I read a quote today from Winston Churchill.
“Success is going from failure to failure with no reduction in enthusiasm.”
I guess this really sums my attitude up in many ways. I am organising today to do the next round of multi currency loans on my own properties and it reminded me of the 2 years work I put in to actually achieve the supposedly impossible. I just don’t know how to give up. It can’t be done only makes me more determined.

And the icing on the cake is that not only can I do it myself but I can offer it to my clients. It enables us to build our portfolios completely differently. The more property you buy the more cash flow you have. We just built a plan for one of our clients that will deliver him around $140K passive income in 18 months utilising these loans.

I’m sharing this with you to stress the point that if you persevere and don’t give up, not only can you get amazing results for yourself, but you can “spread the love around” and benefit others as well.

I wonder how many businesses out there started because someone wouldn’t say no.
What do you have in the back of your mind that could bring you genuine financial freedom??
Are you willing to stick with it till it works.

With my loans I was told it was impossible, it broke international laws, it wouldn’t work. You name it I got told it.

The reality is it works a treat. Why would 3% interest loans with the currency risk 99% protected not work? Was it easy?? No. Did it cost a lot of time and money to achieve?? Yes.
Were there times when I felt like an idiot when another professional with 50 letters after their name treated me like a rebellious child?? Yes.
Was it worth it?????????

ABSOLUTELY!! By the time I am finished I will have reduced my annual interest bill by almost $500,000 a year.

So be encouraged, don’t give up. Success IS just going from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm, until the success manifests itself.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus.

Well I just don’t know how much more good news for investors can be crammed in this week.

From the Government statistician today on building consents:

1,362 new dwellings including apartments were authorised. This is the lowest monthly number since January 2001.

What this means is that the number of new dwellings coming on stream is continuing to drop. This creates unbelievable “pent up demand” and means that there will be a chronic housing shortage as a result which will fuel construction and values. You wait, it’ll be huge.

From Phil Mcalister:

We have been researching the market for the lead article in next month’s issue of the NZ Property Investor magazine to get an up-to-date feel on where things are at.
My take on this is that the big gap between buyers and sellers is likely to suddenly close and maybe close quite quickly, leading to a spike in the number of sales.
The people who will be buying are property investors. The feedback we get is they are out there, attending auctions, checking out mortgagee sales and looking for buys.
Plus there is a huge amount of pre-approved finance just waiting to be drawn down.
They are coming to the conclusion that there is finance out there, vendors aren’t likely to move much lower and financing costs are starting to come down now the Reserve Bank has shaved 25 basis points off its official cash rate.
Adding to the excitement here is that the bank indicated it may cut the rate at each of its next six-weekly reviews this year – that mean cuts in September, October and December.
Then of course there is the prospect of spring just around the corner. Already I am hearing that banks may be more active with spring and summer home loan campaigns as they traditionally do – although they were almost absent last year. (The main exception being ASB with its win a home campaign).

In other words, if there was ever a time to be buying property, it is now.

You will be paying more now in interest than you will be in 3 months, so if the numbers work now take action. Your cash flow is only going to improve.

We have ongoing demand not being catered for due to no new building happening so your values are going to improve.

Prices are generally considered by agents and commentators to have bottomed out. As I have been saying for months we cannot continue to sell property for below replacement cost unless we have a declining population, which we do not.

Our balance of trade was way better than expected in spite of ridiculous oil prices.

And all of this is happening in the middle of winter, in election year with financial chaos all around us!!

So the only reason to not buy is …… ummmm …… well …… hang on …… I’m thinking ……well …… actually …… I can’t think of a good reason either.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus from www.massiveaction.co.nz

I found a reference today to a psychologist whose work sounded fascinating.
Here is an interview with the man, Professor Martin Seligman.

His work and findings are founded on principles that I agree with 100%.

The tool that you introduced at the Nexus EQ Conference is “disputing catastrophic thinking;” what is that?

Martin: There is a skill that everyone has that they usually deploy in the wrong place. The skill is disputing. In learned optimism programs we teach people first to recognize the catastrophic things they say to themselves. For example, they might say, “No one is going to like me at this party. I never have fun at parties.” We teach them first to treat it as if it were said by an external person whose mission in life is to make them miserable. Then to dispute it in the same way they would an external person. When you say these things to yourself, you treat them as if they were true. We generally have the skill of disputing other people when they make false accusations, and we can learn to do so with ourselves as well. That’s the central skill in both cognitive therapy and learned optimism training.

