I absolutely did not want to write another book… but I wanted to share with you what changed my mind.
Yup, after months of brain-numbing work and putting in hours that could kill a horse, I just sent the manuscript of my second book off to the publisher. The title is, The Bank On Yourself Revolution: Fire Your Banker, Bypass Wall Street and Take Control of Your Own Financial Future.
It will be published early next year, and there is no doubt in my mind it will hit all the best-seller lists, just like my first book. (Of course, I’ll let you know how you can get an autographed copy.)
This book is incredibly well documented and will blow the lid off the “conventional financial wisdom” and expose it for what it really is – a way for Wall Street and the banks to continue to line their pockets at our expense.
Writing my first book in 2008 was one of the most painful experiences of my life. It was all-consuming of my time and energy for nearly a year. I swore to my husband Larry that I would never, ever again set myself up for the stress of looming deadlines, the agony of the editor’s red pen, and the loss of so many weekends and so much sleep. Nope. Never again.
Are you ready to have the peace of mind of knowing at least a chunk of your nest-egg is in a plan that goes in only one direction…
And has never had a losing year in over 160 years? You can know the guaranteed value of your Bank On Yourself plan at any point in time before you decide to move forward. To find out what your numbers would be, request your FREE Analysis, if you haven’t already.
You can win one of six valuable prizes by participating in our “Test Your Money and Investing IQ” blog contest – just enter your answer in the comments box below by midnight Monday, November 14.
At a dinner party recently, I sat next to a retired business owner and we got into a conversation about money and finances.
In response to one of his questions, I mentioned an important principle of finance, at which point he turned to me and said, “I’m a CPA and an MBA and I’ve never heard of that!”
Actually, it’s fairly common that I meet highly educated people who are unaware of some of the really critical basics of how money and finances work.
Funny thing is that I think many of our subscribers know these principles, even if they don’t have alphabet soup after their names.
Applying a little logic and common sense (which is admittedly in short supply in our society today) is usually all that’s needed.
And to prove my point, I’m holding a contest to see how many of our subscribers can answer the questions below correctly.
If you answer even one of these questions correctly and/or insightfully, you can win a prize.
I know that people deepen their understanding more when they participate and articulate their thoughts, so I decided to “ethically bribe” you to take a shot at it by holding a contest.
Here’s all you have to do to enter the contest…
Just type in your answer to any one or more of the five questions below, no later than Monday, November 14, at midnight. If you want, you can comment on someone else’s answer to qualify to win.
After the contest ends, our team will pick the best entry (best because it’s correct, insightful, entertaining or a combination of those). That person will win a $100 Amazon Gift Certificate. And two runners-up will be chosen to receive their choice of a $25 Dining Gift Certificate, or a personally autographed copy of my best-selling book.
Three more winners will be chosen at random – all entries containing at least one correct answer will be entered into a random drawing for another $100 Amazon Gift Certificate and two prizes of your choice of a $25 Dining Gift Certificate or autographed book. (Sorry – U.S. residents only.)
Although there are five questions, you don’t have to answer all of them to qualify.
So test your money IQ now by answering as many of these five questions as you want:
If you finance a $30,000 car through a finance company, your actual cost for the car is the money you spend on it, plus the interest you pay, less the value of your trade-in at the end of your loan repayment period.
Question: If you pay cash for a car, what’s your actual cost for the car?
If you have a $20 stock and it goes up by 40%, how much money did you make on that stock? (Hint: This is about a key financial principle, not a math question.)
According to Morningstar, Inc., the top-performing mutual fund for the last decade (ending December 31, 2009) enjoyed an 18% annual return.
However, the typical investor in that fund wasn’t so fortunate.
Question: What was the annual return of the typical investor in that top-performing fund? And why was their return so different from the return reported by the fund?
Wondering where you’ll find the funds to start a plan? Don’t worry! You’ll receive a referral to one of only 200 advisors in the country who have met the rigorous requirements to be a Bank On Yourself Professional and can show you where to find money you didn’t know you had to fund your plan.
What percentage of mutual funds, financial advisors and investment advisory services underperform the overall market? And why?
You could have $10,000 in a mutual fund that reports an average annual return of 25% for four years… and at the end of the fourth year end up with only the $10,000 you started with.
How is that possible?
So there you have it – just answer one or more of these questions, or comment on someone else’s answer, no later than midnight, Monday, November 14, to get in the running to win one of the six prizes!
We’ll announce all the winners in a blog post later this month.
So scroll down to the comments box below and start typing! (Note – all comments are moderated, so there will be some delay before your comment appears.)
We received dozens of insightful entries for our “Bank On Yourself vs. savings account” contest. They confirmed – once again – that we have a whole bunch of very smart subscribers!
