The James Dicks Blog

To accomplish your goal of becoming financially free, you will need to master specific principles of wealth creation. No, these aren’t some magical set of principles we found scratched in papyrus scrolls in the ruins of an ancient temple. They’re contemporary, commonsense principles. At the same time, though, they are magical, because they create the basis for a sound foundation of wealth creation.

You need to be systematic and thorough in your approach to these eight principles. If you follow just some of them, you may still become financially free. (Yes, they are that powerful.) But your foundation for long-term success will be more solid if you internalize them all.

Let’s take another short step in your journey toward financial freedom. Yes, we’re going to do some more dreaming. If possible, you should find some quiet place where you can be by yourself and not have to worry about being self-conscious. But if you can’t, don’t worry about it. Just do the best you can. If you’re not happy about the results the first time, consider repeating the exercise again later in a more private place, and see if the results are the same.

So get comfortable and relaxed. Close your eyes for a moment, and allow yourself to dream. Let your mind roam as if you were a little kid in school, bored by some dull assignment. Give yourself permission to do what people have told you not to do your entire life: daydream.
Let your mind wander, and think happy thoughts—thoughts about things you would really like to do. Places where you’ve always wanted to travel. People you’d like to meet. Whatever comes to your mind, allow yourself to let go and dream, even if it is only for a few moments. Once you complete this brief exercise—and only after you have done this—continue on.

Did you do it? Great. I hope you enjoyed this moment with yourself. It’s a good start, and it’s something you should do more often. At first, your conscious brain—the scolding part, the part that Freud called the “superego”—will resist your attempts at daydreaming. And let’s face it, you’re out of practice. You haven’t done it since you were a kid, and even then, people were telling you it was a “waste of time.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Dreaming puts you in touch with your inner self. It allows you to contemplate what is going on in your life, and what you want to do about it. It is a restful time—a time that allows you to recharge your batteries and rejuvenate yourself, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Entire civilizations in the East endorse meditation as a positive habit to develop.

I do, too—although I prefer to talk about dreaming, rather than meditating. I believe that a focused kind of meditation, a dreaming of your future, is critically important.

My Best
James Dicks

Each of us creates our own world, today and tomorrow, by the thoughts and dreams we create. This is precisely why financial freedom is viewed so differently once you get past the dollar number. Our dreams are all different, and that variety is a good thing. Can you imagine how difficult life would be if we all wanted to be doctors?

In order for life to work, we must all be different. We must have different dreams and different aspirations. But this very variety means that these dreams can all be fulfilled—assuming that each of us is honest with himself or herself and finds his or her true dream.
Not someone else’s dream—your dream.

Financial freedom is your dream. As long as you can dream, you can continue to succeed. Show me a person who has no dream, and I will show you someone who is poor. A millionaire dreams, and then sets out to make those dreams real. Once you stop dreaming, you stop the magic. That’s because you have created the world you wanted. You stop moving forward, because your dreams have ended. Either you are content to live with what you have or you are constantly frustrated because you don’t have enough—or you learn to dream again.

Think about this for a moment. Look around you at the people you know who, when measured in terms of financial prosperity, have a successful life. Inevitably, the ones who are the happiest are the ones who are still dreaming. Those who have stopped dreaming become overly concerned about the money they have. They begin to hoard their wealth in a way that restricts even their own pleasure.

It’s a sad predicament: to be snared by your failing or extinguished dreams. As my grandmother always said, “Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it.” In other words, be ready to handle the consequences of what you think you want, because you may indeed get it. Money without a plan is worthless. That is why the first step should be to create that plan.

You must be ready for your wealth before you get it. The plan you develop for financial success will be based on sound fundamentals, rather than on some pie-in-the-sky, get-richquick scheme. You can build the wealth you seek. It won’t come overnight, but once you master our method, you won’t care. You will be systematically working toward your long-term goal, while at the same time earning money and enjoying the journey. Isn’t that what you really want? Satisfaction today, and financial freedom tomorrow?

Don’t miss my next blog in which I will discuss the principles of wealth creation.

My Best
James Dicks

Welcome back.

Follow up to previous blog post.

Once you have actually seen yourself spending and enjoying your newfound financial success, you can move on. Please don’t fudge—OK, let’s move on together. Let’s change your visual focus. Where do you live in your new life of prosperity? What does your house look like? How many bedrooms does it have? Can you see it? If you can see it, spend a few minutes creating details. If you can’t see it, spend a little more time with the exercise until you can.

Someone once said that what the mind can see, the body can achieve. I believe it. I go a step further. I believe that the mind must see it before the body is able to work for it. Look at another realm of human endeavor: sports. When Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, he saw it long before he did it. Over and over in his mind, he later recalled, he visualized doing what had been deemed to be impossible. Interestingly enough, once Bannister did what no one else had ever done before, others quickly succeeded in doing it. Why? Because in minds all around the world, mental barriers had been broken. People understood that the impossible was now possible.