How young a person can be taught these skills?
Martin: We start at about age 10.

Recognizing that there is no quick fix, what would you advise as a starting point?
Martin: My first advice is to make some assessment of whether or not you are a pessimist. There are a set of tests which people can take rather easily to decide that. It is not transparent to yourself. Then, if you are, the nutshell advice is to learn the disputing skills.

Are you an optimist?
Martin: I’m a born pessimist.

Have you then taught yourself to be an optimist?
Martin: I think only a pessimist can write and do serious stuff about optimism. The skills I talk about I use every day. What I’ve become is what I call a “flexible optimist.” I can recognize the situations which call for optimism, and the situations which don’t call for optimism need a mercilessly realistic view of what’s going to happen. When I make that separation, if it’s one of the many situations in which the optimism skills are going to pay off, then I throw in my whole complement of optimism skills. It makes me better able to initiate different projects. But when I’m in a situation in which the cost of failure is very high, then what I want is merciless realism. In that case I revert to my usual “four in the morning” pessimism.

How do you know whether this is a case for optimism or a time for pessimism?
Martin: I ask, “What would it matter if I fail here?” For example, if I’m a salesman and I’m making another “cold call,” or if I see someone attractive at a party and want to say hello afterwards, the cost of rejection is small.

When the cost is small, use the optimism skills. On the other hand, the cost of failure can be very large, such as getting into an affair which will lead to divorce if your spouse finds out, or, as a pilot, having another drink at a party before a flight. You really don’t want optimistic pilots. When the cost of failure is large and catastrophic, you don’t want to use optimism skills. That’s the basic rule of thumb.

When you look around at the world the way it is, at the onslaught of negative stories, do you find optimism difficult?
Martin: It is surprising that we have very high levels of depression and pessimism in a world in which the hands on the nuclear clock are farther away from midnight than they have ever been, in a nation in which every economic indicator, every objective indicator of well-being, is going north, in a world in which there are fewer soldiers dying on the battlefield than any time since WWII, and in which there is a lower percentage of children dying of starvation than at any time in human history. It is quite astonishing that we have enormously high rates of depression and pessimism. We do have a very important paradox here.

I read an interview when you started as President of the APA in which you said that perhaps a significant part of the depression epidemic in the US is due to counselors treating people as ill. Would you explain that perception?
Martin: I think that’s one of several changes in our culture that has gone on for the past 40 years that may be related to continued high levels of depression. Another is victimology. In general when things go wrong we now have a culture which supports the belief that this was done to you by some larger force, as opposed to, you brought it on yourself by your character or your decisions. The problem about that is it’s a recipe for passivity and giving up and helplessness. So one of the things that is going on, I think, is a pervasive victimology.

What more beneficial approach could people in the field of mental health use with their patients?
Martin: I think the other approach is that what you do matters a great deal. That you are not a passive responder to stimuli. You are an initiator of plans. A lot of your troubles were brought on by yourself. You are responsible for them. And the good news in that is it also implies that the way out is not something that someone is going to bestow on you, it’s something you are going to do yourself.

Does that mean depression is not an illness, that it’s something else?
Martin: Approximately, yes. I think if we get serious about the notion of illness and disease, then there are several things we look for. We look for high genetic contribution, known brain action that produces it, and a treatment of choice that is drugs. In manic-depression, all three of those things hold, so I think of it as a bio-med illness. In the case of unipolar depression, the heritability is minor, a correlation ratio of .2 to .3, the brain activity is mere correlate not cause, and the drugs of choice work at about the same rate but less lastingly than the psychotherapies of choice. For the most part, I don’t think of unipolar depression as a disease.

What is it, then?
Martin: Part of the human condition. It has been called a lot of things just as accurately. The mediaeval theologians called it a sin. Other people have called it loss of morale or demoralization.

Do you talk in your work about the idea of “wellness?”
Martin: I’m sympathetic with the wellness movement. And I think their heart was in the right place. There are two problems with it. One of them is that because it was a fringe movement, it never attracted a serious empirical base, so it has vegetarians, Buddhists, people who practice yoga, acupuncturists, holistic medics. But it never attracted much in the way of empirical science. The second is, I don’t think psychology is a corner of the health movement in any sense. I think psychology is much larger than curing mental illness or curing diseases. I think it’s about bringing out the best in people; it’s about positive institutions; it’s about strength of character. The wellness movement narrows the domain of psychology and paints it into a corner. Psychology is much larger than a corner of the health care system.

