Monday, October 23, 2006

Retirement Planning

Retirement planning

Everyone is talking about financial freedom. A lot of people tell you when you retire, you will be a free man and do whatever you want. A lot of us dream of traveling around the World when we retire then. We hope to do whatever we want when we retire and never worry about money again.

The question is ' Can we retire rich and be financially free?' Although it is hard to believe , I would say it loud and clear, 'It is a 80-90 percent chance that you are going to retire and broke! '
Yes, listen me one more time, you are likely to retire in 10 or even 30 years time without having enough money in your assets to maintain your golden years! See around you and you would see that people who are more than 60 or even 70 years old still working, not because they enjoy their works but simply because they have to work to survive.

Although your retirement is 20 or even 30 years from now, you have to start planning now. They key to a comfortable retirement is being able to maintain the lifestyle to which you are accustomed as wee as having the option to do more. The principles for a planned retirement are easy,


1) Start your saving as early as possible, the earlier you start saving, the harder your money can work towards your retirement.
2) Find a combination of investment vehicles so that you diversify your investment to minimize your risk.
3) Have a separate planning for your children education so that you can concentrate your time and money in your retirement planning.
4) Find extra source of income so that you can invest more money for your retirement.
5) Buy insurance to cover for certain emergencies such as medical bills, fire, personal accident to prevent all these events eat away your money.
6) Have a proper estate planning so that if anything happens to you, your loved ones can inherit your assets without hassles.

Retirement is fun provided you plan it properly and have enough fund to sustain your lifestyle!

Friday, October 20, 2006

Intellectual Property

Lesson 13: Intellectual Property and Business

I talked about various methods of investing your money and time in my previous posts. The reason for you to invest is simple, you want to beat the market and you want to retire rich and young. However, from my previous posts, we know that all types of investment carry some risks. You need to put in your hard earned money and time to get a return and if you are lucky, you are rewarded with some returns but you may burn half or even all your money.

Today I am going to tell you a way where you can get money by spending a small amount of money but the drawback is you have to spend more time. Yes, I am talking about creating/ modifying a new item/idea. A lot of my readers emailed that it is easier said than done, ‘You mean new invention?’ For a lot of people, inventing is a big achievement and most of us think that we are incapable of doing this.




I am not talking about big invention, you can sell your new ideas and make big money from that. Try to look around and think about how to make this world a better place. People are modifying the function of a hand-phone and add in radio, camera, video recorder ( all these technologies are old technologies) functions to boost the sales. Nokia , Samsung, Motorola are making billions of dollars every year by modifying their phone models with add-in functions. If you are creative, write a book and a song which can get you billions of dollars if they become the best sellers.

I always believe that intellectual property is the best investment in your life. I never ask you to do basic sciences research. Modify someone’s idea and apply these ideas.



From the 10th World Wealth Report, we learn that, majority of High Net-worth Individuals become wealthy due to their business. You can invest your money in business, however, always start a business that you are familiar with. If you are a practicing physician, of course you want to start a clinic, always start a business that is easy for you but is difficult for others.

Friday, October 13, 2006

10th World Wealth Report

10th World Wealth Report 2006

I recently read an interesting report by Merrill Lynch And Capgemini. This report gives us some insights about high net worth individuals (HNWIs). HNIWs is people with net financial assets of at least US$1 million, excluding their primary residence and consumables. There are a few important salient points about the report,


1) The HNWI population grew most dramatically in Asia than any part of the World. The growth of HNWI population in South Korea is 21.3 percent; India rising 19.3 percent; Russia, where it rose 17.4 percent, and South Africa, where it grew by 15.9 percent. (As compared to US’s figure of 8.8% and UK’s figure of 7.3%) In addition, three of the four BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia and India) are among the top 10 fastest growing HNWI populations.

2) We learned from this report that the commonest way for millionaires to become wealthy is through business ownership and the sale of a business (37%), incomes( 24%), inheritance (18%), investment(10%), stock options (9%) and other(2%).

3) HNWI s’ investments in North America and Europe will continue to decline and more funds will be reallocated to Asia Pacific and other emerging markets.

4) Most HNWIs tend to invest their money in equities (30%), fixed income (21%), cash and deposits (13%), real estate (16%) a, alternative investment ( 20%)

Hope you find this piece of information is useful and start invest and safe your money like a millionaire!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

eBay Millionaire?