The same analogy applies to wealth creation. There is a process one must go through to achieve it. Bill Gates, in his best-selling book The Road Ahead, writes about his “play” with computers in high school. Even then, when computers were the size of large rooms and far less powerful than our miniature hand-held PDAs, he dreamed about what they would be able to achieve in the future.

His dream was so strong, in fact, that he feared missing out on the revolution he saw in his mind. He dropped out of Harvard University—dropped off the safe path he was on—to get a quicker start. There was simply no way that he was going to let the software revolution start without him.
Bill Gates saw the future of computers in his mind long before it became a reality. He saw a role for himself in that future. He dreamed the dream, developed plans to fulfill that dream, and then took action. This could be called the “science of success.”

It’s not restricted to Roger Bannister and Bill Gates. It’s something that each of you can participate in and benefit from. But before you can do it, you have to knock down the mental barriers to your financial success. You must learn to envision your achievements. Once you do, the achievements will follow. So far, so good? Are you beginning to see the mindset you need to have if you are to achieve financial freedom? Let’s go a little further.

What about a family? Will you have a spouse? Children? What will they be like? These are extremely important thoughts to consider and plan for. You must see it before it happens, but once you do; financial freedom will be more than one step closer.

All of the questions I have posed to you so far will become an important part of creating your dreams and ultimately achieving goals based on those dreams. Now that you see the process unfolding, you can also see how the end results will be different for everyone.

More to follow don’t miss reading the most important aspect of how this exercise can make such an impact on your financial life.

My Best
James Dicks

I can’t take it anymore, as a United States Marine, I served this great country to protect our very rights that seem to be not slowly but quickly disappearing, at almost an alarming rate. Well enough is enough, I will continue to create a series of blogs that I can share my opinion on many of these issues, but for now let me discuss an area of both business and personal activity that I have shared and been in for now nearly 10 years. The Retail Over the counter Spot Forex market.
You may not know it or you may now be aware but your rights afforded you as a US citizen have now been hijacked reduced yet again and are about to be enforced. It’s a sad day when you basically have more rights in China than you do here in the US. I am talking about the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008.

“These rules of the road will help protect the American public in the largest area of retail fraud that the CFTC oversees: retail foreign exchange,” CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said. “All CFTC registrants involved in soliciting and selling retail forex contracts to consumers will now have to comply with rules to protect the investing public. This is also the first final rule that the Commission has published to implement the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. We look forward to publishing additional rules to protect the American public.”

Let me sum it up for you, As an American, a US citizen you are not allowed to open a Forex account offshore in another country to trade the FOREX. The Government has taken your rights and protected you. GIVE ME A BREAK. To late its law and you will have to choke it down. These people have lost their minds, I appeal to all Americans enough is enough vote these career politicians out of office, there are less than 600 people that as a whole, all Americans can simply send home, send them all home and let’s start fresh. Here is a novel idea, I bet that if we replaces all the US representatives and the US Senators good and bad, an entire new house and senate that they can’t do any worse ruining our country than the old timers. Let’s prove it.

Back to the problem at hand, first and foremost, as you read this just keep thinking that you are not allowed to do something because you are being protected, and you have no choice. The leverage for Forex on major currency pairs is now 50:1 and exotics 20:1, what a joke. You had choices you can trade in another country, BUT not anymore. I have included numerous places to voice your opinion; I would suggest you use the fax machines, if enough people do they will unplug them, and when they do start emailing, or calling, and when they turn all that off, start sending snail mail.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Three Lafayette Centre
1155 21st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20581
202-418-5000 or FAX 202-418-5521
Questions@cftc.gov.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, enacted on July 21, 2010, further modified the CEA in a number of ways. It requires that all off-exchange retail foreign currency transactions be done pursuant to the rules of a Federal regulatory agency. It also requires that unless Federal regulators prepare rules regarding off-exchange retail forex transactions within specified time periods, the transactions are prohibited. If any Federal regulatory agency had already proposed such rules prior to the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act – as had the CFTC – the agency has 90 days following enactment to adopt final rules, or the same prohibition takes effect.

For the CFTC, the Dodd-Frank Act reconfirms the Commission’s authority to regulate off-exchange retail forex transactions and establishes a date – October 19, 2010 – by which final rules must be in place. For other Federal regulators whose regulatees are expressly permitted to serve as counterparties (such as United States financial institutions and broker dealers), it requires the preparation of similar rules or such transactions by their regulatees are prohibited.

