How to Be Financially Successful and Spiritual

Many of us wonder just how we can live through life being financially successful while simultaneously being spiritual. The process of attaining financial wealth can at times feel like a stressful process and therefore counter-intuitive to what we seek when we follow a spiritual path.

1. Define it: Spiritual wealth and financial freedom mean something different to everyone. It is important to first define what financial success means to you and then define what spiritual wealth means.
Is financial success a certain amount of money in the bank?
Does it mean being debt free?
Is it about the freedom to choose when to work and where to travel?
What about being spiritual?
Is spirituality about finding more peace and purpose?

2. Be OK with your demands: Once you have defined what spiritual and financial success means to you- it is vital that you accept that what you want is OK. For some a life of abundance means having the simple things in life. A happy and healthy family and a secure job. For others it may mean being able to travel the world giving talks, publishing books and mingling with inspiring people. There is no right or wrong! It simply is what it is for you.

3. Don't take it personally and let go: Money and finances can be quite an emotional topic for many people. It relates directly to our survival and the thought of losing it can bring up a lot of emotional baggage. For many their self-worth is linked directly to the amount of money in their bank account. Not having enough can bring up negative thoughts such as 'What is wrong with me?' and 'I must be a failure.' Furthermore, having a lot of money in the bank can strangely also illicit a similar negative though process with the inner conversation sounding something like: 'I could lose it all' or 'I have to maintain this or I will lose the love of___.' When we hang on to these beliefs we are putting enormous stress and pressure on our bodies and eventually lead ourselves down a path of harm such as ill health. It is vital to be aware of what money means to you and be willing to let go of the thoughts, habits and patterns that harm you.

4. Like attracts like:Have you heard of the law of attraction? It is the belief that by focusing on positive or negative thoughts, one can bring about positive or negative results. When we are attempting to increase our income by way of acquiring a new job or launching a new product or business, we are often focused on the result. It is essential in business to be clear on your intended outcome, however, putting too much emphasis on that can actually be counterproductive. Have you ever had an experience with a sales person that left you running for the door? You could literally feel their desperation. On the other hand, have you dealt with someone where a transaction took place but it felt more like a pleasant conversation with a friend than a sales pitch? When we are able to trust that the right people will be drawn to what it is we have to offer, we release ourselves from having to try so hard and allow a natural, effortless interaction to occur.

The Three Top Priorities of Credit Repair

Making the decision to repair bad credit can be one of the most challenging yet life-changing decisions you will ever make. After dealing with being turned down for credit and hounded by creditors you can't pay, learning to use credit wisely will be a new path that offers a breath of fresh air to anyone who is focused on prioritizing credit repair.

If you want to prioritize credit repair on your list of things to do this year, here are three things you should focus on to make sure that happens:

1.) Pay on time--every account, every month. Your ability to pay on time accounts for 35 percent of your credit score. Utilizing credit wisely begins with staying within your financial means. If you are able to pay your bills every month on time, this means that you have the financial means to match your lifestyle habits and is the first step in rebuilding a solid credit history.

2.) Balance your credit utilization ratio. The magic number to remember here is 30% and in order to repair bad credit, you need to keep that number in mind at all times when looking at your credit usage. You should make sure that your overall credit usage on all credit cards is 30% or less of the limit. For example, if card A has a $5,000 limit, you should never allow your balance on that card to exceed $1,500. Regardless of how many cards you have, if you maintain this formula for all of your cards, you will see a dramatic improvement in your credit score. However, going over the 30% threshold will cause your credit scores to suffer and approaching the limit or going over your limit will cause your scores to take a serious dive.

3.) Show long-term improvement. Time will be the most influential factor on your credit score. When you are able to show that you have successfully managed your credit over an extended period of time, potential creditors are much more likely to view your credit history favorably when considering you for a loan. Credit worthiness is not an overnight accomplishment and a person's good credit takes years to build. But with correcting the misinformation being reported on your credit reports, bolstering what is being reported and showing patience, discipline and wisdom, your credit score will eventually reflect your effort if you stay focused on maintaining and improving it.

Companies Need Access To Accurate, Timely Data

Competition among businesses becomes keener every day. Customers have multiple resources available for price comparisons and purchases. Online stores battle brick and mortar locations with rock bottom prices. Internet retailers undercut each other with services such as free shipping and returns. Accurate, timely information helps entrepreneurs stay on top of sales trends. Armed with this data, they can respond quickly to changing marketplaces.

Monthly reports look backward. They tell business owners what happened last month, quarter and year. Sales forecasts give companies an idea of what might occur in the future. They help retailers plan their inventory and staffing for the seasons ahead. Entrepreneurs need both sets of information to run their endeavors successfully. Access to current information helps proprietors react swiftly to micro trends which make themselves evident over shorter windows of time. In many cases, however, this data is not readily available.

