Choose to be

Wealthy

Why choose to be wealthy?There are a lucky few people who are born wealthy or become wealthy overnight or by accident. For the rest of us, becoming wealthy is something that can only happen because we make a conscious choice to put a plan in place to become wealthy.

The alternative is to end up being poor.

Becoming wealthy is a journey. That journey starts with a choice to become wealthy, then a plan to make it happen, followed by a commitment to the plan and eventually the realisation of that plan – wealth. People who are wealthy have more choices, they have more options, because that’s what money buys. At Wealth Train, we firmly believe that in terms of creating wealth it doesn't matter how old you are, how much money you have, or what you do for a living. We want to empower everyone with the information they need to make confident and informed decisions about their money. While money is incredibly stressful for many people, it doesn’t need to be that way. There are simple, proven, low-cost ways to manage your money and make sure that your money is working as hard as possible for you. We are helping people just like you put in place strategies that are uncomplicated and allow money worries to disappear into the background, so you can have more time and energy for things like family, friends and fun. In this short ebook we want to introduce some of the ideas that Wealth Train is all about. This is the start of your journey to financial fitness and freedom. Happy reading, Daniel

Make the ChoiceIf you find money stressful, you're not alone. If you're not sure what to do with your money, you’re not alone. At Wealth Train, we are building a community of like-minded people who want to make confident and informed decisions about their money. A community of people who want the best financial future they

and their families can have.

But a great financial future doesn’t happen by accident! If you want it to become a reality, then you need to choose to make it happen. Choose to be wealthy. Start a plan for your financial future by moving off your current track and on to one that is going to take you in the direction you want to go. 1. KNOW WHERE YOU WANT TO GO Start by simply writing out some goals you want to achieve in the short, medium and long term. 2. BECOME THE DRIVER Make yourself accountable. Whether you’re just starting your working life, raising a young family, on the path to retirement or already there, you need to be the one who is responsible for what your financial future will look like. 3. CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE This is by far the most important step to take! It’s time to forget what has happened in the past. It’s time to forget what you think you know. It’s time to press the reset button and make sure that from this point forward you’re taking all the right steps to make money work for you and it’s a lot easier than you think.

Getting StartedThe best way to predict your financial future is to create it.

Too many people drift aimlessly through their working lives and then realise they are poor later in life. They didn't have a

plan, they had hope. Hope is not a strategy. They end up paying a very high price, working their whole lives to end up poor for many years in retirement. Here are a few things you

need to know to get started in the right direction. 1. EMPOWER YOURSELF WITH KNOWLEDGE "Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom." - George Washington Carver You don’t have to be an economist or a stockbroker to be financially successful. In fact, it’s probably better to not think you’re an expert and instead just learn the simplest things that have always worked. Too many people over-complicate things and there are plenty of people offering complicated products and services that promise the world but usually only deliver a positive outcome for those selling them.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Benjamin Franklin

2. PAY YOURSELF FIRST The most important part of the wealth creation process isn’t terribly complicated… save something every time you get paid. SPEND LESS THAN YOU EARN. Do this religiously, there are no excuses. Continue doing it week after week, year after year and invest those savings. Before you know it you’ll be wealthy! This should not be confused with denying yourself a life. Make a goal to set aside some money to splurge in moderation. People spending all their income are creating no wealth. Sadly, they can’t see the future and haven’t yet cottoned on to the idea that without wealth they are a slave to their working income. If you have wealth, you have money working for you instead of you working for your money. That is how you attain financial freedom and the longer you give yourself, the easier it is to make it a reality. The biggest regret of Australians over the age of 65 is that they didn’t save enough for retirement. And on average they wished they’d started doing something about it at least 20 years before they retired. Learn from their mistakes! And the key mistake they made was not living by the golden rule of financial success - pay yourself first. QUICK TIP: People who are wealthy usually don’t drive fancy cars. They understand that spending too much on a car is a waste of money and they don’t feel the need to drive an expensive car to prove they’re successful. The reality is that when you see someone living a ‘fancy’ lifestyle, it usually means they have no wealth… they’re spending all their income trying to impress people, saving nothing and will one day no longer be able to afford that lifestyle.

It's not your salary that makes you rich, it's your spending habits.