The Dodd-Frank Act further modifies the list of eligible counterparties by eliminating insurance companies and investment bank holding companies. Moreover, where the list of eligible counterparties previously included “financial institutions,” the Dodd-Frank Act specifically provides that among financial institutions, only United States financial institutions are permitted to act as counterparties. That’s right you read it correctly, you can now only trade in the US where U.S. Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank Say so. Let’s contact them and tell them what we really think. Don’t be fooled. I wonder if they have any major contributors that will benefit from their invite wisdom to make us trade in the US.

Congressman Barney Frank

http://www.house.gov/frank/contact/index.html

202-225-5931

U.S. Senator Chris Dodd
448 Russell Building | Washington D.C., 20510
Tel: (202) 224-2823 (202) 224-2823 | Fax: (202) 224-1083

30 Lewis St Suite 101 | Hartford, CT 06103
Tel: (860) 258-6940/(800) 334-5341 —CT only
Fax: (860) 258-6958
Happy Investing!

As 2011 approaches, some predict that by the end of that year 48 percent of the nearly 50 million mortgages will be underwater. WOW! That’s a lot. We are all affected by this whether we rent or own, want to own or know someone who does own a home. The effects are far and wide.

What do you do if you are upside down on your property and the bank is running you around and around? You know…asking you to send in the same documents over and over again. Well you can do a Strategic Foreclosure.

What is a Strategic Foreclosure? Another word for tell the bank come get my property and you are tired of their crap. You have to take a step back first and decide where your moral compass sits. What is the right thing to do, make your payments, as promised? Sure financial responsibility is admirable, but it is hard to maintain that kind of thinking when the very financial institutions you owe money have little to NO financial responsibility. What happened to lead by example?

Hire an attorney and it will take one to three years for a foreclosure to happen.
Now think for a moment about your situation. If you do what all the big corporations do, you put business first. If that is the case, you may want to consider a business decision on your biggest investment, your home. I can better explain this with an example, which happens to be a real life example from someone I know.

Okay, you buy a modest home in 2006, 4 bedrooms two baths, two-car garage about 1600 square feet, relatively new. You pay $225,000.00 put in about $30,000.00 in upgrades. All of a sudden the market starts to pull back, and it did. Next thing you know you are paying way more than you can rent the property for, the house across the street just sold for $112,000 and there are ten more on the street for the same price. What do you do?

Well, you first try and call the bank to see if you can get approved for one of the many home mortgage modification plans. But you are not so lucky since you don’t meet any of the requirements, and it wasn’t from a lack of trying. You were told “sorry” so many times you quit counting. Now all of a sudden your job has reduced your hours and pay. You are lucky enough to still have a job but nonetheless, you are now struggling to make your mortgage payment. You decide enough is enough and can’t make your current mortgage payment. One month turns into three and so on. You are still trying hard to get a modification but to no avail.

Finally you are making headway with the bank and you believe you can see a light is at the end of the tunnel you think, the bank says “no problem, we will lower your payment and you can keep making payments on your original note.” WOW, thanks but no thanks, don’t do me any favors! But why say that?
Let’s look at why.

Even if they lowered your principal you are wasting your time as far as a business decision is concerned. The house is only worth what someone is willing to pay, and right now that’s $112,000.

So you walk away from this house, the one you owe $260,000 on. You live in it for say 3 years total before it is foreclosed on. Yes, your credit will be affected, you will have a foreclosure, along with about 50 percent of the other Americans out there that owned a home and experienced a foreclosure. But you are better off saving your money and renting at a price you can afford for the next few years. Get your feet back under you and then buy when the job and the housing market has improved a bit.

If you end up buying a home similar to yours, let’s say the one next door, for say $112,000 in the next five to seven year, it will probably be back to the levels you currently owe – $260,000.

So, a sound business decision encourages you to walk away, make a deal with bank, turn over the house and owe nothing. Save a little money, put down 20% on a new house in two years. Even if your credit is affected you can do a rent to own or a lease purchase. After 12 months of good payments, you can refinance it as your primary residence.

The $112,000 house you will buy for $120,000. You put down $10,000.00 and owe $110,000 over the next six years. Your house goes up in value to say $200,000 and your mortgage goes down to say $95,000.00 and you have $105,000.00 in equity. Meaning if you stayed in the old house that you owed $260,000, it is now worth $200,000.00 and your mortgage is down to $230,000.00 give or take. Which scenario, as a business decision, seems better, upside down or positive?

You have to weigh the pros and cons the decision to be moral and ethical make your payments or make a sound business decision and be ahead financially. Only you can make that decision. I will tell you that the banks and big companies make these decisions every day and they always choose the business decision. That’s not a reason to condone it, but a reason to seriously sit down and consider your choices.

One thing is for sure, the real estate market will come back, until then look for the opportunities they are always present.