This week Dan Christiansen has our tip of the week.

This week Lorin shares another inspirational story from a successful student.

Do Not—Care What Others Think
(Adopting The Millionaire Mindset)

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, … sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and earth will say, “Here lived a great sweeper, who swept his job well.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Scores of books have been written on developing what has been dubbed the “millionaire mentality” (or mindset) and how to change it. Anything that has been learned, especially if it is detrimental to our financial well-being, can also be permanently unlearned. Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a first-rate example of someone who can change his mindset. In his case, Scrooge went from the epitome of stingy miser to caring philanthropist literally over night. He had to discover the reasons behind his beliefs that bound him and to see the future results of not making changes.

Changing your harmful habits requires changing your unconstructive actions, which necessitates changing your inferior patterns stemming from your negative thoughts. Developing the millionaire mentality all begins in the mind. The good news is that you have already chosen your pathway for the rest of your life (in your mind at least) by tracking your spending and doing something about taking control of your finances.

Personal development guru Joe Vitale delves deeply into the secrets of the law of attraction in his book The Attractor Factor and offers what he feels are the keys to creating a joyful and abundant life by using the power of positive thought. He also makes it plainly clear that although optimistic and positive thoughts draw altruistic results, they require action. You’ve heard it said that “you reap what you sow” and “what comes around, goes around.” Both of these sayings are actions-based.

The millionaire mindset is a positive state of mind and begins in one’s personal beliefs. All these beliefs have been adopted and accepted, based upon your experiences. Know that what you have been taught to believe can be changed for the better. Believe that you can overcome any hardship and that you can “change your stars.”

The above term comes from the movie A Knight’s Tale. Heath Ledger’s character William Thacker is a peasant squire born into poverty who breaks all the rules of jousting when he passes himself off as a nobleman. Thacker believes that a man can “change his stars,” meaning that no matter what station you are born into and whatever class distinction you may be labeled, that there is no such thing as fate and one can drive his own destiny.

Disappointments can lead to new developments. The millionaire mentality always looks for the broad picture and for the long-term implications and outcomes. The millionaire mindset is optimistic and positive. It looks beyond the horizon for what lies just out of sight, but always within reach. The millionaire mind has the ability to take any roadblock and turn it into an opportunity. We can change our stars and drive our own destiny by believing, by feeling deserving, by deciding upon an action plan, and finally by taking the required steps and putting forth the essential effort dictated by the desired outcome, even if the pathways seem impassable.

When faced with adversity, the man or woman with a developed millionaire mindset will plough through and endure to the end. Additionally, these people will look back in retrospect and be grateful for the experience. Perseverance also constitutes a large makeup of the mindset. Confucius said, “Our greatest glory is not in never failing but in rising each time we fall.” Champions are people who “never say die.”

Once you are automatically able to distinguish between a casual want and a true need, (meaning that this ability has become part of your psyche), you will be well entrenched on your path to financial freedom and you will easily be able to hold onto more of your hard-earned cash.

In their book, The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley and William Danko describe what America’s wealthy really look like, and more importantly, how they act. America’s wealthy are frugal and live not just within, but below their means. The majority of truly wealthy people do not drive Mercedes Benzes or Cadillac Escalades. You would never know they had a lot of money by their outward appearances as they don’t care what others think. They pay cash for everything and plan their purchases wisely and according to needs.

If you consider yourself poor, are you poor by choice? Additionally, what are you doing to change your circumstances? After having made the choice to be wealthy, your future actions will dictate your outcome. The millionaire mindset is not content with mediocrity or in not living up to one’s full potential. The mindset sifts through problems until a solution is discovered.

The millionaire mentality does not give into impulse or lingering sadness. The mindset that you wish to develop in order to live a prosperous lifestyle is positive and resolute. The person who has developed this mindset is optimistic and visionary and unencumbered by the obstacles that life throws their way. These are the leaders of the world who take charge and stand up as beacons. All the world loves a hero, but heroes are nothing more than ordinary men and women who when faced with a defining moment, choose to define the moment and to take advantage of a new opportunity rather than to allow the barrier impediment them on their journey.

Kory Koontz: Excerpts from his book: Do or Do Not—An Inspirational 12-Step Program to Prosperous Living. C. 2009

This week Drew Svetlecic shares a tip of the week on all the various information that our creditors collect about us.

