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Wealthy Affiliate Review 2020: Easy Money Opportunity or Scam?

In the spirit of full transparency, know that this Wealthy Affiliate review 2020 contains affiliate links. This means if you make a purchase through these links, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

Imagine what if would be like if you were in control of your own schedule.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could make money from the comfort of your own home… or anywhere in the world with an internet connection?

Just picture this for a moment… living the life that you have always dreamed of…

No credit card details required

You probably agree that if you want to be financially independent and retire early you need to find ways of making passive income.

Well, creating an online business in a certain way can be a form of passive income for anyone. The best part is that you don’t need to have thousands of dollars to get started like many other forms of passive income.

After you read this up to date honest Wealthy Affiliate review 2020, you will learn what Wealthy Affiliate can offer you.

Wealthy Affiliate Review 2020 Part One:

The Overview and Rankings

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• Name: Wealthy Affiliate
• Owners: Kyle and Carson – 96 out of 100
• Website URL: wealthyaffiliate.com
• Training: 90 out of 100
• Support: 99 out of 100
• Website Builder: 99 out of 100
• Research Tools: 95 out of 100 (for the paid version)
• Success Stories: 95 out of 100
• Price: Starter Member (Free- for as long as you want) Premium Membership ($49 per month/ $359 year)
• Maketimeonline.com Rating: 97 out of 100

My Story

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It all started on a sunny day in Essex, England, in August 2017.

Sarah, my wife, and I were sipping our coffee, chilled on my parent’s sofa when she asked…

“Do you want to start a blog?”

I had no idea how much those 7 words would shape my life. Read the “About Mike” page to learn more about this story.

I didn’t even know blogging was still a thing in 2017!

But after trying it out for a while and speaking to some people in this mysterious “blogging world” we realised some people were making a full-time income from it.

And others were making way more than I’d ever be able to as a teacher.

So it became a puzzle of mine to put the pieces together to figure out how they do this.

As you read each word in this Wealthy Affiliate review you will see how it has helped me to put a lot of the pieces together.

But I am not going to blow their trumpet to convince you to give it a go. I will be completely honest about my experience and show you the negatives so you can make an informed decision.

My First Online Sale…

Man, I remember the day that I made my first bit of money online.

It’s such a weird feeling that is super hard to explain.

I was in freezing England after the Christmas break. We were out at dinner with my parents before we were heading back to Qatar when I got this buzz on my phone.

“Amazon Associates”.

I recently had an email from them saying I had about a week left on my account to make the required 3 sales in your first 180 days.

So I didn’t think much of it as I’d hardly used any affiliate links from Amazon on my website.

Then I clicked it and…

I made a massive…

$1.03!

This may sound weird but this was possibly the greatest $1.03 I have ever or will ever earn.

It was passive income.

I did the work once… and it paid me in the future.

Someone had read my review of Rich Dad Poor Dad, clicked the link and bought the book!

More than anything else, it was proof that I can make money online.

End of 2019 Update…

It’s actually quite crazy how much I have learnt about online businesses over the last 15 months.

I also know how much there still is to learn.

But here’s the truth:

I cannot fail if I don’t quit.

How many types of business can honestly say that?

Here is what has started happening to my website in recent months…

I am getting over a thousand people to find my website every month for free!

This is all from Google and exactly what Wealthy Affiliate has taught me how to do.

But this is not the only method of traffic I have been taught…

I also know how to use social media and work with other online entrepreneurs to drive traffic to my website for viral traffic.

I’ve even used what I’ve learnt to start a new website and get hundreds of people to the website per day almost instantly…

Now, I can almost hear your mind thinking…

So what?

Traffic is not money.

Well, here’s the secret amigo…

Yes, it is!

I just didn’t know that until VERY recently…

Income Update…

If you’re like me (and Jerry Maguire) the only thing you are probably interested in is seeing the money.

via GIPHY

So I’m not going to hold anything back…

You’re probably thinking…

So what?

“This is not enough to quit my full-time job!”

The thing that I want to make clear is this:

• There are multiple streams of income (I make money from different affiliate programs)
• The rate of growth is exponential (this time just a few months ago I hadn’t made anything significant)
• I am a PE teacher by trade! I. Did. Not. Know. This. Stuff!

Everything I have learnt has come from following the step-by-step training and people within Wealthy Affiliate.

It’s even enough proof for me to quit my full-time job before the end of 2019! Exciting times ahead for sure! (I only joined in September 2018)

But enough about me.

Let’s get back to the Wealthy Affiliate review 2020…

You Want the Proof? You Can’t Handle the Proof…

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Now I can almost hear your mind screaming…

Is Wealthy Affiliate a Scam?

So here’s the thing…

There is so much proof, you don’t need to hear it from me.

Meet Jerry- Joined May 2016

The 21-year-old college drop-out consistently makes 4 figures a month from Wealthy Affiliate.

Do you notice the rate of growth in his income too?

Oh, and did I mention he just made over $100k in a week from a new course he made?

Meet Grace aka LittleMama- Joined Sep 2016

The little darling of Wealthy Affiliate knows how to get paid on tap. Are you beginning to notice the rate of growth after making the first affiliate sale?

• Her first annual membership referral was in November 2017
• To $40k commissions in 2018

Will I Have to Promote Wealthy Affiliate?

Absolutely not.

As you continue to read this Wealthy Affiliate review in 2020 you will realise there are 2 training paths you can take.

Meet Juan- Joined May 2015

He makes money mainly from promoting other products on Amazon.

Will it Take Ages Before I Make Money?

How long is a piece of string?

It is entirely up to a number of factors including:

• How much time you put into it
• If you follow the training
• Whether you collaborate and help out others

Meet Dylan- Joined Aug 2015

Dylan refined his tactics after working at Wealthy Affiliate for over a year. His new website generated over $4,000 in month 7!

And yes it is possible to sell websites…

Will I Have to Put in Tons of Time?

This success story may help you decide…

Meet Steve- Joined Aug 2016

Here is a list of what he does:

• Works a full-time job
• Competes in “Iron Man” events (this is a full-time job just training in case you didn’t know… it’s heaps of swimming, cycling then a marathon to finish)
• Manages a travel website
• Spends quality time with his wife and friends

He is not a guy that has 40 hours a week to put into his online business… but he makes 4 figures a month!

Now, if this is not enough proof click here to see a whole load more.

Top Tip- Before you pay any money try the free account out. Find these people or thousands of others using Wealthy Affiliate and message them. They will tell you the truth about what they did and how much they worked.

No credit card details required

Why Use Wealthy Affiliate?

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There are 3 main reasons why Wealthy Affiliate is my number 1 recommendation:

• The step-by-step training is so easy to follow
• Simple to use tools (read this to see “How to Build a Website in 30 Seconds“)
• Amazing support (24/7 live chat and over 1.5 million users ready to help)

Making money online can be overwhelming. There are a lot of moving parts and everyone has the next best shiny object ready to distract you.

As you keep reading this Wealthy Affiliate review 2020, you will begin to realise Wealthy Affiliate keeps it simple stupid.

They use a 4 step proven model:

1. Choose your niche
2. Build content
3. Attract visitors
4. Make money

Click on any of the above to read more about each step.

What are the Wealthy Affiliate Negatives?

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Ok first of all I need to be fully open with you.

Wealthy Affiliate is NOT for everyone.

Here are some people that should not waste their precious time with Wealthy Affiliate:

• Someone that wants to make money instantly
• People that do not want to help others
• Someone that doesn’t want to put in any effort
• If you’re looking for a ready-made program to start paying you money (if you find this, hook me up… joking, this simply doesn’t exist!)

If you use Wealthy Affiliate it does not mean you will be successful and have money flowing into your bank account each month.

It will show you what to do but you still need to put the work in. Some people do get frustrated with it and like to point the finger at the training program.

The Negatives

Disclaimer- Remember there is no magic button to press to make it all work. You will have to learn and put the time and effort in if you want to see results.

As you pay close attention to the rest of this Wealthy Affiliate review in 2020 you will begin to get excited about what Wealthy Affiliate can offer you…

Wealthy Affiliate Review 2020 Part Two:

What does Wealthy Affiliate do?

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A lot!!

To be honest it does so much that it can be overwhelming reading it all.

All you need to know:

If you are interested in making money online to free up your time, then Wealthy Affiliate holds your hand into getting an online business up and running. 

Some of the things Wealthy Affiliate does:

• Step-by-step training – make a website suited for affiliate marketing (promoting other peoples products and getting a commission)
• An amazing community to support you
• Build your website in 30 seconds
• Tools to track and monitor your progress
• Tools to improve your research and content
• Top quality hosting

When you try it out for free you will discover why so many people get excited and tell their friends about it .