Some owners develop reporting of this type using generic spreadsheet applications. Information accumulated in this manner is useful but gathering it may be burdensome. Multiple resources have to be pulled together from varying sources. Compiling and presenting the data may require redundant input. Some software vendors offer software which simplifies the process. Frequently though, off the shelf solutions do not meet all the requirements businesses have.

When considering the implementation of such reports, entrepreneurs must determine the kind of information they need. One way to do this is by developing key performance indicators. These parameters illustrate the progress being made toward company goals. For instance, a retailer might want to know how many sales are being made in a particular area during a specific time frame. This data would then be correlated to an objective which had been previously set.

Key performance indicators alone, however, do not give business owners a full picture of what is currently happening in a store. They must be combined with other metrics to provide an accurate overall representation of ongoing trends. Ideally these statistics should be presented in a manner that readily illustrates the information both in summary and in detail. The presentation should also be easily understood within a short period of time.

Business owners need to have ready access to real time data about customer needs and purchases. Standard reports often do not provide this type of information. Companies can generate the statistics but the effort can be time consuming and redundant. Off the shelf software frequently supplies generic solutions. A business intelligence dashboard accumulates figures efficiently and presents them in an easily understood format.

Saving Your Wealth and Your Life

Essentially when you have money you will have monetary independence allowing you to do whatever you want to do. Currently we are four years into a depression, still there are many people who have been brain washed through mainstream media and phony government statistics that believe were in a recovery. If you were to take the long-term approach to this it would be painfully obvious that were far from any recovery. Depending upon how foolish the government reacts to real recovery, the current depression is going to only get much worse and be prolonged for years to come.

Reasons to be Optimistic

When it comes to optimism there are two reasons here that actually add up and make sense.

For starters every person on the planet would want to raise their standard of living while climbing the social ladder. For many, the best possible way to do this would be to produce more than they consume, putting aside the rest to savings. In essence this would create capital that in-turn could be invested into or loaned out for a productive project or endeavor. What could happen should forces beyond any control make it impractical or more difficult that it ought to be?

The other reason for optimism is in the technology development sector enabling the manipulation in the material world to best fit our needs. The development of this type of technology would further increase the supply of capital. As technologies become more and more complex increased capital expenditures are required. What would happen should there be a shortage of capital generation from businesses and individuals to supplement other technological advances?

Reasons to be Pessimistic

Technology and the accumulation of capital are two highly prevalent human factors of progress. These days however, reality is being masked by chaotic and caustic theories assisted by a world so difficult and complex that the mass majority cannot decipher its causes and effects. Additionally in the developed world people are complacent being they are so used to the good times. At the conclusion of WWII wealth and prosperity to those willing to take risks became an everlasting trait for the future.

The quality of life and high standards of living have been in a bubble. These are the main reasons that have been artificially inflated in the developed world. It is important that their not confused with the two causes that would create endless prosperity. There are three reasons; debt, inflation and the exportation of dollars.

Debt

In and of itself is not a bad thing. It allows capital to be dispersed usually done through lending. However for an economy to mature and grow the debt needs to be used for productive purposes, thereby consisting of short-term self liquidating debt. The majority of debt (in the trillions) the world owns today is for consumption, not production. Furthermore this debt is not self liquidating, it's compounding. It's mostly long-term debt that is not pegged or attached to assets of any kind.

Values of short-term loans are usually easy to calculate by the lender. However long-term debts such as 30 year loans realistically are not possible to calculate. The government's debt including debt from all branches of government, mortgages, students and consumers does not help anything. What in reality happens is that all the borrower's end up living off the capital that everyone else already accumulated. This makes debtors fiscal slaves indefinitely. This process has gone un-noticed by most of the world, including true believers of sound economics.

Inflation

Similar to debt but inflation has an effect that allows people to live beyond their means. The penalties for doing so however come at greater costs, being both indirect and delayed. If the central bank were to deposit $25,000 into the bank accounts of each citizen tomorrow, many people would claim their rich. With this newly found wealth people in-turn would start buying more things that in-turn starts a business cycle. The formation of a business cycle is always a direct result of currency inflation regardless how slight or gentle it seems. The damage always created, results in a depression. The longer inflation is allowed to continue the more damage is done.

Exporting of Dollars

This is a situation exclusive to the United States as well, the reason for the pending depression. The depression within the US will in many ways be worse than other countries. The dollar since 1971 has been used in the same way gold was, as it has remained the world's reserve currency. The dilemma is that America exported $7 trillion in foreign exchanges over this time for products all over the planet. Trading was great while it lasted. Sadly however all that the foreign nations received in return was paper that was backed by nothing and cost almost nothing to print, as the American public lived high off the hog with all the stuff that all those worthless dollars bought.

