Maxing out you 401K sets You Up for Higher Taxes

Tony Brayboy of Matrix Wealth LLC speaks at the Wealth Breakfast in Baltimore

The Uninsured Risk of Being a Parent and how to protect your Family Properly

If you are reading this chances are you have a family. I am also going to assume that you love your family,and are making big plans for the future of your children. Some of these plans may include a great primary and secondary education. Also making opportunities and experiences available to them in arts and culture, and making sure they get a solid start once they reach adulthood.

I applaud your plans for your children. Your kids will have opportunities that you never even dreamed about when you were their age. The great thing is that your hard work and sacrifice is paying for all of these opportunities as well as the basics, food, clothing, shelter, video games, etc. Even greater news is you have a plan and the work ethic to get it done for your family. The not so good news is that you most likely have no real plan in place to fully provide the INCOME it will take to carry out those plans if you were to pass away prematurely.

The uninsured risk of being a parent is hitting more and more families everyday. Many 30 and 40-year-old parents are being stricken with Breast cancer, diabetes, stokes, heart attacks and sleep apnea. Not to mention simple work and non work related accidents and car crashes. The ranks of the six figure earners are exploding with women and minorities like never before in the history of the U.S..

The ranks of the properly insured grow smaller everyday.Why? Because the idea of what being properly insured is has not advanced in the last two generations and the wealthy are the only ones truly taking advantage of the great opportunity to advance the family legacy through the proper use of insurance.

Being properly insured means being able to totally replace your yearly income for the full time your family will need it. How long do you suppose your children and/or your spouse will NEED your income? Depending on the commitments you have made and the plans your family has that could mean 25 to 50 years. 30 plans for houses, 5 year plans for cars and 20 plans for credit cards. Do you have a plan that will pay for that long? Do you have total income replacement insurance that you personally own? If not, you are leaving your entire family in peril everyday because you refuse to totally cover the risk.

A recent survey was done amongst six figure earning parents and they were asked how much life insurance protection they had. The number than had over $500,000.00 was less than 5%. The number the that had none was over 20%.The number that would have none if they loss or changed their job was over 40%. This is an epidemic problem. Can your family lose over $100,000.00 of income and still operate at a level?

How to replace Income

$500,000.00 can only replace about $20,000.00 in income long term because you can’t really get more than a 4% guaranteed return in any stable financial instrument. That means to replace $100,000.00 you need about $2.5 million in life insurance. Put in the proper instrument it will pay $100,000.00 per year forever. It will pay your spouse, your children, and your childrens’ children, etc.. Learning how to do this properly and for as little cost as possible is an art.

BTW, If you have coverage on your job you need to purchase proper coverage like you have no coverage at all because if you lose or leave your job that is exactly what you will have only you will be older than you are now and the coverage will cost much more. Don’t fall into the trap that gets so many Americans. There are so many Americans looking for proper coverage that they are simply to old or too sick to qualify for. Insurance favors the young and the healthy and time is not on your side.

The structure of a proper income replacement plan is key. If you don’t have a plan that will replace your income for the next 50 years minimum then call me so I can help you put together great options. Having no plan is a plan to fail and today’s parents are failing their children everyday by only considering the possibilities if everything remains perfect. Nothing ever goes perfectly. Plan for the worst and hope for the best and you will never have any regrets. By law you can not drive a car or own a  home without proper coverage. Why can you be a parents without proper coverage. So much is riding on YOU!

Call me at 410-908-5987 to schedule a free 15 minute consultation.

Wishing you Wealth Wellness and Wisdom

Mark

Manager of Wealth

Is Occupy Wall Street the Beginning of 21st Century Civil Rights?

People have taken to the streets because something is really wrong in America and they want change. What type of change they want and from whom is unclear at this moment, but Action is always a good start.

Is Occupy Wall Street the beginning of a 21st century civil rights movement? My answer is Possibly with a smile. I smile because although we have revised history to make ourselves the most moral people on the planet earth, the truth remains that we are far from completing the goals of the 20th century’s Civil Rights Movement. The truth is America ALWAYS takes a very long time to do the right thing. And lots of people get hurt in the meantime.