Charles. A. Jaffe

Don't be parted with your money easily. Think about where your money is going. These days there’s no need to pay full price for anything, so don’t. Start making savings happen so you can start creating wealth. The first step to taking control of your money is to set up some form of budget. This doesn’t need to be complicated. You don’t need to track every cent you spend. It’s as simple as paying yourself first. Out of every pay cheque you receive, take a set percentage and put it away for the future, EVERY TIME YOU GET PAID! It’s a simple fact that to create wealth you need to invest, and to invest you need to have money to invest which can only come from saving. A very useful exercise to do is to keep a spending diary for a full month. It requires writing down EVERY cent spent in your household so that at the end of the month you can go back and work through the diary to find areas in which you can save. Find your ‘spending leaks’, plug them and then use the savings to create wealth for the future. Remember, the only person you will be accountable to in the future is you, so do things your future self will thank you for.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.Benjamin Franklin

3. KILL DEBT "A man in debt is so far a slave." - Ralph Waldo Emerson The wrong type of debt and too much of it is one of the great limiting factors in creating wealth. When it comes to debt, borrow less than you can afford. Banks know how debt works against you and for them. They will lend you as much as possible and hope you take as long as possible to pay it off. Don’t borrow what they offer you, borrow less than you can afford so you can pay it off faster and start redirecting that money for your future. For most of us the biggest debt we will ever take on will be our mortgage. Remember this though, your home may provide a roof over your head, but your home will provide you with no income, even when it is paid off. On that basis, your debt is an emergency! It’s something you need to be in control of and get it paid off quickly.

There are no shortcuts when it comes to getting out of debt.

Dave Ramsey

4. DON’T JUST SAVE, INVEST! "The lack of money is the root of all evil." - Mark Twain You might be one of the few people who is lucky enough to work in a job that you would like to do until the day you die. If not, then you’re like everyone else and would one day like to be able to afford to retire. Therefore, you need to create wealth and to do this you need to invest in things that can grow - shares and property. You don’t even have to be saving money to invest to make a big difference... What’s happening with your super? Understand how it works and then get it working. Ignore super at your peril! Start investing as early as possible so your investment will have more time to grow. Investing is a great way to build long term wealth. The money you keep in a savings account loses value year after year due to inflation. (P.S. A lot of people are put off getting started because they think they need lots of money to invest… you can start investing with very small amounts of money!). IMPORTANT NOTE: Before you can start putting money into long term investments, you need a cash reserve! Not having enough money on-hand leaves you exposed in the event that you need to access money quickly. Hold enough funds in a savings or offset account to ensure you can cover everyday expenses and unexpected emergencies.

5. TIME DOES ALL THE HARD WORK Sadly, money and the value of time were not taught to most people at home or at school, nor are they taught in the workplace. Not understanding the power of time means many only realise they need to create wealth when it’s too late for them to use the power of time to their advantage. This is because of how compounding returns work - earning income on income. Albert Einstein called it the most powerful force in the universe, the eighth wonder of the world… and he was reasonably clever! Ideally, money should fade into the background. You shouldn't spend a lot of time and energy managing it or worrying about it. Money doesn't have to be complicated. You can choose to make it complicated by either doing nothing (it will come back to bite you) or by chasing things that are too good to be true (you’ll get burned!). There are some incredibly simple, low-cost, tax effective and easy to manage ways to invest your money to grow. Making those investments allows you to create wealth and that wealth allows you to one day pay yourself a decent income. DON’T EVER FORGET THAT WHEN YOU RETIRE YOU’RE UNEMPLOYED. Your retirement income will depend on what you can afford to pay yourself. The alternative is to be at the mercy of our welfare system and I, for one, will not be wanting to rely on the Age Pension for my income. The Age Pension provides money to survive, I want to live! While saving and not overspending are good habits to have, they can become money mistakes if you don’t eventually put your money to work for you. Any investment you make is going to be a risk. However, as Warren Buffett has said, “Risk comes from not knowing what you are doing”. You don’t need to be an expert though… the ‘experts’ usually get it wrong anyway because they’re too clever by half.

6. CONTROL WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL - FEES! We can’t control inflation, interest rates, the economy, the sharemarket, the property market, etc… but we can take control of the fees we pay by making sure we are not paying unnecessary ones. There is so much competition out there and so many tools to help us find better deals.

7. PROTECT YOUR FUTURE It’s important that you insure your most valuable asset — your income. If you were to die or become sick and injured and never be able to work again then how would you afford to live? How would you provide for those who depend on you? If you don’t think it could happen to you then you’re delusional! So acknowledge the fact these things do happen to people just like you and make sure you are protected. You insure your house don’t you? You probably insure your car. Not insuring your income is ignoring the biggest risk you face, losing your income.

