Market Notice From Our Cheif Investment Advisor

Market Notice Dated: April 16th, 2011 By: David Gimpel, MBA, CWPP, AAMS Chief Investment Advisor, The Maddox Group and President of Rational Capital Management The Coming Breaking Point: (Hopefully) The End of Quantitative Easing 2 In the last 2 years, the market has had a strong positive rally. In previous letters, I made the case [...]

The Credit Crunch Explained — An Easy To Understand Video

This is one of the best descriptions I have ever found explaining what happened to cause the credit crunch. I can imagine being someone on the outside of the financial industry not being completely clear on what really went down. If you ever wanted to understand or just begin to understand what happened in banking/credit [...]

Should You Believe What The Mainstream Media Tells You?

I received a response to an article written in Money Magazine from a.  colleuge in the industry and it alarmed me. They article called “The Safety Trap” apparently reported skewed, incomplete or false information about Indexed Annuities. The thing that alarms me about this is that people’s perception of a media outlet like Money Magazine or most other trusted media outlets [...]

How to Make Rain in a Financial Desert — Blog Post

This is an encouraging excerpt on how Doug Andrews talks about how people are using strategies that are protecting themselves in a volatile financial market: We’re heading into late summer…two-plus years into the country’s deepest recession since the Great Depression…and the mild optimism offered a few months ago may be drying up. In a move that recently made headlines, [...]

Goals To Define Your Business

Guest post by Andy Nathan As a business owner in today’s competitive environment there is one thing that I can do that can lift me above others. I set goals for myself. My ability to define what I want and create the action steps to get there is crucial as a business owners success. First, [...]

Can Family Leadership Guide You To “True Wealth”?

True “Riches” Lie in Your Leadership I was reading a an article written by my mentor Lee Brower and found some enlightening insights on unlocking “True Wealth” in your life. The insights I found to be profound: Advertising bombards us about obtaining financial wealth on a daily basis. With such saturation, a large amount of our thoughts [...]

Can Gratitude Make You Richer?

How Far Can Gratitude Take You? I realized the other day that I completely forgot some of the really exciting things that were currently happening in my life. WHY? Because I was so focused on what I didn’t have and what wasn’t working in my life rather than what was. Coming to the conclusion that everything was [...]

101 Ways To Save Money

Can Saving Money Really Set You Free?

We are a nation of consumers and not a nation of savers, wouldn’t you agree? The scary fact is that spending money has become the “american way”. We have figured out so many ways to spend money and not how to save money, so I wanted to share something that can help start the process for anyone now thinking about saving money.

Here is a free Ebook called HOW SAVING MONEY CAN SET YOU FREE.

I hope you enjoy it and I am positive it will set you free from the stress of saving money.

Make sure you go ahead and share this with anyone you like across your networks

Part 2 Why Traditional Financial Planning Sets You Up For Failure

“Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is at the Core of your Worth? Is it your home, your 401k, your pension, your portfolio? Are those the things that define your Worth?

When we sit down with clients one of the first questions we ask is: “What the largest asset that you have?” Typically, like most of us in our society, they go right for the money part and you may have to. We get answers like 401k, home and portfolio. The challenge is that these are NOT the Core of our Worth.

So, let me rephrase the question, what is the largest asset that you have that means MORE to you than your $$?

Where would you start your list? Maybe, your family, friends or health is where you would start. Don’t these things have a value or worth that is far greater than any mound of money you could accumulate? Sometimes these things are described as priceless because no financial value can ever be placed on them.

Some of the others are:
-Unique Ability -Spirituality -Values -Beliefs -Heritage

So, if these are more important to you than your money, are you capitalizing and optimizing them like you are your financial assets? The challenge is that most of us don’t know how to optimize and capitalize them is because the question has never been asked us.

More importantly, Core Assets influence every other quadrant of assets that we have. Any time we make a decision in our Financial, Experience and Contribution quadrants it has a direct impact on the Core and vice versa. Understanding how we can optimize this quadrant is vital to harmoniums balance in our lives.

So, the way we start this process is by doing two things; 1) capture it and 2) share it. Here are some ways you can do this with some of your core assets:

Values & Beliefs Asset: You and your spouse want your children to understand what you as a family stands for and how the world should see your family.

To Do: Draft a family mission statement that represents what defines your family’s values and beliefs and hand it out at a family dinner. A good time to do this is at your wedding anniversary every year. All you have to do is hand it out and have a discussion at the formal family dinner most people have.

This way, as you celebrate your marriage every year, you also celebrate and share what the family that you created is all about.

Heritage: You want the history, customs, of your parents from a foreign country to live on in your family from generation to generation.

