Increase Financial Literacy to increase Wealth!

Albert Einstein said Compound Interest is the 8th Wonder of the World!
When Albert Einstein discovered the Compound Interest Rule of 72, he said that compound interest is the Greatest Invention because it provides a Systematic Way of Increasing Wealth!
What exactly is the Rule of 72? Simply stated, it estimates how many years it take for your Money or Debt to double in value. All you have to do is simply divide the number 72 by the Annual Rate of Returns you get from your savings/investment.
Eg. if you earn 3% annual returns on your savings, it would take 72 divided by 3 = 24 years for you to double your money. Eg. if you earn 3% on S$10,000, it takes 24 years for you to double the money (Grow the money) to S$20,000.
Increasing Returns can help You Retire Young, Retire Rich!
However, if you can earn 7% annual returns, it only takes about 10.28 years for you to double your money. Thus, by increasing the returns on your Money, you are actually gaining Life (well, if you think about it, Life is the years of you live). So imagine, by increasing returns from 3% to 7%, you save about 14 years of your Life to double your money. Thus, if you want to Retire Young and Retire Rich, you ought to start making your money work harder for you rather than just you working so hard for your money.
The most amazing thing about the Power of Compounding is that the Power GET Bigger and More Powerful Over Time. If you have S$20,000 and earn 3% returns, over 40 years, your money grows to S$65.2k. However, if you earn 7% returns, over 40 years, your money grows to S$299.5k, or 359% MORE!

Rule of 70 to calculate Impact of Inflation
Another not so commonly known rule is the Rule of 70, which basically measures how many years it takes for your money's buying power to halve (drop by 50%). Thus, if the inflation rate is 3.5%, using the Rule of 70, it takes about 70/3.5 = 20 years for S$1 to become S$0.50.
With Inflation in Singapore running at over 7% in April and May 2008, what it means that if inflation continues at 7%, it takes 70/7 = 10 years for S$1 to become S$0.50!

What are you doing to protect yourself against Inflation?
So how to protect yourself against Inflation? The only way other than working harder to increase your income, is to make your Money Work Harder for you. You need to aim for your money to get an annual returns of about 7% or higher to be Richer.

Do you want to continue working 50, 70, 100 hours a week the rest of your life?

Good! Neither do I.
Do you want to be able to take time off whenever you want to, without worrying about what's going to happen to your business?
So do I!
There's a saying in the corporate world: "Don't make yourself irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted." As an entrepreneur, this is still true in its own way. Let's think of "being promoted" as earning more and working less. You can raise your prices, but until you can remove yourself from being directly involved in doing the work that generates the income, there's always going to be a limit to how much you can earn, and it can only increase very slowly.
Passive income, on the other hand, is income that does not require your direct involvement. Some kinds of passive income you may be familiar with include owning rental property, royalties on an invention or creative work, and network marketing. If you want to earn more, work less, and have a decent retirement, you're going to have to start creating income streams that do not require your direct involvement. Whether you're just starting your business, or you've been running it a while, the sooner you start thinking about how you are going to shift your business model to create more passive income, the sooner you can achieve personal and financial freedom.

Earning while learning

Network marketing is one of the few businesses where you can earn as you learn, right from the start. If you find yourself faltering:
1) Think of the millions who labor through years of university or college for a chance to join the ranks of the higher-income earners.
2) Think of the millions who invest their own capital in a business only to end up working horrendous hours trying to make it pay against all odds.
3) Think of those who waste their life stuck in traffic, as they commute to the office and back.
4) Think of those who miss pivotal events in their children’s lives, due to work commitments.
5) Think of those who dread going to work each day to boring, repetitive jobs, not to mention having to work with and for people they wouldn’t spend time with under any other circumstances.
6) Think how lucky you are that you are at the helm of your own low-risk, high-reward business—business where you get to decide how your time will be spent and with whom you will spend it.

Finding the Right Network Marketing (MLM) Company

Many factors will contribute to your success as a network marketer. Your diligence and determination to succeed, as with any endeavor, will play a big role. Your ability to lead others, and build solid, meaningful relationships with your downline are important as well. In addition, your communication skills will help or hurt your business. Do you stay in touch with your host company, and do you keep members of your downline informed of the latest product developments? Lastly, do you address all the concerns that those in your downline may have about how to conduct the business, and do you train them well?

