Wingonomics – The Psychology of Money Mark A. Wingo Copyright 2010 by New Beginning Financial Group, LLC Smashwords Edition Wingonomics The Psychology of Money Wingonomics e-book series – The Psychology of Money By Mark Wingo Financial Expert | Author | Speaker | Entrepreneur | Fundamental Strategist © 2011. New Beginning Financial Group, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, or by any means whatsoever, without written permission from New Beginning Financial Group, LLC, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The Wingonomics Book Series are published in Saint Paul, Minnesota. November 2011. This book is for educational purposes only. New Beginning Financial Group, LLC, P.O. Box 251521, Woodbury, MN 55125 This publication is meant to help you manage, maintain and prosper not only financially, but in life. New Beginning Financial Group, LLC does not give legal or tax advice. Legal information is not advice. If legal or tax advice is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. New Beginning Financial Group, LLC is not a credit repair or debt settlement/counseling company. We simple provide fundamental strategies to help you manage your finances. Table of Contents About the Author……………………………………………………………………………………………… 4 The Psychology of Money ………………………………………………………………………………… 4 Goals………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 6 1 Financial Education ………………………………………………………………………………………… 6 Spending ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 7 Past Due Bills ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7 Cutting Cost ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 7 Saving For Self ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8 Saving for The Future ……………………………………………………………………………………… 8 Credit ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 9 Debt ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 9 Acquiring Assets ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 9 Building Points …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 11 2 About the Author Mark A. Wingo – Mr. Wingonomics™ is a financial expert, author, speaker, and on-air personality. He is also the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of New Beginning Financial Group, LLC, an insurance and financial service company, he founded in 2006. His company specialties include: creating financial strategies that enables their clients to increase and protect their assets, increase their cash flow, eliminate their debt load, create a steady stream of retirement income, establish funding strategies for their children(s) college education and transfer those assets to their loved ones. With his rapidly growing online community and presence he is reaching over 4,000 existing clients and potential clients daily. Combined with his entrepreneurial spirit he has over 10 years of banking, insurance and financial service experience and his drive for financial excellence has only begun. In 2010, Mark A. Wingo created Wingonomics™ a financial literacy program to help main street America expand their realities about life and money. Wingonomics™ is a comprehensive series of financial strategies and concepts to help families and business owners manage, maintain and prosper not only financially, but in life. It’s the perfect complement to New beginning Financial Group, LLC mission to “Helping families Build Their Tomorrow Today.” Wingonomics™ was debuted in 2011 at the Union Gospel Mission – Naomi Family Residence for women, where he continues to volunteer and teach his strategies and concepts. From humble beginnings growing up in a single family home with his mother and no financial knowledge, Mr. Wingo has spent countless hours obtaining formal and informal education to better serve himself and the community. Mark has held many different positions with two of the largest financial companies in the Twin Cities over the past several years before founding New Beginning Financial Group, LLC. Since 2006, Mark has been working diligently to become a leader in the financial services industry. Today, Mark is building a financial empire and a host of other companies that will help the local community expand their realities not only financially, but in life. 3 The Psychology of Money To start off this book by saying financial freedom is available for everyone would be misrepresenting the Wingonomics message of “money is an idea, and those who are lacking money are lacking ideas”. When we are born into this world we have a mind filled with possibilities. We are taught we can do/be anything we want in the world. As we grow up in a world of negativity, we are trained to fit in to our surroundings or your fantasy of life. For some, that surrounding is a life in poverty. Most will argue that the reason for poverty is due to the lack of money, but as I stated “money is an idea.” So I guess the reason for poverty is really a mindset of comfort which provides limitations, doubt and hopelessness. I truly believe if you want to create wealth for you and your family you, you have to overcome your failures mentality. Your failures are attached to your pains experienced in life growing up. The truth to the matter is poverty isn’t about the lack of money; it’s the limitations we place on ourselves. It begins with our mindset. How bad do you want to change? Are you willing to pay the price for success? If so, let’s begin the Wingonomics journey. Every sports team has a plan in place to when facing the opposing team. In addition to the team’s game plan, every player has a personal plan for their opponent. So why don’t you have a game plan for your life? Without having a financial game-plan you are setting yourself up for failure. My goal is to teach you the psychology of money and how to