Joel, Tuesday, 7 PM

I will be getting together with my Passive Income buddy, Joel, on Tuesday evening to play CashFlow 101, review his new investing software, and chat about all the new ideas in our heads.

This'll be the first time we really do this, as last time was for fun and not for education or for future goal-setting.

It should be fun!!

Jill

Today's thoughts and research and ideas

General Reading (books or audiobooks)

I finished listening to Robert Kiyosaki's audiobook, Your First Step To Financial Freedom, this evening.
I am about to start listening to Peter Lynch's One Up On Wall Street now.

Progress of the Financial Statement - aka "Finding out where we are now"

Yesterday I got in touch with a guy who does Financial Planning and general Accounting/Bookkeeping training - we used him to get our business in order last year, and he proved to be very amenable to our goals and our needs. I have an appointment with him, to be held in my kitchen, on Thursday July 7, to start the process of getting our spending documented into the form of a financial statement.

So, today I spent a bunch of time going through our online account information and documenting the activity over the past three months. Right now the spreadsheet I've put together in Excel is a mess because it's just a big list of "things" we've purchased, and I've probably broken down the detail too finely for what we will ultimately do. That's okay, it's a starting point and it's meant to be very honest.

This evening I found a PDF entitled the Home Account Book which seems to help someone do exactly what I'm doing, so I've forwarded the 40 page document to where I have a working printer. I look forward to seeing how it all fits together, despite the fact that we spend too much on doodads and basically nothing on investments since about 1999.

Investopedia Online Stock Trading Simulator - aka, "Practice"

I am taking part in two games:

• Game#1 will be left to ride for a week, at which point I will dump the initial stocks I bought that have been doing nothing but going down. Then maybe I'll just leave what's left and see what it looks like after a month.
• Game#2 has a lot more share-buying capacity, but I've already used up the USD component. I'll buy more CDN stock as I research them and find them interesting. I guess I should dump the initial stocks that are moving nothing but down after a week in this game too.

Investopedia Reading - aka, "What I'm Learning From Investopedia"

My husband and I have investments already, and they're Mutual Funds. I don't know much about the fund, however, as our online interface is pretty generic at this time. It looks like there might be another tab to get a username/password for, in order to more closely view our investments. I will investigate this further, as maybe one of my goals should be to build a successful portfolio that will replace the mutual fund.

Then again, it's an RRSP mutual fund, so I don't know how the RRSP would be affected... more to research and get back to you on ;)

Rich Dad Forum Discussions

Boy oh boy do I love reading those forums. They're exciting! Full of interesting information! Full of stock chatter about companies I've never heard of before. Full of people who are truly interested in getting out of the rat race and spending more time alternating between building wealth and enjoying it.

Today's impactuous thread was the Beginner's Challenge, to take $40 and turn it into $400. Reading what others have done to meet this challenge was very inspiring and informative! I will have to think about this more before I write my own goals or ideas on it, however.

Local Market Reading

I did, however, go and purchase a newspaper today (first one in who knows how long), so I could take a peek at the houses for sale and the businesses/franchises available for purchase/investment. One house listing actually had a price and the fact that it had a tenant renting already, and what the tenant was paying for rent, so I took that information and figured out how much cash flow the property would generate at that rate, with a 10-yr mortgage at just over 7%. It wasn't much. I'm new to this game, however, so maybe there are things I'm missing. I don't even know what a respectable return from a house rental would be, in terms of cash flow. But... I'm not looking to BUY right now either, so I guess that's okay.

The Saturday newspaper is the one with the most listings, but this weekend I'm out of town so I can't pick one up. Maybe I should ask the 7-11 clerks whether they stash those papers for people who wish to buy them days later.

Upcoming Weekend Reading

I'm taking a break from these thought patterns this weekend as I go visit family. I reserved some books at the library before I got re-interested in passive income generation recently, so now I've got books that have NOTHING to do with what I've been thinking about for the past three or four days. It might be difficult, but it might be good for me cognitively as well. I like the idea of letting my brain calm down after all the new stuff I've shoved into it lately.

But I look forward to seeing how my current play-stocks fare at the end of July, just the same!

