Well I’m back after a lengthy break!

Make sure to keep checking out www.usethedollar.com!

So I have a question for each of you.

Many of you saw my stunt running for President of the United States.

I am prayerfully considering a pursuit for office in local politics.
Thoughts?

Thanks guys!
Grace and Peace!
–Michael

I thought I’d try my hand at video-blogging:

Topic: Why are the investors and government so panicky about the banks?
Enjoy!

Okay- I’ve stressed this many times; but I’m learning evermore that it is step number 1 to any sort of financial success.  Discipline is necessary to any kind of expertise.  So yet again, I will stress Income Allocation.  I’ll use my own as my example for this particular lesson.

Whenever I recieve any kind of income- and like I said, DISCIPLINE, so this means ANY kind of income: from my monthly paycheck to a birthday check- I immediately deposit it into a free checking account I have with Wachovia labeled “Spending Account”.  From there it is immediately disbursed among several other accounts, each labeled as follows:

30% remains in my Spending Account
30% is transferred into my Bills Account
30% is transferred into my Investment Account
10% is withdrawn in Cash and placed into envelopes for my Tithe

It is very simple- My spending Account goes many more places though.
For example, For every purchase that I make with my spending Debit Card, I have one dollar removed from the Spending account and automatically transferred into a Wachovia Way2Save high yield Savings account.
I also use this for longer term accumulation for large spending that doesn’t qualify as an “investment”.  What is an example of this?  Well, I hope that in the next five years I’ll be blessed enough to ask someone to marry me.  So, to prepare for this sort of a purchase, I dedicate 10% of my spending account to an envelope on my desk with a circle drawn on it and no label, so that no one walking in will think I’m jumping the gun… but now you all know.  Shoot.
My Bills account gets used for things like gasoline, groceries, etc.
My investment account is widespread, but overall is ONLY used for purposes that will yield some sort of return.  This could range anywhere from purchasing a domain for a website (not a fun website but one I think could yield a return) to a business flight. 
Tithing is very important to me, and I tithe what I’m comforatable with giving.  God loves a cheerful giver.

This is an overview of my income allocation.  If there’s anything I would encourage you to do before doing ANYTHING else- Set up an income allocation procedure for yourself.  Then go through a Passive vs Active income analysis.  Get started!

Hope alls well guys! Maranatha!
–Michael

And check out my newest site: www.schooloftheology.org — I’m pretty excited about it If you’re interested in writing for it, let me know!

Alrighty-  Yesterday we covered what Active Income and Potential Income are and we went through a few methods of increasing them.  So now it’s time to apply it to ourselves.  I’ll show you my personal analysis of my Active and Passive income and you can go about doing the same for yourself.  By applying it to ourselves, we can just how many income streams we have and what to do from there.

So first lets list my current income streams:

So I have a total of 6 very limited income streams.  I do want to make a note that I am ONLY including Regular income.  I own several small businesses that bring in intermittent income, but I cannot include those for valid planning purposes.

So the next step then would be to outline ideas for increases in both sides of the chart:

Now I will say- You’re not going to see all of my ideas.  You’ll hear about them once they’re already in place .  But this is the majority of them.  You’ll notice that there is much more listed on the Passive side than the Active side.  I am ALWAYS looking for ways to increase the side of the chart that takes no regular work or time from me.  I’m busy enough as it is.  I want and need to make money in ways that take the least out of my agenda.

So now I’d encourage you to do this for yourself!  Comment and share how many income streams you have and how many you’d like to have.

Hope all’s well.  Maranatha!
–Michael

Okay Ladies and Gentlemen. Let’s get on track to begin building wealth. As I hope that all of you realize, you will NeveR get rich off of your day job. Now, I’m not saying that through disciplined saving and investing you may not retire wealthy, but a salary will never make you wealthy on its own.
So in this post we’ll be covering Active Income and Passive Income.
We’ll go over what each of these are and a few ideas as to how to increase generating each of them. Then in the days and weeks to come we’ll go through investing techniques, etc.

So, your Active Income is any income that you exchange work or time on a regular basis for money. Examples of this would be working 40 hours a week at Walmart as a Cashier for a preset salary of $7.00 an hour.
Your Passive Income is any income that does not require work and time on a regular basis, yet still continually feeds your income. An example of Passive income can be anything from interest yielded from a bank account or mutual fund to a small business that “practically runs itself”. We’ll get into more examples soon.
We run into a few problems with these definitions, and in all honesty you will need to define for yourself what each of your income streams should be classified as.