Wealthy Affiliate Training, Many Formats to Suit your Taste

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The training comes in different formats to suit your learning style:

1. Video
2. Written
3. Weekly live webinars

There are 2 routes you can take with the training:

1. Online Entrepreneur Training
2. Affiliate Bootcamp

Basically, route 1 is for those who have a specific niche and know exactly what they want to do.

Route 2 is for those who don’t really know and so they hold your hand down the make money online route.

Now for me, the indecisive ninny here, I found this very hard to decide!

As I already had a blog up and running I literally would love to have a niche in anything to do with:

• Health/ Nutrition
• Success/ Business
• Happiness/ Personal development

However, after starting route 1 I realised I would 100% need to sub-niche this down as it’s too vague and pretty much covers everyone in the world (which turns out is not a good thing!!)

If you need to some help in deciding on your niche then I have created a post to show some things I wish I knew before (the video on there could save you hours of faffing!!)

Choosing Your Route

Working in the education system since 2011 has shown me how little financial IQ is taught at schools. This website is my way to help spread the word about financial education and demonstrate different ways we can create more money (and hence time) in our own lives.

…So route 2 it was!

The Bootcamp is more useful than a cold beer on a hot day. It literally shows you, step by step, how to create your online business.

The information is incredibly thorough.

Do you remember reading that the downside to the training is the lack of depth in email marketing? Hindsight has taught me that it’s actually a good thing they don’t put this in too soon as this would cause overwhelm… I know this because I tried it anyway!

You would end up doing everything… but nothing well (Hello… that was me!)

Top Tip- Do EVERY step as it comes. Do not skip past action points and go at your own pace.

To avoid these mistakes and fast track your progress check out this free course…

Wealthy Affiliate Support, A Community of “Caring” Experts

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When you try the program out you will find people at completely different stages of their online marketing journey:

• Complete beginners
• People who have been using it for 6 months
• Members who are making 5 figures a month

I decided to join Wealthy Affiliate after reading Riaz Shah’s website as I found his reviews to be very honest and informative.

He has been more helpful to me than Robin is to Batman (…yes I just referred to myself as Batman!) Just look at the detail in his response to a question I asked. This is only a fraction of the answer… talk about personal service!

There is also a Live chat and Forum so you can get quick responses to any question that pops up in your head!

After only 2 months of being a member, I wrote a post about “Why do People Create Blogs“… 13 people inside WA took the time to answer some questions for me.

People continually provide comments and feedback on my website and they are so helpful, generous and understanding of any type of problems.

No credit card details required

The SiteRubrix Suite, Create, Manage & Grow Your Websites

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This was actually pretty amazing! I remember creating our website for our first blog on WordPress and I was so confused.

WordPress is actually very user-friendly but it took me ages to make the website look how I wanted it.

With Wealthy Affiliate, it took 30 seconds to create a website using Site Builder. No joke! Check out “How to Create a Website in 30-Seconds” for more info.

The screenshot above shows all the things that come with the SiteRubrix Suite. I honestly have found it soooooooo helpful!

For me, one of the best things about Wealthy Affiliate is the site comments.

You choose what you’re interested in (so I never receive any baby advice or gardening websites) and you can skip websites if you’d rather not read it. So I actually find reading others people work really useful. All you do is write a meaningful comment to someone else.

In the screenshot above I had made 10 comments and then I used my “credits” to ask for specific feedback on certain posts that I have created. As you can see I had already received 20 comments (20 for the price of 10!!!!)

The Site Manager (above screenshot) is such a great way to see what you can do to improve your “Site Health”.

It also shows the speed of your website and what you can do to improve this. This helps to ensure your website is optimised to improve its rankings on search engines and that your audience has a better experience when using the site.

Jaaxy Tool – Key Word Research

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The training program shows you step by step how to make the website better for SEO using plugins (Search Engine Optimisation- in English this means it makes your website easier to find on Google)

The Jaaxy Tool is an amazing way to find keywords that receive a lot of searches each month.

If you want to learn more about SEO then check out this “Jaaxy Review” and particularly “How to Find Keywords For Your Website to Get Traffic on Tap“.

As you absorb this information you will realise the best part of using Jaaxy is the QSR column (number of competing websites).

This helps you to find keywords that have less competition. Therefore, your website will rank higher on search engines and you will get more visitors to your site… aka more eyes on your website to purchase through your affiliate links.

This may sound overwhelming if you are brand new to this…

but just like everything else on this site…

follow the training, complete the tasks and all the pieces of the puzzle start coming together.

This is actually worth $49 per month by itself but it comes as part of the Premium Wealthy Affiliate package.

Managed WordPress Hosting- Set up Efficiently!

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Picture your website like a load of files on your computer.

The “hosting” is basically where you store these files and share them with other people.

People can pay anything from $60 to a few thousand dollars per year.

So the Wealthy Affiliate hosting is top quality.

If you are on the free membership you get 2 .siterubrix free websites so you can get started and try out the training without having to pay anything. Plus you can stay on the free membership for as long as you like!

If you use the paid version you can get 25 free .siterubrix websites and 25 domains. WordPress is what all the big online marketers use to manage their website and WA helps you get set up on there super easily.

This means if you have another online business or website you can transfer it onto Wealthy Affiliate and get all the added benefits of:

• Faster speeds
• The Spam Blocker
• SiteSSL (notice my website is https instead of http. You usually find this on websites that you make payments on as it makes the site more secure).

Why bother using the paid version?

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This is something that I asked myself a lot when I started out.

You can access so many things on the free membership I didn’t really see the point.

The 3 big things I could see was that on the paid membership you get:

1. The extra websites available (25 instead of 2)
2. Access to the Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool (usually $49 per month by itself)
3. Much more training

Check out all of the benefits for yourself:

The main reason I went for the paid membership was really because of what I’m about to tell you… and no it’s not the Vegas trip…

Meet in Vegas, Lucrative Affiliate Program

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If you sign up right now you will be getting a free trip to Vegas every year for the rest of your life!!… Only joking!!

Of course, they don’t actually sell this to you like that (that would be cool though eh?!) and of course, it’s great to set big goals but to get the all paid for Vegas-trip you need to get 300 people to sign up to Wealthy Affiliate.

Remember, you DO NOT have to promote Wealthy Affiliate at all.

If your passion is photography then Wealthy Affiliate can help you get a great online business set up for you too.

The bit that is interesting for a lot of beginners is that you can get paid to refer others to join Wealthy Affiliate.

Now, there are a lot of reviews that sell Wealthy Affiliate as the best thing since sliced bacon (I’m sure you’ll understand why in a second).

The thing I have found surprising is that a lot seem to fail to mention this part. I’m not entirely sure why…

You get paid if someone signs up from your link…

If you’re on the free membership (by the way did I mention you can be a free member for as long you like??) you receive:

• $11.75 per monthly premium subscriber
• or $87.50 for a yearly membership

If you are on the paid membership it doubles to:

• $23.50 per month
• or $175 for a yearly membership

So that means if 2 people sign up to Wealthy Affiliate from your link, you effectively get the premium Wealthy Affiliate membership for FREE!

Are you beginning to see how people make money online?

Wealthy Affiliate Review 2020: The “MakeTimeOnline” Final Word

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Wealthy Affiliate is amazeballs for beginners and bloggers that want to start monetising or scale their website.

Especially if you are serious about making money online to free up your time, but still haven’t found the right strategy.

Even if you don’t join the paid membership you can stay on the free membership for as long as you like and learn a load from the free training.

This is the best one-stop-shop to get:

• Tools (hosting, keyword tool, affiliate opportunities etc.)
• Step-by-step training
• And support

Have you noticed yet that if you want to connect with like-minded people there is a strong active community on Wealthy Affiliate?

Plus, I am already going through this process so you’ve got someone to give you personal feedback and help.

How Much Is Wealthy Affiliate Really Worth?

When you actually break down what you get from a premium membership with Wealthy Affiliate it looks like this:

1. 100+ Step-by-Step Training Lessons (Value $997)
2. Super Simple Website Builder (Value $294)
3. Web Domain Marketplace (Value $99)
4. State-of-the-Art Web Hosting (Value $240)
5. Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool (Value $588)
6. Affiliate Program Marketplace (Value $197)
7. Weekly Live Training Calls (Value $497)
8. User Generate Training (Value $299)
9. Worldwide Community: >1.2 Million Members (Value $349)
10. 24/7 Technical Support Team on Standby (Value $299)

The training, tools and support adds up to a total value of $3,859

But it doesn’t end there as I remember exactly how hard and weird it was starting out as a brand new “online business owner” in September 2018.

