3 Ways To Shift Your Mindset From Scarcity To Abundance Mentality

Living from paycheck to paycheck may seem daunting. It was happy at the start but we get anxious at the end of every month as our money gets super low.

We might think that we can live off with the current salary and wait for the next increment. WHEN? In 3 years?! That’ll be quite some time to wait.

What if there is a faster way? There is! In these times, it’s worth to look into investments in properties, stocks, or businesses. Its alright if you are not sure about what to do – it’s natural when you are at the launching phase. First things first, every positive change starts with a positive mind. This is crucial to be able to achieve financial abundance. Here are 3 ways to cultivate the mindset!

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1. ASSOCIATE MONEY WITH POSITIVE THINGS

If you want to live a remarkable life, you must master your emotions, that is, to be able to understand and control them. This works the same for MONEY.

Our wants and needs which is centered from our emotions uses money as the means to obtain what we desire. Relief. Content. Embarrass. Pride. Guilt. These are some of the emotions we associate ourselves to money.

But then again, what if you can use money and produce positive feelings most of the time? This is where your BELIEFS about money comes into place.

“If I have money, I can be with my family on all times.” “I can do whatever I want if I have tons of money.” “I can do an activity as fast as possible if I have money” or “I can have the ultimate wardrobe!”. These are the examples of positive things we should associate ourselves when it comes to attract money in our life.

Tony Robbins, in his book, Money: Master The Game stated that “repetition is the mother of skills“. We can train our mind to be an optimist by repeating positive lines within ourselves. By doing so, achieve a life of financial abundance .

But then again, while you want to be an optimist, there will also be times when you will opt for an avoidance approach. An approach that at least keeps your mentality cushioned – things that might lead to pain. This is where we might say, “If i make money then people will judge me” or “I will be too old to enjoy money” “If I make money then I wont have time to focus being spiritual”. These are the lines we need to avoid saying to ourselves as it will train our subconscious minds not to become the best version of ourselves.

Being in financial abundance is better than being in financial scarcity. More money means you can pursue greater meanings in life beyond our financial means. You can HELP more people in need and who knows, they might be able to achieve what you did and in return – they will help people that used to live like they did. This is what is called the RIPPLE effect.

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2. FINANCIAL ABUNDANCE MEANS FREEDOM

Imagine you earn more than what you spend in every month of your life, wouldn’t that be GREAT?

All it takes is discipline and perseverance.

How?!

It is as simple as taking a portion of money from your monthly salary and dump it in your investment account. The key is to make sure the amounts compounded every year so that the funds grow bigger by every year. This is a sure way to skyrocket your way to financial freedom – you just have to try!

Now, we are only talking about the passive way to grow your funds. Not the active way yet.

Repeat this every day or every month and see how your figures will grow. The only condition is to keep the funds in the bank account as long as you can without withdrawing it as it will affect the growth rate of the fund. Well, until at least you have hit your targeted amount that you want to accomplish. Achieving financial abundance would be easier.

Always save what you have and in return, invest the differences!

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3. IF YOU CAN MAKE $1 THEN YOU CAN MAKE A MILLION MORE!

As mentioned before;

“Repetition is the mother of skills”

– Tony Robbins

Let’s say you figured a way to make $1. Why don’t you repeat the same process for another 1 million times?

It make things easier to see and process when you do an activity at one time after another. Take one step at a time. It will reduce your stress and at the same time makes it more bearable to achieve your dreams.

Because you are FOCUSED.

To achieve a dream, you must have goals. Goals are what you do everyday to achieve the ultimate purpose – in this case, called a DREAM.

A dream can be anything. Buying a mansion, become rich to give back to the poor, or as simple as opening a small business. And it may takes a certain amount of funds – for example, $100 a month to collect $1,200 to open a small lemonade drink business. This requires monthly goals that you have to meet to achieve the dream of having $1,200 after a year.

The higher you dream, the higher the price would be.

A part of achieving a dream would be to fail. Good ideas comes from failing. Failing is an inevitable process that every people must face to become successful. But you will regret less in your old days if you have failed in something. Because it means you have at least tried something to fulfill a dream in your life even if it means you have to fail.

But then again,

Fail and fail again until you succeed.

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5 Core Things Needed To Retire Early

It was a casual saturday and I’d normally stop by my favourite bookstore to top up my family’s weekly groceries.