Playing with the Investopedia investment simulator

I woke up today with a sinus headache and ended up sleeping most of the day instead of going to work.

When I did get up, I spent some quality time at the http://www.richdad.com site, in the discussion forums. I haven't contributed anything yet, I've just been reading and reading and reading. There's quite the community of people there, and I'm learning a lot.

This evening I've been playing with the Investment simulator I found a few days ago. Yesterday had been the first day I started with the simulator, so today was the first day with any type of "results" to look at. I was very pleased with the results and it inspired me to play further.

***NOTE, this is all play - I'm not using real money, just a system that plays off of the real stock market data***

Yesterday I joined a game that used an investment budget of $1000 USD, and I invested in three different companies, spending about $650 of the $1000. Today when I went back, each of the three companies had gone up by ... uhm... well, I THOUGHT it was $9 between the three of them, but now I'm wondering if it was 9% by the three of them, because that makes more sense. But I can't check, because the simulator site is not responding. I'll get back to you on that one.

At any rate, all of the stocks had gone up. That was nice ;)

So, today I spent some time looking through the Canadian currency games until I found one that had a starting budget of $10,000, and I joined that game. It actually also came with $10,000 USD to invest, which is nice, as I don't necessarily have to worry about what exchange the company I'm investing in, is using.

I've been reading the Rich Dad forums, about Paper Trading, and am looking up the stocks they're talking about on the board, doing some basic checks on the chart history and stock price and histories, and then if I like 'em, I'm investing around $500 in them.

Mostly I'm going for stocks that are in the under-$5-range, but I've bought a few $10 stocks and even a few at the $50 range - just not very many. I figure since I'm paper trading anyway, I might as well take risks that I might not take if I were using real money right now.

I've talked to my husband about my plans regarding our finances, and he's in line with the few wispy goals I've set out for myself so far - even those that affect him and his spending habits. He wants me to take an accounting course as well, which I see the value in for sure, but I'll have to plan that in to the next 12 months as I'm not interested in jumping in to it right now.

This weekend my family goes on a road trip to visit MORE family, and thus I will be away from my computer. Of course, the markets are going to be closed at the same time anyway, so what does it matter??!

Jill

Creating a personal financial statement

I haven't decided whether I'll enrol for this eLearners.com course about Creating a Personal Financial Statement, but that's one of the first things I have to do in general.

I have to figure out where we are before I can do anything else.

Jill

How do I get started???!

Augh. I feel like I'm going in too many directions right now. I am getting ahead of myself time and time again and then realizing it and pulling back, only to get ahead of myself in another direction.

Like, I was about to head out and buy a newspaper and look for cheap houses for sale in our city - one that perhaps we could rent at enough of a rate to generate a positive cash flow after the mortgage and maintenance costs for us. I'm thinking of a very very starter home, somewhere around $30-50k, because the downpayment on it wouldn't be as difficult to meet as with a more expensive home.

But ... do I know how to recognize a positive cash-flow house? Do I know the right questions to ask to ensure it's not a disaster waiting to happen, on my chequebook? And are our personal finances in good enough shape to take on a second mortgage?

I think right now I need to find good advisors in different areas of finance. I need to learn about our personal finances, where we stand right now, how we could improve it, and where we're going, before we add on anything new.

And, I have to ponder the morals and ethics surrounding how I wish to attain real estate in order to rent it out. Bankruptcy/foreclosure houses are cheaper than regular sales, after all.

Now, I will go lay down on the couch, cuddle with my pet cats, and listen to the audiobook Your First Step To Financial Freedom by Robert Kiyosaki and friends.

Jill

Passive Income Buddy

I found myself a Passive Income Buddy to share this journey with me. His name is Joel, and he has been a good friend of ours for a few years now. He and his boyfriend came over on Sunday and played Cashflow 101 with my husband and I, and it is because of him that this fire has been re-sparked within me.

Joel has some software that's supposed to assist in stock market investing, I haven't seen it yet. I figure I don't really want to see it until he understands how it works and can zip me through it, because I'm not interested in investing in the same software he has. I'm going to stick with Investopedia.

I hope we can get together a few times a month to play Cashflow 101, just the two of us, and to chat about the passive income topics that have come our way since last we spoke. I find there are so many things to read and talk about that it's difficult to stick to any one thing right now, and maybe sharing this experience with a friend will help me with my focus as well.