The contest even inspired one reader to write a poem!
I’ve been studying these topics full time for nearly a decade now, and even I learned some new things. So, whether you use the Bank On Yourself method or not, or you consider yourself to be an expert or a novice at understanding money and finances, you should read this!
You will undoubtedly learn some things you didn’t already know!
There were so many great contest entries, it was really tough for our team to single out only the five best entries, and the winners of the iPod Touch, Amazon.com gift certificate and more are listed below.
Dank and fetid, the inner sanctums of SSH4TT (and no, it’s not what you think!) are devoid of natural light and fresh air.
Few are ever allowed to enter these unholy chambers. Those who do, disfigured and debauched by their own villainy, steer clear of mirrors and other reminders of their foul order.
In public, these odious creatures adorn themselves in gay masks and robes. They are lauded and paraded as paragons of perspicacity. Millions, yeah, tens of millions of innocents flock to the doorsteps of their opulent and cavernous estates – hoping to be swathed in the aura of their being – all the while stone-blind to the magnitude of their deception.
As a corrupt order, members of SSH4TT have a singular mission – and they pursue it mercilessly. Like vampires that require fresh blood to animate their dead carcasses, SSH4TTs lust after money – other people’s money – to fuel their insatiable rapacity.
SSH4TTs conduct their business, as they have for decades, free of a worthy adversary.
We received several hundred correct entries to last week’s blog contest and the five randomly picked winners are listed below, along with the details of a NEW contest I’m holding.
Enter below to win these prizes!
You could win an iPod Touch, $100 Amazon.com gift certificate, a $25 dining Certificate and more!
In case you missed last week’s contest, I had posted a podcast discussing some of the internet forums where people anonymously debate the merits of Bank On Yourself and discuss whether or not it’s a scam.
Enter below to win these prizes!
On one of those threads that comes up very high in the search results, one of my toughest, potty-mouthed critics has slowly come around and admitted I’m right about many of the points I’ve been making.
When challenged by another poster about the actual returns people get in the stock market, he dragged out 29 years of records of his own investing accounts, and was shocked to discover what his returns had actually been.
The contest was simple to enter – just listen to the podcast where I revealed what my critic discovered was his actual annual rate of return BEFORE accounting for inflation and taxes… and then tell us what the percentage was.
Since the contest has ended, I can reveal the answer now. My critic averaged a 4.5% annual return over the past nearly three decades of investing in the stock market.
That’s BEFORE accounting for inflation, which averaged more than 3% per year, bringing his real return down closer to 1% per year.
And since much of his investing has been in tax-deferred accounts, he has yet to pay taxes on that money. Of course, he doesn’t know what the tax rates will be during his retirement, when he’s taking income from those accounts.
But what direction do you think tax rates will be going over the long term? (If you said “down,” I’ve got a Rolex watch I’ll sell you for $20.)
When you account for inflation and taxes, the question that ought to hit you over the head is…
Was it worth it?!?
Was it worth all the roller-coaster ups and downs and the sleepless nights to get 4.5% per year before taxes and inflation?
Keep in mind that no two Bank On Yourself plans are alike…
Each is custom tailored to your unique situation, goals and dreams. To find out what your bottom-line, guaranteed numbers and results would be if you added Bank On Yourself to your financial plan, request a free, no-obligation Analysis now, if you haven’t already done so.
If you’re wondering where you’ll find the money to fund your plan, keep in mind the Bank On Yourself Professionals are masters at helping people restructure their finances to free up seed money to fund a plan. Here are the eight most common places they look.
My critic’s experience wasn’t unique, although I’ll commend him for actually looking at his statements and then being willing to admit publicly – if anonymously – his disappointing results.
One subscriber to the Bank On Yourself blog made a similar discovery and posted this comment on last week’s blog:
Wow. I had the exact same experience when investigating Bank On Yourself before starting my own plans (have multiple policies and am LOVING the results – exactly as predicted or better, no surprises and I sleep well at night). I made the same Google search and spent hours poring over the posts. What struck me was that nobody ever presented any evidence of any kind of scam. Some folks disagreed with the assumptions or touted their wildly inaccurate assumptions about equities as a more attractive alternative, but never did anyone have anything remotely scam-ish to report.”
This comment came from Dan Proskauer, a very analytical man who has spent literally hundreds of hours researching Bank On Yourself, running spreadsheets and crunching the numbers.
And this concise comment made last week by a subscriber named John really summed up what a lot of people are (finally) figuring out…
I LOVE my Bank On Yourself plan, it does everything I was promised and more. I’ve not borrowed a penny from a bank or credit card in over a year. Why should I? I lend it to myself! And if you want a scam, I have two words for you … Wall Street”
Now for the details of our NEW contest…
A comment was made on the same thread that debates the merits of Bank On Yourself that it essentially works the same as a savings account, but with the added advantage of having a death benefit. This statement really got me thinking.
