Fixing a Loved One’s Money Problems — Is It Worth It?

Even if you’ve gotten your own financial house in order, you may be worried about your family’s bottom line. Maybe one of your parents isn’t financially savvy, maybe one of your children is struggling or perhaps you and your significant other aren’t on the same page of the ledger.

Most of us have an instinctive reaction whenever we see a friend or a family member in a tough spot: we offer to help. But, at least in financial situations, helping may not be such a great idea. The most common type of financial help anyone will ask you for is a loan. Can you afford to make such a loan? Will you be able to help again if their situation gets worse? You might be tempted to offer up financial advice, especially if you’ve been working on your own situation. Unfortunately, most people just don’t want to hear it.

How can you help your loved ones?

There’s nothing wrong with offering up a little cash to help your family through a tight spot if you want to. If you do so, don’t think of the money as a loan. Don’t count on getting it back. Some relatives may make the effort to repay you, and if that happens, congratulations. But if that’s not the case, you don’t want a little money interfering in your relationship with your family. Just consider it a gift and let it go.

Don’t make a habit out of loaning money to your friends and family, either. It’s tempting, but I’ve learned from experience that just means that they’ll keep coming to you for help, rather than trying to find a permanent solution to their problems.

The best help you can provide is often education on their current situation. Most people don’t particularly want advice on straightening out their finances, but if one of your friends or family members have decided that they’re ready to make some changes, offer up the resources that have worked for you. I would never suggest pushing a copy of your favorite personal finance book on your relatives. If they ask for it, though, go right ahead.

Don’t wait around for your loved ones.

I’ve talked to plenty of folks who say that they’ll work on their finances when their significant others will help. But while they wait around, their financial situations are getting worse. Their significant others may not even know that there is a problem.

Personally, I’m in favor of just getting a move on personal finance. But don’t just leave your significant other out on the project: explain what you’re trying to do. They don’t have to help — it’s nice, but there are plenty of relationships where one person is clearly in charge of the money. They should know what you’re thinking, though. Maybe you’ll be surprised. Maybe your other half has just been waiting on you.

In the end…

You can’t just fix someone else’s problems. The best you can do is make sure you’re on solid financial footing and offer help when it’s asked for.

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What is Personal Development?

What is Personal Development?

We hear the phrase “personal development” all of the time. A friend who decides to radically change his or her life tells us “I’m working on my personal development.” Our therapist tells us “there are definite areas of your personal development that need work.” When you hear “personal development” your mind might immediately jump to trust exercises where you fall back and trust the other person to catch you. You probably don’t think of things like learning better time management or applying personal development strategies to your work and financial life.

But, back to the original question: “what is personal development?”

Personal development is, by its nature, the ways in which you develop your person. This could involve learning how to be a better listener. You might work on becoming more organized. You might decide that you learn to be more patient. The ways in which you develop and become the person you want to be all fall under the umbrella term “personal development.”

So how does this apply to Wealth Junkies or your financial life?

Personal development involves things like learning to budget, learning how to spend wisely, time management, becoming more productive, becoming more proactive in areas of your life—all of these will help you build your wealth, decrease your debt and get your credit back on track!

Over the coming weeks, we here at Wealth Junkies are going to explore the area of Personal Development and show you how you can apply the different areas of personal development to your financial and business life.

After all, who doesn’t want to make more money? Who doesn’t want to be debt free? Believe it or not, becoming financially responsible involves working on who you are as a person. There is more to financial responsibility than being good at math or teaching yourself to like the generic brands instead of name brands. Anybody can reduce their debt. Keeping the debt down (or at bay) involves looking at the personal choices you make in your every day life.

Hopefully these articles will be helpful to you. Hopefully we will teach you how to be more productive, spend wisely, increase your wealth and all of those other things that you’ve always wanted to do but thought “I’ll get to that later,” or “I’ve tried to be responsible but it never sticks.”

There is more to personal development than the “touchy-feely” things that probably first jumped to your mind. Personal development is a practical approach to becoming the person you want to be!

Recipe for Success

Donald Trump and Anthony Robbins both say that you should study wealth and success like you would have studied anything else in school. So I spent some time studying and have assembled my notes into this article - a recipe for success.