So I’m going to give you some additional bonuses that no other WA members get and what I wish I had when I started…

My Recommendation and Special BONUS!!

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I would recommend giving Wealthy Affiliate a try for free. This way you can check out the starter training and test out the platform. You can also message some other people inside if you’d like another person’s point of view.

The special bonuses of signing up for the premium membership during your first week are:

BONUS #1, Hypnotic Cheatsheet & Analogy Book ($67 Value)

• Insert scientifically proven words into your writing that helps to keep your readers engaged and hooked to the end.
• Make editing your writing much quicker. 
• Persuade and seduce your readers to take action that can help them.

BONUS #2, 1000+ Amazing Keyword Ideas & Guest Posting Opportunities ($99 Value)

• Get 1000+ low competition (not many websites writing about them) keywords with a lot of traffic (this is how you can get free traffic from Google every month)
• Quickly improve the “authority” of your website by “guest posting” (writing a post for them to link back to your website) to some amazing websites
• Save hours of time from having to do this research yourself

BONUS #3, Personal Business Blueprint + Checklist ($139 Value)

• I’m also giving you this Personal Business Blueprint where I’ll give you specific instructions to help you start on the right foot and plan your schedule.
• I’ve also created a custom daily task for week 1 to assist you in Wealthy Affiliate’s training.
• This is NOT found anywhere else and NOT available to any other WA members!

BONUS #4, Top WordPress Themes & Plugins Guide ($97 Value)

Not sure what themes & plugins to use for your website?

• If you’ve tried WordPress, you know WordPress has a TON of themes and plugins. I understand it’s confusing for beginners.
• So, I’ve created this guide to help you based on my experience.
• This guide will be extremely helpful to kickstart your website!

BONUS #5, Outsourcing Secrets: Hire Writer Like A PRO ($249 Value)

Do you hate writing? Feel like you suck at writing? Me too!

• In this training, I’ll give you the exact steps a Wealthy Affiliate member took to hire his full-time writer at just $400/month who writes really well.
• Thanks to his writer, he’s now automated his website. He hasn’t written a single post for a very long time, yet the money just keeps coming in every single day.
• This is how you can truly create an online business!

BONUS #6, How To Create a 6 Figure Website… In 6 Months ($299 Value)

Still no idea where to begin?

• In this training, another Wealthy Affiliate member walks you through his exact strategy for creating a 6 figure business using Amazon
• Following these steps have proven to create a website that generates $4,000 per month and this is possible to achieve within 6 months!
• If I were to start again and not have a clear passion I wanted to follow… this would be exactly what I would do

Remember this is a special bonus for those “action takers” that join the premium membership during the first week.

Total Value: US $4,809

Your Investment TODAY: US $19

When you try the program out you will discover why so many people get excited about it and recommend it to others.

Now let me ask you this…

What’s the life you would love to live worth to you?

Keep changing for the better,

Mike

No credit card details required

P.S. If you’d like the advice I wish I received when I started out, then check out this free course…

Updates to Questions Below

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The training also includes how to use social media including Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and how to make your website a place for others to engage.

Dave Ramsey’s Complete Guide to Money Review – Is it Complete?

Is this a complete guide? No is the short answer. The long answer is below.

In this review of Dave Ramsey’s book “Complete Guide to Money”, I am going to explain a bit about what the book is about. I will try my hardest not to completely destroy what Dave Ramsey has talked about as there definitely are a lot of good takeaways in the book.

 

Complete Guide to Money – The Overview and Rankings

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• Name: Dave Ramsey’s Complete Guide to Money
• Author: Dave Ramsey – 1 out of 100
• Originality: 0 out of 100
• Practical methods: 30 out of 100
• Enjoyability: 0 out of 100
• Price: Kindle $9.30/ Hardcover $12.25
• Maketimeonline.com Rating: 7 out of 100

 

Pros and Cons

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Pros

• Helps to create a financial plan for people
• Great budgeting advice- helps motivation to save money
• Some simple to follow steps to get out of debt- the snowball effect!
• The book has good negotiation tips

Cons

• Doesn’t practice what he preaches as this is not how Dave Ramsey has become “rich” (although he may have done this in the past to get out of debt)
• Too narrow in investment options
• Doesn’t encourage people to develop their own financial intelligence (or IQ)
• Uninspiring- The best case scenario you can hope for if you follow his advice is that you won’t have any debt and can be “better than average” when you retire… remember the “average American” is broke (his words not mine)
• He doesn’t understand what diversification really is
• He has poor financial IQ and people will listen to him- this is scary!
• He uses his religion to sell to people- He sells his courses at churches!!
• Unoriginal and no new financial advice

 

Let’s start with the Good

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OK, Dave Ramsey sounds like a good person. I really would like to think he is trying to help other people and this is what motivates him to do what he does.

Financial Budgeting Advice

He provides some good solid advice about how to treat money. He explains some great baby steps to getting your life on track:

1. put $1,000 aside for an emergency fund
2. Pay off all debt using the debt snowball (pay off the smallest amount of debt first then the next smallest, instead of the debt with the highest interest- I liked this one as you will save money each time you pay off the debt and then you have more to pay off the next piece of debt, creating a snowball!)
3. Put 3-6 months of expenses into savings as a full emergency fund

One of his best tips is to set a budget BEFORE each month so you already have an idea of what you want to spend money on. If you like eating out or going to the cinema, put this in your budget! You don’t have to stop enjoying the things you like doing but just allow for these things and put it in writing so you know what you are spending your money on.

Inflation

He talks about inflation in the book, which is crucial that people understand in today’s financial system. He explains how this is relevant for your investments. He mentions inflation is roughly 4% on average but with the fees you pay to mutual funds (the investment vehicle he recommends) you need to be hitting 6% interest to break even. However, inflation over the last few years has actually been more like 10% (read “how our wealth is being stolen” for more info)

Credit/ Debt

He explains how easy it is to get credit in this day and age and how bad it can be to buy “anything” (this is debatable in my eyes) with credit. His class were offered $7.9 million in credit in 13 weeks!! This is what holds most people back from getting anywhere as bad debt destroys wealth over time.

Negotiating

He has a chapter on how to find big bargains and talks about some negotiating tips (if you want a negotiation book, I’d highly recommend Chris Voss’- Never Split the Difference) Some of the tips he recommends, which are some great tips in any negotiation situation are:

1. Always speak truthfully
2. Use cash. You can take in the maximum amount you want to spend (don’t carry a card and don’t take any more!) Plus people psychologically see the cash and get excited so are more likely to take a lower offer.
3. Be prepared to walk away. In today’s world, you can almost always buy or sell whatever it is somewhere else.
4. Don’t talk too much. The more the other person talks the more likely they are to negotiate themselves down in price.
5. Say “That’s not good enough!”– I haven’t tried this one but Chris Voss recommends “How could you help me?” I have found this works quite well as it gets the other person to think on your behalf so you don’t have to find the solution!
6. Use “If I”- For example, “if I buy it for that much you’re going to have to throw in that sofa”. If they say they can’t then you say something like “well if you can give me the sofa you’re going to have to give me something else or come down in price”. You’ve added something else into the negotiation, which can help reduce the price!

Get Rich Quick Schemes

The only people that get rich from “get rich quick schemes” are the people selling them.

My definition of “rich” is having the money to be able to create freedom. Freedom to do what you choose each day. Freedom to buy the things you would like. Freedom to live the lifestyle you would like to.

Now I know Dave Ramsey is not selling a get rich quick scheme here, but he is still the only person getting “rich” from what he is selling! This links nicely onto the next heading…

 

Now some of the Bad

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Best case you will be comfortable

The best case scenario from following his advice is that you will just have better control of your money and work until you’re 65, then have a “comfortable” retirement (this is relying on the mutual funds that you invest in to consistently provide a high return, the financial system never changing, there is no financial crash towards the end of your working career and a whole lot of good luck that is not in your control!)

If this something that you are happy with then that is wonderful! I hope you love your job and enjoy your holidays in Benidorm. However, if you want to be able to not have to work, or to travel the world, or make the world sustainable, or get humans onto Mars then you WILL NOT be able to do this by following Mr Ramsey’s advice.

Talking about how to get out of bad situations- Wasting Effort

The book has a tendency to talk too much about what to do in bad situations. For example, he gives a detailed 5 step plan of what to do if your identity has been compromised.

This has happened to us before and, believe me, if I had read this book it would have made no difference. We called the police who put us through to the fraud investigations team. We spoke to each company and they sorted it out for us.

