Thornhill Wealth Forum 
 
Are people who do not know how to manage their finances dumb?

Personal finance, on the surface, seems like common sense.
Spending less than you earn is not rocket science, after all.

The problem is that actually spending less than you earn relies on repeatedly and
consistently making good decisions in many different aspects of life.


You have to know how to shop around. You have to know how to control your impulses.  You have to be able to truly assess the impact of acquiring debt.  These are modern life skills and, like it or not, we’re not born with them.
These are skills that we learn.

Some of us are lucky and we learn these skills growing up. Others have a school with  a great
education program or a teacher who can make the topics  relatable. A  very large  number of us had neither of these. We were dropped into adulthood  without a good sense of the financial impact of our impulses and without a strong comprehension of how big of a hole we were digging for ourselves....Read More

 
 
If there is some aspect of your life that’s bothering you, know this:  you cannot expect it to improve if you keep doing the same things you’ve always been doing.

Even if your fairy godmother showed up and waved her wand to give you what you wanted, you would rather quickly wind up back in the same place you were before.
 
Lasting life improvement only occurs when you permanently change some aspect of how you live your life.

This is the reason many lottery winners wind up broke.  In their lives, they were accustomed to living paycheck to paycheck.  If they had money after the bills were paid (or sometimes before the bills were paid), they spent it. Suddenly having millions in the bank did not change this fact...Read More
 
 
Every single day gives us a new morning.  We’ve awakened to a day that is free from mistakes.  It’s full of hours and hours of opportunity. Do we fill those hours with doing the same old thing that got us into the state that we’re in
today? 
Or do we throw aside some of those old routines and choices and try to work for something a little better in our lives?
Today is a day where you can complete a project that’s been on your mind for a while

Today is a day when you can learn something new.  Today is a day when you can invest the time to build a stronger relationship with someone.
Today is a day when you can set up things to save you time and money later on.
Today is a day to master one real estate strategy and take action...Read More
 
 
As you know  I enjoy studying the habits of financially successful people. This allows me to learn from their mistakes and introduce changes into my own life.  I read an article about Carlos Slim Helu, one of the richest men in the world with an estimated net worth of $US67 billion. He lives in a modest house he has owned for 30 years and his bedroom is the size of a hotel room.  We also know that Warren Buffett has lived in the same 5 bedroom house for 55 years. 

These billionaires know one simple fact and live by it: every dollar you don’t spend on something foolish is a dollar you can instead spend on something worthwhile.

What’s something foolish? A food item at the store you don’t really need. A bigger house than you need, which drains property taxes and maintenance and utilities from your pocket. An entertainment item you don’t have time for. The list goes on and on...Read More
 
 
It has been a very difficult and stressful week. I was sick for 3 and was unable to put any logical thought into my writing. There have been many, many times over the past several years when I have felt completely overwhelmed by my work as a human resources professional, managing the Thornhill Wealth Forum, writing my book, investing in family and reaching true financial independence. 

My big dream is to reach true financial independence.

By that, I mean that I have enough money socked away in relatively stable investments so that the income from those investments provides me with enough for my family to live on regardless of whether I’m actually earning income.

Why is that my goal? It’s not so that I can sit idle. It’s so that I have the freedom to take giant personal risks, like spending several months doing nothing but perfecting a novel or spending a bunch of time laying the groundwork  
for a charity or making a real difference to the lives of a few people without having to worry about failure...Read More
 
 
It is a wonderful thing when your real estate investment is running on auto pilot. Rents are paid on the first of the
month (every month), tenant does their own repairs (and improvements) and you never receive a phone call from the tenant. Sweet. 
 
 But now your beloved tenant is leaving for another landlord.

The work begins. Multiple open houses, carefully vet future tenants like the CIA to ensure the least amount of headache down the road. Thank goodness everything is so easy to do on Kijiji nowadays
 
If you are an aspiring landlord this post should help provide some prospective to getting what you want...Read More
 
 
Small extra payments on your mortgage do make a difference. Mortgage debt carries the most amount of
stress for most families. So, why is it that most people do not invest every cent they have into their mortgage. It is a sin to  pay off your 25 year mortgage in 25 years. There is a better way!

Let’s look at a “typical” mortgage. Without any scientific basis, If I would guess, the average mortgage is $235,000 and the average 30 year fixed mortgage rate is 3.42%.

So, let’s use those numbers. We’ll look at a 30 year fixed mortgage at 3.42% that borrows $235,000. Under those conditions, a person will be paying  $1,044.79 per month for the next 360 months. That’s assuming they make the minimum payments on that mortgage over the entire term. They end up paying a total of $141,123.93 in interest over the course of the loan.
Now, what if a person adds just $1 as an extra payment each month for the entire loan?...Read More
 
 
Trying to be continuously motivated is tough. When you don't feel motivated it simply means that the thought of what you are intending to do is not compelling enough for you to move.  From my experience this is because of one reason:
The thought of what you plan to do appears too vast in your mind, which creates the feeling which is the opposite to motivation – overwhelm.

What you are planning to do is not associated enough to a compelling outcome. This occurs frequently if the outcome you are working towards is too far into the future. For example, if you set a financial freedom goal of owning 10 real estate investments, do not plan to achieve your goal in 12 months. This is unrealistic, unless you win the lottery...Read More

 
 
I love my wife dearly and respect and value her opinions. But, I really, really don’t like arguing with my wife. Sometimes, though, we disagree about money, investments and financial planning. We see things differently and bring different experiences and thought processes to the table. She is an accountant and works with numbers every day. I work with people and love to manage money. We might be married, but we are two different people...Read More
 
 
Accumulation of stuff seems to be the new success metric. Here is a story about Diderot that will illustrate the point. 

In the 18th century, a French writer, Denis Diderot received a gift: a beautiful scarlet dressing gown. The fabric was gorgeous. The colours were rich. The craftsmanship was spectacular.

Diderot immediately threw his tattered old gown away. He did not need it anymore. His new gown was breathtaking. Of course, he needed to make a few extra purchases to accommodate that gown. In the past, if one of his books was covered with dust, he would simply use his old gown as a rag. But he could not wipe away dust with his
beautiful new gown. He’d need to buy some dust rags.

When there was excess ink on his pen, he used his old gown to wipe it clear. He couldn’t do that with the new gown. He’d need to buy handkerchiefs, or perhaps he’d need better pens. But those are small purchases, right? A small price to pay to maintain such a beautiful gown.

Diderot began to notice that the rest of his home looked shabby in comparison to the gown.
His drapes were threadbare and faded, in contract to the rich colours of the gown. He’d need to replace them...Read More
 

Who is TWF?

The objective of the Thornhill Wealth Forum is to assemble like-minded people interested in wealth creation, to share, learn and prosper through knowledge sharing and networking. Our philosophy is to be supportive of the wealth of others. Share information on self-promotion or help a struggling entrepreneur…even share it with your competition.
Because all financial topics, especially real estate investing,  are subsets of net worth, this blog will talk about them with the objective of increasing your net worth. 

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