However, the first and foremost factor that will determine your success is determining which company you choose to align yourself with. Be sure to give this thought the consideration it deserves. Multi-level marketing has exploded in the past decade, and with it, a whole slew of companies have arrived on the scene selling everything from household products to health supplements. There is no end to the kinds of things you can sell, but you have to be very selective about which company you choose to work with. Do your “due diligence” and choose a company with a proven track record of success and customer service.

First you must consider the reputation of the company you will be dealing with. Some network marketers choose to go with an established company that has been around a long time, an outfit with the reputation of Mary Kay Cosmetics. Others may choose to go with a relatively new company with an established reputation. If you go with a new company, do as much background research as you can. Then examine their product line. Are they selling a well-diversified line of products, or are they staking their success on one “killer” product they want you to sell? If the latter is the case, beware of putting your all of your eggs in one basket. Should the multi-level marketing company selling one main product go belly-up, or experience a short-circuit in its supply chain somewhere, you and everyone in your downline will be stuck. As always, diversification is the key. Established network marketing companies should offer a complete range of products for you to sell.

Also consider their compensation plan. Here’s where many burgeoning network marketers have gotten stuck. They get wooed in by a slick sales presentation from another network marketer and hear the large dollar figures that are potential revenue streams for them once they succeed. However, they fail to study the “fine print” of how the compensation plan works. They are dumb-founded by the complexity of it all, and then are unable to communicate the plan, in all its complexity, to their prospective prospects.

Do you understand how your compensation plan works? Are you required to buy a certain “quota” of products first before you start making commissions, or do commissions accrue right away? These are legitimate questions you should ask of any company you choose to align yourself with, and you would do well to ask them at the start.

Will Network Marketing Last?

Network Marketing: The beginning or the end?

For those us who have not yet joined the Network Marketing craze that has been sweeping our nation for the last twenty years, the questions remain "Can I really make any money working from home? And, If I didn't get in on the bandwagon in the beginning, is it too late?" The answer is a resounding yes - you can make money working from home and no, it's definitely not too late.

There are currently over half a million people in the United States that are millionaires. Over 20% of them have made their fortunes in the Network Marketing Industry. It is becoming more and more apparent that this phenomenon is not only here to stay but it's getting better and stronger every day. Multilevel or network marketing is one of the only businesses available that allows a person with potentially no resources to start their own business with absolutely no limit on their financial success. In the old days, many of us viewed network marketing as a scam and unfortunately many schemes lived up to that title. There are always bad apples in the bushel and this industry was no exception. The negative side to this business, however, was two-fold.

Obviously the worst scenario was the unsavory chap who decided to jump on the gravy train and easily took thousands of dollars away from well-meaning folks who just didn't do their research. If the equation is correct, every person that got taken in on a get rich scheme told ten other people about their unfortunate experience. Let's face it, we all know somebody got stuck with hundreds of dollars of worthless products and watched their dreams of financial success go right down the drain. Any thoughts we may have been entertaining about taking a chance on finding financial freedom working from home went right out the window.

The other group responsible for solidifying the unsavory reputation of network marketing were the folks who truly believed that network marketing required nothing more of them than filling out the initial membership agreement. Hundreds of thousands of people were led to believe that all they really had to do was join and then sit back and watch their downlines and their paychecks grow. Seriously though, as a society, we have a great difficulty taking responsibility for our own actions.

Consequently many of these folks blamed their failure, not on their own lack of commitment but on the industry itself. This is a business that has to be taken seriously and worked as such. If you're planning to sit on your couch and collect the money from your mailbox, odds are you're not going to be successful. As more and more professionals become frustrated with corporate America, however, the industry will begin to benefit and continue to grow.

Network marketing of today is not a get rich quick scheme. To be successful in this industry, you have to be willing to work and work hard in the beginning. To its credit, network marketing has been able to overcome most of its lack of credibility and has regained its respectability in the eyes of the consumer. Courses on this growing trend are actually being taught in some of our most prestigious colleges and universities. Advancing technology has made it easier for potential network marketers to research legitimate opportunities and the introduction of the internet in this industry has helped the reputable companies move to the forefront.

The actual beauty of this industry lies in the concept of relationship selling. In our high tech world, consumers are tired of the lack of personal service and crave the opportunity to form one-on-one relationships with the purveyors of the goods they purchase. Who better to buy from than our friends, the people we trust and see on a regular basis? It only stands to reason then; that as the advancements in technology continue and consumers continue to be alienated from the personal touch they require the network marketing industry will grow exponentially.