Posts from — September 2009

COME JOIN ME AT BETTER NETWORKER

We often discuss ways to invest money for various goals like college funding, big-ticket purchases, and retirement. But before investors can tackle where to put the money, they need to tackle where to find the money.

Proper budgeting and cost-cutting can help you free up funds for investment, emergency accounts, or debt-paydown. And today, we’ve revived our 101 ideas to help you stretch your dollars to the max. If you follow through on them, you’ll make significant progress in cutting costs in your day-to-day life.

1.Watch out for shipping costs when buying via the Internet. Use the Internet to comparison shop, then pick up the item locally.

2.If you see something in a catalog that you want to buy, wait a week before ordering to see if you still really want it.

3.Use the public library to check out movies or books for free.

4.Consider dropping your land line phone at home. Your cell phone may be all you need, and some come with free long distance services.

5.When traveling, look online before you leave for ideas and/or coupons. Once on site, ask the locals for low-cost favorite spots.

6.Try a vacation at home (stay-cation). See and do the things you’ve always meant to do and save on hotel costs.

7.Compare rates for cable and satellite. Go with the less expensive option. Only sign up for the channels you know you’ll watch.

8.Send free e-cards and save on postage.

9.Consider buying a certified preowned car instead of a new one.

10.Cut back trips to Starbucks or other premium coffee shops.

11.Stop buying clothes that are “dry clean only.” Learn to iron.

12.Don’t renew subscriptions to publications you don’t have time to read.

13.Don’t watch so much TV. You won’t see all the ads and be as tempted to buy. Take a walk instead or play with your kids.

14.Make IRA contributions early in the year to take advantage of additional months of tax deferral.

15.Lock in a fixed mortgage rate so your interest rate can’t increase to a point you can no longer make your house payments.

16.Only use ATMs where you won’t be charged service fees.

17.Give your time/services instead of “things” for gifts.

18.Give up expensive health club memberships. Learn to exercise outdoors, at home, or through the park district. Or join the YMCA.

19.Even though oil costs have abated, choosing a small hybrid car over a similarly priced mid-sized non-hybrid will save you unnecessary pain at the pump. Plus, gas prices will likely tick up again over time. Check out Hybrid Car Guide for more.

20.Wait a little longer between manicures (try doing one yourself!), massages, or highlights (try a local training school).

21.Let your hair go gray. I don’t know if hair dyes are linked to cancer or not, but as the baby boomers age, gray is “in.”

22.Play golf less often, look for tee times when rates are reduced, or play at lower-cost public courses.

23.Pay off your credit cards monthly and avoid paying interest.

24.If you must charge, switch to a no-fee or low-fee credit card. Go to Bankrate.com to compare rates.

25.If you own a house, shift your higher-rate credit card debt to a lower-rate line of credit. Deduct the interest on your tax return.

26. If you own a house, use a home-equity loan to pay off auto loans. The interest is tax-deductible.

27.Pay your mortgage payment biweekly instead of monthly–you’ll save on interest costs and pay off your mortgage sooner.

28.Pay extra premium payments when paying your mortgage. As above, you’ll save interest payments and be able to pay off your mortgage sooner.

29.If your house down payment was less than 20%, cancel your private mortgage insurance once your mortgage balance is 80% or less of your home’s value.

30.Pay cash when possible–psychologically it’s harder to spend cash than using credit cards, and you’ll save on interest charges.

31.Check your credit history. Go to FreeCreditReport.com and make sure everything is accurate. Good credit may mean lower interest charges.

32.If you have a tendency to bounce checks, deduct a “cushion” from your balance. Then if you accidentally let your balance go below zero, you’ll hit that cushion instead of paying fees for insufficient funds.

33.Set up one checking account for regular recurring expenses and another for bigger-ticket items. (Only buy if you’ve saved enough.)

34.Participate in company retirement plans to save on taxes. Your taxable income will go down and you’ll defer taxes to the future.

