Moving across the Tasman AGAIN
Who would have believed it? We are returning to New Zealand in January! I guess we achieved our goal of moving to Queensland, even if we are moving back again!!
In 2001 the Australian Government changed the law so NZers immigrating to Oz are only temporary residents unless they are aged under 45 years (ooops, I am just past that) and have a skill that Australia wants e.g brain surgeon or good rugby player (I’m not on that list either). 
This means that the boat people who are streaming into the country have more rights than us as they are granted permanent residency status.
Our 9 year old son is also affected by this law so we have decided that, for his sake, the best thing to do is move back to the “Shaky Isles” (so named because of all the earthquakes) and when he grows up (and becomes a brain surgeon) he can always return.
Sunshine Beach has been great and we’ve made some good friends, but it’s time to go. The universe obviously has more adventures in store for us!! I will keep you posted…
Update on Outsourcing
I thought you may be interested in how we are getting on with outsourcing our bookkeeping work to India!
Actually it is going well after a shaky start. Our first bookkeepers were not very good but we have now changed to another company who are friendly, efficient, contactable and all for a fraction of what we would pay in Australia. We just collate the information and upload it to a FTP site. Easy!!
Despite it working out for us, I would not really recommend you try outsourcing. I don’t want blood on my hands!!
Happy Blog
Hello again at last! Yes, I’m still here. Life has been pretty busy lately
I found this blog by Samantha Marie….take a look..I love her article on “Pursuit of Happiness“ Here is a poem from it:
“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
That’s all for now. Have a happy day.
Astrology & the LOA
We build our future thought by thought,
For good or ill, yet know it not.
Yet, so the universe was wrought.
Thought is another name for fate;
Choose, then, thy destiny and wait,
For love brings love and hate brings hate.
~ Henry Van Dyke
I was interested in astrology many years ago but grew to find it wanting. I felt it gave too much power away and I couldn’t reconcile it with my beliefs in the Law of Attraction and ‘creating your own reality’.
Then, I ran into a fantastic webpage belonging to astrologer, Kim Falconer. She believes we are born at a particular time because of who we are. Her explanation of Astrology & the Law of Attraction makes sense to me and I appreciate the different viewpoint.
Jeanette Maw has also written an interesting ezine article on the subject (Kim links to this too). It is called Choose Your Astrology Wisely.
If you have an issue with how astrology fits in with LOA, I hope you find these articles enlightening. I did! Thank you Kim and Jeanette.
P.S The lovely verse above is also from Kim’s website.
Feeling So Good!
I thought I’d tell you more about Abraham:
As I have mentioned before, Abraham is a group of non physical entities who want us to have a fantastic life! Sounding good? They speak through Esther Hicks, hence the name Abraham-Hicks.
I’m really enjoying reading “Ask and it is Given” and what I am learning ties in amazingly well with the other books I’ve read… Wallace D. Wattles, Dr Wayne Dyer and “The Secret” among others.
Abraham is big on the Law of Attraction and is actually where the source material for “The Secret” came from.
Over the years I have read many self-help books with a myraid of different theories. You are asked to make lists of thoughts and feelings, remember to say affirmations and take actions etc etc and then you’ll be rich and successful. Who has time for all this? Isn’t there a short cut? Luckily Abraham have one… your breathing.
This is one of the reasons I love Abraham. They make everything easy: only meditate for 15 minutes a day (life is for living); you don’t necessarily have to take action…in fact their only real gentle suggestions are to feel good, breathe more deeply and drink more water!
The other thing I love about Abraham is their rather dry sense of humour!
I recommend you read “Ask and it is Given.” It has 20 great, easy processes you can use to make yourseld feel better. Feeling better is the key; reaching for a ‘better feeling’ thought. I especially like the “Rampage of Appreciation” where you find more & more things to appreciate; and the The Magical Creation Box is fun!
Abraham have also have produced a wonderful guided meditation CD and handbook called “Getting in the Vortex”. (The Vortex is coming into alignment with the Energy of our Source.) It has 4 meditations: one on general well-being; one on financial well-being; one on physical well-being and one on relationships. And guess what? They are only 15 minutes long!!
If you are on this path, go to the Abraham-Hicks webpage and see their many resources.
You’ll be feeling so good!
Related articles
- Shhhhh, I’m Meditating (wellbeingproject.wordpress.com)
Quote ~ “Life’s Purpose”
The Basis of Your Life is Freedom; the Purpose of Your Life is Joy.
