The Financial Stylist - Credit Cards

There is a way to use your credit card to give you free use of your spending money. Shhhhh... That one is a secret and one day when i put it on video, i will share that knowledge.
Basically, find a credit card that has no annual fee and offers you bonuses to use it. Always pay it off at the end of the month. Once i was buying a big ticket item and called the credit card company to put my BIG purchase on the card and asked them to skyrocket my credit limit for just one month! I was after the big bonus of points that i would get! It worked! They did it! I used my credit card once to buy a new car, but they only allowed so much of the ticket price that could go on a credit card.

The Financial Stylist - Investment Clubs

An investment club is a great way to get started investing in stocks. Pool you resources together and invest in many stocks. I was part of three of them before i went solo and used the techniques that i had learned from the clubs as to which strategies worked the best.

The Financial Stylist - Quote

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there!" So true! A man with a plan is something that you want to be unless you are a woman with a plan of course!

The Financial Stylist - Debt Stacking

If you find yourself in debt, you get rid of your smaller bills and then use that free money to put against the larger amounts. Try to get the greatest interest rate bills first since they are working against your efforts the most.

The Financial Stylist - Looking Ahead!

Take a sheet of paper, list out the next 10yrs in a vertical column and each month going across. Now plot on each month or wherever an event like your birthday, when the mortgage is finished or a car loan etc... Try and get a vision for the future.

The Financial Stylist - Cash Flow Game

Robert K. the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad has created a great game. Play it well and with a little luck, you will see how to get out of the rat race. It is very educational.

The Financial Stylist - Start Today

Begin today! Today is the first day of the rest of your life! Today is the day that you can start to be all that you could have been!

The Financial Stylist - Attend Free Training

Everytime you get an opportunity to take some free training or educational time, do so! Look at your library to see what their programs may entail. Watch your newspapers too!

The Financial Stylist - Seg Funds

These are the best according to any of my life insurance contacts. They are safe and you always seem to get a return of around 9% or better.

The Financial Stylist - Finding an Insurance Agent

This is really tough. Usually there is a friend of a family member that gets recommended to you. You don't have to pick the first one that comes to your door.
I would like to hear them explain the various types of insurance options and to give the pluses and minuses of each type. If they suggest Whole Life or a Universal policy, i like to show them the door and say goodnight. If they recommend term and to invest the rest in a separate savings package, i keep listening.
The bottom line for me is that i like to build equity as much as possible and cut my expenses which has no sustainance to show for the money spent. Ideally, i would like to have sooooo much equity and cash reserves that i do not need insurance at all!

The Financial Stylist - Pet Insurance?

Yes. You can even insure your pet! I have to hand it to the insurance companies to come up with this idea.

The Financial Stylist - Accidental Insurance Only ???

I think over time, heart attacks and cancer became #1 killers and insurance companies did some heavy mail outs promoting "Accidental" insurance. Of course, take your insurance money and not likely ever have to pay someone off since accidental deaths are not the #1 killers. Smart huh? Watch for the fine print when one of these advertisings comes your way!

The Financial Stylist - How Much Insurance is Enough?

Some people "overbuy" insurance trying to see that their families are well covered. Some "underbuy" not giving their family the proper coverage. What you are trying to do, is to replace your income so that your family can at least live the same lifestyle without enduring hardships. What really is likely to happen, is that your spouse will likely remarry at some point down the road, a thought that may be hard to think about.

The Financial Stylist - Insurance for Babies Even

I remember this idea of insurance for babies coming available. Ask yourself if a death of an infant would be a devestating financial blow? In most cases not.

The Financial Stylist - Term Life Insurance

Them are fighting words for me! Basically, the saying goes, if your death will cause a hardship for someone, you need to buy some life insurance to see that it doesn't. I like it because i do not work for anyone so that i am not biased because i just happen to have life insurance products for sale. So i will suggest that you buy "term" insurance and invest the rest. I watched a T.V. show on a lady with two kids whose husband passed away unexpectedly. They had the expensive "whole life" insurance plan. Well, she recieved about $10,000 in the end whereas with the amount that they were paying, they could have had a much bigger "term" policy. The T.V. host talked to the insurance salesperson who just said that it was good that she had some insurance rather than none! I was not impressed! What kind do you have? Check with your employer as well to see if they could increase your coverage as a group plan can offer the best rates available. I was able at one time to get 4 times my annual salary. I will post more on this topic over the course of next week.

The Financial Stylist - Thought For Today!

"Spend less than you earn and you will always have money!"