35.Take advantage of your employer match in your 401(k) or other retirement plan.

36.Don’t take a loan from your 401(k) plan–you’ll save on double taxation of that repaid interest.

37.Take advantage of company-sponsored reimbursement plans. If your company sponsors free retirement advice, take advantage of it.

38.Talk to financial planners at no cost. Look for newspaper money shows or local events where this service may be offered.

39.Take advantage of free health screenings at work (if offered).

40.Switch to an HMO from a PPO for health insurance.

41.If self-employed, consider switching health insurance plans to high-deductible plans to take advantage of HSAs.

42.Take advantage of medical prescription drug cards.

43.Get multiple quotes on insurance. It pays to shop around.

44.Raise the deductible on your homeowner’s and car insurance policies.

45.Increase the waiting period to six months or longer on your long-term care insurance.

46.Review life insurance premiums. Can the dividends pay the premium instead of purchasing more coverage?

47.Buy term instead of whole life or universal life insurance.

48.Check with state or federal government to see if you have money owed to you. To find out more about claims in your state, go to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators’ Web site.

49.If considering moving or retirement, look into places where the cost of living and/or state tax rates are cheaper.

50.Keep track of your cost basis on investments to save money on taxes when you sell an investment.

51.If you have a loss on your Roth IRA (the current balance is less than what you contributed), consider taking out the balance and claiming a deduction for the loss on Schedule A of your tax return.

52.Avoid paying penalties on retirement distributions by waiting until you’re over age 59 1/2 to make withdrawals. Start required minimum distributions from traditional IRAs when you’re age 70 1/2.

53.Do a 1035 annuity exchange to a company with lower expenses.

54.Put investments that generate ordinary income in tax-deferred accounts.

55.Use tax-exempt bonds in taxable accounts.

56.Put investments that generate capital gains or dividends (both generally taxed at lower rates than ordinary income) in taxable accounts.

57.If you’ve inherited an IRA, understand how to stretch out the tax deferral by taking the correct minimum required distribution.

58.Pay attention to the expense ratios on mutual funds you buy.

59.Consider using exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

60.Pay attention to mutual fund brokerage fees.

61.Use prior-year capital-loss carryforwards to net out realized capital gains. You’ll pay less tax.

62.If you have stock options, consider holding the shares after exercise for at least one year. You’ll pay capital gains tax on the appreciation when you sell.

63.Don’t get divorced.

64.Quit smoking.

65.Save all your change and use it to buy gifts next year.

66.Go to matinee movies instead of movies at night.

67.Cook in bulk and freeze.

68.Turn down your home thermostat a couple degrees in the winter.

69.Only do full loads of laundry and fill the dishwasher before running it.

70.Plan parties where everyone brings something.

71.Bring your lunch to work or scout out the inexpensive places to buy lunch. Look for inexpensive items on the menu, like soup.

72. Have cocktails at home and then go out; have dessert at home.

73.Order vegetarian when you’re out.

74.Look up phone numbers in the phone book instead of paying for directory assistance.

75.Sell stuff you don’t need or use anymore on eBay.

76.Get a roommate and share expenses.

77.Investigate phone service via the Internet.

78.Use regular gas instead of premium.

79.Cut back on eating out.

80.Be a smart grocery shopper–cut coupons, shop at discount stores, and stock up on sale items. Check out Costco or Sam’s Club.

81.Buy energy-efficient appliances. They’re cheaper in the long run.

82.Get rid of “add on” services with phone, TV, etc.

83.Shop resale shops or estate sales.

84.Shop the clearance racks.

85.Make your own greeting cards on a computer.

86.Fill prescriptions with the generic form of the drug.

87.Plan your purchases–avoid impulse buying.

88.Use public transportation.

89.Keep up maintenance on cars. It may prevent costly future problems.

90.Get annual physicals to prevent costly future problems.

91.Track your spending. If you write it all down, you’ll probably spend less. And you’ll know exactly where your money goes.