Was this frustrating? Yes. Was it time-consuming? Yes. But in the end, we realised it wasn’t worth our time worrying about it. We could make a much bigger difference in our lives by focusing on how we were going to do to expand our means (at the time we were purchasing an investment property).

He doesn’t understand diversification

He talks a lot about being diversified with your investments. However, he doesn’t recommend any other investment other than paper assets (apart from property/ real estate when you can pay in cash!)

Therefore, he does not understand what it means to be diversified!

There are 4 main asset classes that we can invest in:

1. Business
2. Property/ Real Estate
3. Commodities (Gold, Silver, Oil, Wheat, Water etc.)
4. Paper Assets

He mentions 15 different investments throughout the book. 13 of them are paper assets i.e. stocks, bonds, mutual funds, retirement plans etc. He recommends mutual funds, which is actually financial suicide due to the high fees they charge (he even mentions the fees!)

I will literally save you the time of having to read Andrew Hallam’s book “The Millionaire Teacher” or Tony Robbin’s book “Unshakeable” or Ray Dalio’s book “Principles”.  If you are wanting a safe way to invest in the long term, do not use mutual funds. Just find a good index fund with low fees and put your money in there (Vanguard is great, you can use nutmeg.com if you are in the UK).

Index funds beat all mutual funds over the long term as their fees are MUCH lower and they do pretty much the same thing (they are actually better because they use a larger market and rebalance your portfolio!) In case you haven’t heard of the guys above I would take their advice over Dave Ramsey’s any day (Sorry, I’m going off on a tangent here!)

How is Mr Ramsey actually rich?

Dave Ramsey has made his money by selling courses, books and financial advice. He is a business owner.

However, there are actually only 4 pages in the whole book where he mentions starting a side business! 

And even in these few pages, he manages to pay some backhanded compliments to some people that did this and tried to advertise what they were doing through him…

This just so happens to lead onto what will be my favourite part of this post…

 

OK now for my real opinion 🙂

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He looks down on these people who have started their own side business. He says (and I quote) “Our national ads are way too expensive for a company grossing $100,000 per year and we didn’t want to sink them” I literally spat out my drink when I read this!… How very charitable of you Mr Ramsey, it’s great to see you helping people improve their financial situations!

But don’t worry guys at least Dave is a stand-up guy. He sold them some “Internet-only ads at a bargain rate”!! Oh… My… You know what! (I don’t want to use blasphemy against a religious man)

Religion

This leads me onto how he sells his courses… His courses are advertised and promoted at Church!! He is using religion to help him sell courses for his benefit. Personally, I find that pretty disgusting. I know the Dave Ramsey fans out there will be saying “but he has helped me so much” and “now I have control of my finances”. The point I’m making is that there are loads of these personal finance guys out there and from what I can tell so far Dave Ramsey is not even a good one to listen to!

He may help you get ahead of the “Average American”. He says “normal” in America is broke, his words, not mine! Do you want to be just ahead of broke or do you want to actually live the life you want?

I find what he advocates is very un-aspirational and to be honest for most people doing this they will fail. His advice relies on years and years of willpower and self-discipline and faith that the people you hand your hard earned money to will give you the amazing returns they promise (and I guarantee they won’t be able to in the long run or you’ll pay the majority of the profits through fees!) You will at best just about keep your head above water and live a comfortable life!

Marketing

He talks about ways to guard yourself against marketing. He mentions how Sony use smells like vanilla and oranges to make you feel relaxed when walking in the store. In the swim section of big stores, they make it smell like sun cream so your mind can relate to holidays and puts you in a good mood.

He then goes on to say that in his own office, they bake cookies and put them in reception to make clients feel at ease. But in his case, this is just to give them a good experience… Obviously, it has nothing to do with trying to sell his courses!! Talk about hypocritical!!! He does the same thing that he’s telling you to put your guard up about. 

Investing

His financial advice is sound up until baby step #3. After that, it may be easy to do but none of his advice will make anyone “rich”. It may get you out of debt and to allow you to live “comfortably” but 100% of the time it will not make you “rich”. You will never be able to quit your job when you’re young or live your dream lifestyle from following the advice in this book.

• 4. Invest 15% of your household income into retirement plans
• 5. Begin college funds for your kids
• 6. Pay off your home early
• 7. Build wealth and give

All of this advice involves so much reliance on your fund manager and does not improve your financial IQ at all. By the time you actually reach baby step number 7, you would be so old, there would be hardly any time left to build wealth or give anything!

Dave Ramsey has one piece of advice that he reiterates throughout the whole book: Avoid debt at all costs!

Now for the “average person” (a broke American remember), this is a great piece of advice. I completely agree that we should pay cash for our day to day expenses, we should have an emergency fund in a bank account and we should not waste money on things that are not needed.

However, Dave Ramsey doesn’t seem to understand good debt at all. He says “do not even think about investing in property until you can pay cash!”

Property

I can understand why some people may think this way and it’s clear that Dave Ramsey has been burnt from property investments in his past. However, there are so many ways to invest in property, let alone other asset classes. You can buy to rent out, you can refurbish and sell, you can refurb then remortgage and rent. You can invest in property without buying them such as rent to rent!

The one thing that I can guarantee is that it is riskier to just wait and not learn anything about investing until you can buy a property for cash!

 

The average UK house price in 2018 according to nationwide.co.uk is £216,103

The average salary for men according to Monster.com is £30,530 (it’s lower for women).

 

So let’s say, by some miracle, the average man manages to save £10,000 a year (a third of his salary each year despite tax, bills, accommodation and general living expenses). That means this average person will have to wait over 21 years to buy one investment property.

However, since 1952, the longest time it has taken for property prices to double has been 16 years. So it will more likely be over 40 years until this “average person” can even think about investing in property if they manage to save a third of their salary for 40 years!!

I’m no genius, but it is clear to see this person will NEVER invest in property and never even learn about ways of investing in property because they are waiting to save some made up amount of money before they start.

Commodities

Commodities are general things that humans need such as water, food, oil, metals etc. Dave doesn’t talk about any commodities to invest in other than gold. And all he says is don’t even consider investing in it!!

He claims that gold has only increased by 2.38% on average over the past 177 years.

However, he fails to mention its current value in comparison to other assets. I don’t want to go into too much detail here as this will stray from the book review (again!) An example of working out value is by comparing how many ounces of gold it costs to purchase one share of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI- 30 big American Stocks).

 

 

It currently would cost over 20 ounces of gold to purchase one share of the DJI. As seen in the graph above, there have only been 18 years (since 1920) that the price of gold was as undervalued as it currently is compared to the US stock market.  Previously it has cost as low as 3 ounces of gold to buy one share.

This doesn’t mean everyone should now sell their stocks and buy gold. It just shows that with a good financial education you can start to make more informed decisions about what a good investment is and what isn’t!

This is just an example of ways to increase our own financial IQ. You can compare the value of gold to property prices, other precious metals, oil or pretty much anything. When you do this you will start to be able to understand whether something is overvalued or undervalued. The price of something should not be a factor when investing!

This is why it really baffled me and made me question whether this guy has any financial IQ when he said, “why would you want to buy something when it is at a 177 year high?”

EVERYTHING IS AT A 177 YEAR HIGH… because of inflation!! He even talked about inflation earlier in the book, he just doesn’t connect the two things!!

 

What can we do then?

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Keep Learning

If there was one thing that you can take away from this review, it is to keep learning. Increase your financial IQ should be the main message from any financial book. Saving and sticking money into a mutual fund is a sure way to ensure you always stay average financially!

I’ve spoken highly about books like “The Millionaire Fastlane” and “Rich Dad Poor Dad“. I personally think finding your own “why” or defining your own vision, values and purpose is far more important than trying to pinch pennies.

Personally, from my own experience, it all becomes the same thing. When you end up working towards your goals and try to increase your income (or expand your means) you end up living below your means (spending less on “stuff”) because you spend your time more wisely.

Nearly all of our income now goes into investments, adventures abroad and experiences that make us happy with friends and family. We have stopped spending as much money on unnecessary purchases as we just don’t spend as much time shopping (I’ve always thought shopping is what bored people do!)

Pay Yourself First

We pay ourselves first and then spend the money left over. When I first heard Robert Kiyosaki say pay yourself first I completely misunderstood him. I thought that meant to go and buy the TV you want or the new pair of trainers that David Beckham wears.

What he really meant is put money away to buy assets first, and then use what’s left over for food, fun and bills. If you don’t have enough money for the month then you’re going to have to find a way to make more… or your bills won’t get paid and someone else will chase you up to make more money!

