Judith Morgan says: For a while now, I have been involved with a Manchester based company called Cartel.   Fiona Howarth presented it to us at a Money Gym Presents day in February 2008 which was memorable for the stunned silence in the room as she laid out what Cartel could do for us consumers of financial services products.

Now, you might be asking yourself “Has Judith Become An Ambulance Chaser?”

I rushed up to Manchester on 1st March to find out more about it and set about getting myself debt-free and encouraging clients to do the same and building a team of reps to spread the word far and wide.

Cartel is a very fast-growing company they already have over 1,000 reps, they want 10,000 in order to process the number of claims they envisage. They are advertising on the radio right now, listen out for their adverts on Smooth FM, they will be on the TV in 2009 and plan to float on AIM at the end of next year.   They are led by Carl Wright, a successful mortgage broker, or poacher turned gamekeeper as some have said.   He’s a brilliant thinker who saw this opportunity and ran with it.   It’s a business which is very much of the moment and he closed down his mortgage broking business to take this forward.   You should meet him, his business brain is truly inspirational!

Initially my focus was on debt, getting out of debt, debt-busting – one of my current favourite hobbies for obvious credit crunch reasons.   But Cartel can do so much more than debt.   Even if you have no debt, please read on to see what’s in this for you too.

Because if you have, or have ever had, a mortgage, a secured loan or a car finance agreement, if you can be bothered to fish out the paperwork, you may be entitled to claim back compensation of at least £5,000 from each lender.   That’s everyone isn’t it???

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Are you panicking about the property market?  Or just about the economy generally?  I was watching the news last night and right next to the headline about the awful building conditions of schools in China, a major contributory factor in the disaster out there, I spotted one that said “Banks pull the plug on buy-to-let landlords”.

So I went looking for it this morning.  Found it on Google of course at at The Times Online.  Here is just a snippet of this “good-times” article…By Lauren Thompson and Grainne Gilmore. 
 
“The era of the amateur landlord has all but ended, with banks effectively refusing to lend to new entrants to the buy-to-let market. Thousands of existing landlords also face huge increases in the cost of remortgaging, experts said yesterday. The warning came as HBOS, Britain’s biggest group of lenders, imposed the third increase in the cost of residential mortgages in as many weeks. Cheltenham & Gloucester, the fourth-biggest lender, also increased some of its rates for the second time in three weeks. First-time landlords, including parents eager to buy a house for their student children, will now find it almost impossible to enter the housing market. Lenders have stopped offering buy-to-let loans or severely tightened their lending criteria for prospective landlords and many of the existing one million buy-to-let mortgage holders approaching the end of their terms.

The development comes as senior figures in the housing industry predict up to two years of declining house prices. The problems in the buy-to-let market are compounded by fears that the target of many would-be landlords – apartment blocks in cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff – are facing a rapid decline in their value.

Katie Tucker, of the broker John Charcol, said: “After another week of turmoil in mortgage markets, novice landlords now face huge difficulties securing a loan, and thousands of existing landlords coming to the end of fixed-rate deals will find it very hard and very expensive to switch mortgage providers if they have not built up at least 75 per cent equity in their buy-to-let property.” This week Abbey withdrew virtually its entire range of buy-to-let mortgages, leaving only an expensive fixed-rate deal of 6.99 per cent for direct customers…..”

READ MORE HERE >>> (if you can bear it!)

Notice they are talking about amateur landlords (none of our Money Gym-ers can be called that), about how new build are going to be worst hit (we always steer our cleints well away from over-priced new builds) and I have to ask what on earth any self respecting landlord would be doing getting their buy-to-let from a high street building society - really, I have no idea…………

However, the “Related links” section included “Housing gloom: the silver lining” and if you need cheering up you can read that one here where David Budworth says

“A falling property market does have some benefits! The storm clouds looming over the housing market grow darker every day. But for some aspiring homeowners there could be a silver lining, with bargains emerging as asking prices tumble and sellers become ever more desperate to get properties off their hands. It takes courage to buy at a time when some commentators are predicting that house prices could fall a further 15 per cent. Even Britain’s biggest lenders and surveyors, which have an interest in talking up the market, now admit that they expect property prices to fall. Asking prices for properties new to the market were down by an average of 0.1 per cent over the past month, according to Rightmove.co.uk, the property website. In some regions the slide has been even more severe: in the North West prices fell by 1.4 per cent and in London by 0.9 per cent. And it could become much worse. David Miles, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, says that up to 1.2 million people - one in ten homeowners - could be pushed into negative equity, where their mortgages are greater than the value of their property.