We are the country that wiped out most of the native people who were here before us, kept slavery in effect for 4 centurys, called the country free in 1776 but didn’t allow women to vote until 1920. Of course we didn’t have a Voting Rights Act until 1965. It took until 2011 for Gay Rights in the military. And yes we used to have children working in coal mines because our child labor laws were terrible for the first few hundred years. I could mention so many things that are basic human rights in the country that took way too long to come to pass but you get the point. We can see injustice and keep going along with it better than anyone on the planet but once we decide to do the right thing we want the world to adopt that view and we condemn anyone who is not so enlightened as America.

Occupy Wall Street can build itself into one of the great movements.  At its center is the idea that people should have a fair chance in life and not have to worry that the banks and other financial institutions are stealing their futures. It is a great idea that is taking shape but it will take time and those in power will not go quietly.

More importantly those that lead and support Occupy Wall Street should know that they will not be supported in word nor deed by the majority of people who will be helped by their efforts. 

The leaders of Occupy Wall Street should be prepared for lots of criticism from the very people they seek to help. Just as Martin Luther King and the civil rights workers did. Just as the women from the womens rights struggle did. Just as the first abolitionist did. They may live and die with high disapproval ratings like King only to one day be remade into champions of all Americans.

Power concedes nothing.  This system was not undone by credit default swaps and bad banking. It was doomed with passage of the Retirement Act of 1978 that created the IRA, 401K, thrift savings plan, and 403B. At that moment all of America’s workers became stock market gamblers with no real experience. That moment brought us here because America’s life savings flooded the market and created faux wealth of every type. That is what we must undo.

Slay that dragon and maybe we have a chance to survive. If we keep that system alive and keep training advisors the way we do now with the greatest compensation going to the plans with the highest risk we can not recover.

Will a 21st century civil rights save the people? I have no idea but we should do right because right is the right thing to do.

Will we recover? Yes we will recover, but perhaps not in your life time because in America we take a long long long time to do the right thing.

Wealth Wellness and Wisdom

Mark Fuller

Manager of Wealth

The Unholy Alliance “Your Money and the Stock Market”,you can do Much better!

It’s the day after another market collapse and a lot of people are feeling pretty sore because they have just been beaten up.  Why is this type of abuse acceptable for average Americans and is it all just part of the way saving and investing works?  The short answer is NO, this is not how it works. Today I’m going to share a brief history lesson that will tell you exactly how we as American workers got to the point where we watch our life savings go up and down everyday in the market and how we can get out of this trap.

The IRA, 401K, 403B, and Thrift savings plans did not always exist. If you were a worker in America before 1980 you didn’t have one of these plans. These plans were created by The Revenue Act of 1978 and it forever changed the average person’s relationship to the financial markets. Before this date American workers had “defined benefit plans” meaning when you retired from a company they would pay you a certain percentage of your former salary and benefits. Most American referred to them as Pension Plans. Firefighters, police officers, military, some government employees still have these plans. When the Revenue Act of 1978 was created it signaled the end of the defined benefit plan and started the era of the “Defined contribution Plan.” A defined contribution plan meant that an employee was allowed to put up to a certain amount of money into an investment account,with no financial advising, tax deferred and a company could also match all , a portion, or none of those funds. As America moved through the 80s companies large and small began moving out of pension plans and into qualified plans. This is what created the disaster you see today.

What’s so bad about investing in the market?

First of all workers are not really investors they are savers. The purpose is to save your money so that you can replace your income when you retire. Investing is risk. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. America’s life savings was not meant to be in the casino every single day. When you start work at a company they give you a form that says retirement plan options. You check low, medium or high risk and now 6 percent of your money is going into a fund you know nothing about. When the market is good and your money grows, like in the greatest bull market in history 1982-1999, you feel like a genius. When it crashed like in 1999, 2008, and yesterday you feel like a fool. Neither is true. The truth is you and most of the American work force should not have their retirement money in the stock market. Who advised you on that retirement portfolio. Who keeps telling you to hang in for the long-term even as large institutional companies fail.  Who is telling you all of these things, chances are you are and the media that sells advertising to the financial service companies.

What can I do instead of stock market investing? Pension plans are not an option, are they?