10 steps to sell successfully on eBay

I heard many success stories about people making millions of dollars by selling on eBay. It is estimated there are about 600 thousand full-time sellers around the world who make smart money every month by selling on eBay.

I have been struggling for many months to sell my first item through eBay. I find that there are a few important strategies you must always bear in mind before selling your first item on eBay,



1) Choose the right time to auction your item. Usually, eBay will take about 1 week before approving your item. Therefore, it is advisable for you to upload your item to the net on Friday/Saturday. Internet surfers will be able to see your items only the following Friday/Saturday. More people surf the internet during weekends!

2) Buy before you sell. You must try to buy something from eBay before you learn how to sell on eBay.

3) Sell something you know best. Always sell something you are passionate about because you know these items best and you can write good description about these items.

4) Do not throw your old stuffs. Make use of every old stuff at home. You may want to throw away your old clothes, old books etc. Give it a try, sell these items on eBay, you may be surprised how much you can get form these used items.

5) Give a good description about your item, try to attract your prospective buyers at the first sentence of your description.

6) Photo, photo and photo. A good photo is better than a thousand words. Take a few photos and choose the best!

7) Sell a few items at the same time. This will make you like a ‘professional’ seller.

8) If possible, capture international market as well besides local market!

9) Sell hot items that most people are interested. These include electronic items, clothes and collectibles.

10) Try and try again. Never give up!

Thursday, October 05, 2006

What is leverage?

What is leverage? ( In order to make more money!)

In order to retire young and rich, you must make a lot of money in a very short time. If you are thinking of earning that money by using your own time and effort, I would say that it is unlikely for you to achieve that in 5 or even 10 years.

Each of us has 24 hours. How much do you earn per hour, let's say you earn 30 bucks per hour, how many hours you can work per day? Let's imagine that you work very hard and you extend your working hour to 12 hours a day. You earn 360 bucks per day ( yes, it is a very good money for almost all of us!), do you know how long for you to get 1 million, the answer is 2778 days or 7.6 years. This is provided you keep every cent your earn from your work. So do you think it is possible if you earn money by only both your hands and the limited time you have in a day. The answer is 'NO, NO,NO'!!

I would like to talk about leverage. To make it simple, it is a technique where you use minimal effort to achieve the greatest result. I would say there are two major leverage techniques to make your money grow. As you see from above scenario, the total money you get per day equals to your hourly wages times how many hours you work per day,


Daily wages= Hourly wages x working hours
For you to increase your working hour from 12 to 14 or even 16 hours is impossible because we need to have time to sleep, eat and spend time with our family. Therefore, since that we only have 24 hours per day, we can't increase our daily wages by pushing up our working hours, however, there is one technique we can do it.

You may be wandering how can we do it? Just look around you, what do you see around you? You are seeing fast food restaurants mushrooming every corner in your city. Yes, you are right , the answer to the above question is you have to duplicate yourself. Instead of forcing yourself to work for yourself, duplicate yourself so that more people would make money for you!

So…… you maybe wandering how to duplicate yourself........?? It is easy, if you have a restaurant and you earn so much a day, duplicate your restaurant so that you can have more restaurants to get more money. You do not use your money, you can franchise your business. If you are getting commissions from selling property, set up a company and you hire more agents (agents like yourself) to sell property for you and you get the commissions. If you are doing direct selling business, get more people to join you and sell your products for you and get more commissions for that!

Do you see the point? It is better to have 10 same people making 30 dollars for you instead of you yourself have to work 10-12 hours to get that same money?

Anyway for you to leverage your effort is leverage your money. From the above formula,

Daily wages= Hourly wages x working hours

OK, for you get more hourly wages, there are a few possible ways to do this,

1) Get a better pay job,
2) Get a job where you can do two jobs together at the same time and you will be paid by doing these two jobs simultaneously, ( a good example of this, if you are involved in internet business, build a site where you can promote 2 or even 10 products together and you are being paid from all these products)
3) Make you money grows by itself, yes, since that you are getting a fixed hourly wages, you can put your hard earned money in some investment vehicles and see your money grows by itself.
4) Pull money from your friends, relatives so that you can start a joint venture that gives you a better hourly wages such as starting a new business etc.....

So, the key to make you money grows doest not depend on how hard you work. It all depends on how you leverage your money and time!