Annie says:

Yesterday I found myself having one of those “Money Gym conversations” – you know the kind, where you start saying realistic, yet life changing things to other people and you see the penny finally drop for them.

It went like this. I was catching up with my friend M. after a few weeks of not being in touch. Having just come back from Rome, I said that I couldn’t adjust to the bleak spring weather here and have decided that a move to Italy is on the cards a few years down the line.

She expressed her interest, so I told her that over the past few weeks the plan had been coming together: I’ll need to keep a place in the UK – the summer months are just too hot in Italy for my taste. The thought of having two properties in two (expensive) countries had been a slight obstacle, until I realised that I can achieve my goal in a number of different ways and the UK residence doesn’t have to be in London. Why not have a nice little place on the South Coast?

By some curious coincidence, M. is also thinking about a future move away from Inner London to - dare I say it?- the bywater that Nicola is gradually reinventing as the alternative financial and cultural heart of the UK; otherwise known as Worthing.

M. and I spent a while enthusing gently about Worthing, but I could hear a wistful note creeping into her voice. M. is an Alexander Technique teacher, and a very good one; which means, in practical terms, that in return for helping people to overcome chronic pain, RSI, the long lasting effects of physical trauma etc. she has an income that is precarious at best, and generally ‘Just Over Broke’.

M. couldn’t quite see her way forward. I mentioned the passive investments scheme as the easiest and most cost effective way of achieving all that she wants and more; especially given that she has a few years to play with.

In her map of the world, Alexander teachers don’t have the financial resources to get involved in purchasing buy-to-let properties. I sense a slight “Them and Us” belief holding her back.

Some years ago, M. bought her ex-Housing Association, Inner London flat. It now lies within a couple of miles of the 2012 Olympic complex. Bingo!

I explained to her how she can easily refinance her flat to create the funds she needs to get started with passive investments. For someone like M., who isn’t confident to go out and do it all herself, the scheme is perfect; not only will she have to do nothing beyond making the initial payment, but the whole thing will be absolutely stress-free and she will end up with 5 properties, all fully refurbished and managed and turning over nicely. It has to be a total no-brainer.

Where else could she possibly create that kind of equity, that easily?

There were some small, dazed noises from the other end of the phone, as M. started to realise that she can actually have what she’d like. And then some.

Can I report that without so much as a goodbye she abruptly terminated our conversation to start the process of refinancing her little golden egg?

No, that’s not her style. As one of those caring alternative health practitioners who put other people’s well being first, it’s going to take her a while to internalize the idea that she really is entitled to do this and create abundance for herself, when, until now, she had experienced only scarcity.

But the seed has taken root. M. will worry away at the idea like a dog with a bone (admittedly not my little dog with a bone, because Sharon, the fabled canine guru, just wants to bury the damn things deep in the three piece suite before returning to her blog at www.lifemadesimple.typepad.com ). That’s the way M. operates. Once she’s worried her fill about it, she’ll go with her first intuitive response and commit to it.

Several years from now, when M. and I are relaxing, sipping – herbal - tea contentedly one summer’s day, on the South coast, with straight Alexander backs, she may not remember the long run up to her finally taking the decision. Buy-to-let properties will have become one of the more unlikely topics of our conversation, and she will have forgotten all about how persuasive her scarcity mind-set once seemed.   

One of the greatest things you learn through the Money Gym is expressed most succinctly in Mark Victor Hansen’s "The One MInute Millionaire":"There is an ocean of abundance and one cap tap into it with a teaspoon, a bucket or a tractor trailer.  The ocean doesn’t care."

How’s that for a life changing idea to share with other people?