After analyzing your income streams, if you’re as novice as I often find myself to be, I’m sure that you’ll find two things. 1. I only have three(or fewer) seperate income streams. and 2. Almost all of my income is active.

So how can we go about increasing Active Income? This is a much simpler sector of your income to grow than your passive income. You can go about doing this by getting a new job, starting a new business, or investing in the stock market. Why do I include investing in the stock market in Active Income? What work does that involve? We’ll get further into that in the days and weeks to come, but according to Jim Cramer (a stock Guru) you should be spending a minimum of one hour per week per stock you own. Definitely active in my book.
So a few very simple Active Income Ideas:
1. Get a second or third job
2. Start a small fundraising business
3. Start selling cold water bottles at large outdoor events (braves game, etc.)

How can we increase Passive Income? This becomes a bit more difficult, only because it takes more creativity. Passive income, in my book, is really the American Dream. Earning money with little to no work. This includes things like mututal fund yields, bank account interest, a guy who is afraid of you and pays you $40 a week not to beat him up (this is a financial idea, not a moral one….).
So then what are some realistic ideas to increase my Passive Income?
1. Start a blog and sell advertising on it with Google Adsense or others (this blog has no ads).
2. Invest in Mutual Funds or Index Funds (we’ll get more details on these later)
3. Purchase real estate and rent it.

You will never truly begin to accumulate wealth until you’ve increased your Passive Income. This is how the rich get richer. The ideas on here are decent, but excellent ones are to be made by the entreprenuer(you) themself. Thats how you get rich — Passive income is an idea game, so get started! I’ll share more as time goes on- Feel free to comment with your thoughts on this entry or with your own ideas!

Maranatha!
–Michael

Saturday was my first day of class.  Yup.  Saturday…
But now its Monday and its my first full day of classes.  My Monday Class schedule starts at 8:00AM and ends at 10:45PM.  Yes, a 14 1/2 hour day.  There are gaps in between, but none large enough to warrant a bike ride home.
I was forced to register last Tuesday, the week before school started, because my tuition didn’t get paid in time and they deleted my class schedule.  If I can give any advice, if your state gives out anything similar to Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship, get it.
My tuition is insanely cheap as universities go, but for my 18 hours this semester, I’m costing my family $2038 for tuition and fees and probably another $500.00 for books. :/
This makes me pretty uneasy.   I hate being a burden on my family, and one day I’ll pay it back.

As for my classes though, the one that truly sticks out in my mind is my Anthropology class.
The woman was insane (yet awesome).  The class started out in complete darkness.  Then she turned on a German Techno video without sound.  Then turned it off and left us in darkness for 10-20 minutes.  Then turned it back on with sound.  Finished it.  Walked in with her giant Jew-Fro (her words) and started speaking in a german accent for the heck of it.  Asked one boy to come up and be interviewed. Proceeded to ask if he would like to touch her monkey, pulled out a stuffed monkey and made him touch it.
Then had a boy come up and do the Time Warp.
Awesome

Maranatha!
–Michael

Hey guys!

Sorry its been a few days.  So- for quite a few months now I’ve been an avid reader of a financial blog written by a twenty something year old entreprenuer named Neville Medhora.   Well yesterday he posted a, well, a post that has me thinking.
I’ve always been an avid follower of Dave Ramsey’s envelope method.  If you’re not familiar with it, its very simple.  When you make money, you cash it and divide it up among envelopes labeled for certain purposes.  For example, I have an investments envelope, a vacation envelope, a taxes envelope, etc.
Well, Neville in his infinite wisdom has advised opening up separate checking accounts within the same bank for this purpose.  He has a general account into which all of his income is immediately deposited and then disbursed throughout the rest of his accounts.  I have started looking into how cooperative Wachovia is with this sort of method, and they do something pretty neat!  They  allow you to nickname your accounts, so that from your online banking its all very simple and easy to see.  You can also set up auto-transfers from one account (your general account) to another (say, your savings account!).  A great way to make sure you’re saving at least a minimum amount each month!

So I’m going to end up in Wachovia again this week to make a few deposits and make sure all is well with this idea. 

Also!  Tuesday night was our first XZone of the year!!!
It was insanely awesome! Our leadership team is INCREDIBLE and the kids were so well behaved!
I’m very very excited to see how God uses this year!

Hey guys!