As the gloom spreads, though, bargains are beginning to emerge. Michael Holt, of Charterhouse Standard Holdings, has been buying residential property on behalf of private investors for more than a decade and says: “We are spotting some great bargains. Even if the market continues to struggle in the near term, buy and hold for five or ten years and you will almost certainly make a healthy profit.”

Now, if you study all that carefully you will see that, again, there is hardly any fact, but plenty of opinion.  On the one hand “some commentators are predicting a further 15% fall, whereas in some regions the “severe slide” has been 1.4% in one month……even multiplying that by 12 months, I can’t get it to make 15%. 

The average fall has been 0.1% which on a property of £200k means a drop of….ooooohhhh…..£200 on value.

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I’ve hosted two absolutely fascinating webinars since last week’s ezine, with Claire Raikes, the “Business Blog Angel” and Tim Brocklehurst “MyViralSpiral”. Covering wide ranging topics from internet marketing to business success, it was interesting to note that I don’t “know” either of them in the traditional sense, but because of their web presences, their recommendations and the fact that the Money Gym is a client of Tim’s and Judith is a client of Claire’s, we not only felt comfortable, but had a rocking good time!

You can hear both webinars at http://www.MoneyGymRadio.com.  I could have talked to Claire for hours for sure (but we had another call lined up!) and Tim and I did over-run somewhat…….I can’t wait to see them both in action at the “Money Gym Presents……The Internet” workshop next Saturday. Why not see if there are any early bird places left?

Steve has revamped our Affiliates page too, which looks much better and easy to use now. There are some graphics to use - book covers and banners for the site, and some code for videos you can put on your site very easily. The membership site makes layout a bit tricky but Steve is really getting his head around it - combination of techie and arty - so it’s much easier to use now. If you want to recommend The Money Gym, there are lots of ways to do that and earn some passive income so check out his new page - renamed the Affiliate Center

Summer, as usual, has taken me completely by surprise, this year, although my first born, Phoebe’s birthday on 3rd May, traditionally signals a burst of hot weather…….I well remember labouring through the hot night in my water bath overlooking Wormwood Scrubs (o yes!) which combination of pain and heat did NOT make for very attractive after-birth photos!!

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My ex-business coach, Chris Barrow just posted a blog post entitled “How Can We Be Expected To Work In Such Conditions?” and really, I have to agree with him! http://tinyurl.com/5wvbbe

I woke up at 6.30 this morning to another day of glorious sunsine - and the beach just over the road.

I’m tempted to just get my swimsuit out and grab my iPod and catch some rays while listening to a bit of rich schefren and swotting up further on the Rent2Own concept - perfect for these market conditions and a great cashflow generator!  But no, I have to go to London today.

After getting ready in a leisurely fashion, Steve will drop me off at our sleepy little station, and I’ll enjoy a largely empty train direct to Victoria.

I’m off to go to lunch at The Ivy, with Judith and Sue, Money Gym member and winner of our Women Talk Money Challenge, notably the person who increased her income by the most ££ in just three months.  Sue managed £25,000 plus - marvellous!

We always like to make prizes for clients at the Money Gym things that Judith and I want to do!!  Later this afternoon, we will be joined by Peter Stanley, of “Property Made Simple” fame, who is down from Manchester, and a member of my now defunct first mastermind team.  Not seen Peter for ages.

Then it’s off to the Rex Cinema in Rupert St, Soho, to meet my sister and enjoy the book launch for Michelle Magorian’s new book. 

My opera singing sister Heather shared a house in Walthamstow with Michelle back in th 80’s - they were so poor in those days they literally had to break the ice in the loo due to NO CENTRAL HEATING!  Now Michelle is an acclaimed author with tomes including “Goodnight Mr Tom” starrring the late John Thaw in the film of, and she has a film deal sorted for the new book already.

Home again on the train, and as it will be a late night, I’ll have a lie in tomorrow, as I dont’ have to get up till the 11am Money Gym Wealth Surgery webinar for our Gold clients.

Why am I telling you all this?

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I’ve been too busy to blog much this last week but I’ve been twittering (mini-blogging) which has fed onto my MySpace, Facebook accounts, and onto my blog which has fed onto my Ecademy, MySpace and personal website.  Are you getting this yet about Twittering?

Judith’s a brilliant writer and I’m her business partner and didn’t know half of this !! so read with me and enjoy the week of a serial entrepreneur…..

“I’ve been a busy little bee lately, rushing around. How does it happen that your life creeps up on you like that and suddenly its ten days full on? Poor diary management I hear you cry, and much though it pains me to admit it, I fear you may be right, Gentle Reader.

