I’m on a book tour and I’d love for you to come out to one of my event dates to meet me and talk money.  I’ll be signing my new book I (Heart) Money at the following Chapter and Indigo locations.  Hope to see you out and keep loving your money!

August 7th – 1pm -5pm

Chapters Bayview Village

2901 Bayview Ave Unit 132

North York, Ontario

M2K 1E6

August 21st 1pm-5pm

Chapters Woodbridge

East Woodbridge Centre, 3900 Hwy 7 West, Unit 1

Woodbridge, Ontario

L4L 1A6

(905)264-6401

August 28th 1pm – 5pm

Indigo Richmond Hill

8705 Yonge Street

Richmond Hill, Ontario

L4C 6Z1

(905)731-8771

September 25th 1pm-5pm

Chapters Woodbridge

East Woodbridge Centre, 3900 Hwy 7 West, Unit 1

Woodbridge, Ontario

L4L 1A6

(905)264-6401

Indigo Yonge and Eglinton – Coming Soon!

Chapters Square One – Coming Soon!

Financial health stems from the relationship you have with your money.  Do you get warm shivers when you think of the great things money can get you or stabs of pain when you think of your debt?  Do you avoid talking about money at all costs or welcome the conversation?  How you answered those two questions can tell me how money healthy you are! See which of the below areas you need to “checkup” on?  

If you’re an active investor like I am, days like yesterday can be a scary thing.  The DOW was down 222 points the highest one day drop since Feb.  It is easy to get swooped up with today’s news…debt problems in Spain, Greece and Portugal, a weakening Euro and China pulling back the strings on its economy to try and keep it from boiling over.  What is an investor to do to stay on top?  Here are some “zone” tips to keep you investing at your prime and profiting from it.  

1. Keep Calm, and Carry On.  The worst thing to do in markets like yesterday is to give into your fear.  Keep rational.  CBNC and BNN are all about the story and fear sells advertising and markets.  Keep your head in a good place.  Tomorrow is another day.  Take advantage of opportunities instead of running from them. 

2. Zen Zone.  Before every trading day I think about those days when I was quit witted, making good decisions, and profiting.  I remember what I was thinking that day, what my motivations were and how if felt at the end of the day when I had made all of the right decisions.  Starting that day in the “zone” is crucial to keep you on the ball. 

3. Keep Your Eye on the Ball.  Remember what your ultimate objective is and write it on a piece of paper and keep in in view.  If it is capital preservation, short term gain, or yield for the long haul, or other write it down.  When you process information when the market is crappy you’ll keep your eye on the ball and take actions to support what you want to achieve.  

4. Why do you want it?  Why do you really want the money that you’re making?  Is it family? freedom? security? achievement? or fun?  Anchor yourself to your desired future enjoying the money and re-enforce why you are going to make it or make more of it.  What that money will actually do for you and what happiness it will bring you.  

5. Celebrate!  When you’re a star in the market. Make sure you recognize it and reward yourself for being such a champ.  Re-enforce your positive actions while investing and you’ll repeat them in the future to make even more money. And you know how I love making more money.

Have an amazing week,

Dave

My book is here! Anyone who loves my blogs can now purchase a money manual with all of my strategies and philosophies on investing, borrowing, saving and life. Purchase it right here from my blog and you’ll receive free shipping and handling! I know you love saving money too.  

I love money. I’ve always loved money. Loving money has allowed me to start my own ideal coaching business, buy my dream car for FREE, horseback ride every Thursday, travel more, and spend time with the people in my life I truly love. You should live your ideal life too.  This book will teach you how to dream your ultimate life then realize it by allocating the financial resources. Learn to optimize everything financial in the following book chapters:

1. Love Your Money – Simplify Your Financial Life
2. Live Like You’re Already Rich – How to become wealth like rich people do
3. Setting Goals For Your Ultimate Life – Dream your ultimate life than live it
4. Budgeting For Your Goals – How to track and save to pump back into your happiness
5. How to Use Money and Credit – How to win by using cash and cards
6. Investment Portfolios – How to build a zero dollar portfolio
7. Wealth Equals Income Steams – True wealth is built on multiple streams of income and how you can do it!
8. Mortgages and Loans – How to borrow to benefit you and save tens of thousands on your current mortgage
9. Insurance – How to only buy what you need!
10. Shopping – How to shop like a pro and save
11. Money and Relationships – How to pick the perfect money match
12. Financial Checkups – How will you know when you’re wealth?

