by Elisabeth Donati | Aug 21, 2012 | Financial Literacy, Latest News, Uncategorized
Money…in the worldly scope of making it and using it for whatever we need and want, there are many judgments and opinions about its use. We judge…
- How it’s made
- How it’s spent
- How it’s invested
- How it’s donated
- How we think about it
- Who makes how much and how they make it
- Whether or not it should even be necessary
The fact is, however, it IS necessary…that is until we figure out some other way of getting the materials goods and services we need for life.
Money and The Internet
With the advent of the Internet, many people who might otherwise be out in the world, struggling to get by, found a new way to earn and make money. If they had a great product or service idea, they could now market that great idea on the internet and reach more people than traditional marketing ever dreamt of reaching…for far less money.
And if they didn’t have their own ideas, they could learn how to market other people’s ideas (we could coin a whole new acronym…OPI 🙂 by becoming successful affiliate marketers.
It’s been a great boon to college graduates who couldn’t find the jobs they thought they’d be handed after graduation, high school students who see through the entire ‘gotta get a job’ con and the 30 or 40 year olds who are exhausted from working too many hours making other people money.
The Internet has truly leveled the money making playing field and I for one am all for it! Finally, people can learn to make money from home so they can take care of their children, pets, older parents, gardens, and more. For many of us, working at home is a lifestyle we would do just about anything not to give up.
All this being said, a few weeks ago, I discovered a company called Empower Network that is teaching people how to make money on the internet…and they are doing it in the most brilliant way…by giving them, for $25/month!, a completely pre-designed, ready to work, blogging system that’s built on a platform that drives traffic just because of the system. (The explanation of this takes another blog if you don’t understand what drives internet traffic yet.)
The Empower Network is so strong that I joined myself and am thrilled with the opportunity. I TEACH people to constantly look for opportunities (and there are millions of them) that will allow them to make money and do good. I love combining those two things!
Well, this morning, I got a letter from one of my Money Game coaches who sweetly questioned what I was up to…not understanding their entire program. He didn’t understand why Empower is doing what they are doing and doesn’t realize the amazingly honest opportunity the two young men behind Empower have created for people literally around the globe, to make money and do good.
Here’s the letter I received (unsigned of course)…
I’m a little surprised you’ve taken the Empower Network approach, and I believe that you may profit from it now, probably learn a lot, but at a cost of your integrity. Of course I could be wrong, but the Empower Network has been around for a couple years and already many people are complaining at the lack of integrity ie hidden costs, inaccurate and misleading claims of profits, predictable (even comical) NLP tactics that so many people fall for, etc.
While I do support The Money Game and mission to increase financial literacy, I do not support Empower Network affiliation and their particular MLM deceptively. If I have over looked something and you can enlighten me, please do so..
Thanks…J
And here’s my answer to this letter which I’m sure you’ll enjoy…
Good morning J…
Thank you for your letter. Rest assured, my integrity is fully intact and I know what I’m doing. I spent many, many evenings researching this company, the players and their approach.
While I am not your typical MLM girl in that I do not like to do parties, sell vitamins or hair shampoo, I do wholeheartedly approve of network marketing, also known as multi-level marketing and direct selling, as a brilliant business model that works for a lot of people. And network marketing shouldn’t be confused with a pyramid scheme. They are completely different. One is illegal and unethical and the other is legal and sound.
The fact is, Empower Network hasn’t been around for two years…they are less than a year old. The people who might be complaining are people who complain about just about everything anyway…and they don’t understand the program.
Emppower is marketing a product, a blogging system, that is ready to use, and helps people build an internet marketing business brilliantly. Blogging and internet marketing are very acceptable ways of making a living in this day and age and Empower has provided the most amazing way of doing this…and I’ve seen a ton of things come and go on the internet.
The two men who started Empower Network, David Wood and David Sharp, aka Dave and Dave, are full of integrity and they want to help people succeed, not only by making money but by learning that they CAN make money and do good with their money.
We’ve already seen people earn enough money to pay their mortgages on homes they were about to lose so their familes didn’t have to move and people being able to pay medical bills (I know this one personally) and other great stories. These same people would be in a world of financial hurt if they had to go out and look for a job to pay these critical expenses.
