Well, last month, Neil and I were challenged to play Cashflow for real.   Now to some this didn’t mean much however, it has signalled the most dramatic change and root and branch clearout in our history.

Everything we knew up to that point had to change to accomodate the challenge.  We set up a blog called RichMatePoorMate.co.uk to track our changes and challenges and experiences along the way.

In real terms playing Cashflow for real means to increase our investment/passive/residual income to cover all of our expenditure.  In the game and in real life you can do this by limiting your expenditure.  Now, we’re with Robert and Kim on this one – we liked our current level of lifestyle but we also wanted to live up to the challenge and be a bit easy on ourselves.   So as a compromise we moved from here:

Ford House

A 19th Century Presbytry, a beautiful old stone building, and one that many thought of as a dream house. 

To here:

Walnut Tree Cottage

A barn conversion in a tiny hamlet in Warwickshire.  It still has many attributes that we wanted – character, remoteness and namely warmth (something Ford House lacked severely as the heating system constantly broke down!)

So yes, a compromise, and yes still rather lovely. 

From a four bed mansion to a two up two down… we Freecycled all our furniture as Walnut Tree Cottage is fully furnished (yes we’re renting – ask us about the logic in that if you want to) we threw tons of junk away, and charity shopped the rest, apart from a few bits of furniture that is now on semi-permanent loan with friends and family.

So off we go on our challenge. 

The two main income sources will be via internet marketing and Telecomplus our amazing network marketing business.

So to the future of Women’s Wealth Network.  Having had two amazing trial events, when it came to booking for a 12 month event only one person did.  So I changed the booking arrangements to make it more ad hoc and still no-one could make it.

I put this down to the current economic climate and a general reluctance for people to part with money unless there is an absolute outcome.  No problem, that’s what trials are about and why market research is vital.

So, the future will be this.  Women’s Wealth Network will become a membership site.  I have tons of valuable information and personal insights to give away, video and audio interviews with women all over the world and in March of this year I will be spending some time with Robert and Kim Kiyosaki, so hope to be adding an interview onto the site with them too.  Of course only members will get to see the post.

Women’s Wealth Network was going to cost £550 per year, the membership site will cost somewhere in the region of £120 per year a rather big difference.  As for playing Cashflow, members will be entitled to come to our monthly Cashflow Club games or hold their own or play online with us too.

The most important thing about all this financial personal development “stuff” is that people put it into actual practical use.  No good learning it if you ain’t gonna do it!

You have all of our encouragement to get going – join us and play Cashflow for real – it WILL change your life.

Lastly, we watched an old DVD we had of Robert over the weekend.  He reminded us of this solid foundational principle:

Save 10%

Invest 10%

Tithe / Give Away 10%

Live off the other 70%.

Tithing was already part of our challenge set by our Cashflow Auditor and you can follow the whole thing either on the richmatepoormate.co.uk blog OR via our Tweets on Twitter.com

Neil is RichMatesDare

I am Cashflowclubs

and our cashflow auditor is CashflowAuditor (strangely enough)

The all new Women’s Wealth Network website will be launching soon as I’ve passed it onto an expert in these things who is currently overhauling everything.  All these posts will remain, along with the testimonials and videos, the difference will be that there will be a VIP section of all  the juicy information for members only.

Have a great 2009!

Sarah Hewitt

Her experience is very common – sadly and is not just restricted to women either, I hear plenty about men who also leave themselves in a vulnerable position, through no fault of their own.

The bottom line is – be independent – and even from banks!  I now have four different bank accounts with the four main players, because you just never know.

My friend’s brother in law who works in a senior position for a leading bank has prophesised that a 1/3 of our high street shops will disappear in the next 12 months…

Start thinking about being self sufficient in all ways…grow your own fruit and veg if you can and also keep a watchful eye on the economy.   I also believe that fortunes can be made in the next 12 months too.  Tony Robbins talks about being able to predict what may happen next..get into discussions with people and find out what they think, then make up your own mind and adapt your strategy to fit what you decided.

I’ve been asked by someone to send them my monthly newsletter…monthly newsletter?  Ok, one is now in development and will be issued from January 09…I’ll keep you posted, or comment on the end here with your requests and drop me a line at info@cashflowclubs.co.uk  if you’d like to receive a copy.

Ok, so on to the reason for this blog…the email I received, this is how it starts….

“I ended up having to hand over all my business earnings to my husband, while he squirreled away goodness only knows what and had about £20K in various accounts I knew nothing about. I’ll never be inextricably linked to another human being again”

That’s a great start!  It would be easy to think that people can’t be trusted, it’s not like that for me, I just won’t ever have a joint account ever again, maybe it’s because I like that kind of control?  Maybe?  Maybe not? 