Abraham has described themselves as “a group consciousness from the non-physical dimension” (which helps a lot!). They have also said, “We are that which you are. You are the leading edge of that which we are. We are that which is at the heart of all religions.”
So Long, Time to Wrap Things Up
It has been a very long time since I updated this blog. Although we are STILL not quite financially free we are getting there! The principles we followed are still good but the GFC has affected our plans in a big way. So, I will not be posting regularly from now on.
My interests are now a lot more spiritual. We wouldn’t have got this far without a lot of divine guidance!!
Anyway, this is the story so far:
- I discovered Robert Kiyosaki and we read his books avidly. We bought the game “CashFlow 101″ which is brilliant
- We paid a top investor (with the same philosophies as Rich Dad) to mentor us for a year or so
- I became a Real Estate Salesperson. Rich Dad said “learn how to sell”
- We bought two cash flow positive properties in Auckland and added to our income stream by adding minor dwellings to both of them
- We built a motorhome company and ran it for several years
- We joined Kurek Ashley’s “Life Success Club” and listened to Success CD ‘s every night of the week
- We read many, many books on investing
- We attended lots of seminars on investing: Dolf de Roos, Robert Kiyosaki, Brad Sugars, ESC to name a few
- Finally we threw caution to the winds, sold everything and moved to Australia
- We bought several ‘pre-foreclosure’ properties in the USA for cash flow
We were fortunate that we could buy some cheap houses in the USA. These houses were purchased well below market value so provide passive income now, and will provide capital gain when we sell.
So, not quite, but nearly there!
Follow your dreams …at the end of the day, remember we were sent here to have fun!
All the best!
Investing in the USA
NOW IS THE TIME TO MAKE YOUR MOVE!
We cut our teeth in real estate investing way back (it seems a lifetime ago!) when we lived in New Zealand. In Auckland we had four houses which we had fully managed. Over the years they gave us good positive cash flow and the only reason we sold them in the end was because we were immigrating to Australia.
We had been planning on starting a real estate portfolio in Australia but prices were too high. Looking off-shore we found the perfect opportunity; we had just the experience for investing in real estate in the USA.
There is massive opportunity to buy houses well below their market value in the USA and Australian investors have started snapping them up. The Australian dollar is now very strong against the US dollar making the deals even more attractive to the investors Down Under! Fortunes are made in bad times.
Personally, we now have several properties in the Mid West, giving good returns. Rich dad would’ve been proud of us!
This type of investment is not for everyone and there is a certain amount of risk, one being exchage rate risk. We don’t have a crystal ball (wouldn’t one of those be handy?!!) but it really is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
I am not an advisor in any way, shape or form, so do your homework thoroughly before making any decisions.
Related Articles
Outsourcing to India
What is Outsourcing??
” Outsourcing” is all about farming your work out to have it done cheaper overseas. It’s a good way of avoiding the high prices charged for western services (e.g accountants, PA’s etc). In fact I believe that the Indians, being very entrepreneurial, will do just about anything to ‘make it happen’!
Timothy Ferriss discusses outsourcing your life in his book “The 4-Hour Workweek“. His is a very entertaining story told by his friend, AJ, involving a PA called “Honey.” I’ll let you read it for yourselves at his blog above.
Needless to say, we just had to try this method! The photo on the left shows our Indian Accounting Team in Bangalore! (Yes, our trip to India was a ‘business trip’!!) They do all our bookeeping and tax returns too. They seem to know what they’re doing and are certainly a lot cheaper than their USA and Australian counterparts.
One friend tried ‘outsourcing’ his web design business but quality control was an issue. Another friend has an Indian do a lot of groundwork for his real estate investing business and has found him very efficient. So, some are good and some not so good.
Also, you would’ve all seen the Commonwealth Games fiasco. Remember, India is different and it is a third world country. You can put up with the craziness when you’re there on holiday, but you don’t want those hassles when you are doing business.
If you want to try outsourcing your own life, see what Tim Ferriss has to say.
Life ~ Quote from Helen Keller
“Avoiding danger is no safer
In the long run
Than outright exposure…
Life is either a daring adventure
Or it is nothing.”
~ Helen Keller
Investing Rules ~ Richard Branson
Julie Broad from the BiggerPockets Blog has put together an interesting article on Sir Richard Branson. She has taken some of his philosophies, primarily taken from the book “Screw It, Let’s Do It” and applied them to real estate investing.
