Jason and Sharon discuss the ballooning student loan situation in the U.S. and whether a college education is still as valuable as it once was. Sharon feels that it has to do with a standard, an expectation in our society, and students today can look at alternative ways of attending college to avoid the need for large student loans, such as scholarships or employers who assist with college expenses. The Thrive Time for Teens game deals with this issue, as well as educating youth about investing, real estate, and how to obtain good credit to open doors of opportunity.
A life-long education advocate, Sharon Lechter is the founder of Pay Your Family First, a financial education organization, and YOUTHpreneur, an innovative new way to spark the entrepreneurial spirit in our children. In 2009 Sharon was appointed to the National CPA Financial Literacy Commission as a national spokesperson on the topic of financial literacy. In 2008 Sharon was appointed to the first President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy. The Council served both President Bush and President Obama advising them on the need for financial literacy education.

Sharon is an entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, educator, international speaker, licensed CPA and mother. She has been a pioneer in developing new technologies, programs and products to bring education into children’s lives in ways that are innovative, challenging and fun, and remains committed to education – particularly financial literacy. In 1989 she joined forces with the inventor of the first electronic ‘talking book’ and helped him expand the electronic book industry to a multi-million dollar international market. Since 1992, she has dedicated her professional life and directed her entrepreneurial efforts in the creation and distribution of financial education books, games and other experiential learning products. In cooperation with the Women’s Presidents Organization, Sharon has held events across the country to teach young girls financial lessons through interactive games. In 2009 this event launched her new financial literacy board game THRIVE TIME for Teens, an innovative experiential and fun life and money reality game which has gained recognition with coveted awards including the GOLD Mom’s Choice Award, Creative Child Magazine’s 2010 Game of The Year, Dr. Toy’s Best Vacation Product and a five-star rating from WTS Toy Reviews. Recognized as an expert on the topics of financial education for children and entrepreneurship, Sharon has been featured in top national media outlets including CNN, Forbes.com, MSN Money and The Chicago Tribune. Sharon has authored Think and Grow Rich – Three Feet from Gold in cooperation with the Napoleon Hill Foundation and Greg Reid which was released in October 2009 and has ranked as a BusinessWeek and Wall Street Journal best-seller. Sharon’s most recent book project is Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill-a manuscript hidden for over 70 years updated by Lechter for the modern reader. Future projects with the Foundation include Think and Grow Rich titles for Women and Children.

Katie Kieffer is a national columnist and political commentator. Her multimedia website is KatieKieffer.com.  She writes a column for TownHall.com every Monday. Katie has a background in journalism, multimedia entrepreneurship, public speaking and commercial real estate. Due to her diverse experiences, Katie is a popular public speaker for college campuses and professional conferences across the country. Katie is a frequent guest on local and national radio shows to discuss her viewpoints on young professionals. Katie graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of St. Thomas. As a college freshman, she wrote an opinion column for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. During her sophomore year of college, Katie founded, edited and published a nationally recognized student journal of thought and opinion called the St. Thomas Standard. Katie also developed a comprehensive website for the newspaper so that all of the articles were available online. Katie has over six years of experience in commercial real estate. Before launching into multimedia, Katie worked for NorthMarq Real Estate Services. She chaired a National NAIOP Young Professionals Forum of rising stars in commercial real estate and traveled across the country learning about different geographic business climates and development trends. Katie also chaired the NAIOP Minnesota Developing Leaders and was recognized as NAIOP’s Volunteer of the Year in 2007.

Katie is a LEED Accredited Professional through the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Katie balances conservation and profitability considerations when discussing sustainability. Katie has traveled abroad and she currently researches the needs and challenges that young professionals face across the globe. Katie conducts interviews of both experienced and young professionals and showcases these on her website to inspire other young people to think innovatively, whether they work within a large corporation or are interested in starting their own ventures.

To Kyle, a ‘red paperclip’ is more of a symbolic thing, an idea that you’re ready to launch. A new project about to happen. That spark of insight or inspiration. The most important thing about an idea is to do something with it. Today, Kyle lives in Montreal with his wife and does speaking engagement, photography, art projects, and “Who are These Guys?” to name a few of the projects he has embarked on.

At the age of 16, defiant and hardheaded, Eric decided to leave home and drop out of school, choosing to live on the streets of Detroit. By divine intervention at age 17, Eric met a pastor who saw him a young man with tremendous unrealized potential. As a result, their mentoring relationship was born which led Eric to complete his GED and to prepare for college. Determined not to be another statistic, Eric enrolled at Oakwood University where he began reading every thing he could get his hands on. Understanding the struggle of the streets, he realized what his purpose in life was to become, so he reached back to his fellow drug dealers and helped many of them get their GED’s, go to college and incorporate the strategies and self-improvement exercises he learned in order to assist them in developing their own life plans. In so doing, he provided them with a much-needed positive option to the life of crime and illiteracy they then led. While in college, Eric started Break The Cycle I Dare You, (BTC) a non profit youth development and special event organization that focuses on developing programs for youth who have made bad choices and most often have had family, social, and academic struggles along with the lack of a father figure in their lives. Today BTC has developed and produced many supportive community-based programs and conferences across the country. They provide youth and teachers alike with activities, self-improvement exercises and motivational strategies to help them reach their highest potential in life. Eric now serves as the Chairman of the Organization.