92.Use your senior discount (if eligible). Go to AARP.org for information about member discounts and services.

93.Skip paying cab fare now and then. Walk or take the bus.

94.Wash your car at home and skip the car wash.

95.Pay bills online. Save postage.

96.Don’t buy mutual funds just before capital gains distributions.

97.Use a budget–especially for items like gifts.

98.Trade in your car with high insurance premiums for a car with lower insurance premiums. Go to Bankrate.com for more ideas.

99.Buy an I-PASS and save on highway tolls (in Illinois).

100.Sign up for a Upromise credit card. A percentage of your purchases will go into a college savings fund for your children.

101.Do your own home improvements. Home Depot and Lowe’s employees can walk you through what you need to know.

PLEASE CLICK HERE to see CarbonCopyPRO (CCPRO) and Wealth Master International (WMI) in EMPOWER MAGAZINE.

Struggling Entrepreneur Goes From ZERO To $2 Million Dollar Business In Just 6 Months.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VISIT TRAFFIC FORMULA2 WEBSITE.

Here’s some tips on…

How To Pick The RIGHT Business Opportunity

1. Find a great mentor. He/she should be a visionary; self-confident, driven, well-read, successful, ambitious, and passionate about what he/she does. He/she must also have a financial interest in your success.

2. Find a marketing system that works. Tragically, far too many network marketing systems today are completely broken. If it is an effective system, and if you work it properly, you should be able to start seeing significant money coming back into your pockets within weeks, not several months.

3. With the right opportunity, you should be in an income-earning position from day one, and should not have to be passing up any sales as part of a qualification process.

4. If the company’s primary business-building “methods” are the recruiting of friends and family members, or the purchasing of expensive “opportunity” leads, be aware. This is a big red flag. You will almost certainly find yourself running out of relatives and/or funds for leads long before you see any real growth in your business.

5. Instead of Multi-Level-Marketing, choose a direct sales company. By and large, in MLM the attrition rate is far too high and the commissions much too small. Which will only leave you with the frustrated feeling of “trying to fill a leaking bucket.”

6. Make sure that what is being marketed are “stand-alone” products, that is, that they would sell themselves were they sitting on a shelf in a store, and aren’t just there to make the compensation plan “legitimate”.

If you yourself wouldn’t be willing to pay twice the price for the products of what you are selling them for, they are not the right products.

7. Find something you love to do. Your business should not simply be “a means to an end” — something you have to suffer through in order to reach your financial goals. The right business should make you jump out of bed in the morning, ready and excited to get to work!

8. Make sure the company and its leaders have a vision which goes beyond the mere material/financial. They should promote and model a “pay-it-forward” mentality. With wealth comes the responsibility of good stewardship, and only a person who knows how to share of himself and give back, knows the meaning of true riches.

What’s the Next Step? PLEASE CLICK HERE

Mike Dillard has made quite a “splash” recently in the network marketing world. Many a network marketer has had an inbox filled with videos of Mike touting his expertise in “attraction” marketing.He has intrigued many of us with his cutting edge style of Magnetic Sponsoring. Mike Dillard is quite glib and articulate and certainly seems to know his “stuff.”With all that expertise, many of us have wondered if Mike is active with a network marketing business himself. The truth is that Mike Dillard has been highly successful with a network marketing company by the name of “Carbon Copy Pro.”

In fact, Mike Dillard is the “right hand” man of Jay Kubassek, who is the company’s leader.

“Carbon Copy Pro”, according to Jay Kubassek, will create 100 millionaires by the year 2012!

Jay and Mike appear together on the company’s required informational dvd entitled,” Inside Out.”The main product line of Carbon Copy Pro revolves around financial information products. Asset protection and debt consolidation are some of the topics covered by the information products.

