Skimboarding, Silver Elite & Susanne In Spain

This week has been absolutely mad!  We saw off five of them (phew!) at Malaga Aiport on Monday, and Susanne Jorgensen of  The Singles Gym joined us for a week as we packed them off at Gate 222.  She’s taken the town – no, the Costa – by storm and even the most grumpy waiter has not been able to resist her charms.

Nelson had to stay behind because he was three months too young to travel on his own, but he’s had a great time learning to skimboard and Susanne has turned out to be a great skimboard coach.

I had a great time turning the video footage and photos into a YouTube video for him as he’s all fired up now.  View his video and encourage him in his latest passion here

Read more..

Puerto Banus, Puerto De La Duquesa, Photos & Parasols

I’m very proud that I’ve managed to blog each day, while on holiday in Casares.

Why am I bothering you may ask?  Because one of the elements of the deal I’ve struck with my friends Rona & Adrian, who lent us their lovely house for three weeks, is that I’ve made them a Wordpress driven website to help them promote the rental of their property in Casares, short-term and long-term over the winter.

Read more..

37 Reasons | Actually 53 (Tickets Left That Is….)

With a small posse of Money Gymers I am just off to a Big Issue gigcalled Real Lives Real Achievements, hankies at the ready no doubt.  And I am running again through a ginormous To Do List for Saturday and making up another 20 goody bags.  Steve and I have synchronised our delegate lists and at the last count (Tuesday mid-day) we are agreed on 146 delegates.  And abundant Rebecca Ballard has offered to turn them into badges with me.

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

If you are one of those 146 who has booked already or volunteered your help in any way, however small, on behalf of the Big Issue and the Money Gym thank you so much for your abundance and your support for our project.

I am thrilled skinny to notice that out of the 146, all but 60 are known to me personally because they have been to one of our events before, or are Money Gym Silver, Gold or Platinum clients. Three I met at Rent2Own, three are property chaps, eight are personal clients and their partners, ten I have played Cashflow with, two have been to a Money Gym Let’s Talk Money day, two came to an EFT event, two are my Creative Entrepreneur partners, five are members of the Property Boardroom, three were stand-out members of the Women Talk Money team, one is Brett’s Next Level speaker trainee plus her partner, one is involved in the Money Gym Magic project, two I have met over the phone, there’s a husband, a partner and a sister and someone I once sat next to at an event! Phew.

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

But I know them all, that’s my delicious point. All initially cyber friends and colleagues, now they are real people in my peer group who know different stuff from me about property, who want to teach and learn and just be there to meet the rest of you. And I love them for coming along to this, lending their support and looking forward to a cracking day out as we all are now.

Can you see the value of a network? Can you feel the value of creating a Property Network which will support you in your resolve after the Property Extravaganza day? Recently our Money Gym clients have been creating local buddy groups to support their route to Financial Freedom and I was reminded yesterday, yet again, while listening to Think and Grow Rich about the importance of a Mastermind Team. But in order to connect, you have to show up, either offline or online. You have to reach out to others so they know you and how you can help and how they can help you.

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

So, let me tell you about my plans on Saturday for One Networking Minute.

We have five 15 minute gaps during the day between speakers and in those slots I want to get 10-12 people on the stage each time and given them one minute to explain to a Money Gym property audience who they are, who they can help and what help they need.

I will get the Money Gym Golds and Platinums to do that near Nicola’s slot so they can help her pull the raffle tickets out of the pot for the Money Gym prizes.

I will get the Property Boardroom chaps to do that all together too so they can help me pull out my own prizes for the audience.

And so on.

So if you have time to rehearse your 60 seconds on stage and want one of those 50-60 slots on a first-come first served basis, then do plan your minute in the spotlight. It will be informally done as during those breaks some will be popping off to the loo, speakers will be being de-mic’d and re-mic’d, some will be following the speakers to the break-out rooms for a follow-up question or two and some of you will be hunting down a cup of cha.

But again, in the spirit of the day, it should be fun.