He obtained his Masters degree in 2005 and is currently pursuing his PhD in Education Administration at Michigan State University and serves as Senior Pastor of A Place of Change Ministries, Lansing Michigan. He also serves as a consultant at Michigan State where he has developed The Advantage Program, an undergraduate retention program targeting academically high-risk students of color. In addition to his work with the Advantage at Michigan State, he also serves as a consultant for several collegiate athletic programs across the country. In this role, he provides assistants to student-athletes having academic and social challenges as it relates to successfully transitioning from high-risk schools and communities to a collegiate environment. Eric’s representation of the merits of higher education, coupled with his knowledge of the pains of the street, inspires young people to break bad habits and reach for new levels of personal and spiritual achievement. Eric has lived a life of challenges and triumph but has found a way to break the cycle.

A Chicago native, at the age of 18, Walsh has amassed great wealth as well as created a personal brand that surpasses most seasoned marketing experts.  As CEO of iSocial Academy, Walsh has created what he calls “iHit17” which is a “17-minute Social Media Hit List”, that allows you to build and easily maintain your personal brand and Social Media network. Austin started his career by developing local bands MySpace pages in the Chicago area, bringing in 200 to 1200 attendants—all without spending a dime and using social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  After many successful events, Austin’s father’s colleagues took notice and asked him to do the same for them—create a Facebook page that not only increases their followers but also brings in revenue.  The great thing about his concept is that your followers are people who actually want to receive information from you—unlike a mailing list.

Self-Directed IRA – In case no one ever told you, it’s perfectly legal (and smart) to invest in real estate through a self-directed IRA. The tax benefits are truly amazing, but make sure you familiarize yourself with the complex rules first. Do it wrong and you could get hit with a huge tax bill. The main thing to keep in mind is that the property cannot be for residence or vacation use. It has to be an investment property.

* Read this Kiplinger’s Article on the subject

Partner with other Buyers – There are experienced real estate investors out there who solicit funding from the public for large apartment building buys. This is a great way to let an expert do your property screening for you, though take care to understand exactly what sort of deal you’re getting into and what returns are expected. It wouldn’t hurt to have your own expert look over the deal. We suggest you avoid the “great deals” associated with a “war zone” neighborhood.

Make friends with the local REIA – Most areas have a local chapter of the Real Estate Investor’s Association. Attend the meetings. It’s a great way to meet like-minded investors and maybe even get a heads up on new property deals or meet potential partners.

Wholesale – This refers to the strategy of locating motivated sellers who have not listed their property on the MLS yet. A great way to learn the business from the ground floor up, wholesalers commonly make $5k to $10k per deal by acting as a bird dog for cash buyers.

These are just a few ideas for the young investor looking to break into real estate. The overall point to keep in mind is that you will be much better served in the long run to focus on developing your property portfolio than messing around with Wall Street squirreliness.

The Young Wealth Team

Flickr / Jon Garfunkel

Sean is a wunderkind – with the strength and determination to succeed at whatever he does. A young entrepreneur, he was raised in rural poverty and has lifted himself to wealth in the millions through his service, import, and real estate portfolios. The intensity, commitment, and preparation that Sean demonstrates provide practical starting points for anyone who wishes to become wealthy. Though still in his late 30’s, Sean has become successful in business many times over, with accomplishments such as SBA’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and the San Francisco Bay Area’s Most Successful Under-40 Recognition. He has sufficient self-awareness and analytical abilities to clearly describe the principles and practices that have contributed to his success, so that others can follow where he has led.

Todd Babbitt grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, in an average middle-class family. He attained the majority of his wealth through real estate, and a smaller portion from the stock market. Nothing he did was complicated or beyond the understanding of an average person. Today, Todd lives the good life in Naples, Florida, with his wife and daughter. He continues to build his net worth through various investments.

Such was the case with Frank Corbin at http://jasonhartmanfoundation.org/articles/young-wealth-show/. When Frank was very young, he had a “hunger”, as he put it, to become wealthy. After moving from Ghana to New York City, he watched his mother constantly struggle to pay the bills. Frank was determined not to get into this same situation. Frank was determined to become wealthy and eliminate money as an issue in his life. As a teenager, Frank worked many different jobs. After graduating from high school, he attended DeVry Institue in Toronto – which loaded him up with student loans and other debts.

