rumors that whoever Satoshi Nakamoto actually holds roughly 1 million bitcoins, worth approximately $11.6 billion based on the recent prices ($11, 600/Bitcoin).

One of the big innovations of Bitcoin was creating a system that did not rely on trusted third parties to process electronic payments; instead it relies on the consensus of the “bitcoin miners” on the network (sometimes referred as computer nodes).

Bitcoin is a currency which supply cannot be altered by any central bank or government. That might not seem like as big of a deal in countries like the U.S., or U.K. but in places like Zimbabwe and Venezuela that have experienced hyper-inflation due to excessive money printing by corrupt governments, this is of greater concern.

Blockchain technology

The truth is that cryptocurrencies’ rise in popularity is largely attributed to a new innovative technology that is used for trading cryptocurrencies – “blockchain”, which is considered to be revolutionary, just like the Internet was in the 90-s.

Many people say “I don’t know about bitcoin, but I believe in blockchain.” That could be because many people don’t believe in bitcoin but believe in Blockchain technology. So, what the hell is Blockchain?

Blockchain is a digital distributed public ledger, but it’s really a strong cryptography (based on mathematics). And just in case you are not familiar with the word cryptography, it’s the art of protecting information by transforming it (encrypting it) into an unreadable format. Only those who possess a secret key can decrypt the message into plain text. Cryptography is used to protect credit card information, corporate data, etc.

Recent advance of Bitcoin and recognition by financial communities

On December 17^th,2017, the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange), the world’s largest futures (future contracts) exchange, launched its own bitcoin futures contract under the ticker “BTC.” One CME futures contract represents five bitcoins.

You may know that there are plenty of well-known critics of Bitcoin in the banking and business worlds. Specifically, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co., called the cryptocurrency a “fraud” and said it would blow up. However, Mr Dimon recently said in a TV interview on the business cable network that he regrets calling it a fraud.

There are more and more investors and even hedge fund managers jump on the Bitcoin wagon. Bitcoin has had a phenomenal bullish run in 2017, rising from $966 at the start of the year to a record high of over $20, 000. While the price of the Bitcoin failed since its highs in 2017, many expect that the cryptocurrencies prices are going to climb up further.

If you want to learn more about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as well as how you can buy, store, send and receive cryptocurrencies, I invite you to join my upcoming masterclass Bitcoin, Your Money and Building Wealth.

This training offers a comprehensive approach to investing in cryptocurrencies – from understanding what it is and how it works, to how to buy, store, send and receive it, to how to manage your risk. While I cannot give you a specific advice or promise profits from any of your investments, I can promise that by the end of this masterclass you will be in a good position to make a decision weather you want to invest in cryptocurrencies and what to do next.

To Your Health, Wealth and Freedom.

With Love and Gratitude,

Millen Livis

P.S. I have a crazy good offer for this training if you sign up for this masterclass before February 1st, 2018

Sign up HERE for Bitcoin, Your Money and Building Wealth.

January 24, 2018