Depending on your age and economic situation around you, you will need different investment plans to ensure that you make it big before retiring at age 55. It has been suggested that the amount of pre-retirement income you should aim to replace when you leave your job  should be around 80% of the total income you have earned  or at least $1 million.

Depending on your age, medical history, dependent family size and several other factors you may have to start saving very early before the age 55 to retire comfortably. Researchers have shown that those who start saving at an early stage of their  working years will find it more comfortable to retire at the age of 55. No amount is too much or too little to invest. An investment of around $10,000 for 25 years may grow to more than one million dollars or more if followed strictly.

According to researches. A 32 year old may have to save up to $14,000 yearly to be able to have around $2 million at the age of retirement. You may also need to save $10,000 a year outside of your retirement account to be able to have some financial stability while saving for the retirement age of 55. It will be hard to save this kind of money no doubt considering the fact that you will need to pay insurance and settle all other debts and perhaps what you often have remaining is few Hundreds of dollars. The best possible way to save money while earning low income is to set your priorities and make away with some non essential spending.

Most retirees will also receive Social Security benefits that could replace another 20% or 30% of pre-retirement income. For the average wage earner – with an income of $37,000 in 2005 –Social Security replaces about 42% of pre-retirement income; the figure is less for those with higher earnings. That would boost total income close to the 75% to 85% range of pre-retirement earnings generally recommended.

Saving around 15% of your monthly income does not mean you should stress yourself on your salary. There are some part-time jobs you can take to generate some savings. It has been discovered that those who have more than 1 jobs save more for their retirement age. Get some online jobs which will not take much of your time and remember that It doesn’t make sense to stash all of your money in an immediate annuity -especially one that does not increase with inflation because you will wipe out your savings. You can put around 65-70% of your savings in annuity depending on how well you can cope with the financial demands you got. So go ahead and start effecting your plan to retire at 55.

The advantages of passive income opportunities are quite enormous and they include; flexible working hours, unlimited source of income, funding of future retirement and freedom of choice on decision making. Some of the best passive income opportunities for retirement include; affiliate membership opportunities, pay-per-click opportunities, information product and services sales, blogging, Forex Trading, online referral/membership opportunities, work from home administrative jobs, and many more.

The Internet has made passive income generating opportunities much more popular in the world today. Affiliate marketing also seems to be the most preferred among the passive income generating online home businesses. It involves an individual becoming a part of a marketing team online and income generated on products and services will be shared among the affiliate marketing members. The setup is inexpensive and uncomplicated, merchant support readily available, business running costs are low with no need for office rental, leasing of computers and other equipment.

Affiliate membership generates multiple and recurring commissions depending on the sales generated from such affiliate marketing activities, hence the more you join the more passive streams of income generated.

Some people often engage themselves in multiple passive income generating opportunities before or after retirement and such online business include; eBay product selling and buying, eBook publishing, data entry jobs and several others. Most retirees combine many of these online opportunities to generate streams of passive income at their own pace.

Forex trading investment is one of the highest yielding businesses in the world today but it is actually for those who can master the technicalities of trading the world major currencies otherwise you will stand a risk of losing all your investment. Forex trading often make use of two fundamental analysis and those are the indicators and the non technical analysis which involve the use of current news on the values of the currencies and other economic determinants which may affect the value of currencies being traded on FOREX.

Apart from trading in Forex, you can also invest in several other home based business to generate passive income for yourself after retirement, what you need is looking around you and searching for the needs of people. When you discover what people around you need most then you can start supplying such needs and making your money. People who look around them and create wealth, even one million dollars or more, from providing common services to people around them often generate more streams of income for themselves and their families. You just need to think and make researches.

Financial experts suggested that deducting around 4% of your retirement account annually without compromising on your principal account and when you retire on 1 million dollars, this means with a retirement account of 1 million dollars, you can spend $48,000 annually. However when you live in a city like New York, depending on $48,000 from your retirement account of 1 million dollars may not be well enough and that shows how some factors may affect your chances of retiring on 1 million dollars. If you live in a smaller apartment unit, you may not even spend up to that on yearly basis and live more comfortably on your retirement account.