In addition to his studies at DeVry, Frank also purchased every real estate course and real estate investment book he could get his hands on. As a result, Frank became convinced that purchasing and holding real estate was the easiest and quickest way to become wealthy.

At the age of 21, Frank purchased his first property – a $241,000 home in Toronto which he picked up for no money down, received $20,000 at closing and the property ended up providing him with $900 per month of positive cash flow. One year later, Frank had attained 4 more properties and was financially free.

After 15 years of buying properties, Frank became bored. He needed a new challenge. Frank saw people struggling financially. He couldn’t understand why people weren’t doing what he was able to do so easily. So he went about creating a course, the Remic Wealth Institute, which teaches his methods for finding and investing in real estate. While putting together the courses within Remic Wealth Institute, Frank identified another need people had that he new he could satisfy – obtaining credit despite having a poor credit history. “The 8 Strategies to Highly Effective Credit” was thus born.

The price of food is a killer. Here’s how to give your budget a fighting chance.

1. Eat at Home: The fact is that any tasty meal at your favorite restaurant can likely be prepared at home, or at least a close approximation of your favorite meal, for pennies on the dollar. As a young investor trying to save money, you absolutely cannot make dining out a daily habit.

2. Make a Shopping List: If you wander into the grocery store hungry and stumble around around throwing stuff in your cart, there’s a good chance you’re going to get back home with a pitifully small amount of high-priced, low nutritive “food.” Make a list and ignore the scrumptious distractions.

3. Work the Maze: Grocery stores are intentionally set up so that you have to run a gauntlet of tempting junk items to find the basic necessities around which to build meals. Stay mostly on the perimeter where the actual food is, only wandering into the maze in the middle for a few stray items at the end.

4. Eat First: Fill up at home on a good meal before shopping. You can’t imagine (or maybe you can) what incredibly bad impulse buys end up in the cart if you make the mistake of going into the store hungry. In fact, fill yourself past the point of comfort, so that food is extra less appealing. That should keep you on point.

5. Skip Bottled Water: That liquid gold sold in the store called bottled water is one of the biggest crocks in Western civilization. And it you’re one of those pansy whiners who whimper that you don’t like the taste of tap water, buy a filter. The whole point of this is to cut back on food costs so you’ll have money to invest. Paying for water in bottle is simply ridiculous. Jump on the Internet sometime and do some real research on where that stuff comes from – completely, absolutely, totally a waste of precious financial resources.

We’re beginning to fear that our readers may be on the verge of reaching their tolerance for browbeating today, so we’ll cease and desist for now. Just keep in mind that to neglect creating proper food habits today could be the difference between a stunning portfolio tomorrow, or suffering the paycheck-to-paycheck routine the rest of your life. For real.

The Young Wealth Team

Flickr / Jeff Keen

Suffice it for now to say the stock market, driven by irrational speculation, amounts to little more than taking a spin at the roulette wheel in Vegas except it’s not as much fun. About now, you might be saying to yourself, “Well, where does that leave me, the young investor, most pious and pompous editor? If not the stock market, then what?”

Good question and it just so happens we have an answer for you. It’s called income property and it so happens to be the most powerful method we know of to create wealth in America today. We’d like to present, as an example, a single family residential property in Atlanta that would make an excellent starter property for your portfolio.

The purchase price for this piece of real estate is $102,000. If a young investor has decent credit and stable employment, a lender will likely ask for a 20% down payment, which works out to a little over $20,000. The home is red brick, built in 1999, located in a nice neighborhood, and will be fully rehabbed and rent ready for the new owner. Rent in the area is about $1,150 monthly – we’ve run the numbers because this is the kind of deal we love to jump on – and the cash flow AFTER the mortgage and all other expenses have been paid is about $151 monthly. No one here will try to convince you that the amount is a fortune because it’s not but cash flow is only part of the range of benefits. In addition, you’re getting your mortgage paid off by someone else (the tenant), while your investment appreciates over time.

The icing on top of the cake is that this income property will be owned outright by you at the end of the mortgage term. Considering you only put down 20% to buy the thing and someone made payments on it, the result is same as if you bought the property outright for twenty cents on the dollar. If you are one of the fortunate few to read through this short description and latch onto the possibilities, congratulations, we’ll be seeing you on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous before it’s all over.

By the way, don’t try this strategy on Wall Street; it doesn’t work.

The Young Wealth Team

Flickr / Neurofibromatosis – Reggie Bibbs

Next up was his role as founder of the private space travel company, SpaceX, and the electric vehicle company, Tesla Motors. Mr. Musk also created his own charitable foundation, the Musk Foundation, that supports education and research in the fields of space exploration, pediatric care, and renewable power. So far, his life has been a testament to the power of thinking outside the box when it comes to generating a return on investment. This young investor saw the potential in finding profitable ideas in answer to problems he observed in the world around him.