I have taken the combined wisdom of a lot of people: Napoleon Hill, Robert Kiyosaki, Donald Trump, and Anthony Robbins. They each tell us a few pieces. Put them together, and you have a Picasso.

This is the concentrated version of everything I have learned about success so far. If you are on the way up, you may have discovered one or two of these already. And you may know of one or two that I’m missing.

1. Have multiple projects. Donald Trump says that you should have ten deals in the air at all times. You should be focusing on your top two or three, but you should be juggling the others too. It doesn’t mean you have to work at each of these every day. It just means the project should be in progress with some defined next action.
2. Keep making progress on your projects. This is essential– you must maintain your momentum. In his book, How To Get Rich, Donald Trump talks about William Levitt as an example of why you must keep momentum. Using a philosophy like David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” to organize your projects and keep defining your next action helps for me. Getting Things Done will help you collect and take next actions on things. As long as you have a next action that is possible, defined, and in the works, you will make progress.
3. Never give up. Don’t take the results of your projects personally. Failure is bound to happen. Think of it like throwing rocks at a window: if you do it right, one will eventually break through! Whatever happens with it, you must remember that it is just one thing up in the air. You must take the next action, look at the result, and then evaluate it and determine your next action.

Don’t stop just because it looks like there are obstacles. This is your brain trying to trick you. Yes, it is easier for most people to quit than to come up with half a million dollars of “creative” financing for a project– I am dealing with these same challenges myself– but you can’t take it personally. It is business. It isn’t personal.

For example: I was very interested in obtaining inexpensive warehouse space at a huge industrial park near my home for several projects. I read that it was available and that I just needed to put forth a proposal to get a deal on the space. So I made a call. I was told they’re not sure what they are going to do and they have hired a consultant who should have an answer by the end of the year. They said they’ll “call me”.

What would you do? Throw the idea out? Wait for them to call you? Not me, I have two new actions– (1) to follow up on the 20th of January, and (2) to look for other inexpensive space in the area that might work for my projects.

4. But– just as importantly– you must be evaluating things to check whether you are approaching your goals. What you’re looking for is a real evaluation of profitability, trends, data, and what you can be doing differently. Is Tuesday your heavy day? Plan your editorial calendar around it. Polish the cannonball.
5. Look for barriers to entry. Don’t set yourself up for failure. Warren Buffett’s value investing philosophy has you looking for wide moat companies– ones with a sustainable competitive advantage. So if you were going to invest 100% of your future success on a company that you are starting, why step onto a bloody battlefield? If you want to start a business, do something that differentiates you from everyone else. Anything. Just something. Create your own niche. Sometimes crazy can be better.
6. Meet the right people– and tell them what you’re doing. According to “The Millionaire Mind”, many wealthy people have said that their people skills helped them immensely. If you don’t know who you need to meet, you don’t know what you’re doing - so spend some time thinking about it. Figure it out. And make that a project. If you are tasteful and to the point - think Donald Trump with a twist of class - it won’t be bragging, it will be sharing. If no one knows you exist, how can they send opportunities your way?
7. Make decisions. This is hard for a lot of people, including myself. But my time in the Navy gave me a lot of opportunities to react quickly, give orders, and make things happen. Ever started up a nuclear reactor? I have. And let me say that no matter how many times I did it, that complex evolution– much like any business venture– always took planning, consistent effort, a watchful eye, and lots of decison-making.
8. Ask and you shall receive. (Or, you’ll never get what you want– unless you ask for it.) Whether it is a job, date, or a million dollars in venture capital, if you want to be successful, you need to find out who can give you what you want. Then get in touch with them, and ask for it. They might say yes; they might not. But you have no chance of getting it if you don’t ask. (Thanks to Amit Gupta for mentioning this one.)

The “Ultimate Success Formula” - Part 5

Anthony Robbins teaches a concept that he calls the “Ultimate Success Formula”. Regardless of what you want to do or accomplish in life, you can use this formula to achieve it. This is the fifth of five installments explaining the details of this formula. Read part one, part two, part three, and part four.

Step #5: If It Isn’t Working, Try Something Else.

Life is not perfect. Things do not always fall into place. In your journey to completing your objective, you are bound to try something that does not work. And that is okay.

