Wealth Formula by Buck Joffrey

I am not your typical physician if you have not figured that out. I am more of a “raging entrepreneur”. That doesn’t mean I’ve had only success. In fact, without question, I’ve failed lots of times but the difference between most people and me is that I keep trying until something sticks. I’ve used this same approach in brick and mortar multimillion dollar business enterprises, real estate, and…internet marketing. A few years back, I got really into this idea of making money on the internet. I loved the idea that I could literally create a business on line that could make money with virtually no over head or even capital expense. Not a bad business model, right? So, I started teaching myself all sorts of different internet business models such as affiliate marketing off blogs, google adsense, etc. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s ok. After all, neither did I. Furthermore, I made virtually no money doing most of this. But… then I learned about self publishing ebooks on amazon and believe it or not, I started making $500-$700/month with random cook books etc that I didn’t even write myself! The best part…it was REALLY EASY. Now, I know that many of my listeners are very interesting people with a lot of specialized knowledge to share with others and, in the process, create an additional source of income and/or a source for new clients. That’s why you will not want to miss this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast which features an interview with ebook guru, Jim Kukral, You won’t want to miss this.

To be a successful investor, you must have a personal investment philosophy. You need to think about not only the deal but whether or not it fits in with your own goals and your view of the world. In this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast, I give you my own framework for investing that has served me well for the last 7-8 years. As a reminder, you can leave questions for me by going to wealthformula.com and clicking on the “ask Buck” icon. Also, if there is a topic that you think I should cover, let me know. Even if I don’t know anything about the topic, I bet I can find the right person to interview! Also make sure to let me know how I’m doing by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing the show with friends and colleagues.

My goal with the Wealth Formula Podcast is to build a community of likeminded individuals who can learn from one another. A community implies some level of interaction. Therefore, every once in a while I like to do a little show called “Ask Buck”. In this week’s Ask Buck episode, we had some pretty interesting questions about gold, debt, and inflation. I bet you will find some real value in it. As a reminder, you can leave questions for me by going to wealthformula.com and clicking on the “ask Buck” icon. Also, if there is a topic that you think I should cover, let me know. Even if I don’t know anything about the topic, I bet I can find the right person to interview! Also make sure to let me know how I’m doing by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing the show with friends and colleagues. Thanks to those of you who have reached out to me. It helps to know that I’m not just talking to myself 🙂

I have been talking to many high paid professionals like you lately who have found some inspiration from the guests that I have had on the show. Whenever I get a chance to ask people what kinds of things they want to invest in, they rattle off a lot of great stuff like real estate, mortgage notes, and even gold. Virtually everyone, including me, wishes they had all the money in the world to buy things and invest with others. It’s stuff that actually has a good chance of making money and well…it’s kind of fun isn’t it? In many of the conversations I’ve had, the idea of using retirement funds to invest in some of these real assets has come up. What I realized is that most of you don’t know that you’re retirement account does not have to be limited to the garbage your wealth advisor recommends…namely stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. I spent all of my last podcast episode trashing these volatile and nonsensical derivatives so I won’t do it again. But what really gets me irritated is the fact that Wall Street is behind most people’s ignorance. You see, they don’t want you to know that you can buy things like real estate and gold with your retirement funds. Why would they? Wall street is not there to make you money, they are there to take your money through huge commissions and fees and if you started investing in real assets instead of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, they wouldn’t get to take advantage of you. In fact, if you have a wealth advisor, ask him or her if you can invest in real estate with your retirement funds. I guarantee many of you will, in response, get a blank stare or your advisor will simply say no. In rare instances, you might hear your advisor refer to this as alternative investments. Alternative investments??? Gold has had value for thousands of years. What’s alternative about that? Wall Street will make you think it is difficult and risky to self direct your retirement funds but it’s neither in my opinion. In fact, today’s guest on Wealth Formula Podcast will tell you exactly how you can do it!

When you put aside money for retirement, who’s advice are you taking? Are you taking the advice of the wealth advisor who makes money every time you make a deposit? Why do you trust your wealth advisor? Is he or she wealthy? These are questions that are critical to ask yourself if you want to avoid dying broke. That may sound ludicrous to you. After all, you might be making $200,000 or $300,000 per year right now. How could you ever die broke? Well, if you ever did a deep dive into the formulas used to help guide you to your golden years, you would understand. The reality is, the formulas used by wealth advisors to guide retirement saving/investing through conventional wisdom are outdated and dangerous. We live in unparalleled times. The stock market has essentially been sideways for three years. Earnings from major companies are poor yet their stock valuation are at record highs. Why? Because interest rates have been essentially zero for eight years and institutional investors can borrow money for free. That allows for corporate buy backs and the resultant massive equity market bubbles that we are seeing today. I am not exaggerating when I say that in the history of the financial world we have never seen this scenario. We are stuck at zero rates and no amount of money printing has been successful at getting us out of this new, artificial, normal. Even the United States federal reserve bank concedes that we are in unchartered waters. And don’t just take my word for it, look at the big players on Wall Street. They are all shorting the market. Now, why would you keep putting money into it? Is it because your wealth advisor told you so? Did you know that your wealth advisor makes money on your investments? That’s right, he tells you to cling to the old mantra of “investing in stocks bonds and mutual funds for the long run”. Well, if you do this, you could very well die broke one day despite your current fancy job and high salary. It does not have to be this way. Understand that as a high paid professional you have many opportunities that your less fortunate brothers and sisters do not. You just have to take some responsibility for your own finances. In this episode of the Wealth Formula Podcast, I do a deep dive for you to show why the old paradigm of investing for retirement is not applicable to our new financial world. Following these antiquated paradigms will leave many professionals living with their kids in their final days. A group of highly educated professionals will go out with a whimper rather than a bang. The good news is, all of this is avoidable and I will tell you exactly why. Listen now!