Sometime in the not too distant future dollars are not easily going to be exchanged, it is going to become harder and harder for other nations to accept the dollar. Because smart foreign nations will soon be discarding their dollars. Therefore at some point America will be holding the world's supply of dollars at home. Many of those dollars will be from foreign investors who purchased large plots of land or major businesses inside the US. America's birthright will soon be nothing more than contents left behind inside a storage container. There will be no winners in the end. Those foreigners still holding dollars, who believed their wealth was still protected by the dollar, will wake up one morning finding their dollars completely worthless too.

What's Next?

The last three reasons above essentially have forced the entire world beyond its means for several decades. This progression has aggressively been made possible by the governments in every major country and then some. Governments and politicians rather see people fully satisfied by living above their means, because happy people won't throw the politicians out of office.

America vastly is transforming into a welfare state through debt and inflation. This has turned a large part of society into becoming dependent upon government and its handouts. The general population now has the mindset that government can perform magic capable of repairing the economy when things get out of control or anything gets in the way. Governments are eager to redouble their efforts in the fiscal and monetary areas while trying to find the cure, albeit with increasingly disastrous results.

What can now be done for the "average Joe" and his family to accumulate more wealth? For the most part you're looking at the general standard of living for Joe's family to collapse, as well as the personal freedoms he and his family now enjoys. The ending result is if Joe values his money and personal freedoms, now is the time for Joe to step up and take positive action.

What Steps Can Joe and You Take?

To save his personal assets, purchasing power and individual freedoms Joe should seriously consider following these four steps. Note: the steps below can be time-consuming to implement so start now while time is still on your side.

First - Setup a bank and brokerage account outside of your country and maintain those accounts. You could also setup an asset protection trust offshore. Setting up accounts such as these will take some work but if you take the time to do it now you will most likely find it easier to do today than tomorrow.

Second - Insure a large part of your assets are held in physical precious metals such as gold and silver and more important a major part of those holding should be held offshore and outside the world's banking systems.

Third - Acquire real estate inside a friendly foreign country. Preferably in another country that you would not mind settling down in for a long period of time until things return to some kind of normalcy in your home country.

Fourth - Attempt to become a resident alien of the alternate country you choose to live in. Can you qualify for dual citizenship? Of course there will be advantages and disadvantages but the advantages should give you more flexibility while living inside your alternate country.

Tom Genot -

Confusing Financial Terms Explained

Asset Management - The is the management of physical assets. This term refers to the professional management of investments such as stocks and bonds and also real estate. Asset management is generally for people with a very healthy bank balance. A lot of financial firms and investment banks offer this service, however there is a lot of work involved and although it maybe costly it is always best to have a financial adviser to deal with the whole process if you want good results. The investor will meet with the Asset Management team or financial adviser and discuss the goals they want to achieve. By investing you assets you give the team leeway to select where to distribute them to get the best results. The assets will not normally go to one location and often get moved from one place to another to take advantage of a strong market. Income from the assets are typically deposited into the same bank account, making it more manageable and clear as to what has been achieved.

Capital Management - This is an accounting strategy, with the prime goal being an equal level of working capital and also it currents assets and liabilities. Capital Management helps to ensure companies are meeting their expense responsibilities and also sustaining adequate revenue. Financial advisory companies can help assist your company to achieve both short and long-term health through the management of capital resources. This can involve managing inventories and accounts receivable and payable. With a good financial adviser you will be able to meet your debt obligations and operate your expenses.

Investment Management - This involves investing large pots of money to make a profit. An Investment Manager will invest the money for you and hopefully make a profit for you and also they will manage to make a profit for their organisation too, through the set fees applied. Investment Management is all about managing growth or income money that has been placed in the pots as a principal investment. This money can come from different sources like Asset Management (as explained above) or from pension funds. The contributions made to the pension fund can hopefully improve the value of the pension depending on the growth that has been generated. Also the money can come from private banks and wealth management firms and even insurance companies.

These funds can be invested in different markets. It is not just shares and bonds some investment funds will specialise in property which is a large market.

Terrorism and Your Money

The war on terrorism has been pushed deep into the financial system. The CIA and the FBI have specific departments set up to watch the money flows and activities of certain organizations. They can easily seize banks accounts and funds if they feel, or can prove for some reason that the money is being used for plans or attempts to strike a target. It would seem that this is probably a good thing, at least on the surface.

The question that then arises is what happens when the use of these powers are pushed too far? Are innocent law-abiding people being caught up in this system, and what ramifications does that have on the banking system?