If what you are doing is not working, stop doing it. There is no point to trying again and again to achieve a different result by doing the same thing. If what you are doing is not working, try something else! If that doesn’t work, then try something else!

The key here is to keep fine tuning your efforts. Make small changes. As you make every small course correction, you will keep moving in the right direction.

As an example, Tony explained how, on a commercial flight, the plane is actually off course over 95% percent of the time. But they still arrive at their destination. How do they do it if they are almost always off course? They look at their instruments, make the necessary adjustments, and look at the results. They fine tune there efforts periodically to ensure they achieve their desired outcome.

Computer scientists refer to this as the “brute force” method of doing things. It is. But, when it comes to your goals and dreams, you will be much better off trying something else than giving up.

According to Anthony Robbins, most people look at their objective and focus on everything they will have to do to achieve it. They get overwhelmed, and most people give up. Instead, he says you should focus on how you will feel once you achieve the outcome, and enjoy the process of getting there.

So there you have it. The “Ultimate Success Formula” seems very simple. But achieving your dreams takes effort.

The “Ultimate Success Formula” - Part 4

Anthony Robbins teaches a concept that he calls the “Ultimate Success Formula”. Regardless of what you want to do or accomplish in life, you can use this formula to achieve it. This is the fourth of five installments explaining the details of this formula. Read part one, part two, and part three.

Step #4: Know What You Are Getting.

You must sense if what you are doing is giving you the result you want. But you must perceive it in excrutiating detail. Tony refers to this as “sensory acuity”, and says it is a keen form of intelligence.

(Editor’s Note: According to the University of Kansas Medical Center, acuity is the process of receiving the input, i.e. using your eyes, ears, and other sensory organs. Perception, on the other hand, is a person’s ability to understand the data they took in with their acuity. Therefore, to truly understand what they are getting, it seems a person would need both acuity and perception.)

Establish a feedback mechanism. It can be anything, as long as it allows you to measure, as quickly as possible, whether or not you are heading in the right direction. You need to check this from time to time.

The genius is in the details, so understand them. Tony gave an example where he described a marker: it could be a cylinder, a red gray cylinder, a short red gray cylinder with markings, or a bright red Sharpie Fine Point Permanent Market that never gets out of your clothes.

To further illustrate his point about sensory acuity, Tony explained how the Eskimos have twelve different words for “snow”. (While this makes a great point, it is not technically correct because Tony is comparing apples and oranges. As explained here, it has more to do with the root of the words than the actual words. Using the same logic, English has approximately 22 snow lexemes.)

Although his analogies were not “spot on”, Anthony Robbins still got his points across. In order to reach the outcomes you want, you must be able to evaluate whether or not what you are doing is working. The concept is quite simple, but can be difficult to judge in practice.

Read part five.

The “Ultimate Success Formula” - Part 3

Anthony Robbins teaches a concept that he calls the “Ultimate Success Formula”. Regardless of what you want to do or accomplish in life, you can use this formula to achieve it. This is the third of five installments explaining the details of this formula. Read part one and part two.

Step #3: Take Massive Action.

If you want to achieve your desired outcome, you are going to have to take action. Massive action. It is that simple.

Tony says that anyone who has been rewarded in public for their successes has spent lots of time taking massive action in private. For example, athletes such as Tiger Woods spend years practicing before they ever make it into the public eye. They had a desired outcome, had a strong enough reason, and spent years working at it. As a result, the average person mistakes their years of experience for “natural talent” and “luck”.

As an example, Tony told the rags to riches story of Sylvester Stallone:

Years ago, Stallone was broke and living in New York. He had no money for food or electricity. He had to pawn his wife’s jewelery just for food money. Eventually, he even had to sell his dog because he could not afford to feed it and needed the money for his family.

Stallone looked for work as an actor, asking agents again and again, more than 1,000 times total. After watching a boxing match, he got the inspiration for the film “Rocky”, and spent 24 hours straight writing the first draft. Then he began trying to sell the film– with himself in the lead role. Everyone rejected it.

Eventually, he got an offer for $125,000 for his script. But they did not want him to star in it. (They envisioned Ryan O’Neil for the role.) However, Stallone wanted to be an actor, so he walked away from the offer.