The Financial Stylist - Financial Planners

Financial planners either give you advice and help you nail down a financial path to follow or they are salespersons with a variety of products to sell you. They may have some books to give you for reading as well with some of the basics. I would be classified in the first category.

The Financial Stylist - After Tax Dollars!

Think about this, gross income vs net income. We spend after tax dollars and look at what you have to earn in order to produce an after tax dollar. Think about how you can spend them wisely and stretch out their value to match the cost that you paid to obtain them in the first place. For example, you could buy a new couch for $800 or possible find the same couch used where someone is moving across the country and you might get it for $400. Using you after tax dollar, you are now gaining back the cost on some items by spending wisely.

The Financial Stylist - Smart Money vs Dumb Money

There are two types of money, Smart Money and Dumb Money. Smart money makes the most of itself and dumb money is very soon spent and gone forever, just living for the moment.

The Financial Stylist - Elements

Everything seems to revolve around two elements... Time and Money. Ever had too much month left at the end of the money? So what is needed is a "system" to take your income and divide it up til it can get replenished and that you do not have that problem seeing too much month left at the end of the money. We need to spread the money over time. Hmmm... that almost sounds like creating a budget would be the next step, huh?

The Financial Stylist - Keeping Up With the Jones?

Are the Jones really a Tower of Power? Their fancy clothes, cars, house etc? Nope, not likely. More like they are up to their eyeballs in debt that if one thing goes wrong, the whole house of cards fall down! For them, it is all about image! Image can be very important. You have to look the part when it comes to your job. I recall my wife's uncle, a farmer and when he became a house builder, it took a lot of people getting use to that idea that he could build houses too! The image that they had was that of a farmer. What image do you portray? Can you act like someone that you are not? Can you change your current image in order to move forward? Do you want to be the Jones that everyone is trying to keep up with?

The Financial Stylist - Change

I watch this building going up. Everyday, there are changes that are happening. I never really noticed much on a daily basis, but when i would only pass this way every month or so, i really was able to see the leaps of progress.

If you do what you always do, you get the same results that you have always been getting! To go somewhere else, you must CHANGE! Are you ready to do that? Do you recognize that if you could form a new habit, you could be on the path sooner? It is never too late to become all that you could have been! Life is always in a constant mode of changing. Kids grow up fast and we do not even notice it til we start to look back on some photos taken in the past. Then reality sets in!

Financial Stylist - What is Your Lifestyle?

One of the starting things that you must look at is your lifestyle. What you will need to do is to imagine watching you from a distance taking in the BIG picture as it is. I watch a lot of people in a rut cycle. Work, eat, smoke, have a beer or two or a lot more, go to sleep and repeat the daily rut cycle until the weekend. Are you a spender or a saver? How do you run your finances now? Do you always have an excuse why the rent is never on time? Are you pretty good with handling the money now but wish that you could do better, be more effective?

The Financial Stylist - What Do You Want???

I have a friend Nick who asks this question of all ages. "What do you want?" If you can answer that, then you can create goals that you can obtain. Perhaps make a list and see what things are important to you. This can be a very tough question to answer and might take some thought to arrive at a list of goals that you wish to attain. What are some goals? A house, marriage, a new car, travel, retirement, etc. Some goals are in the near future, some in the distant and some very far future like retirement. A new car might be sooner and a distant one might be saving for a new house. "A wise man once said that if you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there!" Goals are important. Choose wisely.

The Financial Stylist - Introduction

Once upon a time, on a failed move to Vancouver, B.C. that lasted for 3 months, i was returning to back to Winnipeg, Manitoba in November of 1975 with all my belongings under a cap of a pick up truck and my engine siezed in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. I had ten dollars on me and no job. I guess that this is a good place to start my story. I hitched hike to Winnipeg, stayed with my inlaws and found a job and then my brother inlaw came out to tow my truck to the city.
Then came the early 80's. I found myself looking at a credit card statement one time and seeing a good chunk of my paycheque disappear to pay that bill. It was at that time that i began my quest to find a "system" to do my finances.
I worked the system as i learned of many strategies along the way.
I took a millionaire's seminar one time and what really stood out was that all millionaires have a "system" and they work it. In around 1998, my next door neighbor gave me a book called "The Millionaire Next Door." She must have had some kind of insight at the time. By 2006/2007, i became a millionaire the slow way! With the recession that followed and a the worst investment of my life, i lost my status as a millionaire, but still retained the knowledge of how to get there again only the path that i used was no longer available and circumstances had changed drastically. Well, that is a challenge for me currently, but let's journey back in time and help you do a lot better than what you are doing now based on the paths where i have trodden.