Mike Dillard and Jay Kubassek claim that Carbon Copy Pro solves many of the problems inherent with many network marketing opportunities. For example, many people in mlm have trouble asking for the sale and closing the deal. For a fee of about 100.00 a month, associates with Carbon Copy Pro can have the company’s representatives close the sales for them. Closing the sales is a key feature, as entry fees for Carbon Copy Pro range from 1995.00 to 19,995.00. Another challenge that many network marketers face, is making enough money- FAST. Carbon Copy Pro solves this cash flow problem by having very large pay outs up front. Sponsors are also motivated to help recruits succeed, as they receive some residual income on the sales of those that they bring in to the business.

In conclusion, if you were wondering what Mike Dillard is “up to” these days, besides his Magnetic Sponsoring training, now you know. He is successfully practicing what he preaches. And those of us who have listened to Mike Dillard know that he is an excellent “preacher”

by Graham Bowley

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Warren E. Buffett has two cardinal rules of investing.

Rule No. 1: Never lose money.

Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.

Well, a lot of old rules got trashed when the financial crisis struck — even for the Oracle of Omaha.

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At 79, Mr. Buffett is coming off the worst year of his long, storied career. On paper, he personally lost an estimated $25 billion in the financial panic of 2008, enough to cost him his title as the world’s richest man. (His friend and sometime bridge partner, Bill Gates, now holds that honor, according to Forbes.) And yet few people on or off Wall Street have capitalized on this crisis as deftly as Mr. Buffett. After counseling Washington to rescue the nation’s financial industry and publicly urging Americans to buy stocks as the markets reeled, in he swooped. Mr. Buffett positioned himself to profit from the market mayhem — as well as all those taxpayer-financed bailouts — and thus secure his legacy as one of the greatest investors of all time.

When so many others were running scared last autumn, Mr. Buffett invested billions in Goldman Sachs — and got a far better deal than Washington. He then staked billions more on General Electric. While taxpayers never bailed out Mr. Buffett, they did bail out some of his stock picks. Goldman, American Express, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp — all of them got public bailouts that ultimately benefited private shareholders like Mr. Buffett. If Mr. Buffett picked well — and, so far, it looks as if he did — his payoff could be enormous. But now, only a year after the crisis struck, he seems to be worrying that the broader stock market might falter again. After boldly buying when so many were selling assets, his conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, is pulling back, buying fewer stocks while investing in corporate and government debt. And Mr. Buffett is warning that the economy, though on the mend, remains deeply troubled. “We are not out of problems yet,” Mr. Buffett said last week in an interview, in which he reflected on the lessons of the last 12 months. “We have got to get the sputtering economy back so it is functioning as it should be.” Still, Mr. Buffett hardly sounded shellshocked in the wake of what he once called the financial equivalent of Pearl Harbor. (An estimated net worth of $37 billion would be a balm to anyone’s psyche.) “It has been an incredibly interesting period in the last year and a half. Just the drama,” Mr. Buffett said. “Watching the movie has been fun, and occasionally participating has been fun too, though not in what it has done to people’s lives.”