The offer price rose to $250,000, and eventually to $325,000, as long as Stallone would not star in the picture. But he refused.

“Are you insane?”, they asked him.

“No, I’m Rocky”, he responded.

Stallone eventually took $35,000 plus a percentage of the profits of the film. (Obviously, things turned out well.)

After closing the deal, the first thing he did was go back to get his dog, Butkus. Stallone sold the dog for $25 just six weeks before. He offered $125, and then $500 for the dog. The new owner refused. Stallone ultimately paid $15,000 plus a part in the movie to get his dog back.

How do you get started? Develop a plan of attack– a “massive action plan”. List every outcome you want and any possible action you can take that may help you achieve your goal. Brainstorm. Even if the idea sounds crazy, write it down.

When you make the list, highlight the actions that you know are essential to achieveing your goal. If you make 20 possible actions, for example, you might have five actions that must be done.

You may not know how to achieve your outcome. That is fine. Just because you do not know every step does not mean you should not begin the journey. What you need to do is try anything you can, and whatever it takes, to get you in the right direction. Once you know your outcome, focus on the process. Take it one step at a time.

Trying to learn by your own experience can be expensive in both time and money. Wherever possible, you should try to learn from others. Take some time, and do the research. Why should you spend ten years of your life learning by trial and error when you can spend a day or two reading a book?

One thing you can do to speed things up is to find someone that has done exactly what you wish to achieve. Use them as a model. And do exactly what you are doing. According to Anthony Robbins, “If there is one idea in life you want to master, it is the idea of modeling.. the idea that success leaves clues.”

One technique that Tony Robbins teaches is called RPM - the Rapid Planning Method. According to one web site, “RPM is Tony’s fastest way to results. It is a system to manage your time and also help you achieve the satisfaction you desire.”

The Rapid Planning Method consists of three parts:

• The result you want to achieve.
• Your purpose for doing so, ie. why you want that outcome.
• A massive action plan.

Details of this plan are scattered around various programs, including “Get The Edge” and “Time Of Your Life”. Fortunately, you can learn about and use this planning method without buying any Anthony Robbins programs. Here is how:

1. Read “Turning GTE/TOYL/PPII Techniques into a Workable RPM Plan”, a thread from the Anthony Robbins web community.
2. Develop a tracking system. One way is to download this Excel worksheet. It contains templates for use with the RPM planning system.
3. If you have questions or need clarification, a good place to start is the Anthony Robbins Community forums. They are a set of message boards where people like you and I can ask questions, get answers, share goals, and meet like-minded people that want to live their dreams. And best of all, they are free!

Read part four.

The “Ultimate Success Formula” - Part 2

Anthony Robbins teaches a concept that he calls the “Ultimate Success Formula”. Regardless of what you want to do or accomplish in life, you can use this formula to achieve it. This is the second of five installments explaining the details of this formula. Read part one.

Step #2: Know The Reasons Why. Why is this outcome a must for you?

According to Tony, the reasons come first. Answers come second. The reasons are the fuel to get you to follow through. If you have big enough reasons why, your brain will figure out how to achieve the outcome.

In order to get ourselves to take action, we need a reason that is larger than life. We need to get leverage over ourselves so that the outcome becomes something we have to do. Something we can’t not do. Not a “should”, but a “must”.

So how can we get ourselves to this point?

Tony says that there are two driving forces that create lasting change: the forces of pain and pleasure. Everything we, as human beings, do is to avoid pain and gain pleasure. So the key to making that “should” a “must” is to understand the pain associated with not achieving the outcome, and the pleasure associated with accomplishing it. (Although you should think about both aspects, Tony says that the desire to avoid pain is stronger than the desire to gain pleasure.)

Recall, from the first installment, our example of losing weight. (The outcome was “I want to be healthy, fit, and at my ideal weight of 175 lbs. I want to be active, run a marathon, and have tons of energy every day. I want to wake up in the morning with a feeling of excitment and passion, look great in my clothes, and feel proud of myself every time I look in the mirror.”)

How do you make your outcome a “must” instead of a “should”? Consider the following example:

What would happen if I don’t lose weight? (This is the pain associated with not accomplishing the goal.)