It was then that I come across this amazing book called “Your Way to Financial Independence”, authored by Yap Ming Hui. He’s been helping a lot of people planning out their life and achieve financial independence – his company (Whitman Independent Advisors Sdn Bhd) helps people to achieve this. Check their page out if you are keen to restructure your life plans at https://whitman.com.my/.

I only imagine the idea of financial independence and retire early in life so that I can do things that I deem much more important than working around the clock and have no time to do the things I’m really passionate or care about in life such as spending time with my loved ones.

Hence, I believe it is vital for me to get my notes into other people’s notes. Knowing key knowledge in life earlier in life will help reduce your stress in future to come. Just like Jim Rohn said, ignorance is not bliss – ignorance is pain and tragedy.

In this article, we’ll be going through 5 very simple cores to take note if you plan to become the master of your money. I believe this will pose as an important turn around in reader’s life if people know these infos early in life.

1. Spending

Knowing where you stand in life is important. This is the same in spending, knowing how much you spend every day or every month determines your financial standings for that period.

An important note from the book, very simple –

The more you spend, the less savings you have.

The more you spend, the more money will be needed to maintain your lifestyle.

Spending relates very closely to our wants and needs, being aware of your wants and needs will help you steer your way to a more controlled spending life.

2. Return on investments (ROI)

The main idea here is that wealth will work for you better when your ROI is higher.

How do you get high ROI?

Well…

There’s ROI from properties, stocks, bonds, businesses, dividends, compounded bank interest and so on – we only need to get a good research before getting our hands on those investments.

But be alert to get ROI that is above the inflation rate. Otherwise, your money will lose its value across time. It’s as if we didn’t invest at all.

Read more at the links below to know a little more about investments you can start!

3 Surprisingly Creative Ways To Make Money From Properties

Stock Trading For Beginners

Making money while you sleep – the compounding bank account (ASB)

Now let’s continue..

3. Savings

Savings and spending are like yin and yang – they are closely associated with one another.

Just like mentioned previously, the more you spend means the lesser you save.

When we retire, the money we saved will be utilise for our daily wants and needs. But the best way to use that big chunk of money upon retirement is that we invest it and earn dividends in return.

This is where big savings are important so that we only need lower “Return on Investments (ROI)” to sustain our daily life after retirement.

Take an example,

Josh who saves $16,000 a year would need to achieve ROI of 18.3% to accumulate $1million in 15 years time compared to the same Josh who saves $36,000 a year that needs only 8.3% ROI to accumulate $1million in 15 years.

Which Josh do we choose to be?

The point is that saving money consistently bears high result financially and save you more time to buy your financial freedom in the future.

Have a read at…

How You Can Save $1300 A Month With $3000 Salary

and find ways how you can save your money better!

4. Time

When it comes to time, it means to forecast the period where certain of our wants and needs will appear in the foreseeable future.

For example, the time when:

1. We send our child into their tertiary education

2. We drawdown our retirement funds

3. We will marry or our children get married

And so on.

It could be a cash inflow or cash outflow depending on our needs and wants but normally big events in life. This is so that you can roughly estimate how many savings you must have or maybe a certain ROI you need to have to ensure your financial independence goals are still in check when the time comes.

5. Inflation

When it comes to investing, always take into account inflation rate.

Why?

Because your ROI might be lower than the inflation rate. This will result in your investments losing out money whether short term or long term – and we don’t want that.

We expected a return on the money we put to work – what if after 5 years you discovered that your financial status is still the same?!

That’s a nightmare.

Hence, make an effort to check the current inflation rate and which investments whether individually or aggregately are able to beat the inflation rate.

How To Achieve Financial Independence

Now that you have clicked on this title, you must have been wondering what is financial freedom? Or…

You have already set yourself up for financial freedom in future to come but you haven’t figured out how.

That’s great! It means you have successfully gotten out of the rat race way of thinking – at least from a state of mind.

Now it’s time for action. Now it’s time to see how you will set your new life direction so that you can arrive at a new destination.

Before we start, know that different people have different meanings for financial freedom.

Does it mean being debt-free? Does it interpret as being able to travel other countries twice a year? Does it mean living your daily life without worrying that your money might run out one day or another? That depends.

