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You will not get to financial heaven by saving money and investing in 401(k)s and mutual funds. It is virtually impossible. Yet, that is what most financial experts and planners tell you to do. That advice will not get you there.
Investment plans such as 401(k)s in the United States, Japan, and England; superannuations in Australia and New Zealand; or RSSs in Canada were never designed to be vehicles for retirement. They are basically savings plans, and not very good ones at that.
Today, it is nearly impossible to save your way to retirement. Can it be done? For some, yes. For most, no. It’s unachievable for the majority of us because of:
• Rising taxes
(Did you know that the average person in the United States works four months, from January to April, just to pay taxes? This varies from country to country. Check out the statistics in your country.)
• Inflation,
• Lack of pensions,
• Future rising interest rates,
• Devaluation of the dollar and other currencies,
• Insolvency of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs,
• Insufficient personal retirement accounts.
There was a time when our great-grandparents, our grandparents, and, in many cases, our parents could save their way to a very comfortable retirement. But what worked then does not work now. That is why we have to look at our financial lives differently from the old, outdated, and no-longer-relevant conventional advice.
Where Does the Income Come From?
If the monthly income of your infinite wealth plan does not come from a job, a salary, or you working for it, then where does it come from? It comes from you putting your money to work, instead of putting you to work. It comes from investing your money where it will deliver a consistent return of money back to you. Different investments produce different results. The question is, what results do you want?
There are two primary outcomes an investor invests for:
1. Capital Gains
Capital gains is the game of buying and selling for a profit. You have to keep buying and selling, buying and selling, buying and selling, or the game and the income stop.
Capital gains occurs, for example, when you buy a share of stock for $20. The stock price goes to $30, and you sell it. Your profit is called capital gains.
The same is true with real estate. You buy a single-family house for $100,000. You make some repairs and improvements to the property, and you sell it for $140,000. Your profit is termed capital gains.
Let’s say you bought 10 one-ounce silver coins for $15 each. You sell the coins for $40 each. Your profit is called capital gains.
Any time you sell an asset or investment and make money, your profit is capital gains. Of course, there are also capital losses. This occurs when you lose money on the sale.
Unfortunately, many “flippers”—people who buy a real estate property and quickly turn around and sell it for a profit, or capital gains—got caught when the real estate market turned. The mindset for many was that the market would continue to go up. When the market reversed and crashed, the properties were no longer worth what the flippers bought them for, and there were no buyers to flip the properties to. This is one reason why we are seeing so many foreclosures and people just walking away from homes.
Most investors today are chasing capital gains in the stock market through stock purchases, mutual funds, and 401(k)s. These investors are hoping and praying the money will be there when they get out. To me, that’s risky.
As long as market prices go up, capital-gains investors win. But when the markets turn down and prices fall, capital-gains investors lose.
2. Cash Flow
Cash flow is realized when you purchase an investment and hold on to it, and every month, quarter, or year that investment returns money to you. Cash-flow investors typically do not want to sell their investments because they want to keep collecting the regular income of cash flow.
If you purchase a stock that pays a dividend, then, as long as you own that stock, it will generate money to you in the form of a dividend. That is called cash flow.
To cash flow in real estate, you could purchase a single-family house and, instead of fixing it up and selling it, you rent it out. Every month you collect the rent and pay the expenses, including the mortgage. If you bought it at a good price and manage the property well, you will receive a profit or positive cash flow.
The cash-flow investor is not as concerned as the capital-gains investor whether the markets are up one day or down the next. The cash-flow investor is looking at long-term trends and is not affected by short-term market ups and downs.
A Third Way Investors Invest
There is a third way investors invest, and that is called a hedge. A hedge is like insurance. It is used to offset possible losses.
For example, with every rental property I own, I create a reserve account. The reserve account ensures against unforeseen repairs and drops in income. The money is set aside to cover emergency expenses or a loss of rental income in case the tenants move out. It is a hedge against those losses.