When you are taking advice always look at the person who is giving it to you. Do they have experience? Have they “walked the walk”? As “Rich Dad” said “Free advice is often the most expensive advice”.
So, when you are taking tips on investing, pick some-one who has been there. There could be no better choice than Richard Branson!
Five of these lessons are:
1. Just Do It
2. Be Bold but Don’t Gamble
3. Have fun! Life is too short to be unhappy
4. Have respect
5. Do things with POW/Shazam
Here’s the article: Real Estate Investing Rules
Great shot by gultaggen
“The Secret” Website Updated!
I have seen the Secret website many times, so was pleasantly surprised to find it has had a face lift and new material has been added.
Included is The Secret Greats which I am sure you’ll find interesting. It features Buddha, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill, amongst others.
Remember, you create your own reality. There are many books on this subject. I recommend “Ask and it is Given” by Abraham-Hicks . It gives some great strategies which are easy to use e.g “The Magical Creation Box“.
Another interesting book on creating your own reality is entitled “Seth Speaks” channeled by Jane Roberts.
The Magical Creation Box
This is another method of focusing on the things you desire and is similar to using a vision board. Use it when you want to give the Universe more specific details about what you want out of life.
I learned this method from a very interesting book I am reading at the moment called
“Ask and it is Given.” Learning to Manifest the Law of Attraction, by Esther and Jerry Hicks. Thanks Abraham.
Getting started: First find yourself a nice looking box. Any box that appeals to you is fine. Make sure it’s a decent size!
Write on it the words “Whatever is contained in this box – IS!
Next, gather magazines and catalogues and begin cutting out pictures of things that exemplify any desires that you hold. Clothes, cars, furniture, images of physical characteristics, overseas holidays; anything that appeals to you. Place the cut outs in your box. If you witness something you’d like to experience, write it down and put it in the box too. You get the idea. The more you clip the better you’ll feel. You can also put mental images into your box. A blue sky, a sunny day, happy people or a great trip. If you like it, put it in your magical creation box.
The Law of Attraction delivers what you think about, and so this is a powerful process as it helps you to visualise. The more ideas you drop into your box, the more your desire will be focused and your dreams will begin to manifest.
Great photo by Plutor
No Doodads
Do you want to build passive income and become financially free? A good way to do this is to invest in “cash producing assets.”
What are cash producing assets? They are the opposite of liabilities. Assets will put money in your pocket whereas liabilities will take money out of your pocket!
Your car is a liability; your dog is a liability; your home is a liability, however if you rent it out and the rent covers all outgoings it will become an asset!
Positive cash flow rental property is definitely a cash producing asset. Shares? These would be a cash producing asset if they were providing income.
In between assets and liabilities are “doodads!” Doodads are things like widescreen TVs, meals at restaurants, your yacht, or other things that are not totally necessary (though life would be quite boring without them)!
Our eight year old son, in his wisdom, has decided that fashion is a doodad! He is right…an excess of clothes could be classed as doodads. I had to point out to him that clothes themselves are very necessary otherwise we’d all be running around starkers! A trip to the nudist beach had him convinced!
Obama ~ Time Wasting
“With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”
~ President Barack Obama
I’m with the president! If you want to be financially free and aren’t, you should take these words on board.
So many young people nowadays mis-use their time (and money) on such things as Twitter, Face Book, iphones, blogging etc. Gadgets abound. Information is burning their time instead of being used to improve their lives in some way.
I blog as I enjoy it but also because I really hope to inspire people into taking financial control. It horrifies me that people can get into such a terrible financial mess through a lack of basic financial education.
Blogging is a tool for me. Twitter, on the other hand, ruled me for a long time until I decided to go ‘cold turkey’. Apart from being a time waster it’s so addictive!
Time is precious. If you are serious about escaping the rat race you must use your time wisely. Spend some time learning to read financial statements. Read, read, read! Listen to motivational material on your Ipod! Don’t spend your money on doodads or liabilities. Income producing assets are what you need. Once you are out of the rat race you can play all the computer games and chat to all the friends you want!
You don’t have to throw out all your technological toys or close your Face Book account, but take control and limit their use. Spend your time planning your future. It’s called delayed gratification!
See 9 Initial Steps to Financial Freedom
Great picture by marcn
Daily Affirmation 4 Abundance
” I am one with the inifinte riches of my subconcious mind. It is my right to be rich, happy and successful. Money flows to me freely, copiously and endlessly. I am forever concious of my true worth. I give of my talents freely and I am wonderfully blessed financially!”