INSURANCE: It's better to be

5 years too early THAN 5 MINUTES

TOO LATE

We all know deep down that money should be saved, invested and not wasted. But it’s easier said than done. The reality is, despite what the financial services industry would have you believe, money isn’t rocket science! It doesn’t need to be complicated or stressful. In fact, the more boring the money decisions you make are, the better off you will be! Let’s be honest: • Paying attention to your spending isn't exciting • Spending less than you earn isn't exciting • Investing shouldn't be exciting • Money in a savings account isn't exciting • Paying off debt isn't exciting • Wills aren't exciting • Insurances aren't exciting BUT these are the foundations you lay to create and protect wealth. The collective power of these things is exciting once you have them under control. Once this happens, you can enjoy life confident in the knowledge that you have a financial plan working in the background making sure that money isn’t something you have to lie awake at night worrying about. Once you start to create wealth and you see it grow… money becomes fun! All of a sudden you’re on the right track! The wealth you grow, and protect, then enables you to do all the things you love. Slow and steady wealth makes for an exciting life because you have choices!

AnD... ACTION!We wanted to put together some of the concepts that define

what Wealth Train stands for. We believe everyone deserves a great financial future. We started Wealth Train because we

want to help people just like you make smarter financial decisions so you and your family can live a better life.

That’s why we do what we do.

It’s not as daunting as it sounds. You can change your future today. Most of us grow up learning the same old things about money. We’re told we need to get a job and earn an income. So that’s what most of us do. We work for our money but no one teaches us how to make our money work for us. Once you start to create wealth and have money working for you, it starts to do the job behind the scenes. While you’re at work, while you’re out with friends, while you’re spending time with your family, while you’re driving, while you’re mowing the lawn, while you’re on holidays, while you’re reading a book, while you’re asleep... you have money working for you. Creating wealth is your ticket to financial freedom. There are many weird and wonderful ways to try and make money. Then there’s the logical, no fuss, time-tested ways to create wealth, and that’s what Wealth Train teaches people like you. These wealth creation ideas are not the "get rich quick" schemes that lure people in, suck them dry and then spit them out. It is the horror stories you hear about people losing all their money that inhibits people’s abilities to make sensible decisions with their money. If the alternative is to put your savings under a mattress, I can guarantee you it's not going to increase in value! Everyone can create wealth. We firmly believe "wealthy" is a relative term. Everyone is earning different amounts of money that fund different lifestyles and in our minds, being wealthy is being able to afford to maintain your lifestyle for your lifetime. If you can’t do that then it means at some point you will be poorer (and probably substantially poorer) than you are today. Don’t wait for that to happen. Acquire the information you need to create and protect your wealth so that you will be wealthy instead of poor.

The best way to predict your financial future is to create it.

Sadly, most people miss out on becoming wealthy because they make their decisions about money based on emotion. They want to live for today because that feels good, so they ignore the logic of planning for the long term. They end up poor. They don’t invest because they let the media scare them, so they ignore the amazing, simple and proven ways of investing that create slow wealth. They get sucked in by property spruikers and "get rich quick" schemes because they’re looking for the easy way to wealth. So they ignore the complete lack of sense in pursuing strategies that are too good to be true. They go through life thinking “it won’t happen to me”, so they ignore the need to insure their most valuable asset – their income. Of course emotions play an important part in our lives but if they come into the investment process, emotion usually drives the wrong decisions and in the long term leaves people with regret. Let reason and logic guide your money decisions and then enjoy the results which will motivate you further and as you become wealthy, you will be able to enjoy the emotions that come from financial freedom. This recipe for financial success may sound complex, but it’s not. This is not rocket science. You can do this if you have the right information. So don’t waste another moment. Leave the past behind and focus on your financial future. And if you see value in having an expert, INDEPENDENT, financial coach guiding you along the way, then we'd love to help!

Make logic your primary decision process, not emotion.

And since you made it this far, we'd like to offer you a FREE initial consultation.

Head to wealthtrain.com.au or call 0411 484 464

ENQUIRIES Email: info@wealthtrain.com.au Phone: 0411 484 464 Mailing address PO Box 5001 Orange NSW 2800 And please join us on social media. © 2019 Wealth Train Pty Ltd ABN: 39621286146 ASIC Authorised Representative: 1253135 Corporate Authorised Representative: 1258202 Daniel McGregor and Wealth Train are authorised representatives of Independent Financial Advisers Australia AFSL: 464629 GENERAL ADVICE WARNING: The information in this publication contains general information and does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on any information, you should consider its appropriateness in light of your own objectives, financial situation or needs. If the information relates to the acquisition, or possible acquisition, of a particular product, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement for that product and consider this before making your decision. We recommend that you consult a licensed or authorised financial adviser if you require financial advice that takes into account your personal circumstances.