Budgeting is such an important factor that determines if you can comfortably retire on 1 million dollars or not. Getting expensive gifts and living large will probably increase your annual expenditure and if you don’t re-invest part of your 1 million dollars you might probably spend more than you ought to spend.

Travelling and vacation expenses must also be cut to a reasonable size if you really want to retire on 1 million dollars. Shopping sprees should also be reduced just get the basic things you need and that will help you spend less from your retirement account. This does not mean you cannot live a good life after retirement-you deserve a good life too and its ideal to enjoy what you have labored for but try invest from such a retirement account so that a monthly streams of income will still be flowing while you are retired.

Retiring on 1 million dollars is all about Prudency and being able to save a substantial amount of money at your early stage of working days. Those who start to save early can retire early and start their own home based business or even invest a substantial part of their retirement income in Annuity plan to generate a constant income for life.

Since people differ in their way of living, therefore it will be pretty difficult to have a standard rules for determining whether they will be able to rely on 1 million dollars retirement account. If you will have to retire on 1 million dollars, financial experts suggest that you re-invest around 40% of the 1 million dollars in annuity and then spend around $40,000 a year to balance up your regular annuity income with the rest of your 1 million dollars retirement account.

Look at your expenses and determine whether $40,000 per year will be sufficient for your city and your expectation of standards of living. I would suggest that if you are still young and active, to shoot for more than 1 million dollars. It used to be enough for our parents but in today’s context, I would need about 2 million dollars to retire comfortably…

I am not saying that one million dollars is worthless, far from it, many Americans still do not have their first million, and may not see it in their life time. However the amount of goods or security that one million dollars can buy has definitely and visibly dwindled. Take for example, the price of our homes. Home prices have risen about 300% over the last 20 years. That would mean that a million dollars used to be able to buy a home three times as big 20 years ago versus today. Taking that as a prime example would mean that one million dollars today is only worth three hundred thousand 20 years ago.

But the more important question that we should ask, when we ponder the worth of our money is whether we are able to grow our money as fast as the annual inflation so as to maintain the value of our cash. If you do not grow your value by the amount of inflation, you are effectively losing the value of your wealth. And in twenty years, the one million dollars underneath your bed would only be worth one third as much. So dun leave your money to fend for itself, it cannot do so within the confines of your cookie jar or even that of your saving accounts.

Invest your money into the stock market would help you grow your money fast but this also comes with lots of risk. The safer bet in the stock market would be to buy the index or others would call indexing. That would mean that you would need to buy into the stock market index. This would be relatively “safe” as the stock market tend to perform well over the long term.

To hedge against inflation, you could also procure real estate. As mentioned above, property prices had risen over 300% over the last 20 years. Buying a good piece real estate can mean staying in line with price increases and maintaining the value of your wealth. Do not let your cash sit idling; make sure your cash is working just as hard as you.

At the end of the day, many people will be asking whether they can retire with just 1 million dollars. It is definitely possible but the standards of living that one million dollars can buy will fall with each passing year. I would bet that one million dollars would not be sufficient in another 10 years time. So be prepared and do your sums right.

We have all heard of the guy who made his fortune on the stock market and of the neighbour who sold his investment property and made one million dollars of the sale. I interviewed a Dave Sheldon, from Los Angeles, whom I met during an investment seminar late last year. He works in a training consultancy firm that develops training systems for companies, and he has joined the ranks of the millionaire when he sold his investment property in LA two years ago. Dave was an average guy drawing a four figure salary from his daily grind but invested in the real estate market ten years ago. When he finally cash in on his property, his profits was more than a million dollars and was more than sufficient to allow Dave to live the life that he has been dreaming of. Nowadays, he fetches his kids to school and is currently attending college again, to pick up a few more languages. By the way, Dave is only 35 this year. Is it possible for all of us to be like Dave? Join the millionaire club before 40 and escape the daily grind?