Talk can be cheap
Use Skype (www.skype.com), free-to-download software that allows you to make telephone calls over the Internet. For $3/mo. you can make unlimited calls to United States and Canada. This could cut down on your cell phone bill big time, and possibly eliminate the need for a landline. You can even set up Skype so that when you use it to make calls, your cell phone number shows up on the caller ID of the person you are calling.
If you have an iPhone, you can use Skype’s iPhone app, which allows you to make cheap Skype calls from your cell. How cool is that?
Dump the contract
Save money on your cell phone bill. Boost Mobile has a $50/mo. plan with unlimited talk, text, web, and sms. No contracts, no roaming charges, no surprise big bills (you pay as you go). Check it out at: www.boostmobile.com. If you’re currently locked into a cell phone contract, this may be something you’ll have to wait on. When you’re ready to make the switch, this company could save you a bundle.
If you’re stuck in a contract you don’t want, you can always sell the remainder of your contract. There are sites like Cellswapper.com and Celltradeusa.com that you can do this on.
You can also sell the remainder of your contract on Craigslist.com. Before you do this, make sure you call your carrier and ask if there are any fees to transfer a contract into someone else’s name.
Buy used
Speaking of cell phones, you can often get a much better deal by purchasing a phone on your own. There are many stores that sell used cell phones. Not only that, but you can sell your old phone to the used cell phone store, and make some quick cash – or get credit towards a trade-in.
Technology is your friend
Harness the power of the internet to eliminate the need for expensive cable:
• Hulu - www.hulu.com All you have to do is set up and online account, and you can watch TV for free. Go on there to check for your favorite shows.
• YouTube.com Screening Room - http://www.youtube.com/ytscreeningroom?feature=pyv
The YouTube Screening Room has tons of full-length movies - for free! YouTube updates the site with more movies every 2 weeks. Now you never need to spend another dime on movie channels, Netflix, or Blockbuster.
YouTube is also adding premium content on a pay per viewage basis, which will most likely be cheaper than paying for your cable.
• iTunes - http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ – Great resource for lots of free content. iTunes has an enormous selection of free podcasts, about anything in the world you are interested in. They have both video and audio podcasts that you can listen to. All you have to do is download iTunes to your computer, which is free, and then go to the iTunes store and download the podcasts you would like to listen to or watch. You can then watch or listen to the podcasts on your computer or on your mp3 player.
Also, many network television shows offer a free downloadable podcast of the show on iTunes.
iTunes U, also on iTunes, features free lectures, language lessons, audiobooks, and more, that you can enjoy on your iPod, iPhone, Mac or PC. Explore over 100,000 educational audio and video files from top universities, museums and public media organizations from around the world.
You can sit in on classes from Duke, Stanford, Yale, and many other top notch institutions, for free.
Show me the money – Use technology always know where your money is:
www.Mint.com immediately pulls in your balances, purchases, stock trades, etc. to give you a complete picture of your finances. Mint connects securely with more than 7,000 US financial institutions, saving you hours of tedious data entry.
Mint updates all of your account information automatically. So you always have the most current information available.
With Mint you can set budgets for each kind of spending each month, and have a visual reminder of your budget. It will also alert you when you go over your budget.
It will also track your investments, so you can get a quick minute-by-minute update of your net worth.
Mint will also instantly show you your APR and what you’ve been paying in interest and fees – a great motivation to get the debt paid off!
Make the kids and dog worried they’re going on Craigslist
Craigslist.com offers a variety of ways for you to save money in all kinds of different ways. First of all, there’s a FREE section, where you can find items that people in your area are literally giving away for free. Next, there’s a wanted section. So if there is something that you need, but you can’t find it, or can’t find it for the price you want, you can post an ad in the WANTED section on Craigslist.com.
There’s another site called Freecycle.com, and this site has tons and tons of items listed, for, that’s right – FREE. Now that’s a price you can’t beat.

This week Lorin shares another great and inspiring testimonial.

Investing Basics

There are a lot of great places that you can go online to learn more about stock investing. A few sites that I would recommend if you are trying to learn more about the Market would be optionsxpress.com, nasdaq.com, and moneycentral.msn.com. At optionsxpress you can learn about investing in stock and options. There is a free educational center there that can help those wanting to get involved with the stock market. Nasdaq.com has a very powerful tool that can help you understand how to analyze the fundamentals of a company. Moneycentral.msn.com is a great place to go to find information on the company you are looking into. If you want to focus on mutual funds, the best website out there is Morningstar.com. At Morningstar.com you can learn about the expenses of the funds. How long a fund manager has been managing the specific fund etc. With so much information it can be a challenge to know where to begin. I would start by using some of the elective classes that are already available to you on the success center website. Listen to all of the stock electives. It may take listening to these classes more than once before you get it. Be persistent as you learn how to invest. It can seem like you are learning a new language when you first start. You will grow in your understanding little by little. If you learn how to do invest the right way, the sky will be the limit on how much money you can earn.