DAY 12 the Africa Nurse

After yesterdays meeting I felt confident that today we could continue moving forward on our goals even faster. I was content to know that we had set some definate dates on things.

We had to meet with the landlord around noon and since I get off work in the mornings, staying up is a challenge. Many time’s work is exhausting and I have to be careful not to sit down for to long or I’ll fall asleep and lose the day. Everyone knows that Once I do lay down for the day, I’m down for the count and dare even a tornado to try and wake me!

Fortunatly last night was easier and I was still feeling fairly rested with enough energy to keep going. It’s a challenge to do business in the morning after working all night but one has to make the best of the situation and move on anyway. Luckily I’m getting better at it and have developed a great work ethic. I have been meeting in the mornings after work now for quite some time and am getting used to it. They say that your habits make you and I’m happy that I have at least one good one now that will help me hit my goal.

So, in order to stay awake for the meeting we decided to use the time wisely and go to the local coffee shop. This way there would be no chance of me falling asleep and we could use that time to do some research and planning while waiting for 12:00 to roll around.

I am glad we did! Thanks to mom for being so outgoing too. Mom had asked a lady sitting next to us about her laptop, did she like it and was it easy to carry around? The conversation eventually led to what she does for a living and we were blown away!

This lady was a nurse and always had a desire to go to Africa and help the locals with her medical expertise. Come to find out, she even started raising money to export medical supplies.

She told us all about her trip abroad and how much it had changed her life. We learned all about the organization she works with and her plans to return. This is something that is also close to my mothers heart. I also want to help people with their financial situations so they can go do things like this.

This nurse is currently out of work and looking for way’s to finance her trip back. She started a blog and needed help with that too.

Although my goal is to be debt free, I have a desire to help other’s do the same. I think this desire comes from my day’s on the mission field when I was kid. It seemed like every time we needed something done we stopped by the lack on finances.

I know that most of the world suffer’s from that and it’s my desire to help people get what they want out of life. I figure why not? If I can do it then so can they, it will sure be fun trying. Anyone can do the easy thing and just get it all for them self. but that’s the easy way out, and really, when you think about it, one person can only spend so much before its redundant. So, my plan is to help others become debt free, that’s why I started this blog. I want to document my journey of becoming debt free in the hopes that they will see it’s possible for anyone to do it. If I can do it from nothing, then so can they!

For this reason I was excited to meet this lady. She had a big heart for the villages in Africa that suffer so much. It’s actually amazing when you think about it, we think our problems are big, but if you have ever seen the movie Blood Diamond, you will know what I mean. We have it easy compared to those people!

Like many, she has great ideas but needs the funds to do it. I was able to give her some of my ideas of raising money and she loved it! I have also studied internet marketing and was able to show her some things on the computer that helped out a lot!

I showed her how to use the google calendar and how to post pictures to her blog. This way she can share her mission with others and keep an ongoing record of it all complete with pic’s and videos.

She was so excited to have some help and support, in fact, we scheduled another meeting with her for next week and I look forward to it.

I have some unique ideas on how to raise money for charities or any project for that matter. There is nothing wrong with the normal way, people like to give, but I think there are also some other ways to do it. Instead of just giving, why not create a win win cituation for all the parties involved. Find way’s to make the money they give not only work for the charity but for them as well. I think this would help raise more money because people could give money they didn’t know they had, like equity in their homes or an I.R.A.

How does that work you ask? We don’t want people to lose their home’s or retirement! Of course not, I feel the same way, i am simply suggesting some different techniques that you might not think of were everyone involved could get something and possibly do even more then previously thought.

For example, let’s say you have $10,000 to give, normally, a charity would hand you a receipt for the donation which you could then use as a deduction on your taxes. Nothing wrong with this, it’s done all time. It works because they get the money they need and you get a deduction which helps you put more money in your pocket at the end of the year. Well, what if you could accomplish the same thing without losing the power of the money. We could leverage that money, creating a savings or retirement for you, while at the same time setting up monthly or yearly cash flow for them.

Here’s how it would work, you take the $10,000, put it into a mutual fund that pay’s a guaranteed dividend and alocate the bonus to be paid to the charity on a yearly basis which can be deducted. (I’m no tax pro, so the details would have to evaluated by a professional of course). There are annuities out there right now that pay a guaranteed 10% return, plus the yearly yield plus a 10% up front bonus, the only stipulation is the money must stay in for a minimum of ten years. So, let’s see how this would work, the donator put’s up the ten grand, it goes into a separate account. This account funds the ten year annuity and pays the bonus up front which can be spread out over the whole year if need be. Now the donator still has the money working for them, earning a yield which they will cash out in ten years and the charity gets the bonus of $1000 up front. They could also choose to have the bonus paid monthly, the donator simply directs this monthly payment to go to the charity which helps them more then once and since this payment can also be automated, they will have a secure stream on income for the next ten years. The donator gets a tax deduction and also still has the original ten grand in the bank earning them a profit while still providing a monthly deduction that they would normally not have. They could even set it up to have the money donated at the end of the ten year period, or just allocate the yield. Since the fund had a yield they will have successfully helped fund an entire project every month with a bonus at the end and still have their original donation left over when it’s all done at the end of the ten years.

That is a rough draft of the idea and the details of it all would need inspection and planning by a professional, but the idea is still sound. They could even use the annuity to fund a property that cash flowed and pay out a percentage of those profits to the charity on a monthly or yearly basis. This would still give them the deduction they needed, if that was the goal for them, simultaneously funding the charity on a secure monthly basis and building wealth for the donator in two ways, one on the annuity itself, and two, on the property. The property’s value doesn’t have to go up very high for this to work, it simply needs to be worth more later then it is now. The property would also provide an exit strategy for both parties and could also be donated with the deduction going to the donator.

So, as you can see, this is just one way to be creative when doing something simple like helping a charity of your choice. Strategies like this will help everyone involved, not to mention the people that rent the house. They could be future home owners that need to build their credit to qualify for their own loan and since the fund goes for ten years and building credit takes about two years, you could help 5 families with one house, build equity to be cashed out later, have a long term savings plan with a guaranteed yield and fund a charity all with the same money!

Now, I don’t know about you, but that get’s me excited! To me, it’s nice to know that there are many different and creative ways to kill two birds with one stone! That’s the difference, is knowing how to get your money working for you instead of you always working for it.

Another great day completed, we went home knowing we met and helped someone who was doing something good in the world!

BLASTOFF!