As my youngest son was heading off to Los Angeles to follow his dream in filmmaking and I was attending the Equity University Networking Conference<\/i> and the BiggerPockets Meet Up<\/i> in Orlando, it dawned on me that we were both doing the same thing… following our Passions<\/i>.\u00a0 Although his passion is writing and directing, he knows he has to head to where it’s all happening if he expects to make something happen in his life.\u00a0 He knows it will take more than just being passionate about film; he has to find his own voice.\u00a0 I see my son as being very fortunate because he knew at very early age exactly what he wanted to do in life.<\/p>\n
For me, it wasn’t so easy, and I didn’t discover my voice or passion until much later in my life.\u00a0 Because I had a modest upbringing, I’ve always had a strong desire to be wealthy and successful. But, like many people, I was in survival mode. It seemed that my passion was to get educated and find a way to make money. It was around the time I hit 42 that I first retired and became financially free. That\u2019s when my passion started to shift from figuring it out myself to showing others.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve discovered that my greater passion in life is to show others how to have freedom of their time, which to me is probably the greatest gift out there. After all, we cannot buy time, but we can use our money to work for us so we have more time to follow our passions. I believe that to have complete freedom of time<\/i>, one must first attain financial freedom<\/i>. This means that you would have more cash flowing assets than expenses and liabilities (I recently wrote an article on this subject, \u201cAre You Choosing to be Poor?\u201d<\/a>). The few folks I know that have achieved this (probably less than 5%), seem to have certain things in common. \u00a0So here\u2019s just a few:<\/p>\n That last characteristic is key. As American author and businessman Zig Ziglar said \u201cIf you want to get what you want in life, help others get what they want.\u201d In other words, the more people you serve, the more successful you will be.<\/p>\n So while I was listening to David Bach in Orlando, author of the “Automatic Millionaire” and “Smart Couples Finish Rich,” in a very humbling way he said that he wasn\u2019t really there just to speak that weekend, but he was really there to learn about self-directed IRA<\/a>s.\u00a0 This is a very smart guy, who was a vice president of Morgan Stanley. He was very quick to say that he knew very little about self-directed IRA accounts and that 99% of all retirement account firms did not even offer nontraditional retirement account investments, like real estate, tax liens, and notes (just to name a few).\u00a0 And, he was also there just to point out how lucky the 500+ or so in attendance were for being there and taking advantage of the well underutilized technique for wealth building and retirement planning.\u00a0 And that in fact, this was going to be the topic of his next book.\u00a0 Wow!<\/p>\n He was attending this event, which really is the hub of discussion surrounding self-directed IRA investing, in the same way my son was traveling to Los Angeles\u2014to learn and to go to the center of the action. \u00a0I was also at the conference for this reason, but it dawned on me that I was no longer coming just to learn, and self-directed IRAs had a greater hand in my success than I\u2019ve realized.<\/p>\n David Bach wants to serve as many people as he can with his book. And so, too, my passion is to serve people by spreading the word about the benefits of using these accounts (Health Savings Accounts, College Funds, and Self-Directed IRAs). The money you can save by utilizing these tax-free or tax-deferred vehicles can be a large step towards financial freedom and, therefore, freedom of time.<\/p>\n\n
But, it\u2019s one thing to dream, and it\u2019s another to take action.<\/h2>\n
Utilizing a Self-Directed IRA to Become Financially Free<\/h2>\n