~ Anon
Dare to Dream ~ Short Quote
“Whatever you can do, or dream
you can do, begin it. Boldness
has genius, power and magic in it.”
~ Goethe
Lovely photo by Ezzz
Dream Books & Vision Boards
To manifest your dreams you must convince your subconcious mind that they have already been achieved. To do this you must visualise them as though you already have them. Make a ‘mental movie’ and play it over and over. Your subconcious mind cannot differentiate between what is real and what is not. It will pick up on the things you hold in your mind and make them reality.
A couple of great strategies to help you visualise your goals are “Dream Books” and “Vision Boards”. We were introduced to these techniques by Kurek Ashley, an Australian based “Life Success Coach” and founder of the “Life Success Club”.
Dream Books
These are just small notebooks…we had one each and we carried these around with us for years. In them we’d written our dreams, goals and intentions, as well as motivational quotes and anything else we felt important to us on on our journey to self-improvement and achieving financial freedom. We read each others books now and then to make sure we were striving for the same things! Double power.
My book included my goals with dates to have achieved them by, ‘my purpose for achieving my goals’, ‘my purpose in life’ and how I wanted my life to be in all areas, in bold colours! It also contained several affirmations. One I liked was: “Life is so good, life is so easy, all good things come to me”. I read these at least once a day and visualised my goals as if I already had them, then I gave thanks for receiving them. Gratitude is very powerful.
Vision Boards
Our vision boards sat on our dining room table so we couldn’t help but see them every day. We had two boards with pictures and photos of what we wanted in life pinned all over them. One was for the future life we dreamed of in Australia (the above photo of me and our son on Noosa Beach was pinned on this board. We now live near here and swim at this beach!), the home we wanted, lifestyle, friends etc; and another vision board for other things we wanted to do in life e.g travel to Africa, South America and Cuba, drive sports cars, own a boat etc
Soon the pictures became so familiar we could see them with our eyes closed. With these and our dream books the universe was certainly left in no doubt what we wanted!
Then we saw “The Secret” and realised that we had been using the Law of Attraction all along without realising it. Visualisation is the key. Now we knew exactly what to do we visualised like crazy and our dreams rapidly began to manifest themselves.
NB. If you are making your own vision board make sure that you are included in the photos you use (even if it means cutting out tiny pictures of yourself to glue on to them!). The universe will give you what you think about. If you concentrate on an empty sportscar, you will never be in it! Wave as you see it driving the other way down the street!
Looking back at our dream books now, we are amazed by how a lot of the things we had visualised were achieved, eerily near the dates we had set. The vision boards made visualising our desires much easier. We were immersed in them.
We still use our dream books. Not all our goals have manifested yet, but we know they will come.
Try these simple techniques. You may not achieve your goals overnight (though the universe does like speed!), but commit to them and watch the magic happen!
‘Leverage’ is the Magic Word
Do you want to accelerate your path to financial freedom? If so, you need to know about the power of leverage and how it applies to investing. Leverage is amplifying the power of your money, time and knowledge.
To illustrate this, let’s make a comparison between investing in the sharemarket using no leverage, and investing in positive cash flow real estate using leverage.
The difference is because the banks won’t normally lend to invest in the sharemarket, but will often lend 80% or more to enable you to purchase real estate.
Sharemarket: $100,000 invested is $100.000 of your own money in shares.
Returns- if the return is 5% your return is just that; 5% on your own money
Property: $100,000 invested, but $80,000 (80%) is borrowed and you put in only $20,000 of your own money.
Returns- 5% return on $100,000 invested = $5000. As only $20,000 of your own money was invested this is a 25% return on your own money.
Using the above figures, the return on your money invested in property (using leverage), is five times greater than the return on your money invested in the sharemarket (no leverage)!
Caution: with any leveraged/geared investment your gains can be increased, but so can your losses. Ensure your property is cash flow positive i.e creates you a profit before tax when all expenses, including borrowings, are included.
There are other types of leverage you might want to utilise. You can leverge your time by getting a good property manager and you can leverage your knowledge by using people who have already done it.
Read Robert Kiyosaki’s book “Retire Young, Retire Rich.” It’s all about leverage.
Disclaimer: this is not intended to be financial advice and is for guidance only. If you are interested in using leverage please consult a professional.
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