Expand your means

There are so many ways to make a little bit of extra cash if you need. Taking surveys online or becoming a virtual assistant (look into Fiverr or Upwork) are a couple (out of millions) of ways to make instant cash online. If you’re a teacher can you tutor? If you enjoy booking holidays, people will pay you to do this. I am one of these people who will pay you! Think about what you enjoy doing and start getting paid for this if you need more money towards the end of the month!

Long term it’s vital to find ways of increasing passive income. My definition of passive income is spending time today that pays you over and over again in the future. It doesn’t mean you won’t have to do anything again and money will keep rolling in. It just means money will keep rolling in even if you can’t work for one week, or you need to go on a holiday to Barbados for a month!!

This is exactly why starting an online business is a great way to expand your means. You will have to work on it to receive payments through affiliate links, adverts or selling your own products. However, once you do the work and set it up in a way to increase your traffic to the website for free (SEO) you can start to receive money over and over again for the time that you put in today.

 

The Complete Guide to Money: The “MakeTimeOnline” Review Final Word

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This book has some great tips in if you are in a lot of bad debt and need some strategies to get your finances in order. You should set a monthly budget each month to get an idea of where your money is going. These tips are pretty simple, but very effective, ways of making your money work harder.

 

However, if you are looking for a COMPLETE guide to money. This book is not that.

The advice about investing actively discourages people to learn more about investments. The book encourages you to put your faith in mutual fund managers and pension schemes, which have already been proven to not know what they are doing when markets are going down (many mutual funds lost more than 40% in 2008!)

Truly sophisticated investors make money when markets are going up, down or sideways. 

The truly “rich” make their money through business. Many people still have a belief that all business people are greedy and bad people. Or they believe they have some special, unique gift that we “mortals” don’t possess.

The truth is anyone can start a business… you can start one online in the next 5 minutes by clicking this link! Do you really want to have the freedom to choose what you want to do with your time and spend it with who you want to?

If you do, the only real focus should be figuring out “what is your why”. Keep spending time working out what your purpose, vision and values are. You will find the passion to do whatever you want from here.

The key takeaway from this review (not the book) is to keep increasing your own financial IQ!

Keep changing for the better,

Mike

 

 

If you have any questions and I mean ANY questions about the Complete Guide to Money, please leave them below. If you have read the book before or used any of Dave Ramsey’s courses before I’d love to hear from you too!!

If you are interested in making money online to free up your time, have a look at my #1 recommended program here, which I am currently using.

Your Network is Your Net Worth

Have you ever heard this before? Your network is your net worth.

It’s something that I find people say quite a lot but it always seems a bit of a weird one. I’ve always thought surely the things you own is how to figure out your net worth so what are they going on about?

Recently I’ve started to realise that actually the people that say these kinds of things may well be on to something!

 

Why is Your Network so Important?

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The definition of a network is a group or system of interconnected people or things. What I am talking about in this post is all about the people you are connected to.

I recently heard a story about a man from Malaysia who managed to raise 10 billion dollars from Goldman Sachs. Later $5 billion disappeared… I wonder where that went!!

This guy called Jho Low had connections to rich Arab families from his university days in Whorton. He was naturally a great networker and realised how other people could help him but apparently was very good at showing them how he could help them.

He managed to keep putting himself between people until he ended up becoming an international financier. This is when he managed to use Goldman Sachs to raise extraordinary amounts of funds from investors. I’m sure this will become a film in the future but you can read the book “Billion Dollar Whale” here.

It’s important to remember that we are now in the information age. There are a different set of rules compared to the industrial age. It’s more important than anything else that we have good connections and have meaningful relationships with people if we want to be able to live the lifestyle we dream of and achieve the things we’d like to in life.

 

How to Build Your Network

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Social Media

This is the main way to build your network in the information age. It’s never been easier to join a “community” of like-minded people by just searching for a group on Facebook! The key here is to actually engage though. If you join hundreds of affiliate marketing groups and then never read or write anything useful in them, then you have wasted your time joining them.

But how do you find out who is genuine and who are novices? Simple!! Ask questions.

I used to set myself small targets of posting or commenting on one post a day in certain groups. Just doing this for a month you will see who regularly engages in the community. The key now is to filter out the people that are either too negative or don’t really know what they are talking about.

Sending these people a private message to ask about something in more detail can really help to start building that relationship. However, the relationship doesn’t really start until you make time for them either on a phone/ skype call or ideally meeting up with them in person.

I live in Qatar and I still regularly speak to great people that live in the UK using the power of the Internet!

Personal Brand

You may have heard people like Gary V or Rob Moore saying things like:

Build your own personal brand!

This is really just an extension of social media.

This is something that I found particularly hard to understand initially (and still do find it a bit weird!) But you are missing out on so much potential if you don’t do this! Just put yourself out there on videos and social media and people will start to feel like they get to know you. You don’t need to spend additional time doing this, just document your own life.

People will be interested in certain things that you do and you’re building trust with all the people that follow you in one go. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not because this is so obvious, just be yourself.

Seminars or Courses

There are loads of free seminars for all sorts of things all over the world. Sarah and I went on some property courses in the UK. We went to some free ones and even here you get to meet like-minded people in the same room. You don’t have to be really extraverted or weird to make a connection it’s easy enough just to talk to the person sitting next to you and learn a bit about them.

Meetups

We went to free property meetups every month and have recently found a meet up in Qatar. These are great ways to meet people that are often doing something similar to you or something you would like to do. It’s also great to get different people’s points of view particularly if you have a problem that you are trying to solve.

Read

This is one of the easiest ways to “rub shoulders” with some of the world’s greats. If you’d like to learn from Elon Musk, read his autobiography! If you’d like to know how to start numerous successful businesses, then read about Richard Branson.

This is one of the ways that you can find out invaluable information from some of the most successful people in the world by just reading a few pages of a book each day.

Be Consistent

The main thing for any of these networking methods is to be consistent. If you are all over a facebook group for one day and then don’t look at it for the next month, people will not remember you.

If you attend a meetup once it’s very hard to make any meaningful relationships within a few hours. You must be consistent and stay in touch with people that you speak to. If you want to learn more by reading it needs to become a habit, not just something that happens for 2 weeks each year on holiday.

 

The Number of People That You Know Isn’t Important

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It’s not about getting thousands of followers on any social network. It’s about making meaningful and good relationships with certain people. The key here is to decide who you would like to spend your time on. There are so many people on social media that it’s impossible to make meaningful connections with all of them. However, when you find someone like-minded and you believe you can learn something from then (but also contribute to their life) then it’s important to foster this relationship!

Quality over Quantity

It’s way more important to have good contacts over loads of average ones. For example, if your best mate was Richard Branson I’m sure you could find a way to fund your new business idea providing you can show him how it would work. You could also probably get some support in ensuring it was a good idea in the first place.

It’s also important to realise how connected you are to these people. If you would like to gain experience from someone but you only speak to them once then you won’t get anywhere. Equally, if you speak to someone that you think you could help out or put them in contact with someone else that could help them then do it! These relationships are a two-way street!

 

 

How Does This Relate to Affiliate Marketing

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It’s more important than anything else

Something that I am starting to learn about when using affiliate marketing is that it doesn’t matter how much content you create. Or how much time you spend on your website. Or how often you comment back to people that visit your website. None of this matters if nobody reads your stuff! You’re not making a difference to anybody else or adding any value so you will not get anybody to click your affiliate links let alone use them!

Having a good network around you helps to stay realistic, know what to expect and leverage other people’s networks to grow your own.

Learn from their mistakes

Many people have mentors exactly for this reason. It’s much better to speak to people who have already done what you are trying to achieve than trying to figure it all out by yourself. You can learn from other peoples mistakes rather than having to make all the mistakes by yourself (you still will make mistakes, but as long as you learn you will never lose!)

This is something that Wealthy Affiliates are great for! The community is so helpful and there are people that you can speak to who have been through what you have but have come out the other side.

There are also people in the community who are earning more money through their website than you ever imagined possible! Click here to find out more.

 

The Make Time Online Summary

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As you can see your network is worth a lot more to you than what most people think. It’s easy to be caught up in your own busy life but unless you are nurturing and building relationships with the type of people that you would like to learn from or be like, you will never change.

There is no excuse to not build your network and particularly develop some great relationships with people that are doing what you’d like to be doing. Social media makes this super easy in today’s world and if you’re not using any platforms you’re missing out on ways to instantly change your life for the better.

If you have any ways that helps you to build your network please let me know in the comments below!