There is such taboo around money…the making of it, the spending of it, the saving of it, the investing of it, the donating of it…it’s the most interesting substance on the planet. Making money in and of itself is critical to one’s success in life. How much money we have affects our health (food, water, shelter, medical) and our happiness.
If we make judgments about how money must be made, i.e., you must work hard for it, you must make it doing good, you must earn it from a job, etc., we spend our lives judging others and often times, are never financially successful ourselves. I have been doing money coaching for years and I see this all the time.
The Empower Network guys have created great thing. They are empowering people all over the world, literally, by giving people a decent honest way to make money and they are teaching them how to make money not just by blogging and sharing what they know but by using the marketing techniques to sell/market/spread anything they might have a passion for…for instance, financial education programs that change the world. :-).
I appreciate your concern, but don’t listen to the naysayers. I did the research. Empower Network is a great organization with a heart-filled purpose and I’m enjoying learning from these two young knuckleheads (David Wood has the silliest laugh:) very much!
Hope that helps…
Have a fabulous day…Elisabeth
The bottom line is that the more judgment we attach to people and their money, the more we judge ourselves with money and the more we judge ourselves with money, the worse our financial situations become.
It may not make total sense, but I’ve seen it over and over again in my coaching business.
Your wealth work for today is to look at your money judgments…what are they, who do they concern, where do you spend the most energy judging money and most importantly, what are your judgments about yourself and money?
I promise that if you’ll spend a bit of time looking at the answers to these questions, you might just learn why you have the money challenges you have…and we all have them…it’s just that we all have money challenges that are unique to our personal judgments.
As always, just something else to think about…
by Elisabeth Donati | Jul 26, 2012 | Allowances, Media Attention, Uncategorized
Guest Post by Expert Panel Member Claudia Mulcahy
Living within your means doesn’t equate to living less well.
You not only save money by not buying candy, sodas, coffee, alcohol, or cigarettes, but your body will celebrate!
Maybe you bike to work to save money on gas. Again, you’ll find an added mind and body benefit.
That 20 year old sweater—if it’s a classic, it’s still in style. If it looks nice, and still fits, why would you part with your money to replace your sweater with a trendy, poor quality version?
There are so many opportunities and temptations when we venture into the store.
Do you have a shopping list? Not just for grocery shopping, but to keep you on task when you stop at the garden center, or the mall?
If you’re looking for something to compliment an outfit, or room decor, do you bring a color or style with you to ensure it doesn’t become an unnecessary purchase?
Suggestions:
- Have a self-made list of agreements:
- If something isn’t on the list, but begs to come home with you, you’ll leave the store for a cool down period before buying.
- If you buy something BUT remember when you get home that your priority or goal is more important to you than what you bought, keep the tag on the item, dig through the garbage if needed for the receipt, and return it to the store as soon as possible. (Ladies…sometimes UNshopping is as fun as shopping in the first place!)
- Don’t shop when you’re bored, upset or lonely. Go out into nature, instead! It will help shift your attitude.
- If getting outside is going to cost you, weigh the cost of the activity. Maybe you really want tennis lessons. Once you learn tennis, the game can be free.
But it’s not about not spending money. It’s about being aware of what you have, and the purchases you make.
YOU have the power…not the money and certainly not the stores.
Stand tall and continue to live within your means. It takes backbone.
And if you don’t like your means? Change it by choosing differently!
See what else Claudia is up to at these sites:
http://www.SpiritandMoneyMatters.com
by Elisabeth Donati | Jul 20, 2012 | Financial Literacy, Uncategorized, WEALTHwork™, What you can do
Guest Post by Brian Hamilton, Bestselling Author of 90 Day Money Challenge. Please visit his site for the other 3 reasons budgets don’t work.
Who should handle the budgeting in a marriage? The husband or the wife? The spender or the saver? The nerd or the free spirit? If you want to be wealthy, you need to do what wealthy people do. And their answer is: both of you!
The #4 reason that most budgets don’t work is because you don’t work together with your spouse.
