#1 What compelling reason exists for people to give you money? You have to have a value add to your consumer. If I don’t think your product will leave me better off than without it, I’m not buying it.

#2 How do you acquire what you’re selling for less than it costs to sell it? Most of the time there is some type of laboring that adds value to your cost to allow you to sell it for more than what you paid for it. If it is not labor, figure out what this is in your situation so you can have a profit margin.

#3 What structural insulation do you have from relentless commoditization and price wars? A patent is always the best thing. This way no one else can produce your goods but yourself. Other times it’s location. Why is it popcorn is way more expensive in the movie theater or alcohol in a restaurant? Because they are the only sellers!

#4 How will strangers find out about the business and decide to become customers? Advertise (to who), advertise (where), advertise (how). To teenagers in the downtown book store on magazines. To adults at work through email. To kids watching TV through commercials. To students online through social media. I don’t care if you have to walk door to door in every neighborhood in every city, do whatever it takes!

Below is a guest post from one of the stock traders I trade with, David Hutcherson, on Effectiveness vs. Efficiency:

Now that you know the difference between clocking and grinding, you are ready to conquer the world and not to mention your goals as well. After a few 2nd shift sessions, you realize that you are still not getting closer to your goals. Why?!?!? Is it because you are being efficient and not effective? Note that being efficient is doing things well regardless of their importance but being effective is doing the right things.

Sometimes we get caught up in trying to make sure we use our time efficiently by making sure we accomplish our tasks in a timely manner. But are those tasks effective in helping you reach your goals? If not, you must remove those tasks from your daily routine. For instance, if you find yourself in meetings that do not contribute to your end goals; you should consider eliminating those meetings from your schedule. This will open up your time for more effective tasks.

Always remember: What you do is more important than how you do it!!

Have you ever heard someone say I wish I had F.U. Money? It is term people use when they wish they had so much money they could to do what they wanted, when they wanted, where they wanted, and for how long they wanted without having to answer to anyone. I think it may be everyone’s dream state. But my question is how much money is actually F.U. Money? I think for me it would have to be around $100 Million USD. At that point, I would probably tell anyone to just piss off if I didn’t feel like being bothered and not worry about the financial consequences. I think another way to describe F.U. money is having financial freedom. In a recent post, I answered what is financial freedom:

…To describe it, financial freedom is the feeling you get if you just earned $100 million dollars. It is having enough money coming in that you do not have to work. The decisions and actions you make are not based off of financial reasons. We want our readers to choose what they do because they WANT to do it and not because they feel as if they HAVE to do it…

So I’m wondering, how money do you need to say you have F.U. Money or feel like you are financially free? Also, what if you put a million dollars in government bonds and received a guaranteed 6% interest payment ($60,000 USD) for the rest of your life? Is that F.U. Money too? What are your thoughts?

The new thing now is a side hustle or what we at MoneyIsJustAnIdea like to call a Cash Cow! Another source of income that helps you pay off debt, go on world vacations, buy new cars, pay for college, or anything else that you have been dreaming about. Well I have a book that will get you a lot closer to your goal. I recently read “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss. This book is totally different from many other books I read on starting businesses. It doesn’t dwell on the problem but provides an in-debt solution on how to start that side hustle!

He goes into great detail about the “New Rich” and how to design your lifestyle like a millionaire but not necessarily having millions of dollars. Then he gives step by step instructions on creating a side hustle or what he likes to call a “muse”. His personal muse paid him over 30k a month!! I’m quite sure this is way more than most people make at their day job. So, if you really want a lot of extra income and to get less dependent on your job, this book is definitely a must read! Remember money is just an idea!

I have been getting a lot of inquiries from people, who would like to make some extra money trading the stock market. It is only right that I tell you the good and the bad; First the bad, YOU CAN LOSE MONEY IN THE STOCK MARKET if you do not properly educate yourself. Alright, now the good stuff.

When you trade the market, you are looking to predict when prices will go up and/or down. Then, you must decide the time frame you wish to hold your stocks. The longer the time frame, the easier it is to predict prices. What does all of this mean? If you want to hold your stocks for 20 years, you could comfortably say the stock will be higher because history shows stocks trend higher over years. Therefore in 2-3 years (outside of a recession) you can also say the market will be higher. But, when you analyze a smaller time frame such as a day or even 3 months, it’s harder to predict the movement of the stock prices. However, most people looking to make quick money try to catch the short term movements in the market without educating themselves first. If you want to do short term trading, you have to do your research.

First: Where can I find basic stock information?
1. Go to Google Finance, http://www.google.com/finance, and type in your favorite publicly traded company. So McDonald’s (symbol MCD) is a good pick but not Chick-fil-A (since it’s privately owned). It will come up and you will see what their stock price was last traded at and some information on the company. Now your goal is to utilize whatever information you can to predict if this stock is going to go higher over some given time frame.

Second: How do I place an order?
Once you have decided to buy a stock, the easiest way to place the order is to open up an online brokerage account. Sounds scary but it really isn’t. It’s just like opening an account with an online bank (e.i. ING or HSBC). You can pick from Etrade, Charles Schwab, OptionsXpress, Sharebuilder, TD Ameritrade, etc. For those who are starting with a dollar amount less than $2,000 OptionsXpress and Sharebuilder I know does not require minimum balances. The application will ask for basic information along with your SS# for tax purposes and your level of trading experience for their demographics. The type of account you want is a cash account (NO MARGIN). Last thing is you want real-time quotes so read and agree to the terms.