Now we all are familiar with the saying "I have nothing to hide," or "If you're not with the program you are with the terrorist." Fine, we get it. Nobody wants to be with the terrorists or even give the appearance that they don't want to help, but what about restricting you access to your hard-earned money.

Think it can't happen, think again. It is happening now as we speak and has been for some time. Just recently, a long-standing influential account holder (name withheld for obvious reasons) that was well-known to his bank tried to remove money in the form of gold from a bank in Switzerland. He was told that anything above 200,000 Swiss francs could not be removed from the account because it had to do with anti-terrorism and bank laundering precautions. What?

There are other examples of people removing smaller amounts of money for cash purchases of things like automobiles that are being asked what they need it for, or what they are going to do with the money. Really?

The bank never asked, nor did they care where it came from when it was deposited. However, when they go to retrieve those funds at a later date, a cast of suspicion is thrown over them. Does that seem right? Are we terrorists by default because we want our money in a large sum for something?

A lurking concern should be if the banks and other financial institutions should find themselves in a situation that they are over leveraged or insolvent, hell let's just call it what it is BROKE. Will they use these laws that are now on the books to keep you separated from the funds you have deposited with them?

At the moment it does not seem to be a wide-spread problem, but as always, laws tend to creep into different areas and can have huge unintended consequences from their original purpose or worse yet can be used in a way that was never intended in the first place by people with less than honorable goals.

The next question that arises is what kind of backlash could this have on our financial institutions? If the public starts to feel that their money may not be available to them or worse could be seized. Will they decide to choose another method of safeguarding those funds? The sales of home safes have increased as much as 60% in just the last year alone and continue to rise every day. Are the Financial institutions of the world shooting themselves in the foot?

Each day, if you look back from where we came from say thirteen years ago, it would appear that the terrorist goal to restrict are freedoms around the world has been extremely successful. And if you don't count just physical attacks alone, I would have to say from all perspectives they have won. We are less free then we were, and are now looked at as suspicious from our own governments as we are slowly acclimated to a police state, truly a sad state of affairs.

Save Time and Improve Cash Flow

There's no reason to add 20 minutes to your day for you.

Check? What's a check? You've probably heard people say that. The popularity of online bill-pay and credit or debit cards has led to the demise of many paper checkbooks.

But a lot of your customers (especially commercial/corporate) may still be using them, and that can mean multiple trips to the bank every week to deposit them. If you wait until you have several, your deposits will be delayed and your cash flow slowed down.

Intuit's Check Solution for QuickBooks may be just the solution for your business. You can accept check payments over the phone or scan the checks when they arrive in your office. Payments are deposited into your account anywhere from 1 to 4 days, depending on time of day, day of week and holidays. Most times my checks are in my account by the next day. Here are some benefits:

Faster payments. Since you can accept check payments over the phone, you don' t need to wait for the check to come via snail mail.

Save time (yours or staff): You don't have to fill out a deposit slip and go to the bank. If you scan the checks, both sides of the check are copied and stored in your QuickBooks data file no more standing by the copier to make copies of checks! This could also save you money - labor is a significant expense for most businesses, and if you're the owner, your time is valuable and better spent strategizing and making sales.

Improved accuracy. With check scanning, the numbers are entered for you. It's so easy to type a lengthy number incorrectly, especially if you're processing a number of transactions.

Decreased risk of fraud. The more people that handle a paper check, the more likely financial fraud is, so this cuts down on the number of handlers.

Lower fees. While there are fees associated with accepting e-checks, the fee per check is a very low flat rate, instead of a percent of the amount as with credit cards.

How it works

There are two methods with Intuit's check solutions.

1. Electronic Check - When you accept payment over the phone or are not using a scanner, go to receive payments in QuickBooks and enter the customer and amount as usual.
   1. Payment method is E-Check
   2. Check the box at the bottom of the screen next to Process E-Check payment when saving, and save the payment record.
   3. You will be prompted to enter the routing and account information from the check; QuickBooks will lead you through the necessary steps.
2. Check Scanning
   
   1. Click on Customers>Check Processing Activities>Scan Checks
   2. Scan the check (you can scan multiple checks at one time)
   3. Verify the information scanned correctly.
   4. Record the payment now or later. If you choose to do it now, Intuit will look for an appropriate open invoice. If unable to find and match, a button will appear for Receive Payments and then you can match the payment with appropriate invoice. All the payment information will be entered for you already.
   5. If you scanned multiple checks, you'll be asked to review each one.
   6. Send checks for processing - this will send the entire batch of checks you scanned.
3. You'll then be asked if you want to make a deposit now or record later. If you do it now, all the checks will be on one deposit for you.

You'll need a merchant account with Intuit if you don't already have one.

For those of you already using this, I'd love to hear how you like it!