Do you have a name for psychology as part of the general improvement of being human?
Martin: Just psychology. Positive psychology.

Positive psychology includes optimism and what else?
Martin: There are three pillars of positive psychology.

The first is positive subjective experience which actually breaks down into three parts: past, present, and future. Past is well-being, contentment, and satisfaction. Present is happiness, ecstasy, and the sensual pleasures. And Future is optimism and hope. That’s all one pillar of positive psychology.

The second pillar is positive individual traits or the traits of character that enable one to have a good life in the Aristotelian sense, not in the California sense; traits such as intimacy, vocation, wisdom, integrity, aesthetic sense, spirituality, future mindedness. There are seventeen of them.

The third pillar is positive institutions, the kinds of communities, families, schools, and nations that bring out the best in positive character and bring out the positive subjective experience.

And how to we erect those three pillars?
Martin: Well we need a science of that and that is what mostly I am going to devote the rest of my career to.

So you’ll look at measuring what that would mean and how to make that happen?
Martin: We would do the same thing that we did with mental illness, to have a nosology of it, to ask how you measure those things, to look at the causal skein of it both experimentally and longitudinally, to create interventions which, in the case of mental illness, break them up and, in the case of positive psychology, build them. Nosology, measurement, causation, and intervention is where positive psychology is going.

What are some of your hypotheses as you begin studying the investigative work in exploring the third pillar?
Martin: I think hypotheses is premature. At this point I think I know the right kind of questions to ask. For instance in media, why do we like bad news so much? What’s wrong with good news? In government institutions like Congress, why is negative campaigning so appealing. In education, what would positive psychology in education look like? Do we do better in education if we build from strength rather than try to repair weakness?

In your work thus far, is there one piece of research that you would like to see on every bumper sticker, and chalkboard, and refrigerator door in the country?
Martin: I think it’s basically that if you are a pessimist in the sense that when bad things happen you think they are going to last forever and undermine everything you do, then you are about eight times as likely to get depressed, you are less likely to succeed at work, your personal relationships are more likely to break up, and you are likely to have a shorter and more illness-filled life. That’s the main discovery that I associate with my lifetime.

When I’m talking about learned optimism, people often ask how to start shifting from pessimism to optimism?
Martin: I think the way most people start is to find out the costs of being a pessimist. As a pessimist, it’s always wet weather in the soul, they don’t do as well at work, and they get colds that will last all winter. They find themselves failing in crucial situations and their relationships go sour very easily. So when people have those kinds of hurts, if they can find that there is something useful in positive psychology, that’s where people start.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

We had an amazing man speak at church yesterday. He is a pastor in Zimbabwe. Whenever I have net people who live in difficult or persecuted conditions I am always amazed at the depth of maturity and love they have developed compared with most of us in the so called “free world”.

Pastor Colin has nearly 10,000 people in his churhc, they have to run 7 services on a Sunday to get everyone in the building.

They live in a country where you literally have to drive over the border to a neighbouring country to buy food. Inflation last time I heard was 2.2 MILLION percent, (300 billion Zim dollars 1 US dollar on the black market). People are killed indiscriminately and a violent dictator looks set to continue to plunge the former “food basket” of the world into abject poverty.

So if this was you or I in this environment, we would probably be focused on how we can get out of the country right??

Yet Colin and his wife Sarah are focused on looking after the ten thousand people God has given them to care for. They are believing God for funds to build a larger building so they can house everyone at once. There is a huge risk that Mugabe could confiscate the building or their funds at any time yet they pursue their God given vision with a maturity that you just don’t find in the West.
Their other passion is to share the love they have found in God with others and to assist communities all over the African continent to find hope, peace and healing where all around them is death, abuse and sadness.

This is what happens when we mature beyond ourselves. If our vision is all about us then it often dies because it lacks fuel. Selfishness ultimately is powerless in the face of extreme adversity. Think about this even in the context of people who are in life threatening situations. How many times have you read or seen people who survived impossible situations who said: “I pictured my wife/kids/lover/???”. I decided I would live FOR THEM.

I might be wrong but I don’t think I’ve ever heard one of them say “I decided I was too important to die”.

Like Colin these people develop a vision for something outside of themselves that they are passionate about. That’s the type of vision that suffers gladly, perseveres until it succeeds, and with it, nothing is impossible.

Stay Safe ~ Dean @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

From today’s business news:

A new survey of pay rates shows the poor are getting poorer.

An analysis of 73-thousand jobs listed on website Trade Me show employers are finding it easier to attract staff…but those on the bottom rung are being paid less.