The words “real estate investing” conjure up many different images. For some, it might make you think of Vanilla Ice’s reality show on flipping homes. For others, The idea of real estate makes you think of real estate moguls such as Donald Trump. The reason for these very different images is because real estate is a very large industry with multiple different niches. Going through all of the different niches is a show in and of itself and we are not going to do that today. Instead, the focus of this week’s Wealth Formula Podcast is a discussion on real estate as a business versus real estate investing. Both can be lucrative, but they have very different intents and outcomes. Andrew Holmes, called by some, aka the “king of cash flow” in Chicago, has experience and active participation in both kinds of activities. Therefore, he is the perfect guy to discuss this distinction. This is a great show and a must listen for anyone involved in real estate or even contemplating it. I hope you enjoy it and make sure to send me your comments. P.S. if you haven’t done so, download my special report on little known ways of legally saving thousands of dollars in taxes at wealthformula.com.

Let’s talk, for a minute, about how a bank works. You deposit money in the bank. These days, they pay you less than 1 percent interest. Because they are a bank, they are able to lend out most of the money you deposited. This is called the fractional reserve system. It’s complicated and best addressed in detail on another episode. However, in a nutshell, this is how it works. The bank only needs to keep a tiny percentage of what you deposit and can lend out the rest. So, say you deposit $10. The bank lends out $9 and keeps your $1 in the bank. Of course you never told them to do that. You assume your money is in the bank and that you can access it anytime you want. And…in theory…you can. That is as long as everyone wants there money back at the same time. So, when the bank lends out your money to a borrower, they charge a much higher rate than what they are paying you and they make a lot of money. Did they pay you for putting your money at risk? Hardly. Wouldn’t it be nice if a bank told you what it was doing with your money? What if they said, we are going to take your deposits and lend them out as secured loans. Furthermore, instead of paying you a nominal negative rate on your deposit, we will let you keep the majority of the profits. That might sound more interesting right? Well, that is pretty much what real estate debt investing is. Learn all about it on this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast as we talk to Rick Von Der Sitt from Tower Real Estate Fund.

Your typical wealth advisor stresses the importance of a diversified portfolio. However, to them, that means investing in a variety of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. I believe in portfolio diversification, but diversification should NOT be limited to different classes of paper assets that react to the emotional whims of normal geopolitical undulations. Diversification should mean having exposure to different REAL asset classes. If you are investing in real estate, you might consider investing in not only apartment buildings, but office buildings or assisted living facilities. You might want to invest in farmland or businesses. You might even want to invest outside of your country to hedge against your currency. Investing outside of your country may sound exotic and dangerous, but for those of you who throw money into stocks and bonds, I pretty much guarantee you that you have some international exposure already. You’re just blind to it because you have no idea what’s in your portfolio! Furthermore, right now, the dollar is VERY strong. What does that mean? It means that we have really good buying power overseas. It also means as the dollar weakens, which if I believe is imminent, your international investment becomes relatively more valuable. I recently discovered an opportunity to leverage an international investment to something that is highly addictive, has shown tremendous health benefits, and has a huge global market that is growing at a 20 percent per year clip? Want to know more? I thought so… That’s why, in this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast, we’re going talk to David Sewell of International Coffee Farms about investing in specialty coffee in Panama.

Wealth Formula podcast is not a real estate show. However, we do love real estate! Why? Because real estate is real. It’s not a piece of paper and it’s not a digital equity that you trade on Ameritrade that goes up and down with the whims of global emotion. It is an investment that allows us to own something that has nothing to do with Wall Street. We also love it because it can provide us with one of the pillars of wealth…cash flow. In addition, it provides us with great tax incentives. I believe every high earning professional should be invested in real estate. If the idea of owning real estate yourself is daunting, invest along side others and enjoy the same kind of cash flow and real estate advantages as those in the trenches. In this week’s podcast I talk with a prolific real estate syndicator who puts together big deals and lets others participate in the cash flow. Whether you want to take it to the next level and become a syndicator yourself or just invest with one and get real estate exposure in your portfolio, today’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast is for you.

Over the last several podcasts I have been impressed by the increasing number of listeners that are tuning in to the show and am really excited about the community we are growing together. For that, I thank you. This week I’m traveling but thought it would be a great opportunity for me to share more about myself with you. A few weeks back I was interviewed by Lane at “Simple Passive Cashflow Podcast”. He asked some interesting questions that I thought might interest you and help you understand more about me. Lane asked me about the good and the bad and it made for some very interesting conversation.