Building Wealth - Cutting Costs

Right now the mortgage industry seems to be in melt down but real estate investing has a proven track record of making great returns even during recessions, that is when properly leveraged. In short trust deed investing is basically when private investors loan money that has real estate offered as collateral against the loan. Trust Deed Investing is nothing new; banks and private individuals have been loaning money against hard assets like land and other real estate for centuries.

In essence trust deed investing is like taking the position of being the bank in a mortgage vs being the slep paying interest for 30 years.

I recently asked to review a website for Diamond Bay Investments who specialize in trust deed investing.   They are currently advertising returns of 12%.  Investments like these are not with out risks and you should of course consult with your financial advisers before investing with any company or investment.

That said trust deed investing has a high potential rate of return and it is protected by a hard asset (land, property, buildings) so it is worth considering.  It is not a place I would advise anyone to put all their money but it is one underutilized investment option that is a great part of a long term balanced investment portfolio.

My primary goal here at this blog is to help the average person learn simple ways to build above average wealth. As you begin to build wealth the key is to make sure you have the right wealth management team.  Northern Trust is a premier provider of banking, asset management and asset servicing to affluent families and individuals and leading institutions worldwide.

With a proven track record Norther Trust a company I can recommend with out any hesitation.  They also offer some exception free financial resources.  For more information visit their website and check out the Global Economic Research link.  You work hard for your money and it should be hard at work for you.  It should also be protected because as I have posted about before we have the potential to see a recession that could make 1978 look like the “good old days”.

Now I am no gloom and doom forecaster but it is more then probable right now that we are in for some tough times.  Many entrepreneurs are used to going it alone, I have been guilty of it myself.  Yet when it comes to investing, asset protection and preserving the future of your family’s future alone is a very bad choice.  Rely on professionals and that is what you will find at Northern Trust Banking & Asset Management.

Many financial advisers are not very keen on investing in gold because they claim it has a fairly poor record compared to let’s say the S&P Average or the Dow Jones. Indeed a case can be made for this but there is another lesser know case for gold that make you really want to look at putting at least some money in gold. The reality is that the Dow and just about any metric or fund or stock has at some point a 10 year period where it lost money or at least lost to inflation and against gold.

Gold has never gone down over any 10 year period in history except for the early 80s when gold along with silver and other metals were artificially manipulated by the Hunt Brothers and other groups. Smart investors did not buy during that period though, if they were really smart they sold off gold and bought in back in the mid 80s.  Those investors did very well.

Now look I am certainly not advising you to put all of your money in gold or to take it all out of solid investments.  I am also against any real heavy numismatic investments in gold coins.  Yet to put 10-20% of a portfolio into gold or gold stocks or funds makes a lot of sense as a solid investment hedge.   Gold has gone up quite a bit in the past five years so many investors are a bit skiddish about buying it at a precieved high.  However there are a lot of factors in play right now that will most likely have a positive impact on Gold prices for a long time to come.

• The US Dollar continues to decline and the government seems to want it that way.   To understand this factor you need to grasp that gold could stay level in the global market and still go up in dollars, simply because the dollar declines.
• The economies of China and India and other nations are putting more demand on gold as a consumer level commodity.  As the middle class of these nations grow more demand for gold jewelry results in more demand for gold in the global market.
• Right now the demand for Gold is about 10% higher then the supply that is being produced.

All of these factors make gold an attractive alternative to conventional investments.  Of course you should consult with your financial advisors before you buy, I am just saying have a look at gold as one way to protect yourself against what looks like a coming recession and an ever falling dollar.

You hear liberals all the time discuss how the tax cuts by Bush were reckless. Now look I am not exactly pleased with Bush myself right now and I think his spending (and that of our both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress) is absolutely reckless and disgraceful. Yet cutting taxes makes a lot of sense, further I think we should keep cutting lower and lower.

In fact if I had my way Ron Paul would become our next President and completely cut the income tax to zero. Think that is unreasonable? Well if we cut spending to where it was just 7 years ago we could eliminate the income tax. Yea your read that right, just cut spending to 2000 levels and we do not need an income tax. That should make you really understand just how many other taxes we already pay.

I digress though, lets just talk about an easy way to understand why lower taxes are good for our economy. Now I could go into Economic theory and formulas and such but that is not necessary. I can instead explain this in a very simple and easy to understand way, think of it simply like having a “sales”. If you ran a store and wanted to sell more products would you do it by raising prices or by having a sale?