Where did all these millionaires make their millions? Are there many secrets that we are not aware of and need to attend $3,000 seminars to learn from? After speaking to more than 50 millionaires, I have compiled a simple statistic of where did these average guys and girls make their million dollars and how we can follow their example. Note that these are people whom I have met over a period of 3 months and have no relationship with each other whatsoever.

From my interviews and research, I could see that most of millionaires that I have met made their first million dollars from starting a business or investment in real estate or the stock market. This is not surprising since the last few years before 2007 were economically strong years. Significantly less folks saved a million dollars from paid employment or just spending less. What does this data tell us? Quit our jobs today and start a business in investment into real estate. LOL.

It does tell us that it is becoming difficult to become a millionaire by simply working hard on your job and hoping that your 401(k) plan will grow into a million dollars. At least it is not a popular method to becoming rich. Why so? The median income in US is $21,587, which does not leave much on the table for savings after you deduct expenses and taxes. Yes, taxes. To really jump onboard the million dollar club, most of us will need drastic actions and this path is likely the entrepreneurial route, where we can start a business which we are passionate about.

Starting a business is not for everyone. The financial risk that comes along with the business can be quite foreboding but if one take careful steps in managing the risk, the rewards can be extremely gratifying financially and emotionally. I will talk about starting a business in another post next time.

Deliberate & Unintentional Attraction

This phenomenon is what I call the Deliberate and Unintentional Attraction. Deliberate Attraction happens when we clearly desire an object or situation that we would like to be in. We are without doubts and have a single focus on our desire. In this situation, our energies will be directed by our conscious mind at our declared desire. Positive energies are emitted and we will attract the object or situation that we would like.

Unintentional Attraction happens when we have not cleared up our doubts about our desire or when we are unsure of what do we really want. If you consciously desire wealth but subconsciously pass snide remarks about why people do not really need that money to be happy, you will not only be not attracting wealth but you will be attracting situations whereby wealth can be lost from you.

Our unintentional attraction can also happen when we are constantly worrying. When you overly worry about the lack of money to pursue your studies, you will be attracting situations where your savings will be depleted.

It is easy for many of us to understand and believe in deliberate attraction when we discussed about the Law of Attraction but when the subject of unintentional attraction is raised, there will always be 2 camps. Opponents will raise the question whether a rape victim desired to be raped unconsciously or whether a murder victim desire to be killed. At the extreme end of the argument, proponents will argue that in both cases, the victims had desired to be victims. I would rather argue that the victims did not wish for harm to befall them but it is the criminal who had desired to do harm unto others; thus attracting the victims to come their way. But I digress from the main topic.

Law of Attraction is about attracting the Opportunities and not the Object in Question

There are many books and videos that have informed the general public that the Law of Attraction is about wishing for an object e.g. car and the object will appear to them. If it was so, everyone would be a multi-millionaire already. The Law of Attraction is about attracting the opportunities whereby your desire can be fulfilled. For example, if you desire a new job, what you will get is not a job offer but rather contacts with headhunters who are always ready to offer jobs. When you emit energies to attract wealth, you will start to see business opportunities come your way.

In this way, the Law of Attraction requires you not only to ask for your desires but also to deliberately accept them when the opportunities come knocking on your door. You have to make the final decision on whether to accept the chance to start your business ventures or whether to accept the name cards of the headhunters who you just happened to meet.

Visioning – Putting yourself into the scene

The other interesting topic about the Law of Attraction is the expression of the desire. Visioning of one’s desires is one key step to affirm your desires so that the Law of Attraction can get to work. To be able to emit the energies of wealth, you must first feel rich. You must be able to envision yourself in the endstate that you would like to be. If you wish to become wealthy and retire before your thirties, you will need to see yourself in that state. You can also reinforce the desire by using physical items to affirm your needs.

Using physical props is effective as it gives a tangible object for your desires to be focused on. For example, if you desire wealth, you should write a cheque to yourself and place that cheque somewhere where you can see daily. This will help you to visualize with greater clarity so that positive energies can flow and attract the correct outcomes.