The Budget Committee Meeting (BCM)
If you’re married, it’s time for the BCM: a quick budget meeting with your spouse before every month for the rest of your lives.
You are not taking over the money, your spouse is not taking over the money, you are going to work together and you both have a vote. You are both adults. You’re not daddy taking care of a spoiled little girl or mommy taking care of a little boy and dishing out his allowance; you are two adults working together.
BCM Ground Rules
This meeting should take place at the kitchen table with the TV off.
Nerds:
1. Do a rough draft of the budget
2. Bring it to the meeting
3. Be quiet (all of your opinions are on the page)
4. Make it brief
5. Let the free spirit change something (you’re getting their support when you make it “our” plan)
Free Spirits:
1. Come to the meeting
2. Talk at the meeting and have mature input
3. Agree to every number on the page or vote to change it
4. You can no longer say, “Whatever you want to do” (this is part of having mature input)
A Contract
Once both of you agree on the budget, it’s now a contract for the month. Pinky swear and spit shake that you will both stick to spending the amounts you agreed to at the meeting.
The BCM is the biggest thing that can improve your marriage and stop money fights, assuming you can keep your word and you have integrity. Make each other a promise and keep that promise.
We’ve had a BCM every month since we’ve been married and we’ve never spent any money that wasn’t in the budget without having an EBCM (Emergency BCM) first. That’s where something comes up in the middle of the month and you add an expense to the budget, rebalance it, and agree on it with your spouse before you do the spending.
Warning
If this is the first time you have done a budget with this much detail, I can almost guarantee it’s not going to work out according to your plan. But it does get easier. The first month may take close to an hour, but we now spend about three minutes per month on this (because our budget doesn’t change much anymore).
If you implement the BCM, you’re going to learn to work together in a way you’ve never worked together before and you’re going to see your marriage improve dramatically.
Question: Are you having any trouble getting your spouse on board?
Please leave your comments below.
by Elisabeth Donati | Jul 8, 2012 | Extra Money Game Activities Category, Money Game FAQ, Money Game Specific
As you know, I love getting great questions about The Money Game that allow me to expand the game even further.
Sometimes the questions spur an addition that is so blatantly missing in the game it causes me to pause, and think, “How did I miss that?”
It always reaffirms my continual philosophy that all great things are collaborative in nature. I know for a fact that Camp Millionaire and The Money Game are as great as they as because of all of you!
Here’s the question from our Money Game Instructor, Kristina Steiger, from Dayton, OH. She posted the question on our private Money Game Facebook Group. The questions were important enough to put on your Money Game Blog.
KRISTINA’S POST…
Good morning,
I have a small group (6) of students who have been playing The Money Game this week and we have a few questions.
Question #1 – Making decisions about events.
The first is in regards to rounds and making decisions about events. We know the decision about what to do about an event (i.e., pay this round for a car accident with cash, or pay double the credit card bill next month*) comes before you collect your passive income.
However, can you make the decision about what to do, knowing you are getting that passive income? For example, if they need an extra $200 this round, and they’ll get that when they collect their passive income in a few minutes, does that work, or do they need to have that money currently in their account before the round’s passive income is collected?
* Or a third option is to forgo putting money in the Play Bag the next round. This way they can still Pay Themselves First.
ANSWER
Well…the answer is, “That Depends.”
It depends on whether the players want to practice the habits of financially free people or broke people.
It depends on whether you want to instill our Money Game Principle of “If you can’t afford it in cash, you can’t afford it at all.”
You see, here’s the thing…we’re trying to teach kids to think like, and make decisions like, wealthy, financially free, rich people. In this case, they tend to spend money they HAVE, not money they’re GOING to have.
Why? Because ‘stuff’ happens and you can’t ‘count’ on money you don’t have…until you have it.
When I play The Money Game with our players, I always emphasize that it’s their choice AND they have to make those choices knowing the consequences of those choices.
My preferred answer to this question is that they can PLAN actions that involve the money that they are reasonably sure they will be getting but that they don’t ACT on those plans until they have the money in their hands.
Question #2 – About saving money during the game.