change you behaviors not only in your financial life, but your personal life as well. Today, if I looked at your financial behavior (actions) what would I see that tells me you are heading down the right path to create change in your present financial situation? Remember, Behavior never lies! If you are on the right path to making your dreams and vision come to past you should be working your vision aggressively daily. Your mission in life is to have a vision, speak your vision, and work your vision so you can be living your vision. Being active in pursuing your vision will allow you to live the Wingonomics lifestyle and become a cash flow millionaire on any budget, in any market. For financial growth to occur your must understand that money is only an idea. If you are lacking money, than you are lacking an idea (vision). A vision allows you to visit your future so you are motivated to leave your present. Dare to dream big! You are closer to reaching your goals than you think, but you have to be a student of life to understand the game of money. 4 Let’s look into a few steps to create a financial game-plan to help you reach your fullest financial potential. 1. Goals (vision) – A vision allows you to visit your future so that you are motivated to leave your present situation(s). A. Your number one goal to allow your vision to come to past is to network with others who are already doing what you want to do in life. Always keep a circle of achievers who are doing better than you for inspiration and advice. B. Compare all your actions to your financial goals in life. If your financial goals aren’t being meet, why are you doing what you are doing? Always keep your financial future in mind when making any life or business decision. It will keep everything in perspective. C. You must have a goal system in place to hold yourself accountable for your actions. What is your reason “WHY”? Why are you doing what you are doing? Is it to make you lifestyle better? Or is it to make some extra money? Make sure you Why is in line with your vision. D. Learn how to expand your vision daily by visualizing yourself living the lifestyle. What I did was visit the car dealer to test drive my dream car. I gave the salesman my business card and told him to follow up with me to make hold me accountable to my goal. You can do this with a realtor, jewelry companies, or a good friend. Dream big, see yourself living the lifestyle! 2. Financial Education – A formal education (school) will make you a living, but an informal education (Self-Education) will make you a fortune. I’m not down talking our school system but for us to become rich Americans we need to self educate ourselves on how to create wealth. You can do this by… a. Becoming a member of our online financial community. It has audio, presentations, and financial worksheets for you to use and make better financial and life decision. b. Downloading our financial workbook which contains a financial outlines for you to follow. I suggest you read, study, and record your financial life daily for at least 30 minutes a day. This will allow you to review your dreams and goals in life on a daily basis. c. Take classes at your local college about banking & finance. You can also find classes at local colleges that offer certificates of completion. This 5 way you can begin to turn you informal education into a profitable business to create additional income. d. Develop a financial empowerment team to help reach your financial goals. Mortgage Planner, CPA, Real Estate Agent, Financial Planner, and Personal Banker are all great examples of a financial empowerment team. e. Remember, T.E.A.M. means, Together - Everyone - Achieves - More. 3. Spending- If you can’t control your spending, you can’t control your financial life. To become a better steward over your finances you should consider some type of money management system to help track every penny coming into your account and going out. a. First, you must know how much money you make every pay period, you must know your net-income (take home pay), and your gross income in order to create a spending plan (budget). b. You should always have your financials in priority. Meaning you should pay your rent/mortgage, auto loan/insurance, food and all the other needs in life first. Then you can purchase your want as long as they are within your budget. c. You must determine what you needs are in life to be comfortable and enjoyable lifestyle. This will eliminate any of those impulse purchases in life. d. Develop a spending system (budget) that will process your money or how your money will flow. Today you have all of these fancy excel spreadsheets to use to manage your money. I personally recommend the old fashion way of money management, a paper and pencil. e. Establish a rewards system that motivates you for your financial achievements. Rewards will come from meeting budget, catching up on past due bills, establishing an emergency financial plan, cutting cost, creating income, or eliminating debt. This is separate from your allowance! 4. Past Due Bills – Past due bills look a lot like broken vows. In some (most) instances they will come back to haunt you with additional fee and interest. That’s why it is very important to stay current on your bills. We just talked about creating a spending plan to follow. Within your spending plan you want to… 6 a. Develop a spending plan to stay current; if you are not current communicate with your creditors your reason why. b. Put your past due bills in order of priority c. Ask your creditors to: Defer payments or add to the end of the loan, allow you to pay in installments by making payment arrangements, or defer past dues only until you create some money. 