You have been warned. My Cleaning Biz partner Emma is in charge of marshalling you all onto the stage (and she’s an official yacht racing marshal with stopwatch); more details at the first break and on your schedules.

So, the 60 of you I don’t know yet, I shall look forward to putting faces to the names on Saturday.

Oh, and to meeting the two “famous” folk in the audience  – David Gray and George Bush. Not the real ones methinks, but our real ones – you never know? Presumably GB is looking for a new job!

Best Wishes
Judith

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

PS Whilst writing this one more ticket sold, 147!   So if you ARE intending to come, please book now and bag your seat, your one moment on the stage, and lots of wonderful new ways to make your fortune/pension in property.

37 Reasons | The Good News About Property – Part #5

Day Five in my series of 37 Reasons why you should attend our Money GymProperty Extravanganza on Saturday 21st March 2009, in Central London, in aid of The Big Issue homeless charity. A little recap first…

Day One – 8 reasons all about inspiration

Day Two – 7 financial reasons

Day Three – 5 incentive reasons (bribes)

Day Four – 10 reasons about opportunity

Total so far 30, so only 7 to go then…

Day Five – 3 Educational Reasons:

1. Find out what a SIPP is, how it’s about one thousand per cent more interesting than it sounds, how it’s not perhaps the easiest of things to understand but how when you discover what it can do for you and the tax breaks lurking inside, how very much you will want one. Meet Roger, the man I have found to teach us about SIPPS and how we can use them to invest in commercial property in the UK and overseas.

Discover how to convert those little bits of funds sitting in old pensions into a meaningful financial instrument you can use to take control of  your finances in invest in something without using your own money. Take the power back from the under-performing City fund manager and have some fun with it – learn to enjoy creating your own pension, often within 10 years or less.

2. Learn something new or be reminded of something you know already but haven’t auctioned yet. And remember what Nicola says (and, I think, Roger Hamilton too) “to know and not yet to do is not yet to know”. Convert your “I know” into “I am”.

3. Stop the rot of any investing errors you have may have made and learn how to survive and thrive. Speaking personally, I am living proof that this is possible and fun! Its never too late to start to implement a new strategy which will turn your negatives into positives.

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

Look out for my remaining tiny handful of reasons to be cheerful about property.

Until tomorrow…

Judith

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

37 Reasons | The Good News About Property – Part #4

Day Four in my Series 37 Reasons to attend our Money Gym Property event on 21/3/09 in Central London.

Only 80 tickets left, that’s 40 really as most of you are buying x2 to get the 90 day trial of The Money Gym Silver Level for free!

This is generally accepted to be a year of unprecedented buying opportunity in the property markets around the world. Our speakers will demonstrate why that is and why we should be brave now and swim against the tide, although it IS turning…

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

Here are Judith’s Top 10 Reasons all about Opportunity.   Are you an Opportunist?

1. Because Warren Buffet says he feels “like a hungry mosquito in a nudist camp” right now and you want a piece of that action too.

2. Because you want to learn how to become a better Property Entrepreneur, negotiator, sales person, referrer or sourcer

3. Because you want to create a Property Business – part-time or full-time

4. Because you want to understand how to evaluate an investment opportunity

5. Because you want your One Networking Minute on our stage that day

6. Because you want to meet Martin Roberts off the telly and Rick Otton and all our experts in the flesh, real people who have done what you are about to do

7. Because you want to play Devil’s Advocate at the end of the day Q & A panel session – go on, you know you want to be the one to ask THE most unanswerable question!

8. Because you want to do just one property deal, or just one more

9. Because it’s a great place to find a hot date with a hot property investor!   The Money Gym’s Clients are 80% women – and none of them are looking to you to be a meal-ticket.

10. Because you just know in your bones that this is the right time to invest, and more importantly because it’s the right time for you.