What is your meaning of financial freedom?

To cut things short, this is the general outline that I learned from attending financial seminars and meet people who already obtained financial freedom and those who are already charted to that destination.

Assume we are doing this in order of sequence:

1. Work

Yup! That’s the reality of it – you have to work and by saying work it means the job you earn your main income. It’s the job you work to pay your monthly living expenses like utility bills (electricity, water or phone), housing and car installments, as well as other monthly legal obligations.

This is where it all starts – it is the first stage.

The key to this stage is when your salary comes in, who do you pay first?

Yourself!

That’s right, yourself.

You will have to allocate a certain portion of your salary aside for yourself. This leads to the next stage…

2. Savings

This is where the warm up begins – you will have to be disciplined and set your goals.

You will have to save every month until that money accumulate into a huge pile of resource. You need to calculate how much you need to save before you believe that huge resource can help you achieve that freedom.

Have a read at 5 Simple Ways To Save Money and How You Can Save $1300 A Month With $3000 Salary to get wider ideas of how you can save better!

When we already have that huge chunk of money, you might asked what happens next?

This is the point where you make money work for you.

When the time comes, when you believe you are ready to get to the next stage – whamm!!

You invest that money!

And that leads to the next big part which is investing.

But before we go any further, we’ll have to consider another important part to achieve financial freedom and this is applicable to the massive people out there.

This is simply because having a single income from a single work may not be enough to accumulate that huge chunk of money. You will need a second source of income or maybe a third or fourth.

And that leads to our 3rd step….

3. Side hustle income

Many times we’ve heard people working 2 jobs at a time to sustain their life – well you are probably right.

But the idea is that the money used from your main work to pay your loving expenses. Your daily work is used to settle your daily expenses such as basic bills (electricity, water and phone) and other recurring expenses like rents and daily foods.

On the other hand, your second job is what you use to build your fortune.

It can be any jobs, you can start by selling stuffs online, become an insurance agent, open a business, become a beekeeper or even a painter – anything that you love.

Then you save your money and build that huge chunk of money that you can invest and in return, get you that recurring income.

Or…

Without investing, you can simply get recurring income from the people’s demand provided that your service to the society gives value.

Value. This is one of the secrets that Jim Rohn, a great motivational speaker once shared – to attract the world’s wealth, we must become the people that can create and give value to the society.

And I think that’s wonderful information.

Now that you know how to accumulate the huge chunk of money, step 4 plays an even vital role.

Step 4. Invest

Invest – It’s a big meaning for a short word.

Money will lose it’s value in time to come. Things like inflation will inevitably be one of the major cause. Money will not grow unless we put it to work, now that we have worked hard enough to get money.

This is why we need to invest.

We invest to sustain our wealth. To make sure that the money grows more while we are occupied with other matters.

We have traded our time much enough that it is now time that the money will work for us and saves us more time to do the things we really want to do in life.

I always like to invest in things I already know well, and not invest into blurry confusing things. I still prefer the traditional way of investing.

This brings us to step 5.

Step 5. Passive Income

While there are many other forms of investments in this world, I will highlight the most common yet effective investing instruments that are still relevant till today.

It’s none other than by investing in properties. With this, you’ll get recurring income from renting. Imagine if you have 10 houses that each gives you $800 a month – that’s $8,000!

Can you live off with that? I know I can.

You might wonder how to start investing in properties – have an overall understanding by reading 5 traits of a good property to invest and get good rental and 7 steps guide to buy a house – the complete guide. This should help you get that booster understanding about real estates in general.

If you are still young and having fun in your 20s but are getting prepared to settle down – you’ll be ahead of your time by knowing the top 5 tips to buy a house in your 20s.

Better yet, boost your investment income by knowing the 4 unbelievable ways you can maximize your rental income!

Imagine you get yearly dividends from 20 types of stocks that each gives you $200 a month – that’s $4,000 a month!

You might be wondering how you would begin this great journey through freedom by learning stock trading. Have a brief understanding here!

Wow…

How about making that monthly commitment to save a portion of your income into the compounding bank account. Let’s say you save $600 a month for 35 years – that may grow to around $1 million after 35 years.

This is where you will be able to see how to make money works for you! Even when you are sleeping.