We have a large commercial property with one tenant. If this tenant moves out before their lease expires, we are left with a gaping hole in our income which we use to pay our mortgage. We would then be at risk of losing the property. The reserve account we have on this property is a hedge, or insurance, that if that happened, we could still pay the mortgage.
Silver and gold are two other examples of a hedge. Robert and I buy gold and silver not because we think the price will continue to rise, even though we do think that will be the case. We buy it mainly as a hedge against the dollar losing its value. Historically, when the dollar declines in value, people look to real money, such as gold and silver. Generally, when the dollar goes down in value, the price of gold and silver goes up. To us, gold and silver are a hedge against the devaluing dollar. We buy gold and silver to offset possible losses of the dollar.
Stock options are another hedge that investors use. A stock option is the right, but not the obligation, to buy a stock (a call) or to sell a stock (a put) at an agreed-upon price within a certain time period or on a specific day.
A stock option is a hedge because, if you buy a call option, you are betting that the price of that stock is going up. The price of the option is a small fraction of what the actual stock would cost you to buy. For instance, the stock may be selling at $30 per share, but the option might cost only $1. If the price of the stock goes down $10, then you forfeit the cost of the option at $1 per share instead of losing $10 per share. The option is a hedge against possible losses. Of course, if the stock does go up, then you can use, or exercise, your option and buy the stock at the lower agreed-upon price. Stock options are a science all to themselves.
Two Words You Should Grow to Love
Capital gains, cash flow, and hedges all have a place in the world of investing. I use all three. However, to accomplish my goal of financial independence and infinite wealth, my two favorite words when it comes to money are:
CASH FLOW
Cash that flows in every month without you working for it is produced by investments, or assets, generating cash flow. That cash flow is called passive income. That’s not to say you won’t also use investments to produce capital gains or as a hedge. They are all important. The primary focus in building infinite wealth, however, is on cash flow. Why? Three reasons:
1. Most people cannot save their way to retirement today. It’s not easy—in fact, I would say it’s almost impossible—to save the amount of money you will need to retire. Unfortunately, way too many hardworking people who were planning on retiring in the next few years are finding out that they cannot afford to do so. Too many people will be forced to work, literally, until the day they die.
A better focus would be to acquire the amount of cash flow, or passive income, you want per month that will last as long as you own the investment.
For example, when Robert and I retired back in 1994, we did not have a huge amount of money in savings. As a matter of fact, we had very little in savings. Our stock portfolio was almost nonexistent, and we did not have mutual funds or a 401(k). What we did have was $10,000 per month in cash flow coming in every month from our investments, primarily real estate at the time. Our living expenses, on the other hand, were only $3,000 per month. At that point, we were financially free. Our passive income was greater than our living expenses. My point is, it wasn’t millions. It was $10,000 per month. That, and more, is very doable today.
2. I like control. I do not like to invest in things where I have no control, especially when it comes to my money. I am not a stock trader or a flipper (one who constantly buys and sells property). I am not good at timing the highs and lows of the stock market or the real estate market. I’m just not that smart. My cash flow from my investments is not dictated by the daily fluctuations of the market. I cannot control the markets. I can control my rental properties. I can control my businesses. The majority of stock shares that Robert and I own are shares of companies we own. And although I may not be able to control the oil production of our cash-flowing oil wells, I can pick up the phone and talk with the owners of the company at any time.
3. I want to determine when I retire or, better yet, have the choice to stop working or not. I can achieve my goal of building up my cash flow to equal or exceed my living expenses much quicker than I can amass a set amount of money to live on for the rest of my life. Cash flow also frees me up to get on with my life and do what I really want to do, not dictated by the constraints of money.
Cash Flow Breeds Cash Flow
Cash flow breeds more cash flow. My first cash-flow investment was a small two-bedroom, one-bath house in Portland, Oregon, in 1989. My monthly cash flow averaged a massive $50 per month. Not a lot, but it gave me my start. And that first step was, by far, the toughest. I wasn’t sure if I could actually go through with it. I had enormous amounts of fear.