But, the average salary rose to $57-thousand 600 dollars from $55-thousand 500 in the last quarter of 2007.

But unskilled groups at the bottom of the heap went backwards, earning around $28-thousand dollars.

Now this is really important to understand. I see this in every society and country I visit.

Most people don’t understand things like compounding, (debt or interest), or inflation.
So “poor” people often work hard, but they live form week to week not realising that their net worth, if not already zero, is getting eroded by inflation AND they don’t even put $10 a week aside to save for their future.

So in this context the difference between rich and poor is as little as $10 a week.
Or put it another way, if you buy 2 rental properties you will eventually earn in additional income as much as the “poor” earn working 50 hours a week.

This is an incredibly powerful paradigm to understand. Even one inflation proofed investment like a rental property will keep you form ever being part of the “poor” referred to above.

The difference is you taking some action. It doesn’t even have to be massive action, just buy 1 property or set up an AP to transfer $10 a week into a savings account.

Look at the power of ten dollars a week with just 8% return on your money.

Yr $$ paid in Closing Balance
1 $520 1,123
2 1,040 1,775
3 1,560 2,478
4 2,080 3,238
5 2,600 4,059
6 3,120 4,945
7 3,640 5,902
8 4,160 6,936
9 4,680 8,052
10 5,200 9,258
11 5,720 10,561
12 6,240 11,967
13 6,760 13,486
14 7,280 15,126
15 7,800 16,898
16 8,320 18,812
17 8,840 20,878
18 9,360 23,110
19 9,880 25,520
20 10,400 28,124
21 10,920 30,935
22 11,440 33,972
23 11,960 37,251
24 12,480 40,793
25 13,000 44,618
26 13,520 48,749
27 14,040 53,210
28 14,560 58,028
29 15,080 63,232
30 15,600 68,852
31 16,120 74,922
32 16,640 81,478
33 17,160 88,557
34 17,680 96,204
35 18,200 104,461
36 18,720 113,380
37 19,240 123,012
38 19,760 133,415
39 20,280 144,649
40 20,800 156,783

Imagine if you put this to work in a rental property where your actual return on your ten dollars might be double, treble or 5 times this amount.

1 strategic action like this will keep you from poverty and start to build an inheritance for your family. But will you do it?? Or is the big screen tv, the Lotto ticket, or Shortland Street just too important??

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus (aka Dean Leftus)

www.massiveaction.co.nz

Don’t miss this exceptional opportunity, freehold commercial investment from only $40,000

I love words and everything to do with language so I really appreciate these types of emails. Sorry I can’t add the pics, (thanks Paul)

A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre.

After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings, and made it safely to his van.

However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.

When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied,
‘Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings.’

I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh.’

See if you have De Gaulle to share this with someone else.

I sent it to you because I figured I had nothing Toulouse.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus (aka Dean Leftus)

www.massiveaction.co.nz

Don’t miss this exceptional opportunity, freehold commercial investment from only $40,000

I was talking to a developer today who has been around a long time and seen several cycles. He commented that he is so surprised how many people are so influenced by waves that come along and cause them to make bad decisions. It reminded me of a recent blog where I said exactly the same thing.

We were discussing one of his projects, which is both unique and fabulous and a great alternative to sticking a few grand in the bank where inflation will kill it. Yet he was surprised at people’s apathy when it came to sales for such a great opportunity. Given his development history and reputation for value and quality he would have reasonably units to be snapped up.

He was commenting that even allowing for the current drama’s in the economy the fact is people still have to do something with their money.

The ones that have clear goals and plans simply keep investing and doing what they have planned. I have bought 3 units in this developers current project because it is low risk and inflation proofed, (because it’s property), and not a cent down for 18 months. This is not only because my own due diligence shows me it is a genuine opportunity but also because it fits in with my future wealth creation plans, a short term blip in NZ isn’t going to make me change my mind.

When my Australian friend was here recently he said he couldn’t believe how much *%$#@( we had in our newspapers and on TV that was so victim based and negative. He couldn’t wait to get back to Oz to some positive reporting.

So what plans have you ditched because of some journalist, what investment plans have you shelved simply because some poor relative told you that they saw someone on TV saying the world was ending??

Hello, is any one out there

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus (aka Dean Leftus)

PS, click on the link below to see the project I was talking about above
www.massiveaction.co.nz

Don’t miss this exceptional opportunity, freehold commercial investment from only $40,000