So, due to circumstances beyond my control, I lost out on a very large portion of my monthly income today… for good.  SO.  No crying over spilt milk by this entreprenuer! Thats simply wasting time I could be spending coming up with new ideas!!!

So I thought I would spend this post going through a few ideas for ways to make some extra income in your spare time, or maybe even replace that boring day job of yours!  Who knows, maybe I’ll fall in love with one of them while I’m typing it

1. Start a fundraising company!
I’ve been doing this one with a friend, David Carlisle, for quite some time now.  The company we run is called Bottom Line Fundraising.  We specialize in making fundraising discount cards for schools and church groups.  We’ve been making a very nice profit and are far from finished Its and easy side job that, once we’ve completed the initial work finding companies, does most of the work itself.  For a more detailed explanation with a step by step guide I typed up a while ago, see here!

2. Flyer Distribution
This is one of those random ideas I’ve come up with that I always thought would be worth a shot but never took the time to try it.  Most small business owners dont have much time on their hands, but are in dire need of ways to reach the community around them while staying on a budget.  Why not offer to make and distribute (in parking lots under windshield wipers) flyers that have directions to the store and maybe even a coupon or some sort of incentive?  You would charge a little over what it would cost to go have the flyers printed: If you’re good with photoshop you could even design a great looking flyer before going in and giving your pitch to try to get the sale.  What you’re really selling is the distribution anyway as most shop owners wont want to risk a run in with nonsoliciting rules or simply dont have the time

3.  Sell your Class Notes!
I tried this for the first time during my summer semester when I only had two classes. I only tried it with one of them, but it was a HUGE success.  I ended up making $75.00 from taking notes I would have been taking anyway.  What it did though was kept me accountable to go home and re enter my notes into the computer, which was forcing me to study.  It was an outstanding system- I charged $15.00 for a season pass.  Click Here for a step by step write up I did when I was done with it last semester I’ll be doing it with all five classes this semester

Hope this was helpful guys!
Give one or two of these a shot! And if you try #2, Let me know how it goes for you!  Thanks!

Maranatha!
–Michael

Alrighty guys- I was going to just go straight into a gameplan for my long term goals, but I was up thinking lastnight about how little I actually know about my monthly gasoline consumption and costs.

So I’ve decided I need to take action.  How can I conduct proper financial planning and budgeting if I’m not even sure of one of my expenses?  And how can I possibly cut back on gasoline spending in any way if I’m not sure how much I spend to  begin with?

So I’m putting together a chart that I will revert to after each fill up.  I will input the gallon price and number of gallons purchased and it will calculate total cost paid, average MPG of previous tank as well as average monthly gallon price, total number of gallons purchased in month and total amount paid per month.

I think that by utilizing and retaining this information (aside from simply keeping my receipts) I will be able to better plan and manage my gasoline spending.  It will also help me to plan and prepare for the ever rising prices of the gasoline.

Come September 1, 2008 I will post my chart for August.  Maybe that’s what I’ll start doing, posting my financial statements for the month at the end of each month?  yes… I dont see why that should be an issue… Hm, we’ll see
Regardless, I’d suggest you each follow along and keep a detailed record of your gasoline spending

Hope alls well! Maranatha!
–Michael

Alrighty then-
A few days ago I went through my planning as to how I would accomplish each of my short term goals.  I still need to elaborate on goal #3 of short term, but I’ll leave that until a later post.
Here is my plan for my MidTerm Goals::::

Mid Term Goals

1. By 20, be earning pretax $2500/month from my business ventures
2. By 22 have $10,000 in personal account set aside for down payment on real estate

Here we go!

1. $2500.00 per month will equate to $30,000.00 per year.  My only real strategy behind this is to start and run as many different forms of businesses and investments as possible.  By spreading my money out over different industries, I should be able to even avoid any issues with the economy.  So if you have any ideas, I’d be on board for testing, just let me know   To have this accomplished by my 20th birthday, I have a year and 17 days from today to accomplish it.

2. Now, by 22 years old I want to have $10,000 saved up in a seperate real estate account that can be put towards a down payment.  Preferably, this will be accomplished before my 22nd birthday, but If I start on my 19th birthday (17 days from now), Then I will need to put $277.78 into the account each month in order to achieve the $10,000.  That gives me three years.  Should be “accomplishable”.   It will, however, require an update to my income allocation procedure though.  I’ll have to remember to bring that to the discussion with my pretty girlfriend

If you have any ideas or suggestions, drop em in a comment!
Maranatha!
–Michael