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

Until tomorrow…

Judith

PS   There’s even a prize for the person who comes up with the best reason for NOT being able to get into property

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

37 Reasons | The Good News About Property Part #2

Judith Morgan says: Here is the second of my pieces walking you through my 37 reasons to come to our Money Gym Property Extravaganza on 21st March. Today? Seven Financial Reasons to get up early on a Saturday morning and exhaust yourself learning all sorts of new stuff and meeting all sorts of weirdos (just some of the resistances we feel to getting out of our comfort zone!). Yummy, the financial reasons, my favourite ones…

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

1. Currently, with the bank base rate as low as it’s ever been, there’s never been a better time to buy property. Your savings aren’t earning anything, the value of your own home is still falling, your dismal pension ditto and perhaps your SIPP is non-existent as yet. You can’t leave it to “the professionals” – that much is clear. But we can show you how to take control of your financial resources, get some of it into property and make a significantly better return on your investments, one you CAN bank on. That’s four routes at least – savings, equity, pension, SIPP. I bet you will be showing me more by the end of the day!

2. Whether you have the ability to borrow secured, unsecured or not at all, I can offer you at least one way to become a property owner.

3. Rick Otton will show you how to buy a house for £1.

4. Martin Roberts will show you how to buy ten years’ holidays for the price of one year AND get a property investment thrown in (without resorting to either timeshare or fractional ownership) with Unique.

5. Henderson Capital Management will introduce you to investments in property where your initial capital outlay is guaranteed. I’ve never heard of this before, it’s a real scoop for the Money Gym and our clients.

6. Property is a “real” investment, you can see it, feel it, touch it and live in it – or your tenants can. It’s not going to suddenly disappear overnight. Whatever the ups and downs of the financial markets, people are always going to need homes to live in. There’s a constant demand.

7. And finally, we can show you how property can become your pension in 10 years or less, again with your capital guaranteed. This means if you are worried about how you are going to live when you stop earning, you can put your mind at ease at last. No matter how late you start, you no longer need 40 years at the coalface to save enough to retire on. Property’s your pension, whichever way you do it. Start young, retire young. What if you never want to retire? I don’t! But wouldn’t it be nice to know you were safe and didn’t have to worry about money any more? Financial serenity, close at hand.

Told you these 37 reasons were stonkers!

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

Watch out for my next batch coming soon…

Judith

Your Mortgage Based On Your Rent Paid Now?

A new type of mortgage will allow borrowers to buy a property based on their previous 12 months’ rental payments, says All Types of Mortgages Ltd (AToM).

Rent-to-buy mortgages are aimed at renters who want to make the step to home ownership.

The rent-to-buy mortgages look at the applicant’s ability to manage their money and make rent payments on time.

The upsides

It may mean successful applicants can BORROW MORE than with a standard mortgage, which multiplies your salary by up to three times. So a single person earning £20,000 a year would borrow around £60,000.

With AToM’s rent-to-buy mortgage, you could borrow 5.5 times one salary, or 3.75 times two applicants’ salaries. a single person earning £20,000 a year would borrow around £110,000.

As with some popular standard mortgages, AToM offer a fixed rate for two years with no early repayment charge after this point.

READ MORE ABOUT RENT TO BUY MORTGAGES >>>

(With thanks to Sarah Rourke, the RatRace Escape Artist for posting this on our Money Gym Google Group)

Beat Credit Crunch – Sell Your Home!

Bet you never thought you would hear that advice about beating the credit crunch from us eh?

I was moodling around Google Trends today, looking at the interesting key words and phrases thrown up around the phrase “credit crunch” and I came across something – by a “So-Called EXPERT” – that absolutely incensed me. Have a read below and then carry on to hear my thoughts on the subject……!!

(This article is was featured on the Money Week website and was taken from “Merryn Somerset Webb’s free weekly personal finance email, Money Sense)

Merryn says: We’ve heard that 41% of people paid for some part of Christmas on their credit cards; that more people than ever before will go bankrupt this year; that repossessions are likely to keep rising all year; that mortgage rates are going to keep going up even as base rates fall; and that the average person only has enough cash to last 12 short days should they leave their jobs.