To Do: Slice out some time to sit down with your grandparents or parents and video tape them talking about the customs, history and heritage that they have brought with them to this country and to this family.

Then make a copy of that and send it to the whole family and/or share it at a family event. Many of us have not taken the time to just sit down and have this conversation with our elders. By you doing this and sharing it with the whole family you have just leveraged your experience for the rest of the family. You have now optimized and capitalized on your heritage asset.

When you start doing things like this, what type of impact do you think it would have on your family, not only vertically (your kids and their kids) but horizontally (your siblings, cousins, nieces or nephews)? It would be a hugely positive impact, right? The odds of these things living on from generation to generation in your family just got a lot greater.

So, now is the time to start optimizing your Core Assets. Make a list of your values, beliefs, family mission and unique ability. Then share it with your family friends and an confidants. When you do this you will find a higher level of clarity, graciousness and confidence in your life. This is where you will start to begin to make confident decisions about your money because you know It will be in alignment with the Core Assets in your life.

The next post I will talk about experience assets and how you can start identifying and optimizing those assets in your life. I look forward to you coming back and reading that part of the series.

If you would like to schedule an appointment to speak with Bryan McDonald directly in more detail about these concepts click on this link now: TALK WITH BRYAN

Why Traditional Financial Planning Sets You Up For Failure

HOW DO YOU MAKE CONFIDENT DECISIONS ABOUT YOUR FINANCES?

PART 1 OF A 6 PART SERIES

What is your rate, Bryan? That was the kiss of death question from a client when I was in the mortgage business. I knew right then and there my goal of helping someone make a confident decision about their mortgage was O-V-E-R.

Here was the challenge: Do you write 6.875% on the check you wrote to the mortgage company in the box next to the $ sign? Nope, you sure didn’t and never will, will you? So why is that the first question most people ask?

Is it because we all don’t know how to ask the real underlying questions that need to be asked. The world has “consumerized” and “commoditized” us all. The real questions, when it comes to decisions about our money, are rooted in and have a foundation in places that have nothing to do with, rate of return, market share, derivatives or fund fees.

In the financial services, planning, strategist, or whatever catch phrase you want to use after the word financial, everyone has access to the same products and services. No one has cornered the market on the “get wealthy pill or juice”. That product just plain old, doesn’t exist.

The real questions are rooted in places most of us never tend to consciously and intentionally go when thinking about or making decisions about our money and overall wealth. The reason we don’t go to those places is because these questions are masked by the questions the world has beaten into us as “the right questions to ask”. They are beaten into us so much and through so many different avenues of influence it makes us think they are the right ones to get us where we want to go.

Ultimately the end game, no matter what questions you ask, point us in a direction to create more personal WORTH, financially and/or figuratively. So how do you create more WORTH by asking questions that serve you better?

A personal mentor of mine, Lee Brower, puts is so sysncly in his book “The Brower Quadrant” when he says:

“The whole notion of worth expressed in dollars is utterly meaningless when we think about how valuable we are to those around us and how valuable they are to us.

Are wealthy parents more beloved or more important than middle-class or working-class parents? Of course not.”

So why is the common thought that the almighty dollar is on a ivory post and should outrank anything else in our decision making process?

The answer is simple:

We are not completely aware of how to identify and optimize all the assets in our lives and how they are all intertwined, needing to live in harmonious balance with each other for us to make confident decisions.

Do you want to live a balanced or imbalanced financial life?

The reason why traditional financial planning sets us up for failure is that in only focuses on our financial assets; neglecting how it will influence and affect the other important and intertwined assets.

So, we need to take a step back and look at how we REALLY are making decisions. We need to become clear on our what and why before we choose any tactic, tool or strategy. The way to achieve True Wealth and completely enjoy financial abundance without neglecting our family, friends, communities and our own search for personal meaning is through the harmonious balance of all 4 of the asset classes in our lives.

The 4 asset classes we all posses are:

1. Our Core Assets – The essence of who we are
2. Our Experience Assets – The sum of our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual experiences
3. Our Contribution Assets – Our effect on others
4. Our Financial Assets – Our net worth

By giving yourself the ability to focus on all of these asset classes during life and during the “financial” decision making process you can start creating more wealth and more meaning in all areas of your life. You start making confident decisions that empower you, your family and everyone around you.

Would you like more wealth and more meaning?

As you go through this series you will begin to understand what these 4 asset classes consist of, how to start optimizing each of the them and identify how to use them to make confident decisions.

If you would like to schedule an appointment to speak with Bryan McDonald directly in more detail about these concepts click on this link now: TALK WITH BRYAN

I am confident that you will enjoy these concepts as much as I do. So, keep tuned in to the whole series and start making confident decisions

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