Now that is about a stupid question isn’t it? Anybody knows when stores have sales they sell more and when they jack up pricing they sell less.

The important thing to understand is that employment, investing and spending is what drives our economy. So to understand why lower taxes drive better economies from here is really easy. Let’s look at how taxes going up or down effect each of these three factors.

Employment - When taxes are lower businesses keep more of their profits rather then giving them over to the government. When a company has more money in profit they grow. As they grow they have more needs for personal and of course they hire more people. In short a lower tax is like a sale on hiring talented people. When you tax a business higher of course we have the exact opposite effect. Companies keep less profit, there is less funding available and they grow slower and hire new people at a slower rate.

Investing - This is simple to understand. If you invest money that inherently comes with risk. So if I put 50,000 dollars into an investment I could loose much of it. On the other hand if the investment does well I end up with a profit but I only keep the part I don’t pay as taxes. For me to take a risk the upside has to be attractive so of course the lower the tax on investment profits the more attractive investments are. Now if you want me to do something incredibility risky like fund a new business I better get to keep the lion’s share of my profit or there is no good reason to take the risk.

You see when taxes are low on capital gains it is like a sale on investments. Effectively I am paying less money to make more money. Did you know that at one time tax rates were as high as 90% for some income brackets. 90%! Don’t believe me look at some historical tax rates here. Now let me ask you why would anyone risk say 100,000 dollars to fund a start up business as a part owner. End up making 200,000 dollars for the investment and then have to pay all but 10,000 of it as taxes? Why in the hell would anyone take such a risk for so small of a true return? Again when this tax goes up it is like when a store raises its’ pricing and when taxes go down money flows in a “sale like” environment. Simply put when investments go on sale more investors buy more investments.

Spending - Now I am all for saving money but if no one spends any money the economy grinds to a halt. This one is the easiest of the three to understand. Tax Joe and Jane America at a lower tax rate and they keep more of their money, when people have more they spend more. In short for the average consumer lower taxes are a “sale” on everything. You just have to do a bit of inverse thinking to understand this. Joe works 10 hours a day and makes 250 dollars for his day of work. Each day he pays 100 back in tax so he profits an actual 150 dollars.

So Joe values money according to that formula. Hence he “pays” 10 hours of his effort for a 150 dollar item. Now tax Joe only 50 dollars and he now profits at 200 dollars for the day. Now a 150 dollar item only “costs” him 7.5 hours! In short by taking less taxes Joe is now buying everything at a 25% discount.

The combined effect

The reality is the economy is like an ecosystem composed of these three factors of spending, investing and employment. None can sustain themselves with out the other two. There is far more complexity then this but a basic understanding is simple.

• When more money is available to business from profit and from investors they hire more people.
• When more people are employed they have more money to spend, hence they spend it.
• When people spend more money it drives business and results in more profits
• When people can find jobs and get paid well and are taxed lower they also invest more
• Investments then feed business

It is really a circle of economic life. In this circle low taxes are like good fertilizer that makes everything healthy and grow faster. Higher taxes are like salting the earth, they lay waste to the ecosystem and stall growth. Now democrat or republican should not matter this is mathematical science and math does not lie.

Debate the role of government if you like, support a guy with an R or a D after his name or if you are smart perhaps an I. Yet don’t ever be fooled by how there is any good to come from higher taxes. Don’t let the government pitch class warfare on you saying only the “rich” are going to see higher taxes. Right now most American’s work till April 30th to pay all taxes, that is enough, more is not the answer.

Oh and yea I really meant it that we could totally eliminate the income tax, watch this video on Ron Paul for more about that.

 This Article is on Digg - Click Here to Digg it

This post is an extension of my post on, not resenting people doing better then you from a few days ago because that is also part of a “poverty consciousness” but today I am going to go deeper into this concept that I call financial cancer. So what is a poverty consciousness? In short it is the belief that money and wealth are scarce. That you have to be lucky or crooked to become rich and that cheaper is always better.

Now given my blog URL is CutThatBill.com you would think I would be all over the “cheaper is better” philosophy but I am not. There is a place for it,

• When it comes to a mortgage get the lowest rate
• When it comes to phone service pay the least
• When you buy a car negotiate the lowest sales price you can

In essence when you buy a specific item of a given quality there is no reason not to pay less if you can. Unfortunately this is not how most of the psychologically broke thinks.