Investors big and small hang on Mr. Buffett’s pronouncements, and with good reason: if you had invested $1,000 in the stock of Berkshire in 1965, you would have amassed millions of dollars by 2007.
Despite that formidable record, the financial crisis dealt him a stinging blow. While he has not changed his value-oriented approach to investing — he says he likes to buy quality merchandise, whether socks or stocks, at bargain prices — Buffettologists wonder what will define the final chapters of his celebrated career. In doubt, too, is the future of a post-Buffett Berkshire. The sprawling company, whose primary business is insurance, lost about a fifth of its market value during the last year, roughly as much as the broader stock market. While Berkshire remains a corporate bastion, it lost $1.53 billion during the first quarter, then its top-flight credit rating. It returned to profit during the second quarter. Time is short. While he has no immediate plans to retire, Mr. Buffett is believed to be grooming several possible successors, notably David L. Sokol, chairman of MidAmerican Energy Holdings at Berkshire and also chairman of NetJets, the private jet company owned by Berkshire. After searching in vain for good investments during the bull market years, Mr. Buffett used last year’s rout to make investments that could sow the seeds of future profits. Justin Fuller, author of the blog Buffettologist and a partner at Midway Capital Research and Management, said the events of the last year, while painful for many, provided Mr. Buffett with the opportunity he had been waiting for. “He put a ton of capital to work,” Mr. Fuller said. “The crisis gave him the ability to put one last and lasting impression on Berkshire Hathaway.” For the moment, however, Mr. Buffett seems to be retrenching a bit. Like so many people, he was blindsided by the blowup in the housing market and the recession that followed, which hammered his holdings of financial and consumer-related companies. He readily concedes he made his share of mistakes. Among his blunders: investing in an energy company around the time oil prices peaked, and in two Irish banks even as that country’s financial system trembled. Mr. Buffett declined to predict the short-run course of the stock market. But corporate data from Berkshire shows his company was selling more stocks than it was buying by the end of the second quarter, according to Bloomberg News. Its spending on stocks fell to the lowest level in more than five years, although the company is still deftly picking up shares in some companies and buying corporate and government debt.

Among the stocks Mr. Buffett has been selling lately is Moody’s, the granddaddy of the much-maligned credit ratings industry. Berkshire, Moody’s largest shareholder, said last week that it had reduced its stake by 2 percent.Th e shift in Berkshire’s investments suggests Mr. Buffett is starting to worry, said Alice Schroeder, the author of “The Snowball,” a biography of Mr. Buffett. But Ms. Schroeder said Mr. Buffett was also growing anxious about how he would be remembered. He wants to remain relevant in the twilight of his career, she said, and is taking a more prominent role on the public stage. That shift means ordinary investors are getting a chance to hear more of his sage advice, but it also carries some risk. “Before, he always made sure to dole out the wisdom with an eyedropper,” Ms. Schroeder said. In the past, Mr. Buffett “said it was a mistake to believe that if you are an expert in one area that people will listen to you in others,” she said.

Whatever his recent missteps, many people, from President Obama down, listen to what Mr. Buffett has to say. He is important in his own right as a billionaire businessman but also because millions of ordinary investors follow his homespun aphorisms, copy his investing strategies and await his pronouncements on the markets. Mr. Buffett refused to be drawn out on where stocks are headed, but he warned about the dangers of investing with borrowed money, or leverage, which proved disastrous when the crisis hit.
As for regrets, he has a few. His timing was bad, he concedes. He should have sold stocks sooner, before the markets tumbled. Then he served up a Buffettism that any investor might heed: Asked if anything was keeping him awake at night, he said there was not. “If it’s going to keep me awake at night,” Mr. Buffett said, “I am not going to go there.

Posted by Sarip Ahmad at 4:19 AM

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FOLLOW THE 5 LAWS OF SUCCESS

1. MASSIVE ACTION = MASSIVE RESULTS

2. PROFESSIONALS SORT AND AMATEURS SELL

3. CREATE SUCCESS IN OTHERS AND IT WILL COME BACK TO YOU TEN FOLD

4. LOVE YOUR BUSINESS AND YOUR BUSINESS WILL LOVE YOU

5. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH THE KIND OF PEOPLE YOU WANT TO BECOME

“LEARN THE PRODUCT & BECOME A PRODUCT OF THE PRODUCT”

(You cannot have success unless you know your products…it’s just that simple.)

. BE ON ALL OF THE TRAINING AND ALLIANCE CALLS

(The knowledge you will gain from these calls will make you a true professional. In addition, you can never be a true leader unless you set the example for your new Consultants.)

. ALWAYS OPERATE IN LEAD PROSPERITY

(Unless you have an abundance of leads, your business will never prosper…end of story.)

. BRING 8-10 PEOPLE THROUGH THE CCPRO & WMI SUCCESS SYSTEM PER DAY(This is where massive action comes into play. You will probably have to speak with 50 or more people per day to make this happen. There are NO shortcuts when it comes to this!)