Here’s what I have packed in during the last ten days:

Monday - podcasting Ann Ross on BlogTalkRadio and producing our weekly tapping script on TapToTheTop. Malek returned to fit the curtains and blinds which are toptastic, a DebtBusting call, an EEC client, a referral from coach George who I referred onwards to coach Heather, hired a car for the week from Enterprise and went to an Ecademy networking evening at the Tower Hotel, my first despite having been a member for YONKS and living almost next door for YEARS! What are we like? Didn’t do much networking, enjoyed chums Sarah and Carolyn and the speaker Phil Calvert.

Tuesday - lunch outside in the really hot sunshine in Wimbledon then whiz up to London to meet a coaching colleague at my new, favourite central London meeting place, The Brunswick, juice al fresco. Rush back home to study teleclass with Sandra about Squidoo and Linkedin, keen as I am to get deeper into social networking online. Sandra sends me a copy of her new ebook asking for a testimonial by Thursday and when it arrives it has over 100 pages of closely typed script about Wordpress. I print it off and put it aside to take with me on my travels on Wednesday.

Wednesday begins as it always does with my cleaner, Beverley, at 10 a.m. and me dodging her hoover during The Money Gym weekly wealth creation webinar, then me rushing off to meet a multi-millionaire for lunch at Jamie’s Fifteen - my turn to pay! Whilst sitting outside in my car, I call a friend who has been abroad since selling her business last September. I call her on a hunch only to discover she’s been back in the UK for less than 24 hours and was thinking of me only 30 seconds earlier, while reading a local magazine and gazing at a photo of me in an advert in it. Synchronicity at work there. After lunch I drive to ….

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Judith’s on the move - read her highly entertaining account of downsizing and moving back into home ownership….

Another of my 2008 intentions was to open up a huge gap between my income and expenditure by greatly reducing my expenditure and vastly increasing my income in a bid to end living beyond my means, a lifelong habit, and to create reserves and to have more money to invest.   And to be in ever-increasing integrity with what I teach all day long.

The first part of this plan revolved around moving back from the rented sector into owning my own home.The amount of rent I paid afforded a half million pound luxury flat in London’s swanky Docklands with THE best view over London and my beautiful river flowing past the door.   The same amount of monthly outgoing when buying your own home in London affords a 100% mortgage on a rather downmarket garden flat worth £300k in upwardly mobile Streatham Hill!   Hmm.   There are sacrifices to this downshifting lark.

There’s no doubt that Streatham was once very grand.   It’s housing stock is nothing short of plentiful and elegant and gorgeous.   One of my early callers (an 0800 Handyman) advised that perhaps we should not put up the picture of Canary Wharf as it might make me too sad.   Bless.   And also it was his opinion that I was not living in Streatham Hill, but Telford Park.   Bless, again.  When I first lived in this neighbourhood some 29 years ago (!), there was a branch of John Lewis in Streatham called Pratts.   I was an account holder.   No-one remembers Pratts now and Streatham High Road has become a ghastly race-track to Gatwick and Brighton.

One of my clients is a professional property investor who owns no fewer than three properties in this area and she tried to cheer me up about my choice, as I ducked in through my side gate covered in bird poo underneath the two (!) satellite dishes - and me not even owning a telly.   This building was beautiful when I bought the flat and they had already mutilated it by the time I moved in, in the name of footie.   Bah humbug to Murdoch.

What’s the worst part of being back south of the river…………..?

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Sometimes I’m almost ashamed to be a “wealth creation expert!”  So many scams going on around me, so many people being ripped off, so many dodgy blokes in suits selling unscrupulous products and services.  I’m sick to the stomach when I hear about some of the things some companies do.

Why did I, in 1999, become obsessed with creating wealth for myself and then have this great idea about sharing what I learned - it’s a bit like deciding on purpose, voluntarily, without having my arm twisted, to become a double glazing or timeshare salesman.

Why didn’t I just do it for myself and keep schtum?

The problem is that there wasn’t a Money Gym around when I was struggling financially, when we couldn’t pay the rent and we had to move to my sister’s tiny cottage and cram ourselves in with our kids, her kids, my husband, then her husband (who was supposed to be away at sea but who broke his leg and came home on sick leave). 

There was nowhere to go, to get the very basics of wealth creation in one place. 

O yes, you could learn about investing in shares, or building a business, or investing in property (real estate) but there wasn’t anywhere to get all the basics and you certainly couldn’t learn about making money online without wading through piles and piles of emails.  So I could see the need and because I was only a few steps away from feeling the pain myself - how could I NOT share what I was learning.

And that grew into The Money Gym - in those days just me and the telephone, coaching clients myself.  It was only with the arrival of ….. [Read more →]