She continued…

“…when I decided to pull the plug on my marriage, he then dragged me through the courts 7 times which cost me £34K, and to add insult to injury, he ended up with 60% of the equity in the final financial hearing  – but I was just glad to end up with the house and kids. My solicitor on returning from her maternity leave agreed I was out of pocket but said I could sue the Barrister. Erm, no thanks!”

That’s a good enough reason for me… so easy to get into and so hard to extricate oneself from those kind of situations.  There’s more…

“Everything was in his name too. The house was in his name so I had to re-mortgage and ironically it would have been paid off in 2012 but I had to take another 11K towards the divorce debt and extend it over 24 years to make the repayments manageable and then the various insurance companies had their day too – my household insurers racked the premium up by about 25% and my car insurance cost a bomb at first because I hadn’t built up my own no claims bonus.”

Yes, that’s right – single people pay more…this bears out one of Kim Kiyosaki’s stats. When a marriage breaks down and someone gets custody of the children their income is automatically cut by 75%.  This is then affected by a higher cost of living.

So the moral of this story – whether you are a man or a woman, be independent.  Sink or swim on your own merits and successes, relying on no-one, only yourself.

I would also add that working in partnership and alongside other people is completely great.  I have had two business partnerships during my working life, both were wonderful, however, I’d never do that again either.  Perhaps I just don’t like sharing!

The Women’s Wealth Network…which is rapidly expanding into THE WEALTH NETWORK… and across the country teaches independence and teaches all kinds of financial strategies.  It will be so wonderful to be able to help people find a strategy that fits their own belief system and style and also to help people explore new ways of doing things.  I strongly believe that our lives are about to be changed forever – the way we shop, the way we do business, the way we operate our lives on a daily basis…do you have a bicycle?

Maybe that is going a little too far..?

Please add a comment and let me know what you think.

The next WWN event is on the 22nd January in Birmingham, UK and after that on the 29th January in Harrogate – please come along and find out for yourself.

Sarah Jayne Hewitt

14 women attended – 100% turnout for what was a No Charge event, which I think is testimony to two things.  Firstly everyone had been invited by Jane Keogh of www.aqanta.com and so didn’t want to let her down by not turning up, secondly many women were there not to network or pursue their business interests – they were there to learn things for themselves – to put one day aside for them and no-one else.

I do think this is something that more women could learn to do for themselves and maybe being a member of WWN could help?

So, an awesome day – another awesome day actually following the Birmingham event.

This time I knew no-one, other than Jane Keogh and Vicky Yates a little (via email and two near misses) all the other women were completely new to me, which of course I loved.

They all made me feel so welcome and were so excited about learning the game and learning something new about themselves.  I was, of course, on hand to provoke and prod and ask those challenging questions and there with the usual explanations about Assets and Liabilities, ESBI Quadrants, Stock Prices and charts etc etc etc..

I am so in my passion when running these games.  Most of the women there were self-employed, with maybe three employed and one with a great residual income business, who was the only woman to put her hand up when asked – “who gets paid even when they dont show up at work?”  It is, incidentally also one of our four income streams.. just to be upfront there too.

So the verdict from the day was that they wanted more – depending on the costs.  Very right too.

So the cost has been set – as has the day for the take off of Women’s Wealth Network number two in Harrogate.  January is the month and the date is the 6th.  Venue:  The Pine Marten Hotel, Otley Road, Harrogate.  Time to be confirmed but probably 12 till 5 pm.

Want to come?

Flowers, cards and many chocolates! 

The event was held at our house, Ford House, in Warwickshire.  Lunch provided by the fabulous Throckmorton Arms on the A435 and education provided courtesy of Robert and Kim Kiyosaki with the amazing Cashflow 101 game.

8 women met and played the game having incredible learning and Aha! moments – the learning feedback session was amongst the most intense I think I have experienced in four years of playing Cashflow.

See the photos and study their intense expressions – they were really thinking hard and giving the game their all.  The usual format of the Women’s Wealth Network is that there will be about 2 hours of game playing, learning feedback and then further learning either via a book study or a visiting speaker – such as Clare Darwish of www.richbrits.co.uk who has become a wonderful friend since we met on an advanced traders course in Davos, Switzerland.

The day was incredibly successful, so much so that the Chapter will go ahead and launch on the 22nd January 2009.

If this is something that you’re interested in, there are still places available for the 12 month programme and the cost is extremely competitive.  My passion is that everyone gets to come who really wants to.

Thank you to all who came along and made the day so amazing…next stop Harrogate!