I remember the first time I went back to the little coal town I grew up in after having built a successful career and life. I was going to go off on my own and do some fishing and stopped by a local donut shop for a coffee and a couple of old fashioned donuts. I was going to grab them and go but decided to sit down and enjoy my breakfast because I was on vacation and had all day.

Being alone and just browsing at a paper I heard quite clearly all the conversations around me. One word was used over and over by the mostly elderly crowd in their chit chat. That word was “cheaper”, this was “cheaper” here, that was “cheaper” there, Joe was a crook because his gas was two cents higher a gallon that at Tony’s where it was “cheaper”.

I got up and left, I just couldn’t listen any longer. Cheaper, cheaper, cheaper it was like being subjected meat grinder. While I fished that morning for small mouth bass with the sun on my back enjoying life though I realized that I used to be exactly the same way. When I lived in this town I remembered driving to Tony’s Gas Station to save the 2 cents, (5 mile drive in a car that got 10 miles to the gallon). I remembered all of it and I realized it wasn’t success that shed this constant “cheaper” search from me it was getting away from a culture married to it.

I can’t blame the people of that town, specifically the elderly on “fixed incomes” it is a poor place that never really recovered from the depression back in the 1930s. In fact my Grandfather used to say, “the Great Depression came, then it went, we never noticed.” Yet what I realized is this mentality of poverty is a big reason why my town is still poor to this day. The people all think they are poor, they expect to be poor and so they are.

After that day I realized much of this mentality was still in my head. I had shaken some of it off but not enough. I was still limiting my vision of success, of retirement of what I could expect to gain in life. I was still driving exta miles for pennies off a gallon of gas. Today I use the gas station on the side of the road that is best for when I need to pull out back into traffic.

I was still standing in supermarkets evaluating which package would have me pay less per ounce, today I buy the size that best fits my needs. Indeed even though I had money, even though I had started to build a second business and even though I was saving for retirement and paying off debt I was still on some level the poor kid from that coal town.

I believe most Americans today are still carrying their own “coal town” poverty mentality with them. It is what makes you limit your dreams one day then the very next day be stupid about how much you spend the next. Believe it or not this poverty consciousness is why people buy 50K dollar cars when one half the price is much better suited to their needs and budget. The expensive do dad makes them feel rich even though they are cash poor it helps them run from the fear or poverty.

On the other side they do things just to be cheap! They buy a 9 dollar garden hose that is kinked and useless in a year. They buy the cheapest refrigerator and it wastes electricity. They think a guy that makes 20K more a year is “rich” until they get there too and then they think the next guy 20K further up the food chain is rich.

This all stems from “poverty consciousness” if you see yourself as poor you will figure out a way to keep yourself poor. If you always look for cheaper, cheaper, cheaper then you will always have the poorest and cheapest things in your life. You will cheapen joy, you will cheapen your personal value and you will cheapen your dreams. Try not to use the word “cheap” as a positive thing.

Save cheap to describe junk. Save cheap to describe bad service. Save cheap to describe a stingy miser. Save cheap for negatives and use terms like “good value” and “excellent price” when you find a lower cost on a good item. This is just one step to removing the poverty demons from your subconscious but it is a good start.

Let me be blunt you will never and I mean never become wealthy so long as you resent people who are wealthy. This has been written about extensively by Robert Kiyosaki in his Rich Dad Poor Dad series. Yet I think it is worth repeating here because I believe it is the single biggest reason the poor and the broke stay poor and broke.

Follow this simple logic, in the 50s and 60s many blue collar families had parents working say construction (you can fill it in with just about any trade) and all through the 70s etc young men grew up and if they were not college bound aspired to work construction. Hence middle Americans worked construction jobs for many decades. These jobs paid for houses, college tuitions, retirements and life in general.

In short being a “construction worker” had a certain status. It was considered a good paying blue collar career. Sure you had to work hard but Americans valued hard work and some kids never wanted college they wanted to build things, run back hoes and tear old buildings down. Who can blame them while hard work playing with heavy equipment is kind of fun.

Now a whole book on why construction wages fell over the 80s, 90s and 2000’s could be written. Floods of illegal cheap labor, a weakening job market, etc. Today we also seem to believe that every child should go to college and get a degree. We have forgotten that we need a middle class, a blue collar work pool, we have stopped valuing hard physical work as an admirable quality.