Keep changing for the better,

Mike

 

If you are interested in making money online to free up your time, have a look at my #1 recommended program here.

How Our Wealth is Being Stolen

Sarah’s Grandparents bought their family home in London in the 1960’s for about £4,000. It is now worth around £450,000! It has increased by 11,250% in under 60 years! Or the annual growth has been 8.48% on average!

I know what you’re thinking… Property in the UK (especially London) is an amazing asset… NO, NO, NO and NO!!

If this is the case, everything is an amazing asset… because of inflation, our wealth is being stolen!

You may be wondering if it’s even worth reading this drudge! But if I do this properly I hope you can understand the current world monetary system a bit better. I promise to try to keep it as simple to understand as possible (please note I don’t claim to know everything about it and I would highly recommend doing your own research to back this up)…

I am not a financial advisor but this may affect every future financial decision you make.

 

What is inflation?

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First of all, it’s important to understand what inflation should not be. It should not be the price of things going up.

The definition of inflation should be the expansion of the currency supply from money being printed (the government call this the monetary base). If there is more money available to buy the same things, it is natural for the price of goods and services to go up.

The price of things going up is really a SYMPTOM of inflation. The reason we can tell this is by looking at some history.

The US dollar came into existence around 1775. Prices of goods were only 20% higher in 1913, and were actually 40% lower than they were during the war of 1812. So it’s fair to say that prices went up AND down in this time frame.

 

REAL LIFE EXAMPLE 1775-1913:

• Term: 138 years
• Amount to save initially: $1,000
• Amount to add each year: $100
• Interest paid annually: 3%
• Total amount in 1913: $252,736
• Amount of inflation since start date: 20%
• Total paid in: $14,800
• Inflation-adjusted amount (1775 purchasing power): $210,630

There are 2 things to note from this example:

1. Interest rates were consistently higher than 3% for this period- so the final amount could have been much higher
2. It used to make sense to save money because inflation didn’t really exist.

 

However, in 1913 the federal reserve was created. This is a PRIVATE organisation, with a balance of ZERO in its bank account who have managed to control the world monetary system as we know it today. This PRIVATE organisation decides when to “print money”.

They have played a huge role in removing the dollar from the gold standard. Currencies used to be pegged to gold i.e. $20 US would buy 1 ounce of gold. This means that it is easy for governments to print money as it doesn’t really matter how much money exists as it is not backed to anything (this is called a fiat currency).

Since 1933 (when currency started to get removed from the gold standard) inflation has rocketed. See the graph below:

It’s important to understand the difference in definitions of inflation. Not only has inflation been recorded as rocketing from 1933 but the world’s monetary supply is currently increasing MUCH faster than the price of goods and services (so the graph above should actually look a lot worse!)

This begs us to ask the question… why are the prices of “things” not increasing at the same rate as inflation?

 

How does the government measure inflation?

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Most people know that the government doesn’t want to look bad… Well, inflation is one way the guy in charge can look bad! If prices of things go up a lot in a short space of time, the public would question this and could potentially revolt against the system.

The CPI (Consumer Price Index) is how the government reports inflation. However, they should probably call this the CP-Lie (see what I did there!!)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) takes a selection of goods and services and tracks their prices throughout the years. This is a perfectly logical way of checking inflation… Apart from they don’t use the ACTUAL price and they don’t always use the SAME items each year!!

 

The sneaky buggers can use 3 ways to make inflation seem more “acceptable”:

 

1. Deletion (Governments rational- just bin that one lads, it’s gone up 10%!! Food and energy are too volatile and seasonal. It’s OK though because no one actually needs food or petrol anyway?!?)
2. Substitution (Erm… lets also just compare that Sainsbury’s finest beef to this Tesco Value chicken… Hey it’s now 10% cheaper for that comparison… BONUS!!)
3. Hedonic adjustment (knock the price down because the quality has gone up e.g. because cars now have reverse cameras (or better technology) in them lets just say this £10,000 Kia is only £9,000. That sounds fair doesn’t it fellas!?”)

 

 

From 2000 to 2008 inflation was reported at 22% using the “CP-Lie”. Inflation has never been over 4% since 1992 and was often below 2% according to the “CP-Lie”.

Using data from ShadowStats.com the CPI has actually been over 6% annually from 1992-2008 and the latter years has been over 10%. So a more accurate CPI would be a 64% increase from 2000-2008

This means that if you have money sitting in a bank it is LOSING purchasing power all the time… and not just by a little bit but as much as a 10% decrease in purchasing power in one year!

 

REAL LIFE EXAMPLE 1913-2041:

• Term: 138 years (to make it comparable to the first example)
• Amount to save initially: $1,000
• Amount to add each year: $100
• Interest paid annually: 3%
• Total amount in 2018:$252,736
• Amount of inflation since 1913: 2446% (this is up to 2018… the inflation will be MUCH higher by 2041)
• Total paid in: $14,800
• Inflation-adjusted amount (1913 purchasing power): $9,927

There are 2 things to note from this example:

1. Banks do not currently pay anywhere near 3% and there will be more inflation- so the final amount will be much lower!
2. Our wealth is being stolen by inflation. The numbers may be going up, but is our purchasing power?

 

The table on the right shows the CPI (more accurately the CP-Lie!) and monetary base since 1960.

As you can see in the highlighted cell, the monetary base (real inflation) has increased at 10.6% per year on average since 1960 (which makes investing in property in London not look as amazing as we first thought!)

Looking at this more closely you can see that CPI pretty much kept up with inflation until the 1990’s e.g. in 1978 the monetary base increased by 11.4% and in 1981 the CPI was 10.3%, which makes perfect sense!

However, in 2008 the monetary base increased by 99% (So it had taken about 220 years to expand the US monetary base and in one year they doubled it! Yes you are reading that right!!) but the CPI only increased by 3.2% in 2011. If this is not enough proof that the CPI is being manipulated then I’m not sure what is!

Note all this information is hidden in plain sight. Have a look at statista.com and please do your own research to back this up!

 

What should we do?

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I am very aware that this is not interesting to most people and graphs and numbers can seem very confusing. So I want to try and explain what this means for us in day to day life.

If you like the vast majority of people interested in saving for your future and are working hard for your money and living frugally, then here are my top tips:

Tip #1 – Do NOT stick your money in a bank and leave it there!! You obviously want some sort of buffer in a bank account that you can access instantly in emergencies. Some people recommend 3-6 month worth of expenses but I think if you have some more liquid assets (easily accessible such as stocks or gold) then you don’t even need this much depending on your lifestyle or job.

Tip #2 – Educate yourself more about different investments and asset classes that interest you. There are 4 main asset classes: Property (or real estate if you’re not from the UK), business (read more here about business CENTS), commodities (gold, silver, oil, wheat etc.) and paper assets (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or index funds).

Tip #3 – Do NOT just invest for the long haul. Due to the current financial system and inflation, you will not actually be improving your purchasing power even if you make 8% return every year. It is possible to make a much better return in every asset class listed above but to do this you need to invest in yourself and educate yourself!

Tip #4 – Build your network- Start talking to new people who know what they’re doing. This has never been easier! With social media, you can literally join a group on Facebook, become active on there each day and after a month you will know who knows what they’re talking about and who doesn’t. Just send them a private message and ask them some questions.

The real relationships start building when you make phone/ skype calls with these people. Since I moved to Qatar I have made more meaningful connections to people living in England that are dealing with millions of pounds worth of investments, all because of Skype and social networks and me becoming brave enough to chat to new people.

Tip #5 – Expand your means. Have you ever heard of these financial gurus telling you to live below your means and live frugally? This is absolute trash!! This advice would have worked before 1913 as inflation didn’t really exist. Obviously, don’t go spending more than what you earn, but rather than focus on reducing your spending what about focusing on increasing your income?

I know, I know, you received a 2% pay rise since last year in your job. What your employer doesn’t tell you (or probably doesn’t even know) is that it is actually an 8% pay cut compared to it’s purchasing power due to inflation. Find ways to increase your income! Click here to see how I am doing this.

Tip #6 – Start doing! The best way to learn is by doing the real thing. If you don’t want to lose money, most things have a trial period or a “fake money” account to start with. If you have an idea, just Nike it!

 

The Make Time Online Summary

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If you look up the definition of inflation it will be the rate of goods and services rising. In actual fact, this is really the symptom of inflation. Inflation is really the increase in the monetary base. Before 1933 inflation didn’t really exist as money wasn’t printed until the federal reserve came to exist in 1913.

Inflation is currently reported by the CPI (or CP-Lie), but this figure has been manipulated to be much lower than what it actually is.