5. Cutting Cost – Learn to turn outflow (expenses) into inflow (inflow) or make it a tax deduction. a. Utilize the Ten-Ten Principle – You want to reduce 10 item by $10 each. After you have accomplished that you want to upgrade your strategy to 20 items by $20, then 30 by $30 and so on. b. If you can’t reduce or eliminate an expense, then make it a tax deductible by starting a home based business. This is a great way to generate an additional income stream. 6. Save for self – Saving for self is the one bill that most people are delinquent in paying. It’s not your mortgage, auto loan, student loans, it your personal savings account. This is your account to do what you want. You can take a vacation with the money saved, you can pay off debt, or you can purchase something you want, like a new pair of shoes. It’s up to you how these funds are spent. Let me ask you a question. Why do you wake up every morning to go to work? It’s not to pay bills, it to create a lifestyle. And you are part of that lifestyle, so take care of yourself first. a. Develop a motivational reason to save and give yourself an allowance. b. In this rare occasion I will recommend that you use automatic draft to transfer money to your savings account. c. Save ½ of all raises or cash-flow increases to fund your lifestyle. 7. Save for the future – One day you will need to finance your children’s college, purchase a piece of real estate, or retire from work. If you are not financially prepare these items can break you not only financially, but mentally. You should always prepare for income protection and financial stability. a. Life Insurance is a must to protect your income. While most people see it as a death benefit, it does have it living benefits. In this economy we live in today we need different way to bridge the financial gap(s) we are 7 facing. Life insurance can be that option and provide the cash needed to secure your family’s future. b. We all need additional ways to fund college because in order to get a get a job you need some form of college education. But to make college affordable we need more options and in order to create more options we need to think outside the box and prepare sooner than later. I recommend everyone to start saving for college when you get into a serious relationship and/or when you first find out that you are expecting a child. The earlier you start, the less financial burden you will have when that time comes. c. We are living longer these days and retirement seems to be a foreign to most Americans. Let face it the old way of thinking about retirement are gone. There is no more 40 year working lifetime, you are lucky if you can maintain a secure job, that’s why you have to be proactive by finding supplement your retirement income. d. Real estate is still one of the greatest ways to create wealth but in order to do that you have to be willing to purchase investments, not homes. For real estate to become an investment it has to produce cash-flow. If you are paying a mortgage on your home it is not an asset, it’s a liability. 8. Credit – Your credit is a written verification of your integrity. I’m not going to go into details about how the credit system works, but you must maintain a decent credit history. Why is maintain a decent credit history so important? Because having a great credit history gives you unlimited access to money (wealth). a. In contrast to what all these credit repair company say, there is no magic formula to fix/repair/restore your credit. In fact, you can do it yourself. I have all the information available to you in our online financial community back-office. b. The most important rule of maintaining a solid credit history is to follow your spending plan so that you pay your bills on time even if you must sacrifice purchasing your wants in life. (This reflects 40% of your credit score) c. You should also understand what impacts your credit report in a negative way; and avoid them by managing your money. If you ever get into a 8 situation of not being able to pay your bills, simple contact your creditor and explain why. d. Understand good debt vs. bad debt. A good debt is something that allows you to create wealth. It reports on your credit report in a positive way. I consider real estate a good debt because it is giving you an opportunity to create cash-flow and it gives you purchasing power to buy more real estate investments. 9. Debt – Bad debt elimination create wealth accumulation. If you had no debt, what couldn’t you be capable of accomplishing in life financially? You would have more cash-flow to invest in those good debt(s), and maybe you would be able to guarantee your retirement. If I were you I would look at debt as your greatest enemy in life because it is stopping you from creating wealth. In order to get rid of your bad debt you must commit to eliminating it and never allowing it back into your life. a. Start by creating a list all of your debts from smallest to largest. b. Attack only one debt at a time; in most cases the one that will create the most cash flow the quickest. c. Use your life weapons to attack your debt: Regular payments (Income), money from an eliminated debt, money that you create for your new business endeavors and your taxes (if you receive them). d. Remember, once you have created a plan to eliminate your debt(s) stay on top of it until you owe no one a penny in bad debt(s). e. The fun doesn’t start when you have paid off all of you debt(s) because now you have to start planning for your financial future. 