Hot on the heels of this has come a plethora of articles telling us what to do about it. Anyone who doesn’t know how to consolidate their loans, find an interest free credit card, cut their utility payments, create a budget spreadsheet (you can download one here) and get a cheaper mortgage by now clearly hasn’t been listening to the personal finance experts properly or spending enough time on the Moneyweek website.

But reading – and writing – all these money makeover articles this month (see also: How to give yourself a money makeover), I’ve been beginning to wonder if for many people the best way to survive the credit crunch and free up a lot of cash in a hurry might be to stop bothering with financial micro managing, dump their mortgages altogether and rent somewhere to live instead.

Why it makes sense to rent, not buy.

Selling to rent (STR as it is now known) has made some financial sense for some years now in cash flow terms – i.e. rents have been generally cheaper than mortgage payments on most properties. But now that the chances of making a capital gain on owning a house (the only reason to have bought over the last 3 years) look pretty low, it seems to make more sense than ever.

READ MORE HERE >>> (If you can bear to…..)

Right then, deep breaths all round!

Any Money Gym client will be spinning on their mouses (mice? meece?) right along with me because we all know something that the majority of the population does not seem to know….or believe……or worse……they seem to forget in times of TEMPORARY crisis like these….

Property doubles in value every 7-10 years in the UK on average, and it’s quicker in the South East. Even taking dips in growth (because that is what this is, a dip in growth).

The GOVERNMENT for heaven’s sake, have recently upgraded their estimates of ANNUAL GROWTH of property in the UK, for the next ten years, from 5.5% per annum to 8.5% per annum. And that’s the whole of the UK. The South-East historically has risen at around 14% over the last 50-60 years.

So, when your average family home is worth around £240,000, and the family who lives in it is set to make another £240,000 over the next ten years, without having to work for it, or even pay tax on it……..

HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY MAKE SENSE TO SELL IT?

How else could they make that money? That’s £24,000 a year…..more than many people make per annum in their JOBS.

Sorry, I’m shouting I know, but I’m bloody furious!! If I had my way, old Merryn would be taken outside and shot at dawn. With a paintball gun obviously, but publically and with dayglo paint balls that HURT a bit. While wearing a sign that says “STUPID ALERT: DON’t BELIEVE A WORD I SAY”

Even if this fictitious family have to borrow some money to keep up the mortgage payments or GOD FORBID, GET A SECOND OR THIRD JOB to keep up with their payments, surely that’s got to be worth doing?

My business partner Judith Morgan gave up two properties in London in the early 90’s because it was that, or let her business go down the tubes. She subsequently sold the business for well over six figures, but now she says she should have kept the properties, and DONE EVERYTHING in her power to do so, because they would be worth MILLIONS to her now. And have taken a lot less work!!

Read Judith’s story here – and she’s an accountant, so she knows.

Unlike Merryn somerset Webb, MoneyWeek editor who doesn’t know, to the point of being dangerous.

Her biography reads thusly:

Merryn was a senior scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she gained a first class degree in History & Economics. She then became a Daiwa scholar and spent a year studying Japanese at London University. In 1992 Merryn moved to Japan to continue her Japanese studies and to produce business programmes for NHK, Japan’s public TV station. In 1993 she became an institutional broker for SBC Warburg, where she stayed for 5 years. Returning to the UK in 1998, Merryn became a financial writer for The Week. Two years later, in 2000, MoneyWeek was launched and Merryn took the job of editor.

She writes a FREE weekly personal finance email called Money Sense and has recently published a book on personal finance for women, Love is Not Enough: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Making (and Keeping) Money (HarperPress, 2007).

Note: Nowhere does it say she’s a professional property investor. Oooooh, were those all JOBS she has had? Methinks they are. High paid jobs, but jobs nonetheless.

Money Gym’ers……….avoid this woman like the plague! In her articles credits she lists one article called “Your house is not your pension” – I have read it and I tell you now, you should not.

In the third paragraph, she says “But if your house isn’t your pension, what is? Personally, I think it is a nice savings account backed up by a SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension) into which you put a variety of low cost exchange traded funds which you then hold for 20 years”.