While there certainly are some ways in which Bank On Yourself-type policies function like a savings account, I can think of a lot of major, critical differences.
But rather than me telling you what those differences are, I’d rather hear what you believe they are. And some of our subscribers are a whole bunch smarter than I am.
So, I’m holding another contest, and our team will pick the five best answers and award a top prize of an iPod Touch (a $229.00 value), a second prize of a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate, and three runner-up prizes that will give you a choice of a $25 dining gift certificate or a personally autographed copy of my best-selling book for you or to give to someone you care about.
Just answer the following question in the comments box below no later than midnight, Monday, October 3:
The contest question is: How is dividend-paying whole life insurance different from a savings account (besides the death benefit)?
You can address one or more differences, or comment on someone else’s response to qualify.
And if you think I’m “full of it,” feel free to tell us that, too. (Some of our subscribers don’t seem to need any encouragement to do that…)
We’ll circle back here next week to report on the contest results and winners.
To qualify, just type in your response in the comments box at the end of this post no later than midnight, Monday, October 3rd. Please note that all comments are moderated, so there will be some delay before it appears. (Sorry – open to U.S. residents only.)
And now for the winners of last week’s contest. As I mentioned, we received hundreds of entries with the correct answer by both email and via the blog comments. These five randomly chosen winners have all been notified by email:
$100 Amazon.com gift certificate – Sheri Browning
The four winners of the $25 dining gift certificate or autographed book – Jeannie Fisher, Kevin Caldwell, Lynne, and Rich Rhoads
Okay! Scroll down to the comments box and enter the contest…
If You Don’t Already Know It, You’ll Discover It Here
Executive Summary: Knowing your true risk tolerance, or what we more broadly define as your personal Peace of Mind Quotient (POMQ), is vital to effectively directing your savings and investing strategies throughout the course of your life.
Really, until you get a handle on the emotional price you are willing to pay in pursuit of higher financial returns, you have no business chasing wealth.
People who fail to take their POMQ into account when developing their savings and investment strategies very often pay an exorbitant and unnecessarily high emotional penalty for their shortsightedness. Here we provide you with a fun and thought-provoking Peace of Mind Quotient Self-Assessment and encourage you to take five minutes or less to discover your score.
The conventional wisdom is that “peace of mind” is priceless.
It isn’t.
All of us have some level at which we are willing to tolerate stress, discomfort, worry, anxiety or other unpleasant feelings if the potential financial rewards are large enough.
Think of the popular NBC television show, Minute To Win It. Contestants – ordinary folks with no special skills or athleticism – compete in up to ten consecutive 60-second challenges using common household items.
As the winnings mount, each challenge becomes progressively more difficult. The suspense builds over the contestants’ fateful choice to pocket the cash they’ve already won or continue in pursuit of the ultimate prize of $1 million. If at any step along the way they falter, the game is over and they must forfeit their earlier winnings.
Would you risk 60 seconds of intense stress and many thousands of dollars of existing gains for a shot at $1 million?
Scroll down to the second paragraph below the “50/50, if you’re 50” subhead to read the advice Pamela gave for investors age 50-65 who are fed up with watching their hard-earned nest-eggs shrink yet again.
What about investors over age 65?
Pamela also gave advice for investors between the ages of 66 and 85 who want to add more guarantees and predictability to their financial plan and bump up their returns without the risk of stocks and other investments.
Although there wasn’t space to include that advice in the AARP article, this is an increasingly popular option for Americans up through the age of 85.
This little-known option provides many advantages that annuities and CD’s do not have, including…
Provides guaranteed growth and a higher return
Exceptional flexibility and liquidity
Protection from estate taxes
Automatic long-term care coverage at no additional costs (in states where it’s available)
If you’re not sure where you’ll find the funds to start a plan, don’t worry. The Bank On Yourself Professionals are masters at helping their clients of any age restructure their finances to free up seed money to fund a plan that will help you reach as many of your long-term and short-term goals as possible – in the shortest time possible.
Remember – Wall Street already lost more than 45% of the typical investor’s savings TWICE in the last decade. How would it affect you if this latest stock market rout is just the beginning of another look-out-below crash?
To find out how you can add predictability and guarantees to your financial plan and have the financial security and peace of mind that you want and deserve, request your FREE Analysis now. You’ll be connected with one of only 200 financial advisors in the country who have met the rigorous training and requirements to be a Bank On Yourself Professional.
Check out these other articles that may be of interest to you…
Teleconference replay reveals the steps you must take immediately to protect yourself from Wall Street’s bloodbath
I just held an urgent Teleconference on what you should do right now to protect your family’s financial security.