10. Acquiring Assets - Most people spend time looking for jobs; when they should be looking for ways to create assets. I personally think you should focus on only five areas of assets to create wealth. And that’s starting a business, investing in real-estate, and investing in cash flow, and cash accumulation (money making money vehicles). a. Business – What are your talent? What is your passion? These are questions you should be asking when you are going into business for yourself. I highly recommend network marketing opportunities to start your business career. They give you the support, training and opportunity to make money. Find something that you are passionate 9 about and create a career around it. When you are doing something you love, you will never work a day in your life. b. Real Estate – With the supply we have today there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to purchase investment properties. If you don’t personally have the credit, cash, or know how, find someone who does. Don’t rule out your T.E.A.M. and form a group of investors that way you all can reach your dreams together. Real Estate TIP - Purchase a multi- unit (4plex) as your first home. This way you will be creating income and cash-flow at the same time because your renters will be paying your mortgage and you will be pocketing what’s left over and your paycheck from your day job. c. Becoming a cash-flow millionaire is more realistic than you may think. Just imagine all the debt you will acquire over your working lifetime (40 years) including your mortgage. On average you will spend around $400,000 - $500,000 just in debt. As far as income you will earn well over a million dollars in your 40 year working lifetime. Where is it all going? Too your creditors. d. Cash Accumulation – Think outside the box when it comes to building wealth. There are so many ways to create wealth; you just have to be open-minded to see the opportunity in the vehicles that are out there to accumulate cash value. e. Create a circle of influence of individuals who can help you strive for excellence. I like to refer to my circle as “the power team” of people who have achieved what I aspire for in the future. Keep these people close to you at all times because they will be the ones who motivate you to visualize an action plan for success. 10 [...]... successful business 11 Spending money on financial education is not an expense, it’s an investment 12 I can learn the rule of the money game of life 11 13 Owning a business give anyone the opportunity to become rich 14 Money is only an idea and those who lack money simple are lacking an idea 15 Negative people keep me from building wealth’ they rob me of my time to learn, grow, and they assassinate my dreams... assets whereby any one of them can produce enough cash flow to support my lifestyle 24 I can make money in the stock market even when the market goes down 25 I can use other’s people’s money to make money for me 26 I must rely on systems, not people Systems never fail 27 By building a business, it will make me super rich 28 I can help change lives For more information about Wingonomics audio, books,...Building Points Remember at the beginning when I said Money is an Idea?” Well, if you don’t change the way you think about money you will not become wealthy The only limitation we have in life is how we think So, let change our thinking process by expanding our beliefs about money But before you can expand what you know about money you must first break down the walls you have up about money Let me ask you... but mine; I can’t blame others 5 Every problem has a solution 6 The best way to create money initially is to better manage my credit, taxes, debts, and expenses 7 Spending plans don’t restrict me; they help me create cash flow so that I can enjoy life 8 Without a written plan, I reduce my chances to succeed 9 Failure is the key ingredient to success; I must overcome the fear of failure 10 I must run... Let me ask you a question If you hear something that is outside of what you believe about money (just too good to be true), what would you do? Would you hear it but never act upon it, think it is a scam, or take action? Majority of people would never act upon it or think it is a scam because it’s outside of the realm of thinking Today is the day your realities are expanded and you begin to think for... with your head held high (maybe look into the mirror) and repeat after me FOR FINANCIAL GROWTH TO OCCUR IN MY LIFE I MUST BELIEVE… (Courtesy of Financial Destination Inc.) 1 My problem is not money; I have more than enough It’s the management of my money holding me back 2 To change my financial situation and life, I must change what I believe and know about money 3 If I focus on what I have, not on... my dreams 16 My job should not be my only and major source of income 17 I should save every time I get paid; it’s a bill to me that must get paid 18 I should be looking for more assets than a job 19 Investing and businesses are not risky; it a job that is risky 20 I can retire at 50 years of age or younger 21 I can afford anything I just need the time to develop a plan to acquire it 22 I can buy assets... For more information about Wingonomics audio, books, videos, blog post, speaking topic visit: www.wingonnomics.com To implement financial strategies in your life to become a cash flow millionaire visit: www.nbfinancialgroup.com “Thank you for purchasing my e-book and supporting financial education.” Mark A Wingo 12 . for financial excellence has only begun. In 2010, Mark A. Wingo created Wingonomics a financial literacy program to help main street America expand their realities about life and money. Wingonomics . a financial empowerment team to help reach your financial goals. Mortgage Planner, CPA, Real Estate Agent, Financial Planner, and Personal Banker are all great examples of a financial empowerment. Wingonomics – The Psychology of Money Mark A. Wingo Copyright 2010 by New Beginning Financial Group, LLC Smashwords Edition Wingonomics The Psychology of Money Wingonomics e-book series – The