So that $50 was much more than a few dollars in my pocket. It was the first building block towards the cash flow I enjoy today. There comes a point in your investing life where the cash flow from your investments supports, not only your living expenses, but also your next investments. Your cash flow breeds new assets which, in turn, breed more cash flow.
Here’s the key. To pave the way to your financial heaven, you’ve got to understand these two things:
1. You must know if an investment will give you cash flow, capital gains, a hedge, or any combination of the three.
A stock can give you cash flow in the form of a dividend. If the stock price goes up and you sell it for a profit, then you will have capital gains.
You may hold 100 ounces of silver as a hedge against the falling dollar. If at some point you sell the silver, then any profit will be capital gains.
Robert and I bought 10 apartments in a 300-unit apartment building that was being converted into condominiums. Those 10 units gave us cash flow because the developer rented them from us to use as models for prospective buyers to walk through. Once the project was completed, we sold the 10 units which produced capital gains. We immediately reinvested the capital-gains profit into a cash-flowing apartment building that we still own today. In this one deal, we went from cash flow to capital gains to cash flow. The key was that, even before we sold the 10 model units, we already knew where that money would be invested next.
Remember, if you don’t know where to put your money before you get it, your money will be gone.
2. You must decide which result you want from your investments—cash flow, capital gains, or a hedge.
What’s your plan? What’s your goal? What do you want?
When I began having my money work for me, my goal was this: To acquire two rental units per year for 10 years. At the end of 10 years, I would have 20 units, all cash-flowing. The beauty of a goal is, once you are crystal clear on what you want and you work towards it, magic often happens. Or as my friend Paula White, a well-known minister, says, “When you are clear on what you want, God will send you opportunities.” In my case, I did see opportunities, and it didn’t take me 10 years to reach my goal. It took me 18 months. It came much faster because, when I set the goal, I wasn’t sure how I would achieve it. But, as I kept working towards my goal, I learned new strategies that sped up the process tremendously.
Then I immediately set the next goal—to acquire more investments to increase my cash flow so that the cash flow was greater than our living expenses. I gave myself five years to accomplish this. We actually reached our infinite wealth goal in only three years, and we were free.
A Distinction About Goals
My fitness trainer taught me something valuable about setting goals. JR works with a lot of tri-athletes and marathoners. He noticed a pattern in the athletes after they completed a major goal, such as running a marathon or competing in a triathlon. He often saw the athletes lose their drive and interest in training after their event. In fact, the motivation of some athletes decreased within days of finishing the event. Sometimes the athletes experienced deteriorating moods and even depression.
In talking with the men and women he trained, he discovered that these athletes trained at a very high level for months towards their goal of winning the event, beating a certain time, or simply completing the event. The training was demanding.
He began to realize that these athletes, who were driving towards their goals for months, now had no goal. They were drained from the event and needed time to recuperate, so it was tough for them to get excited about the next event. Yet the more time that passed, the more their interest waned, as did their fitness. He said it would shock him to see a person who was at the peak of fitness right before his or her event put on 30 pounds and decline in health in just a matter of months.
His solution? About one or two weeks before the athlete’s event, while the athlete is still excited about his or her upcoming event, JR sits them down and makes sure they set their next goal. They set their next goal before accomplishing the goal at hand. Do you think this strategy could work with anything in life? It does for me.
Your New BFF
I assume you want your freedom as soon as possible and that you want to live at your current standard of living or higher. And I assume you want to be the one in control of your financial destiny, not someone else. If those assumptions are correct, then the rest of this book is dedicated to you and your infinite-wealth goal.
I know it’s been said that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but I would argue that your real BFF (Best Friend Forever) is CASH FLOW because cash flow will get you to your financial dreams. And then you can treat yourself to all the diamonds you want.