It’s just amazing. You can either use that money yearly – though you might lose the benefits of compounding or you can just wait for it to grow big. If you can’t benefit from it then maybe your family can!

We’ve already worked hard to get that big chunk if money and we should not risk it by investing in things we do not know – in things that may not exist 10 years to come.

And that brings us to the final step.

Step 6. Dream

Now that you have worked your ass off, you can now live your life without worrying about money!

Your debt is settled and no one have any claims on you every single day because now you are free.

Free to do what you want and free to live how you want it to be.

This is where you can do the really significant things in life because you have solved the money problem.

This is where you can buy your dream.

It can be anything.

Spending time with your wife and kids. Innovate something creative and beneficial to the society or even as simple as helping/coach other people become financially free – just like you did.

You can also opt to help poor people when you are free. Help them escape poverty and coach them the ways of attracting wealth. In return, you will feel what it means to truly live. You will only gain more when you give more because giving to charity makes you richer.

a quote by Tony Robbins from one of his greatest books, “Money: Master The Game” –

The secret to living is giving.

It’s a noble cause.

This is why financial freedom is important. You’ll be able to chase matters beyond any money concerns because you are now free. Upon achieving financial freedom, you can now chase a life purpose that is bigger than just making money and meeting ends meet – with financial freedom, you will be able to create a more meaningful life.

Giving to Charity Makes You Richer

Money has been mostly what people chase in their life to ensure they can meet whichever needs or desires may come. While many think that money makes them happy – money is actually a tool to make us happy. Some people are happy because they get that new Mercedes, or they get that new pair of shoes, or even that latest iPhone – but what is actually used to have all these? That’s right, it’s money.

But believe it or not, people tend to become happier when they commit a portion of their money not on themselves – but towards other people. People will become happier when they contribute to others, they feel life has a meaning because they feel like they are making a change – and indeed they are!

By now you will be asking – man, how will by giving to charity make me richer?

Based on an article from the Entrepreneur, a research from The Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey by Harvard University stated that giving more of your money for charity leads to higher income. This fact takes into account of the differences in race, religion, age and other personal characteristics in America. How is this possible?

According to another research from the United States and the Center of Philanthropy at Indiana University provided an essential example – $100 increase in income per person leads to an increase in $1.47 of additional money given to charity. Simultaneously, an increase in the same $100 given to charity boosts GDP by a marginal $1,800. It is amazing to observe that small amount of money channelled into the society would impact such large multiplier effect and stimulates economic growth.

There is also another research called “Feeling Good About Giving” conducted by Harvard Business School discovered that people who experienced positive events such as receiving cookies or finding dimes in a payphone place are more likely to help other people afterwards which is believed to be due to the happiness they felt. This is further backed up by another experiment conducted where a group of people were to report their general level of happiness after disclosing how their monthly expenses are utilized; either towards personal use and/or public social purposes.

Surprisingly, people who give more money for charities experienced greater happiness. I would say that is also a type of richness in life, I mean, there are people out there who have billions of dollars in their banks but are still unhappy, worried or sad most of the time – hey, look on the bright side! You are already rich when you are happy and content with what you have and found meaning in life – that’s a great deal!

Analytically, when people feel happy – they will give more money towards other individuals or institutions for charity purposes. Simultaneously, when we look on a countrywide perspective, the charities (be it in money or other forms of charities) distributed will then encourage people to spend in the market. As a result, the country’s productivity is boosted – hence resulting in economic growth.

What happens if there’s economic growth? More of the consumers will have better incomes or stronger purchasing power – it will become a continuous cycle of pure goodness. Not only you are making yourself feel happy but you are also helping people become happy too! More people will have high likelihood to make charity and help more people who are in need. If ever, you feel like things always go wrong in your life, try and give charity a shot – who knows what you might discover along the way. Giving is living and you will always get more than you give. 

What’s the difference between master title, strata title, and individual title?

Whenever you are purchasing a property or you went for a property purchase inspection, people always say things like, “don’t worry this unit has strata title issued already” or “this unit is great but it is still under master title” – why is this so important? It’s important to know as it affects your property purchase process especially in terms of time. In this article we will discuss on master title, strata title, and individual title.