. READ & RE-READ “THINK AND GROW RICH” & “RICH DAD, POOR DAD”(These classics read like they were written by WMI for WMI! Definitely required reading.)

. ESTABLISH YOUR GOALS…SHORT TERM AND LONG TERMIf you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve” Napoleon Hill

CarbonCopyPRO is the world’s most powerful marketing system for one reason—Leverage. The ability to efficiently and effectively utilize resources and time is a critical to the success of any online entrepreneur. Here are the top 5 ways that CarbonCopyPRO can give you an incredible amount of leverage in both your Wealth Masters International business, and your personal life.

1. The System—The majority of Internet marketing opportunities require you to create your own website if you want to do business online. And unlike CarbonCopyPRO, most of those systems don’t have a team of online marketing gurus constantly split-testing and improving the framework from behind the scenes 24/7/365. Unless you’re using CarbonCopyPRO, you will need to walk your new team members through the process of building their own website while you find the time to build your own.

2. The Training—CarbonCopyPRO was built for—and by—the best marketers in the business. People that are out there in the marketplace, just like you, building their business using the exact same techniques that they developed and that we teach. Regardless of your prior marketing or computer experience, the training that CarbonCopyPRO provides will bring you up to speed quickly with an expert level of quality. Every member benefits from our years of collective experience, which dramatically reduces your learning curves and any stumbling blocks you may encounter in the process.

3. The Results—Leveraging the success of other self-made millionaires is one of the quickest ways to become a self-made millionaire yourself. With CarbonCopyPRO behind you, your prospects can be rest assured that they would be working with an entire team of people with a solid, impressive, track record of success.

4. The Resources—The leaders at CarbonCopyPRO are consistently researching and strategizing to bring you the best available resources in the industry. From our in house call-center that closes your sales, pre-written auto-responder (follow-up marketing system), daily webinars/conference calls, and live Master Marketing Events to The Urban Cowgirl and Platinum7, you will have exclusive access to resources that are unparallel in the industry.

5. The Lifestyle—Working with CarbonCopyPRO will have a huge impact on your personal lifestyle – IF you learn to leverage everything we have to offer. There is an old edict that states: If you are willing to work 99% harder than everyone else for 3-4 years, you will have the lifestyle that those 99% of people have only been able to dream about. Ultimately, when leveraged properly, you get to work less, so that you have time to enjoy the profits you’re bringing in, while continuing to build your own financial legacy with Wealth Masters International. It’s the perfect scenario, and it’s waiting to be your reality.

How To Generate Endless Leads And Instant Cash For Any MLM

. How to set up your automated traffic and lead generation “Nerve Center” that spits out red-hot qualified leads for you 24/7

. The non-geeks guide to getting to the top of the search engines for a steady never-ending flow of traffic you can use to promote any product, service or  opportunity

. How to quickly, easily and in-expensively create short videos and get your message out to thousands, even millions of viewers on 12+ high-traffic websites.

. How to leverage Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites (the right way) to reach more of your market and position yourself as an expert.

. How to hit the ground running with our favorite paid traffic sources and get HUGE dividends for every dollar you invest.

. How to use “pipeline marketing” to explode your profits and make more money with each visitor to your website(s).

. And much, much more…

“You do not have to be an online expert, or anything close to it, in order to put these techniques to work for you and your business, but you DO need this knowledge which is the piece that you’re missing right now.

The second thing you’re going to have by the end of the course, is a real business, with a real asset that can produce money and distributors for you every single day on autopilot which is based on the You Inc business model I shared with you in the previous video.

This business model is what allowed me to build the 2nd largest downline in my network marketing company, and make over $7,000,000 in the last 3 years from my home”…….MIKE DILLARD

VISIT MLM FORMULA TRAFFIC2 WEBSITE

Best Regards

SARIP AHMAD
Independance Marketing Consultant
WMI Consultant