The Law of Attraction can attract positive outcomes or negative consequences. It does not ask whether you would like a positive or negative outcome, but rather it acts according to the energies emitted by you.

What is the purpose of the one million dollar cheque?

Some of you may have wondered why would anyone want a “fake” million dollar cheque? The idea of using picture of a million dollars or a one million dollars cheque to attract wealth is not an original idea that I dream up one day. I definitely cannot profess to be the originator of this ingenious but effective idea. I got the idea after watching “The Secret” DVD. It was the scene where Jack CanField, Author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul Book, used “The Secret” to attract wealth into his life by writing to himself a one million dollars cheque and visualizing what that one million dollars can do for his life. He immersed himself everyday with the joys of wealth by looking at his one million dollars cheque and visualized his dreams. He was able to attract vast wealth and I am using that same idea to express my intent and as a visualization tool

I put up the code for the million dollar cheque onto this website so that others can also practice the same technique. Click here to get your own personalized one million dollars cheque!

Law of Abundance

The fundamentals of the one million dollar cheque has its roots in the Law of Attraction and the Law of Abundance. Many people have confused the two laws and have often claim that the 2 laws are referring to the same principles. I beg to differ.

The Law of Attraction is about applying the principle of “like attracts like” to our conscious thoughts i.e. to say that we can use our positive or negative desires and emotions to attract, whether consciously or unconsciously, a change in the physical world that is resultant in a correspondingly positive or negative experiences for us. This Law is about attracting what you want by consciously desiring what you want and to believe that it will come to you. Whereas the Law of Abundance is about the vastness of the universe and the bountiful and endless supply of resources. When we are trying to attract wealth, the Law of Abundance then expresses that money or wealth is abound everywhere and that it is only our right to own it.

How can you start to apply the Law of Attraction and the law of abundance?

Applying the Law of Attraction and Law of Abundance to attract wealth or other desires into our lives is not difficult. What would be difficult is our belief in the 2 Laws. Do you whole heartedly believe that one can ask the Universe for what we want and the Universe will present itself to us?

Many of us probably are skeptical and would not believe it enough to start to applying the law of attraction and law of abundance to our own lives. I was that way until I watched “The Secret” DVD and seeing all the testimonies by these prominent leaders of our world. Even Albert Einstein was a believer and we all know what he achieved. Not sure what he was visualizing then thoughJ

Is This Million Dollar Cheque Going To Help You Become Rich?

Will this one million dollar cheque gurantee wealth and riches for everyone who stumbles onto this website? I seriously do not think so. 90% of you who are reading this blog will not even attempt to even print the cheque, much less to apply the principles behind the Laws.

This one million dollar cheque is merely one of the first steps to attracting one million dollars into our lives. If you have any doubts at all about the Law of Attraction and Law of Abundance, I would suggest that you watch “The Secret” DVD and read up some more on the 2 laws (subsequently I will also write a detailed explanation of the 2 Laws) and then decide for yourself whether these 2 laws are real. Once you are ready, come back here and join me to attract that first one million dollars.

How To Start To Benefit From The Law Of Attraction And Law Of Abundance?

To start to benefit from the Law of Attraction and Abundance, there are 4 keys. We must know what we Desire and then Ask the Universe for it. The Universe is refers to nature but some people also refer it to God (not trying to be sacrilegious here). We must then Focus our thoughts upon the desired outcome with actual feelings of enthusiasm or gratitude as if the desire had already been fulfilled. We must feel that we have already acquired our desires. Lastly we must be Open to receiving from the Universe.

Onemilliondollarsonly.com comes in at the Desire and Focus stage. It helps you to affirm your desire of attracting a million dollars into your life and it allows you to be constantly reminded of the intent to attract wealth. Not only that, you are able to visualize the desired outcome with better resolution.

I will end off this post here and I will come back again to update on my journey as well as to share my acquired knowledge about the Law of Attraction and Law of Abundance. Good Luck!

Click here to get your own one million dollars cheque!