Love your money and it’ll love you back with an Ah-mazing life!

Dave

1. Set your payments from monthly to bi-weekly–or even better weekly. Bi-weekly payment means you make one extra payment per year compared to monthly. Over the amortization time of your mortgage these extra payments will save you thousands.  
 2. Round up your payments. If your bi-weekly payments are $829.68, for example, round them up to $900. The extra $70.32 bi-weekly will save you even more over the amortization of your mortgage.  

It is so hard to step away from your prime minus variable rates when they are so low. I had a rate of prime -.85 before I sold my place. If you do decide to stick to your variable rate and hope that interest rates climb slowly over the next few years, increase your payments so that you are making the payments that you would be in a five year fixed. There are two advantages to this:

1. You will be paying down your principal very quickly, which will equal less principal to pay back when rates go back up. It will save you bundles in the long run.  
2. You’ll also be used to the payments at a higher interest rate. When you need to renew or decide to go with a fixed rate, you’ll have a few years of already making payments at that higher rate.  
 
Try out some of the mortgage calculators online like the one below to see how much interest you save with the different options, along with how many years you’ll “bump off” your amortization, instead of it bumping you off. And mortgage free years are years that you can spend that mortgage money on your extra special life!  

As you’ve probably already read, 80% of mutual funds under perform the market.  Why would I ever pay up to 2.5% in management fees to under perform anything?  You can really see that they don’t have our best interests in mind.  When the market was correcting huge in 2008 and 2009 did any of the managers go to cash?  Any strategic moves? No way.  The reason for this is that if the market had swung upwards at any point during the correction and they had not participated in it, they would have been fired.  So over the cliff we all went.  As long as the managers stay close to the index, -30 may that be, the safer their jobs were.  

That doesn’t sit well with my love of money, and that is why I manage my own money.  I know at this point you feel queasy at the thought of going through company annual reports, balance sheets, and listening to conference calls, right?  Well it is so much easier than that.  What I do is find a mutual fund or index fund that I believe in and then I copy it and save the management fee.  I, for example, love dividend yield.  I’ll search for the best dividend funds or index funds and then rip off their top holdings for $5 a trade at my discount brokerage.  That way I’m in control of what I do with my dividends.  

There are many options when I’m in control of the dividends.  I could save the dividends up and buy another high yielding stock when I have enough funds to do so.  Which adds diversification to my portfolio for free.  I could also set the dividends up on a drip (dividend reinvestment plan) program.  My dividends would then buy me more stocks every quarter as they got paid out.  This way you naturally buy stocks higher and lower as the market changes over time. The indie term for this is dollar cost averaging. Quarterly I would receive more stocks that the following quarter would buy me even more stocks — and all for free.  This is a great way to accelerate growth over the long run. If I’m having a good month I might even pay myself my very own management fee and have an amazing dinner out with friends or family.  

If you share my love of dividends, look up the top holdings of XDV, the iShares dividend index. This ETF mirrors the 30 top stocks in the Dow Jones Canada Select Dividend Index.  You can grab the list of stocks right off their web site, plus their weightings.  To keep down my trading costs I buy just the top 15 stocks–making up 63% of the index. If you own them you’ll be participating when the index rises–in the last year it went up roughly 36%. You are given each stock’s weighting in the index which I could match, but with such small percentage differences between the top 15 I just buy them in equal weightings. If you did purchase the later you would have a 4.8% yield and some of Canada’s top dividend yielding companies.  When the dividend index is going up I know that I’m participating in the growth, and I have to keep checking back once a quarter or so to see if any of  my 15 have fallen off the list. I then simply make the appropriate trade to match the new top 15.  This is all on top of those sweet sweet dividends that are paying me quarterly.  

Make your own Mutual Funds and pay yourself instead of the managers.  You’ll love your money so much more.  
Dave