A multi-millionaire by the age of 31, he wasn’t content to sit around on a beach the rest of his life, basking in the bliss of the next margarita. Nope, it’s always been onward and upward for this young investor and, perhaps more than any other attribute, shows us what is possible if you have enough energy and thirst for conquering the unknown.

Way to go, Elon. Excellent job. We’re excited to see what he’s going to get into next. Time travel? A non-aging pill? Whatever it turns out to be, we’re betting it will make a splash.

The Young Wealth Team

Flickr / OnInnovation

A trader plans a strategy around short term market fluctuations. He might jump in and out of positions several times (or several dozen times) each day. The trader believes there is money to be made in the ebb and flow of the market day. Most traders prefer to be flat at the closing bell, which means they don’t hold open positions over night.

The investor looks at longer term market direction – months, years, decades – and employs a buy and hold strategy that, like the trader, takes advantage of a trend. The difference being that this trend takes much longer to play out. The investor does not concern himself with the daily hiccups that pull prices back and forth. They prefer to step back, look for quality positions, and add to them regularly.

One could extend this analogy to real estate. A trader would be a person who buys undervalued houses and flips them quickly for profit. An investor is one who acquires a property and holds onto it, allowing for long term price appreciation to create wealth. The young investor will likely be drawn to one side or the other and it makes sense to pay attention to your preference. Trading/investing against your natural style could make you a little crazy. Here’s an idea from Young Wealth. If you can’t make up your mind, try this – put most of your portfolio in investments and keep a small percentage, say 10%, to play short term trends. This is one way to satisfy both desires.

The Young Wealth Team

Flickr / artemuestra

June 27, 2010 — Jim Lowell, author of “Investing from Scratch,” joins the Young Wealth Show to speak on financial planning for young investors. The interview aims at the 20 to 30 year old beginning investor by suggesting actions to take to get on the right track.

Host of the Young Wealth Show, Jason Hartman, asks Lowell what basic actions young adults can take prior to investing. Lowell replies, “Time is on the young investor’s side to secure a bright financial future… make sure you are employed, have three to six months saved for a rainy day, then, with limited capital, invest in no-load indexed mutual funds to take advantage of compounding interest.”

Lowell spent most of his childhood and young adult life talking about stocks, bonds and cash around the dinner table, not sports, and suggests that investing clubs or groups can be beneficial for young adults to gain financial literacy. “But take a cautious approach to the existing investor clubs,” he says, “if you can, assemble an investing club with friends and share notes; often times, the long-standing clubs may require you to purchase the funds they are involved in.

Financial planning and goal setting can cast a young investor in the right direction; and increasing financial knowledge, and paying attention to economic activities, can help a young investor recognize opportunities or risks that exist. Lowell states, “With the government spending itself into oblivion, we need to secure our own financial future. Remember, it’s time in the market, not timing the market that creates long-term wealth.”

The Jason Hartman Foundation recognizes that life as a young adult can be very confusing and chaotic.  In the midst of completing formal education and beginning a career, there is a constant level of uncertainty concerning what will transpire in the future. The Jason Hartman Foundation is specifically concerned with helping young adults develop the necessary skills for financial success. The Young Wealth Show offers free educational information to help young adults develop the financial literacy needed to become financially independent. The show can be found on www.JasonHartmanFoundation.org/articles/young-wealth-show or the iTunes store.

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Contact Info:
Brittney Roberts
The Jason Hartman Foundation
Phone: 714-820-4267
Email: Media@JasonHartman.com
Web: http://www.JasonHartmanFoundation.org

1.Bloomberg mobile – take this uber-financial service titan with you everywhere. Check up on news, stock quotes, trend analysis, and more. By the way, did we mention it’s in real time and the app is free? That’s a great price no matter which way you slice it.

2.Paypal – is there any company more ubiquitous for the mad rush toward internet money transactions than this online financial jack-of-all-trades? Who doesn’t have a Paypal account any more and now you can check you balance, send money, and more from your iPhone, all accessed by the same user name and password established online already. There are some limitations – you still have to go online to check your transaction history and see when money has arrived but, once again, this app is free.

3.Day Bank – this powerful little doo-dad of a check register app is great for entering transactions and tracking spending. How about this – photograph receipts or items you purchase! Day Bank costs $1.99 but is an excellent way to not completely lose track of your banking account throughout the course of a busy day.

If you have yet to incorporate these three applications into your daily cell phone use, give them a try. The key to successful life as a young investor is to know how much money you have and what you’re spending it on. We all know how it trickles away through the process of frittering. Now you’ll know what you’re wasting it on.

The Young Wealth Team

Flickr / compujeramey