Hahahahahhahahahahahahh – the sound of hysterical yet still FURIOUS laughter echoes round Money Gym Towers, startling the seagulls and the children of the beach. All very well if you have excess income over expenditure and you have 20 years till you want to retire. Which most people – most women – don’t!

God almighty, comment by clicking the link below, will you Money Gym’ers?

Let me know I’m not alone in my fight to save the ordinary people – particularly women – of the UK from being trapped in their “Just Over Broke’s” and total financial poverty in old age?

Women Great At Property!

Emma Wright built a mansion and made a £1.2m profit. She’s now investing it in 30 buy-to-let homes

When Emma Wright’s husband handed her £1m and asked her to invest it in property, she vowed to try to double the money within three years.

The 34-year-old housewife used it to snap up nine acres of land near Sevenoaks, Kent, and borrowed £2m-from the bank to build a palatial seven-bedroom luxury mansion.

The ambitious project was Emma’s first venture into property development but it has been a resounding success. She managed to sell the house to a foreign investor two months ago for £4.3m.

‘It’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like it, but no one who knows me is surprised I pulled it off,’ says Emma, a former sales manager for a credit-management company and now a full- time mother of two young children.

‘I approach life with a lot of confidence and I thought this was really no different from any other house transaction – you buy as cheaply as possible, don’t skimp on making improvements and sell as well as you can.’

Now she is ploughing her £1.2m profit into building a buy-to-let portfolio. Emma plans to purchase up to 30 houses near her home in Wadhurst, East Sussex, on a 60/40 split with a neighbour and friend Jacqui Hollie, 36, who wants to invest with her after they met at the school gate and started talking about property.

Her bank has offered a £1m loan facility at 1.5% above base rate and a maximum of 70% on each property if she wants to use it.

‘I realise house prices may still have further to fall,’ she says, ‘but I’m a cash buyer so I can negotiate hard. No one can predict when prices will recover again, but as long as I spread my purchases and buy one new property every couple of months, my portfolio should benefit from any further price falls and I won’t miss any opportunities.’

READ MORE HERE >>>

Property For £1 – My First One!

Welcome to the world of buying UK property for just £1.  Here is the first deal I have done, within 3 weeks too!  This is fast and fun……and the best thing is, you are helping people who can’t sell (without beating them down on the price) and helping people who can’t buy due to not having enough deposit, or being able to qualify for a mortgage.  Here’s the info: 

Charming 2 Bedroom Cottage To Let in Littlehampton, West Sussex.

Stop!  Think about this for a second……….why rent when you can buy?

I am offering a lovely two bedroom cottage in Littlehampton to let, on a “Rent 2 Buy” or premium rental basis.  If you are a first time buyer but can’t afford the normal deposit, or get a mortgage in today’s market, this could be perfect for you! 

Click here for a 4 minute, streaming video, tour around the property….

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olzAhu5_XEc]

The house is offered at £220,000 and you simply pay a 5% deposit, and then instalments of £1283 per month, and this lovely cottage could be yours in 2-3 years.  No mortgage required but you will need to provide work references and some other financial details.

Close to Central Littlehampton, with great road and rail links across West Sussex, in a very quiet private road, and a lovely secluded walled and gated garden – perfect for children.  The whole cottage faces South/West and is very light and sunny.  Fully refurbished thoughout, the cottage has a living room with open fire and beamed ceiling, double glazing and gas central heating.  There are two good sized bedrooms, lovely refitted modern kitchen with modern wood units and integrated cooker/hob, a hall/dining room, bathroom with white suite and seperate toilet upstairs.

Have a look at the video and if you would like to view this cottage, call me for more details on 01273 910986.  Stop paying dead rent and take your first step on the property ladder.

** Put your name and email in the box to the top right to get a Free Report on how “Rent2Own” works in the UK and join our priority Property List for 1 bed, 2 bed and 3 bed Worthing, Shoreham & Littlehampton properties**

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