Third: You have to read!!
If you have no clue about assets and liabilities, the first thing you need to do is read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Then read Jim Cramer’s Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World. You can purchase both of these books easily from amazon. I am not telling you to read these books for your health!! They will give you a nice foundation for you to build wealth. Rich Dad, Poor Dad gives you the basic mindset on what assets are and how to start building them. Jim Cramer teaches you about the asset class of stocks and how to go about picking the right stocks to buy. I like Jim Cramer’s book because it is a fairly easy read and he does a great job at breaking down the basics of stocks in an entertaining fashion. Lastly, you have to keep up with current business news. So watching CNBC and reading articles from Wall-Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, and Yahoo/Google Finance is necessary.

After you finish reading this post and you say, “man, I still don’t know what to do!” It’s because you did not read the books I supplied, explored Google finance, watch CNBC (especially from 4-6pm est: if you work, watch the clips online), nor did you open up a brokerage account. Once you do all those things AND read this post, will you the basic skills needed to trade the stock market.

What type of trader/investor do you want to be and what you need to do?

1. I have no clue about the stock market but it looks interesting and want to make some money. I really don’t have a lot of time to learn but I have a couple hundred dollars that I can put into the market. Maybe one day it will be worth a lot of money.

Answer: To be honest, to make a lot of money from a little without doing much work is called the lottery. But because of the times we are in, there is a couple of what I like to call hope plays out there. Research the stocks that have been beaten up the most, meaning their stock went from 80 dollars to like 50 cent or 1 dollar. Then research the company!! This is KEY! You have to find a company that you think will survive this recession we are in. Real Estate and Financial companies is a good place to start. A company who stock that has been sold off to around a dollar could possibly one day hit new highs. A hundred dollar investment could be worth $5,000 in about 10 to 20 years.

2. I have a 401k or Roth IRA and it is losing money. I don’t know what funds to put my money in. I want to learn about the stock market so I can better manage my retirement account.

Answer: The best way to manage your long term retirement accounts better is to learn business cycles and the seasonality of the stock market. You will have to keep up with business news, what sectors are growing and so forth. To do this, watch CNBC more often to understand business jargon. You want to reallocate your funds maybe once or twice a year. Also, moving your money to cash is just fine!! People who say dollar cost average in a declining market and never leave your money in cash is a broker trying to make money off fees and not performance.
a) One rule of thumb to follow is buy the market in October and move your money to cash in May. This one rule has beaten the market averages over time in a major way.
b) If you don’t have a 401k or Roth IRA, get one and put $25, $50, or whatever you can afford into your account every month. If you are young, this is one of the best things you can do. If you follow the sell in May rule, then during the summer months, you still deposit the money in your account, but leave it in cash until October comes. This way you stay discipline in depositing the money every month.

3. I have no clue about the stock market but I want to learn and spend 1-2 hours a week trading stocks. I have about $2,500 dollars that I can use to get started. I believe the more I work, the better my trades will be. I want to stay in a trade maybe 3 months to 2 years (this current market, it’s more like 2 weeks to 3 months).

Answer: Personally, I think this is where most people would fit. Anyone who has any wealth or wants to build wealth will have to interact with the stock market. So I say you might as well learn. To do this, you need to keep up with business news (via CNBC), Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance, etc and you also need to learn the dynamics of the stock market. Once you learned how to trade, it will only take you about 1-2 hours a week to manage your portfolio.
b) Open up an online brokerage account and learn the platform. It’s fairly easy to do.
c) Find one stock and follow it. Use this stock to see how economic news items and stock specific news items affect stocks movement.
d) It is imperative that you read the books mentioned in this post and learn market jargon through CNBC and Google finance.
e) Once you have done the basics, I will help you develop more skills to hone your skills using technical analysis, fundamental analysis, etc.

4. I have no clue or some clue about the stock market. I am really interested in it and want to be the best trader I can be. I see myself trading well and can possibly make a lot of money from trading. I will spend 10-20 hours a week working on being the best. I want to be able to trade stocks and invest in them well. I want to get to the point where I don’t have to work.

Answer: This will take about 3-5 years to accomplish. If you really want to do this, contact me. The first thing I’m going to do is give you a book list of 5-10 books to read and homework to do before we even get started. Why I say this. There are no secret tricks to learning the market, you just have to put in the time and effort. So I have to weed out the people who think they are going to make some quick money overnight.

Hello everyone, This will be the home for the Book Club discussion of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”.

I hope you all are ready for tons of great discussions. Since this is the first book club event, I will explain the format. We will work out of this blog post and everyone is invited to add a comment on something you would like to discuss from the book. This will serve as the spark to get everyone else talking and thinking.

Hopefully this can be an educational experience that everyone can benefit from.

Let the fun begin:

One of the most controversial points Robert Kiyosaki made in Rich Dad Poor Dad to me was when he discussed why buying a house was more of a liability than an asset. He states on page 73 that since the money you pay for your mortgage, taxes, insurance, and other house related costs take money out of your pocket that it is a liability.

Most people look at their house expenses as investment money, in hopes that their home will appreciate and make money for them in the future.

I am interested to hear people’s opinions on this issue.