This means living frugally and investing for the long haul no longer works. We need to find ways to increase our income if we want to be financially secure in life.

I know this can be a hard pill to swallow but all of this information is out there. It only takes a quick google search to back up what I’m saying here.

The question is, do you want to be ignorantly bliss (and get a rude awakening in the future) or are you going to do something to make sure you are prepared?

Keep changing for the better,

Mike

 

Please leave your thoughts and comments below, I really believe this is vitally important for people to learn about and I always want to hear others opinions on the matter.

If you are interested in making money online to free up your time, have a look at my #1 recommended program here, which I am currently using.

 

 

 

 

Some useful books to read if you want to learn more about this:

The Crash Course- Chris Martenson

Guide to Investing in Gold and Silver- Mike Maloney 

 

Websites to help research:

• www.businessinsider.com
• statista.com
• ShadowStats.com

Do Most People Hate Their Jobs?… Research says YES!

Since 2000, Gallup has polled millions of employees from over 200 countries to work out the answer to “do most people hate their jobs?”. They reported that 85% of all people hate their jobs.  

Work has been reported more often a source of frustration than fulfilment for 90% of employees. Employees that don’t enjoy their jobs typically are “emotionally disconnected” and “disengaged”. Some countries in Asia and Africa have a much higher rate of “disengagement” but even more developed countries, such as the United States, has 70% of employees that hate their job.

The question begs to be asked. Why do so many people hate their jobs?

 

5 Things Forcing Employees to Resent Their Jobs

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Longer Hours

Employees are expected to work longer and longer. Working weeks of over 50 hours (don’t forget to include travel time!!) is very typical for a lot of jobs. Due to the high competition for each job people feel they have to justify why they have this position and therefore work longer!

Trivial Work- Low Self Gratification

More and more “service jobs” (McJobs) are being filled by overqualified people. Technical positions are being shipped overseas to cheaper areas. This means employees are left with a gap not being filled. They do not feel like they are contributing what they can to society and are left with that empty feeling.

Not Rewarded for Hard Work

The majority of jobs still pay people based on how many hours they work. Employees sign a contract that says something like “I will work 45 hours a week, with an expectation to do more on some weekends”. The employee gets paid the same amount every month no matter how well they do they job.

Our Wages seem to be Going Down

“Each year my pay goes up (slightly) but every year it feels harder to do the same things I did last year”. I remember a colleague telling me this when I first started teaching.

This was around the same time that was reading and learning a lot about the world economy (because it never made any sense to me!) The short answer to this concern is that it is true… 100% true. Inflation means that our money doesn’t go as far each year, unless your employer hands out 10% pay rises (I’m not even joking about the amount – stay tuned for a future post about inflation… it’s frightening!)

Does Job Security Even Exist Anymore?

Remember employees don’t get paid extra for doing great work… well they may get fired if they don’t do their job well enough! I remember hearing Ross on friends saying that he got “tenure” at his job. I had no idea what this meant at the time, but it has historically been possible for people to get a job for life. People under 30 are probably not even aware this is (was) a thing!

So What Can You Do?

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To be honest, there is a way out. The Internet has literally created a new era for human beings and it’s called “the information age”. Knowledge becomes information and information is money in today’s world. Therefore, all you need to get started is some knowledge about anything… and not even a lot because you can (and will) learn as you go.

If you were to work as hard on the Internet as you were at your job you would 100% be more successful (in terms of value you provide, self-gratification and money that you earn). There are lots of reasons for this but here are a few (to read more click here):

• It’s easy to build an online presence (Click here to build a website in the next 5 minutes)
• There are fewer barriers to starting your own online business compared to most businesses (you just need a laptop, or phone and internet connection)
• There are more people online every day = More money being spent online every day
• Make money by the second, not by the month.

One of the worst relationships we have is… using time to earn money. It has been ingrained into us that the best way to earn more money is to work harder and longer. It’s important to remember that if you have grown up with “formal education” you have been taught how to become an employee.

The information age creates so many NEW opportunities that our teachers, parents and their parents won’t even be aware of. It’s important to think carefully about where we receive our information from.

 

Are You Too Comfortable?

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Do you really HATE your job? If you do that’s great! It’s so much easier to change something when we reeeeaaaaallllllly HATE it.

If you are one of those people (like me!) who actually quite enjoys their job but you feel like there is more to life than doing it for the next 20-50 years, then, unfortunately, your situation is harder. You are too comfortable right now so it makes changing very hard as you have to visualise your future self. EURGH I KNOW!

What a lot of people will do when they really hate their job is quit… and then find another one. The problem is that a few months or years down the line they are back in that same position. So they quit and find another one. I’m sure you get the idea.

So the bad news is you are likely to be unhappy with your current job situation (like 85% of people). The good news is there is a way out of the day to day grind, and no experience is necessary!

Do you Want to Change?

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If you are ready to make a change you have to know that it will require more work of you right now. The key here is the words RIGHT NOW. It doesn’t mean you will have to work harder or longer forever (or even for too long).

The plan is to stop NEEDING to work full time. When this happens you will actually work a lot less. To get to this stage without giving your whole lifestyle up right now you will have to work harder initially.

I am currently putting in an extra 2 hours every day (Sarah keeps telling me off when I spend more- like right now… Coming Dear!!!), so note it doesn’t have to be a huge commitment. I have spoken to people that started with 5 hours a week and some that stayed up late each night to commit more time to their online business.

Just remember we want to separate ourselves from the time and money relationship. What you DO with that time is far more important. Unfortunately, when starting out it can seem overwhelming and hard to know what to actually do.

This is why I’ve started using Wealthy Affiliate. There is step-by-step training to help you get your online business up and running… no matter what you’re interested in! The support is amazing, any question will get answered quickly as there will be someone else that had the exact same thought before. You will 100% have support from at least one person too (me!)

If you have any questions or want to vent about something at work please leave them below. I’m sure that I can personally help you out as I have been there and done that!

 

Keep changing for the better,

Mike

 

If you are interested in seeing how I started my online business and the current training I am using then check out my #1 recommended program here.

Millionaire Fastlane Review in PDF – Do What Makes Financial CENTS!

“The Millionaire Fastlane” review in PDF will show you how it is one of the most straight-talking, to the point, eye-opening books that I have ever read.

BEWARE of this disclaimer straight away: This is not for everyone! MJ De Marco is very blunt, there’s definitely a bit of over exaggeration and he will say something that you probably won’t like.

A lot of the ideas in his book are about making some big money (over $200,000 per month according to MJ). If this is not something you are interested in learning then this book may not be for you.

However, with the way the world’s financial system currently is, you are either on the Fastlane or you’re going backwards.

 

The Millionaire Fastlane – The Overview and Rankings

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• Name: The Millionaire Fastlane
• Author: MJ De Marco – 89 out of 100
• Originality: 98 out of 100
• Practical methods: 78 out of 100
• Enjoyability: 95 out of 100
• Price: Audible $24.95/ Kindle $5.81/ Hardcover $12.49
• Maketimeonline.com Rating: 89 out of 100

 

Pros and Cons

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Pros

• Gives you one massive kick up the butt!
• Practical advice into what business to start to get on the fastlane
• Helps to question the status quo- does living in the rat race really have to be normal?
• Makes you want to stop wasting your time! Is playing fortnite or watching strictly come dancing really enjoyable or are you escaping?
• Shows you why your most important asset is TIME (I’m sure you know I agree with this one!)
• Become a producer rather than a consumer
• Working for money makes no sense!

Cons

• Does a bit of author bashing- even though I completely agree the name dropping is not needed- he even criticises Robert Kiyosaki, who I actually think is promoting the same thing as him!
•  Can be overwhelming to hear so much of what we know is apparently so “wrong”!

 

Sidewalk, Slowlane and Fastlane

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Sidewalk

MJ claims the “Sidewalker” has no financial plan and spends surplus money immediately on new gadgets, a new car or trip.

They believe they need to use time and money right now as they don’t know what tomorrow will bring. They will gamble and buy lottery tickets in the hope it brings them the big bucks!

Slowlane

The “Slowlaner” knows that if they save their money now they can invest it in the stock market and in 50 years their $10,000 will become $4 squidrillion due to compound interest.

They believe their job is their sole source of income.

The issue for the slowlaner is that it takes their whole life to get their hands on this money and due to changes in the financial system or their pension scheme, they may never see this money or it isn’t worth as much due to inflation and taxes.

Fastlane

The “Fastlaner” knows about another way.

A way where the more they help others, the richer they become in time, money and personal fulfilment.