Master Title

Having a master title means one thing, the property is under a major/parent grant which is usually the property developer themselves. The master title will eventually be released as an individual title (normally for landed properties) or strata title (normally for high rise buildings). However, the title release will depend on the property developers in terms of how fast they settle their land purchased from the government through self finance or banks using bridging finance. In Malaysia, it may take 3 – 10 years on normal circumstances.

Strata Title

Unlike master title, strata title is issued for high rise properties. Having a strata title means you are now the rightful owner of that small unit up the apartment – finally! This implies that the land lot has been split evenly to all respective owners. This also means that it will be easier for you to purchase or sell the property without consent from the property developers.

Individual Title

Similar to strata title, individual title is normally issued for landed properties. Having an individual title means that the property is under the ownership of the individual who purchase the property. The issuance of individual title is normally much faster compared to strata title. Sometimes, even though it is a landed property but in a gated housing areas with guards and facilities – the property can be considered as strata title (as it is in a shared areas, similar to the concept of a serviced apartment) and not an individual title. Hence, do ask your developers whether your property is under which title as each title has its impact on your whole purchase process.

The links below might interest you~

https://hustlerinvestor.wordpress.com/2018/11/18/3-surprisingly-creative-ways-to-make-money-from-properties/

MRTT vs MLTT? Get yourself insured before buying a property

Any other people should be aware and act to include themselves with an insurance coverage once they are able to afford one. You can consider yourself lucky if you start paying at a young age because the younger you are – the smaller the insurance premium you have to settle. I have heard many stories where people buy a house then suddenly – wham!! They got into a major accident and unable to work again. What happens next? He couldn’t pay the loan installments, banks put his house on auction (lelong), and the poor fellow lost his home – all because he didn’t get himself insured. Maybe you are thinking it’s too early to get insured or maybe you are concerned that it would take huge financial impact on you. My advice is get yourself insured while you are still healthy because insurance company would have high chances of turning you down if you apply when you are critically ill. Believe it or not, you can get yourself covered for RM300,000 by only paying RM 100 a month, small sum for a big life changer. Here are two types of insurance for starters:

Mortgage Reducing Term Takaful (MRTT)

MRTT basically will only get you covered on a single property and it acts as a safety mechanism for the banks in the event that the borrower (us) gets a total permanent disability (TPD) and could not work anymore to make the bank loan settlements. However, with MRTT – the banks will still be paid in full by the insurance company on the whole property price if the borrower faced TPD.

These days MRTT are made mandatory by banks in Malaysia because there have been many cases years back where borrowers make MRTT as an optional matter and in the end faced TPD. Resulting their properties to be auctioned and banks consequentially have to sell the property at lower price. MRTT will normally be included as part of your bank loans during your loan application process. Have a read on “4 Great Tips For Getting your Loan Approved” for better insights to have a successful loan application. For MRTT, you may get covered for only one property and that the monthly payments reduce over time (which is good, maybe?) – but so does your coverage (covered only in specific period) gets reduced and the coverage will no longer be available to you after the contract period ends. MRTT is especially beneficial for people with less dependents/ family members.

Mortgage Long Term Takaful (MLTT)

Unlike MRTT, MLTT covers you forever but you will have to pay forever until you pass away. Well it does cover you forever but it also requires you to pay forever? how do you take advantage of this? The answer is to start as early as possible! The earlier you start paying your insurance, the cheaper the premium you will pay. Also, the amount you pay monthly will be fixed forever – unless you are willing to increase the amount of  insurance coverage when your salary increased. You can decide whether or not to top up your coverage anytime in futures to come.

Finally, the best thing about MLTT is that if you are faced with TPD – your house will be fully settled completely. Let’s say your property loan is RM 200,000, your insurance stands at RM 300,000 – your house will be fully paid and the balance of RM 100,000 will be distributed to your family members 🙂 This way your family won’t suffer too much of a harsh time in your death and you  can rest easy knowing your family members are in good hands.

Key Notes:

• You may fall critically ill anytime and when you do, you may not able to work, when this happens – you can’t pay your bank loans
• In the end, you will lose your property to lelong (auction) – you may have no place to stay anymore, family members will be in hard times.
• The younger you start paying the premiums the better, because the premium paid is determine by your age, the younger you are, the lower your premiums will be.
• In event you can’t pay your loan due to critical sickness, the insurance will help settle all your loans, provided you take an insurance that covers the property price your purchased. Start young and get protected fellow hustlers!”