So how many kids today have a positive view of being a back hoe operator, or framing houses or building roads? The answer is not many, today that is something most people “settle for” not what they aspire to. Hence not many young men grow up in the US and become construction workers any longer. The logic is quite simple when people have a negative view of a profession, a place in life, a title, etc. they tend not to become what they dislike.

Pretty obvious, not ground breaking, what does this all have to do with wealth and money?

Simple if you see rich people and grumble, if you think the guy that is already in the 35% tax bracket should pay more and if you think all corporate executives are “rich jerks” you are going to have a real hard time moving up in income. Even if you do you will become what I call the “highly paid broke“. That means you will blow all your money and simply match spending to your income to satisfy material needs.

I see people all the time that resent the wealthy and the rich. I watch them grumble when Bill Gates gives 4 Billion to charity, they say with irritation “well he has it to give”. Then you put together an office pool to buy kids toys at Christmas or help a needy family and these same people make excuses and often give nothing. Don’t get me wrong there are poor people that give all they can, very generous folks, most however, don’t resent the wealthy.

Simply put if you want to be wealthy you must first have a very positive view of wealthy people. You can’t begrudge a guy his lifestyle then expect to achieve it yourself. I believe as I stated before this is the NUMBER ONE reason people stay poor and or broke. So the next time the urge to scoff at a successful person crosses your path, ask yourself, “do I want to become wealthy?”.

If the answer is yes think twice before you reinforce to yourself once again that being wealthy is a negative thing only achieved by insiders, the greedy and the lazy. You are going to have a real diffcult time doing what it takes to become wealthy if that is your view of those who have already done it successfully.

I know this seems so obvious, never take advice on money, investing and business from the broke. The problem is it is not always easy to recognize the “broke”, when I refer to people that are broke I am not saying they live in a “poor house”, make very little money and eat mealy porridge. I simply mean they are broke as in more money goes out that comes in.

Broke people live next door to you, they live in neighborhoods that are both two steps down and two steps up from yours. Broke people are everywhere, most of the people in America are broke by my definition. They are the people in huge 50K dollar SUVs that they justify as being needed “to cart the kids around in”. Jeez, how big are these kids? They have beautiful homes, nice furniture and perhaps even lawn care service. Many have vacation homes or time shares or other true luxuries. How can I call these people broke?

Easy they are broke, they have very little to no surplus cash flow, they save next to nothing other then what perhaps goes automatically into a 401K (Thank God for that at least). They have TVs on credit, cars on credit, pools on credit, some have charged the very paint on their walls and the sofa they sit on. Cut off their income for 30 days and most would loose every thing they have. They are broke because they have no “wealth” only things, stuff and the appearance of wealth.

Such people are always big talkers. They tell you “now is the time to buy” or that “that business deal seems risky” and other wonderful nuggets of advice. They tell you how great that new SUV is, how wonderful owning a plasma TV is and they always have investment advice for you.

My advice is, don’t take their advice. If you follow the advice given by most people it will lead you down the same path they are on. In other words take advice from your uncle who has that beautiful house, nice cars and kids in top schools and you may just get their yourself. Yet you will probably do it “his way” (the normal way) and be in debt up to your eyeballs and working into extended retirement years just to pay the interest on all of it.

So where do you go for advice? To the successful, to the millionaires next door. Look for the guy that pays cash for everything, the woman that has a 6 figure job and a 150,000 dollar house and a sensible car along with a nice savings account, a good team of advisers and a very fat and growing Roth IRA. These people are not “broke” they could go with out work 6 months to a year with just a bit of sacrifice if they had to.

How do you find them? There are many of us, just talk to people and you will know right away.

• The broke talk about how expensive gas is and the wealthy talk about how efficient their cars are.
• The broke think rich people are “over paid” and “thieves” and the wealthy think the rich are “generous” and “admirable”
• The broke shop for “deals” on consumer goods, the wealthy look for “deals” on real estate and investments
• The broke think cars are status symbols and the wealthy think cars are a “necessary expense”
• The broke talk about “saving money” by spending it, the wealth talk about budgeting and investing the savings

Just realize it is not income that separates the broke from the wealthy. In my town I can show you people with a household income of 100K or more that are “broke” and I can show you some with a household income of say 70K that are very “wealthy”.

Just remember this and consider it when anyone advises you how to spend your money, what to buy, how to invest and on what is important or what is safe vs risky. Now I am not saying that no broke person ever gives any decent advice. Sure many times they do, just don’t let the broke counter your instincts or justify what you know to be a mistake for short term gratification.