Our second question is about “winning” the game. Since we have a small group we wanted to play as many rounds as we could, knowing that by the end they would all have been able to invest in at least 10 assets which produces the $1,000 of PI per month required to win the money game.
What is the ratio, or ideal amount, that students should have IN the bank, i.e., their money game registers, when they are financially free?
The kids were making that much in PI income each month, but wanted to spend most of it buying new assets. This meant that when we ended the game, some kids had 20+ assets, but only had $200 in the bank.
ANSWER
Kristina, this is such a brilliant question…it’s the one that caused me to pause, realizing I hadn’t hard-wired this lesson right into the game. The answer is taught in The Money Jars Activity Lesson but it’s not reinforced in the game unless an individual instructor chooses to do it.
The answer is that they ‘should’ have 3-6 months of living expenses put away in their ‘Just In Case’ Jar in case of, well, you know, just in cases:-).
If your expenses are $900, they theoretically need at least $2700 put away to truly win the game in real life. And since we’d never get through the game if the players had to do this, we need to address it…so let’s do so now.
Let’s look at The Money Jars for clues. If we look at the 6 jars and divide their initial $1000 paycheck into the jars, we have:
Living Jar (55%) – $550
Freedom Jar (10%) – $100
Saving Jar (10%) – $100
Education Jar (10%) – $100
Play Jar (10%) – $100
Donation (5%) – $50
Now let’s look at the Expense Bags relative to The Money Jars. They aren’t an exact match (because we wanted to keep the workings of the game simple) but they are close:
Rent, Living, Car Payment, Credit Card Payment = $600
Paying Yourself First (after round 1) = $100
Education = $100
Play = $100
Donation = $100
Total = $1000. We didn’t want to have to rip the $100 into a $50 for donation so we rounded up and since we absolutely wanted Donation to be part of the game, it had to be $100.
So what is missing, technically from the Expense Bags? You probably figured it out…the SAVING Bag.
The solution was for the register to be both the Saving and Freedom Jar money but that makes it only $10% of their paycheck. This is a blip in the game we haven’t been able to nail down because, quite honestly, it’s never been an issue because kids realize they must have money in their register ‘just in case’ one of the Event Cards costs them money (and they often do!).
My suggestion is to make sure:
- They have gone through The Money Jars lesson with the kids.
- You reinforce the importance, by reviewing the jars lessons, of having 3-6 months of expenses saved up for just-in-case events. And that means always having money in their register (truth is, it takes people time to save up 3-6 months of their regular expenses so you can talk about this as well).
- You absolutely should encourage them to save up money in their registers when you first introduce the Event Cards. Let them know that some of the events might be opportunities that require money to take advantage of.
Question #3 – About having ‘winners.
If we want a first, second, and third place winner, should that be based on who gets the 10 assets first, or is there a way to determine a winner based on their accounts (i.e., student A has $1000 in the bank and 11 assets, Student B has $1000 in the bank and 12 assets, Student C has $1900 in the bank and 10 assets)? Which one would be first?)
Great question…
ANSWER
It was never my intention for there to be a winner of a series of rounds of The Money Game but that EVERY player get the chance to ‘win the money game’ or at the very least, realize what is TAKES to win them game.
You see, in life, there are already trillions of examples where people believe that they can’t win the money game, for one reason or another. The point is that ‘ALL WEALTH IS LEARNED‘ and anyone can win the money game if they develop the right:
- Financial Mindset
- Money Habits
- Invest in assets
- Do what wealthy people do
I personally never promote one winner. Instead, at the end of the game…be it 3 hours, 1 day, a weekend or during a 5-day summer camp, we ask WHO has won the game, WHO is close to winning the game, WHO understands how to win the game and finally WHO chooses to be financially free and is wiling to do what is necessary to make it happen.
If you want to make winners and give prizes (assets preferably…never piddlyjunk please). Savings Bonds work great and aren’t expensive), then base it on how much money is saved in addition to the base number of assets. It promotes a better lesson in regard to basic financial habits.
Hope all this makes sense.
Thank you
OMG, thank you for asking! Upload some photos of your players!