Jill

Being okay with being rich

I don't come from a rich family. My husband's father is a wealthy, successful entrepreneur however, which has turned out great for me in a way that wouldn't readily be apparent in this situation:

I know some rich people, I like how they think financially, and I've got rich people who like me as a person, despite the fact that I'm not rich. To me, this makes my liking of rich people a lot easier.

You see, I grew up with prejudices surrounding wealth; mental paradigms about rich people and their attainment of wealth that severely restricted me from moving towards being wealthy myself. Humans spend a lot of time ensuring their thoughts are consistent with their behaviors and vice versa, and with a negative image of wealth attainment and wealthy people, I wasn't walking on a path of financial independence, that's for sure.

Rich Dad Poor Dad really altered my way of thinking about the accumulation of wealth, because my folks taught me exactly what Rich Dad advised against: Go to school, work hard, get good grades so you can get a secure job with a company that has great benefits. One of my friends called that the 40/40/40 plan - work 40 hours a week for 40 years and then live on 40% of what you were earning when you worked.

At any rate, before I get very far in my investing, I'll likely be facing self-image issues surrounding my vision of what "rich people" are like because these outdated notions I've learned while NOT being wealthy will not match with how I want wealthy to look like for me. I'll have to recognize what's going on and address it head-on.

For now, however, I'm okay.

Jill

What I'm doing now

Last night a couple friends came over and we got into talking about investing and passive income. We ended up playing CashFlow 101 for the next three or four hours, and playing the game again sparked up my interest in this topic again.

Now today I've been exploring and reading material from www.investopedia.com.

From my first impression after 24 hours, this site is GREAT! I mean, not only does it have a lot of information FOR FREE, but it's sorted well, and bonus of bonuses, there's an Online Trading Simulator that allows you to work with play money using real stock market data (15 min delayed, etc).

The simulator itself has a community aspect which is neat, in that it allows you to enter into specific simulations with other people - for instance, I have one "game" going that gave me $1,000 USD to start with and has 300 other players in the game. I have another game that gave me $100,000 CDN and there are over a thousand people in that game.

So, today I ventured over to the tutorial section of the Investopedia site, and started at the first article. I printed out articles as I found I wanted to read them in depth, as I prefer reading paper that stays still, considering all the flashing and moving banner ads on all the free informational sites these days.

I've decided Bonds and Mutual funds are really not the way I want to go, so my next path of reading is about the stock market, which is where the online trading simulator piqued my interest.

Tomorrow, I will continue reading, and see if the stocks I "bought" today changed at all in the 24 hour period ;)

Jill

Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad / History of my journey

My husband and I were introduced to Robert Kiyosaki in April of the year 2000. My father-in-law lent us two books as we journeyed from Sydney, NSW to Cairnes, QLD in Australia. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki was one of those books.

Personally, I don't really like reading, but Rich Dad, Poor Dad had such a great format and was so easy to read, and because the content was mind-boggling to me, I read the entire book in the span of a few hours and found myself so full of thoughts and ideas!! My husband also read the book that trip (it rained and rained and rained while we were in the tropics that time :( ) and we came away from that holiday with altered perceptions of the world.

Over the past 5 years, we've been building and growing a profitable business venture and in the past 6 months, the amount of work I personally am required to handle has reduced quite a bit, without our income being similarly affected. So, we're both drawing a decent wage from our company but I am not working full time anymore. This is a good thing - it gives me time to research and learn about investing and generating passive income my own way, while my husband continues to work on his dream of growing our current company even further.

I've played the board game CashFlow 101, along with reading or listening to audiobooks of more of Robert Kiyosaki's teachings off and on over the past five years, although I have never attempted to apply the knowledge. Right now, however, I feel as if I should begin to learn from Robert more by taking action instead of just reading and acquiring knowledge. Five years is enough of just reading - now I must do some playing.

Jill

Introducing myself

Hi! *waves*

My name is Jill, I'm a 32 year old female Internet addict and this is my blog. It's surrounding the topic of generating Passive Income for myself and my family so we can worry about things other than our finances.

Jill