A number of people told us they weren’t able to attend and asked if it was recorded so they – and the people they care about – could still listen to it.
You can listen to a replay of it below, or you can download the recording as an MP3 and listen to it on your own player or iPod now at:
I urge you to shut the door and put out a “do not disturb” sign while you listen to this critically important information which includes answers to timely questions such as:
Should you stay in the market despite the turbulence and wait for the market to rebound?
Is now the time to shift into gold?
Where else can you find shelter from the storm?
What can we do to encourage Washington to get its act together?
Find out what you need to do right now to protect your hard-earned savings and take back control of your financial future here:
Are you ready to do something different?
And if you’re ready to find out how the Bank On Yourself method can give you the financial security and predictability you want and deserve, take the first step right now by requesting a free Bank On Yourself Analysis.
You’ll also get a referral to one of only 200 advisors in the country who have met the rigorous requirements to be a Bank On Yourself Professional, who can answer your questions and show you how much your financial picture could improve when you add Bank On Yourself to your financial plan.
Nobody is going to twist your arm, and you won’t even be asked to buy anything at your first meeting with your Professional.
But at least you’ll know whether Bank On Yourself makes sense for you and your family. So please request your free Analysis today.
Keeping that in mind, you might want to print this column and save it at the ready. It is timely reading this week and without any doubt will be again — sooner than any of us want to admit.
Along with death and taxes, one certainty in life is that the stock market will gyrate wildly, each time robbing investors of any remaining sense of financial well being.
When a stock market quake hits, stunned shareholders always get airborne, seeking a flight path to safety. In the immediate aftermath, my in-box overflows with queries from shell-shocked individuals searching for quality alternatives to the Wall Street temblors.
My answers are pretty much the same each and every time, although I must admit I remain puzzled why so many people who cry “foul” when Wall Street shakes, soon behave like “fowl” and — despite their badly damaged nest eggs — wing their way back to their 401(k)s and other Wall Street roosts, often within weeks or months.
So, fully aware that I will likely be pressed into writing some variation of this column again in the not-too-distant future, I present three of the questions I’m asked most frequently and my replies:
The markets are crazy and the economy may be unraveling. We have some important and timely articles, interviews and advice planned in the coming weeks on how to protect your hard-earned money. Subscribe to our free newsletter today, so you don’t miss any of it! You’ll also be able to immediately access my new 18-page Special Report absolutely free when you subscribe.
The Dow is down 1,300 points (give or take) in just the last two weeks, plunging more than 500 points today alone
The risk has been increasing daily that we will fall into another recession (if we aren’t ALREADY there), making it likely that the volatility in the markets will only continue – and maybe get worse.
If you have money in the stock market and you haven’t read the article I wrote on “Why You Need Dow 27,000 Today,” I urge you to read it now.
Are you sick and tired of the “hope and pray” method of building wealth?
Do you want to have a nest egg that grows by a guaranteed and predictable amount EVERY single year?
Have you just plain had enough?
The drop was the largest one-day decline in three years
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, and you haven’t already added the Bank On Yourself method to your financial plan, please, please, please – DO NOT PUT IT OFF ANOTHER DAY!
Request a free Analysis now. When you request your Analysis, you’ll get a referral to one of only 200 advisors in the country who have met the rigorous requirements to be a Bank On Yourself Professional.
The Advisor selected for you will be able to answer any questions you may still have and show you exactly how much money you can count on having in your plan at any point in time.
If you don’t like what you see, there’s no obligation at all and no one is going to twist your arm or try to hard sell you.
But at least you’ll know whether Bank On Yourself makes sense for your situation.
Wall Street already lost more than 45% of investors’ money – TWICE – just in the last decade
You may not vividly remember the sting of the last crash, but please don’t fool yourself into thinking it isn’t going to happen again.
More than $2 trillion of wealth has been wiped out in the past two weeks, but NO one lost a single penny in their Bank On Yourself plan. It’s an asset that has increased in value EVERY year for more than 160 years and remains the ultimate financial security blanket in both good times and bad.
If you finance a $30,000 car through a finance company, your actual cost for the car is the money you spend on it, plus the interest you pay, less the value of your trade-in at the end of your loan repayment period.
If you have a $20 stock and it goes up by 40%, how much money did you make on that stock? (Hint: This is about a key financial principle, not a math question.)
According to Morningstar, Inc., the top-performing mutual fund for the last decade (ending December 31, 2009) enjoyed an 18% annual return.
What percentage of mutual funds, financial advisors and investment advisory services underperform the overall market? And why?
You could have $10,000 in a mutual fund that reports an average annual return of 25% for four years… and at the end of the fourth year end up with only the $10,000 you started with.
ner than any of us want to admit.