1. I have a greater chance of dying from everything. Obesity has a massive impact on risk factors for other diseases. By being overweight, I will have an increased risk of cancer and many other illnesses.
2. If I don’t do something right now, I will start to have problems with my back and knees. I have been lucky to this point, but as I get older they will begin to bother me.
3. I will miss out on so much of life. I am missing out on spending time in the great outdoors and being active.
4. I will amplify my hereditary risk of heart disease. Since my uncle had a heart attack a few years ago, and my grandfather had one before him, there is obviously a much greater risk of heart disease in my family. I need to do something about it now or else I will be a ticking time bomb.
5. If I don’t lose weight now, I will continue to feel terrible and embarrassed every time I look in the mirror. I have felt that way for years. And I am tired of it.
6. I will always hate going out in public because I feel like people are judging me.
7. I will have to keep buying new clothes, wasting money on clothing I don’t even like because nothing else fits me.
8. It will hurt me financially. Since I am going into business, I will be dependent on sales. People are superficial, and they judge quickly. If I stay overweight, it will make me look unprofessional and will hurt my ability to sell.

Why must I lose weight? (The pleasure associated with accomplishing the goal.)

1. So I can feel sexy and confident. So I can wear form-fitting designer clothes and feel good every time I look at myself in the mirror and when I walk in public.
2. To feel energized every day. Since I am quitting my job, moving to a new home, and starting a new life and a new business, I need to hit the ground running. I need more energy now than ever before.
3. So I can enjoy all of the activities my wife and I want to do together, like scuba diving, hiking, biking, etc.
4. To set an example for my family. If I ever have children, I want them to be healthy, active, and have good habits. How can I help them if I can’t help myself?

There is no right or wrong answer to this exercise. It is all relative. The key is to come up with whatever it takes to get you emotional about the outcome.

By associated enough pain to not accomplishing the goal, and enough pleasure to achieving it, you will get to the point where you say, “Never Again!” It is at this point, where you cannot take another day without taking action, that you have what Tony refers to as “leverage” over yourself. And that is the whole point of knowing your reasons why– to get leverage.

No matter what you want to change in your life, you can change it once you get leverage. The path may not be easy, but if you truly want something different, your mind will find a way.

Read part three.

The “Ultimate Success Formula” - Part 1

Anthony Robbins teaches a concept that he calls the “Ultimate Success Formula”. Regardless of what you want to do or accomplish in life, you can use this formula to achieve it. This is the first of five installments explaining the details of this formula.

Step #1: Know Your Outcome.

You must know your objective. You must understand it and be able to describe it in a detailed, positive way. (Tony calls it an “outcome” instead of a “goal” because it adds more certainty to the description. It is like saying you “will” do something instead of you “should” do something.)

You mind will be drawn toward whatever you focus on. So you must focus on a positive image of what you want, and NOT a negative image of what you don’t want. For example, if you say “I don’t want to be fat”, your brain will only see the image of being fat, and so it will draw you to that outcome instead of what you actually want. Instead, you should say, “I want to be healthy, fit, and at my ideal weight of 175 lbs. I want to be active, run a marathon, and have tons of energy every day. I want to wake up in the morning with a feeling of excitment and passion, look great in my clothes, and feel proud of myself every time I look in the mirror.”

According to Tony, clarity is essential. The more vivid your vision of the outcome, the better. (He referred to a part of the brain called the “reticular activating system.” According to Wikipedia, it is “believed to be the centre of arousal and motivation in animals”.)

Tony Robbins estimates that less than one percent of the population has absolute clarity in their goals. Instead, most of them are caught up in making a living versus designing their own life.

The purpose of knowing your outcome is to clarify your focus. The more time you spend deciding, describing, and clarifying your outcome, the more certain you will be about what you actually want. When you visualize the outcome in excrutiating detail, it helps your brain achieve that outcome. In one of his audio tapes, for example, Tony discusses how spent days on this aspect of planning his life. He wrote thirteen pages in the process of describing the ideal woman that he wanted to meet and marry. And he met and married her within a year.

You and I can achieve anything we want in life. If we spend the time to determine exactly what we want, and visualize it in such extreme detail that we actually feel it and experience the feelings associated with its achievement, our brains will drive us there.

Read part two.