If you really want to be successful financially you have to follow the intuitive wisdom of the 12 year old that plays Pop Warner Football. That 12 year old sees himself as Bret Farve or Randy Moss or whoever his favorite player is when he takes the field. In his head he hears the crowd and when he makes the catch, tackle or completes a pass for a second he is that superstar.

When you want to build wealth and success you need to do the same thing. You need your own heroes to follow and model yourself after. Here are some of mine and why I follow their lead.

Donald Trump - I admire Donald Trump for a large number of reasons. His success as an entrepreneur and real estate investor of course speaks for itself. On the personal side, Trump often comes across as a real jerk but that is just who he is. Believe it or not I admire that as well, despite being in the public eye he does not try to make the public happy. He is who he is and if you don’t like it, tough! I respect that a great deal.

Trump is also completely honest with people (this is a big part of why he is considered a jerk) about the way he sees things. I never have felt that Trump is someone with a hidden political agenda, he is a patriot, a success and a tough business person with a world class team around him. Trump has also put great deal of effort into establishing educational programs for real estate investing and other financial education programs.

Richard Branson - Branson is a real entrepreneur and has a life envied by many but experienced by very few. Despite being amoung the richest people in the world though he is remarkably down to earth and even reasonably accessible. When you hear him interviewed you think he could just be a bit of an eccentric British guy that lived next door to you.

He owns Necker Island where he maintains his primary residence which was recently featured as the number one celebrity home ahead of Hugh Hefner and Bill Gates! Yet if you met him in a bar tomorrow he would sit down and have a beer or three with you. He has failed more times then he has succeeded in building companies yet he keeps doing it because he loves being a true entrepreneur.

Warren Buffett - Warren began working in his fathers broakrage firm at the age of 11 and never looked back. Known as “America’s most successful investor” I can’t help but admire him. Buffett employed a three pronged approach

• Generals: undervalued securities that possess margin of safety and meet expected return-to-risk characteristics
• Arbitrages: company events that are not related to broader market changes, such as mergers and acquisitions, liquidation, etc.
• Controls: build sizable holdings, ally with other shareholders or employ proxies to effect changes in companies

This approach has made him one of the richest men in the world but was actually a very “safe approach” to investing.

Jimmy Buffett - No not Warren’s brother and that is no typo either. I am talking about party hardy, parrot head, Margaritaville singing Jimmy Buffett from Mobile Alabama. Jimmy speaks to my fun side, the part of me that takes 15 days off, lays on a beach and just lets everyone else deal with my businesses two times a year. He is my “someday” archetype. The old man I want to be when all my battles have been fought and I fish on the beach and drink rum from a coconut.

There is more to Jimmy though, Mr Jim is rich my friends, very, very rich! He has worked branding magic around the “Margaritaville” theme and now owns bars, merchandising and a premium Tequila label. At the same time he has only done what he loved doing. When he first went to Nashville he was rejected by 18 consecutive record label executives, so he kept playing bars and clubs and being who he was.

The rest is history and now despite not having a top ten record in two decades he still sells out just about every show he does and his fans still want more. There are Buffett fans (Parrot Heads) from 8 - 80 and their numbers continue to grow. Why, Jimmy created an image, a brand and did so by being himself. To me that makes him a very successful business person.

Henry Ford - Henry could never have gotten into college even with a bribe, he did not have the grades, the desire or the “book smarts” for it. Yet he is more associated with the automobile then any of the people that actually invented it. Henry took automation to the extreme and made the assembly line a reality and brought the car to the average American. That one achievement may have had more influence on the wealth and growth of the United States then any other person from his era.

Not content to just make cars though, Henry was a master of efficiency. When suppliers bid on supplying him with engines he required the crates they came in to be made to specific specifications. Wanting his business his suppliers agreed, the crates were then disassembled by his workers and formed the floor boards of the Model T. Despite that he had massive amounts of scrap wood from all the shipping crates so he teamed up with E. G. Kingsford, who was a local real-estate agent, to buy land for a massive wood production and charcoal processing plant. With all the waste in government and business today we could use some guys like Ford around.

So those are my heroes in business! I have others but those are my big ones when it comes to money, building businesses and investing. I suggest you assemble your own heroes list. Be inspired by them, know their stories and utilize that creative visualization children do so well in back yards and school stadiums to reach further then you can on your own.