They don’t have to wait 50 years to start living this life it can be in 5 or 7 years time. They know that it won’t be easy but every time they fail, they learn, which helps for the next time.

 

Who is this book for?

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This book is for people that really want to change their lifestyle and be able to own time so they can choose ANYTHING they want to do.

MJ will literally question everything you currently know about money and how to earn it, even though most of his financial ideas are nothing new… he makes them sound new!

However, I can almost guarantee that some people will stop reading half-way through or they won’t even pick up the book because he is too direct and comes across as pretty arrogant. This doesn’t take away from the fact that this guy talks sense and knows his stuff.

So it is my job in this blog post to ensure you get the main points from his book because I feel like they are too important to not be known!

The main question that can really help you decide how to start a business is this simple question…

Does it make financial CENTS?

Here are the 5 most important commandments to ensure your business is on the Millionaire Fastlane.

 

Control

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“You are either in control of your own financial plan or you aren’t, there is no in between.” MJ DeMarco

This is a very important commandment but most people will not even realise whether they are in control or not until further down the line. A great example is network marketing. You will hear about some network marketers that will do very well for themselves, or you may even be one.

However, if something was to change in that company tomorrow that meant you couldn’t sell their products anymore, all your income would disappear overnight.

That is because you do not control the company. You own a job managing and creating a sales organisation.

Obviously choosing the right company in the first place could offset this risk and I’m not saying you can’t earn some good money (over $20,000 per month) from network marketing. You will just never earn “big” (over $200,000 a month) or “legendary” (over $1 million per month) money from this… unless you own the network marketing company!

What should I do then?

Start creating your own brand or business.

Even as an affiliate marketer (promoting other people’s products online for a commission) this is something you can do. You can start selling other people’s products but create your own brand at the same time. Eventually, you can create your own products for this brand and really take control.

So would you rather be a driver or a hitchhiker? In General:

• Drivers create network marketing companies; they don’t join them.
• Drivers sell franchises; they don’t buy them.
• Drivers offer affiliate programs; they don’t buy them
• Drivers offer employment; they don’t get employed
• Drivers accept rents and royalties; they don’t pay rent and royalties

Some questions to ask yourself:

• Do I own the company?
• Am I reliant on another platform or someone else to make money?
• Do I have a diversified income stream or am I reliant on one income source?

 

Entry

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Is it easy to start?

If it is… it won’t be on the Fastlane!

Working a JOB, Investing in stocks, starting network marketing, buying a special kit that has a website made for you for $40 are all examples of things that are super easy to enter into.

If it’s something that everyone is doing, then you will become just like everyone… and everyone isn’t wealthy!

It’s actually quite a well-known investing technique (which hardly anybody does due to fear and greed) that if everyone is buying something you should be selling it. It was the same with the dot-com bubble in 2000, the property bubble in 2008 and the crypto bubble just at the end of last year in 2017.

Just afterwards when people want rid of their “terrible” investments would have been a perfect time to buy these investments whilst they were on sale… time will tell if that’s the case for certain cryptocurrencies.

What stops everyone from doing it?

If there is something that stops everyone from doing it then there will always be a level of difficulty and therefore it can be a better opportunity.

It’s important you figure out what this is and are prepared for this.

For example, consistency of working on your business is a big reason why everyone is not an affiliate marketer. It is relatively easy to set up a website.

But it is not easy to set up an autoresponder, be present on social media platforms, have an email list, create quality content and consistently add value to your audience.

You must be prepared to be consistent.

The only way to beat the masses if everyone is doing something is to be exceptional. You do not have to always reinvent the wheel but you do need to be prepared to put the effort in.

 

Need- possibly the most important Commandment

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Does it solve someone’s problems?

People will ONLY care about what your business can do for THEM!

Do not ever believe anything else.

You may have found something completely unique and something that you think you would love to have. However, you have to surrender your own wants and address the wants of others (people are innately selfish according to MJ!)

Chase Needs, Not Money!

Are you doing something to solve problems or are you doing it to make money (Wantrepreneurs)?

A lot of people will make this mistake.

They will think about something that they are an “expert in” or something that they think can make them money. This is the WRONG way to think!

I think this is why business people typically have such a bad name for themselves. People associate business owners with chasing money.

However, the best business owners will actually chase needs e.g. Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

The niche is so important

I didn’t start my affiliate marketing business for ages.

I thought about it for a long time before acting on it (it’s been something I considered when Sarah and I started our first blog in mid-2017). This is because I knew the niche was very important (thanks to MJ).

I thought about some type of fitness, self-development, food, happiness niches just to name a few. However, I decided on my “making money online” niche because I could see there was a demand for it. For one… I wanted it!

I was no expert in this niche!

I didn’t just dive into starting a business when I read Rich Dad Poor Dad in 2012. I ensured my business idea made financial CENTS and I checked to see if people needed it. The more I work on it, the more of an “expert” I am becoming.

Click here to read more about how to find your niche.

Is your business different?

Something I realised about financial advice gurus was that they nearly all focus on SAVING money and living BELOW your means (frugal has become this cool word thrown around on Twitter).

Even really successful financial gurus such as Dave Ramsey, Tony Robbins and Andrew Hallam focus on these things.

I get why they do this and I understand so many people need to do this more, after all, it is the foundation of getting our finances in check.

However, what people really need to do more of is increase their financial intelligence.

Doing this will help to find ways to make more money and expand their means (or solve other peoples needs)! Plus it’s much easier to be passionate or get excited about living a lifestyle that you really want rather than cutting back on things.

Some examples of fastlane thinking:

• Make them look better (nutrition, exercise, clothing, makeup).
• Raise a positive emotion (love, happiness, laughter etc.)
• Educate them.
• Make things easier.
• Enhance their dreams and provide hope.
• Give them security (housing, safety, health).

Only follow your “love” if the market wants it

This has to be the most common mistake! You will hear a lot of affiliate marketers who claim “do what you love to make more money” (Wealthy Affiliate‘s training can even be interpreted like this).

However, it’s crucial to realise there are niches that do NOT solve needs as an affiliate marketing e.g. being an affiliate of underwear will never be profitable!

Remember:

Choose a profitable niche that you are interested in… make money… you will then develop a passion for this niche (note that a passion and a love for something are two very different things)

Still on the search for a business idea?

Start listening out for pain points of people and what people want. These are some common phrases to look out for in daily life:

• I hate…
• I don’t like…
• This frustrates me…
• Why is this like this?
• Do I have to… ?
• I wish there was…
• I’m tired of…
• This sucks…

 

Time

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Can the product exist in time and standalone without your connection to it?

This is an area where people starting a “business” get confused. If you need to work to earn money, you have created a job, not a business!

Your business should be able to bring money in at any time of the day… including when you sleep!!

Does it serve while you are away?

One of the most important things to do with a business is to automate it. If you need to do everything in the business it will be impossible to grow. The more value you provide, the more time you will need to give.

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can use systems and hire people (on an hourly basis or part-time) to help grow and improve your business.

The goal is to get away from the worst relationship ever created… your time for money.

 

Scale

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Scale is about leverage

There are 6 business habitats (plus real business examples):

1. Local community (pool)- Tanning salon
2. City (pond)- Upscale Restaurant
3. State/ county (lagoon)- A fitness business
4. Regional (lake)- A property developer
5. National (sea)- A big bank
6. Worldwide (ocean)- Internet company

The 2 ways to scale

Net Profit= Units Sold x Unit Profit

Imagine you were selling sandwiches at a local store. How many can you sell in one day? Fifty? A hundred? How many hours are there in a day? Can you see how scale is limited here?

This guy could scale his business by making more stores across the country and increasing his reach but his unit profit will always be limited (max $10?). He can only ever sell to people physically coming into the store and during certain hours of the day.

The best thing about starting an online business is that your products scale but your work doesn’t. You literally can reach the whole world and unit profit can easily change (depending on what you are selling or promoting).

 

Millionaire Fastlane: MakeTimeOnline Summary

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If you are not in the fastlane you will be going backwards in today’s financial world!

The world has really changed since the internet was invented and the gap between people using it to help them and those that are not will only get bigger.

Making money online meets all five of the commandments.

It is one of the few types of businesses that does this.

It’s clearly written in MJ De Marco’s book but it’s up to you how you use the information.

To be on the fastlane you need to make financial CENTS. Possibly the most important lesson is that when you chase people’s needs, money will flow to you. So figure out what people want and need and help them solve this problem. Stop chasing money!

Keep changing for the better,

Mike

 

If you are interested in seeing how I started my online business and the current training I am using then check out my #1 recommended program here.