What you can do is get your life savings out of the market!  You can’t afford to lose everything. You couldn’t afford to lose half of everything in 2008 and chances are you have gone over a decade without making a dime if you subtract your contributions from your returns. Stop the madness now! And yes, there are was to set up your own private pension plans that are not exposed to the market and will secure your retirement without the up and down of the market. The companies that provide these plans have been producing uninterrupted returns for over a century. Paying dividends, not losing your hard-earned money. These companies are where the wealthy and educated store the vast majority of their fortunes. I hope you know that less than 20% of the wealthiest people’s money is in the stock market. The wealthy don’t take those risk. Think about it. The short answer is dividend paying insurance companies can set up a private pension plan for you that will work and pay you the income you are saving for. Not every company is the same and there are more companies to stay away from than to save with. Shoot me a message and I will be glad to point you in the direction of someone who can help you understand all there is to know about safe options.

Maybe you need the cold hard facts on the history of the 401k from the government itself. Here is the history and you will see that until 1980 American workers did not suffer loses like yesterday. When the great depression hit, workers did not have money in the stock market. It was a depression because companies closed and there was no work. Satchel Paige once said, “It’s not what you don’t know that will  hurt you, it’s what you think you know that ain’t so.”

Read the history for yourself:  http://www.ebri.org/pdf/publications/facts/0205fact.a.pdf

You may also find this video enlightening.  60 minutes did an excellent job on the 401k. Share this with your friends because it doesn’t need to be this way http://youtu.be/nAHgr9dY9BU

Wishing you Wealth Wellness and Wisdom

Mark Fuller – Manager of Wealth

Leaving a financial legacy , Seniors can do much more with retirement income than pay off homes!

Imagine working your whole life and paying every on time or early. You have done all the right things, raised your children, and worked for 40 years on a good job. Now you are retired and drawing a fixed income of $3500.00 per month from your pension and social security. You are also like many American seniors who are still paying a mortgage. You live in a $250,000.00 house but you have paid down your mortgage so you only have $100,000.00 left to pay before you house is paid off. Now when you got this mortgage you were ten years from retiring and earning $70,000.00 per year on a full-time job. The mortgage payment of $1700.00 per month represented less than 30% of your income but now in retirement the mortgage payment is now 50% of your monthly income. Taxes, insurance, utilities and medical expenses  have almost all disposable income going to bills. With 20 years left to pay on this mortgage and a life expectancy of 85 you might be paying for this property for the rest of your life.

But there is a great option that creates additional income and provides an opportunity to leave a much greater financial legacy than bill paying ever will. Instead of mortgage payments for the next 20 years you could create a great financial nest egg with the same money. Most never consider this option because they want to pay off the house and leave it to their kids(who already have homes of their own, and will sell your house as soon as they are able)

Lets assume $1500.00 a month was going to principal and interest and $200.00 was going to taxes and insurance. If you stopped paying a mortgage and started sending $1500.00 a month to a saving account paying 5% over the same 20 year period of time you would amass $620,619.46. So the same dollars that only pay off a house could have built up a huge financial legacy for your heirs. In addition, it could have acted as a safety net in case you fall on financial hard times.

For many seniors once they retire their retirement income is so low they can’t qualify for a home loan because their debt to income level in too high.   Most live on a lower fixed income than they had while they were working. With 85% of American’s net worth is in real estate equity and 65 %to 70% of the wealth belongs to seniors. This reality creates a huge problem or a huge opportunity. Being equity rich and cash poor is a disaster waiting to happen.

The reverse mortgage is one of the few government programs that actually performs as promised, if you use it properly. Advice form a great mortgage adviser and a great investment advisor can be invaluable. I hear more mythology about these products which is far from the truth and has seniors scared to death.

This is a mortgage that accrues interest instead of one that you pay monthly.  It is not you signing over you home to the bank. I have heard people say these mortgages are for poor people who can’t pay their mortgages . Everyday I see wealthy people use these mortgages to capture the equity in their properties and move the money to savings accounts where they can keep the growth.

Don’t let misinformation steal your opportunity. Get educated. Why would a person take half their income for 20 years to pay off a house when they could amass over $600,000.00?  Only because they don’t know any better. If people knew better they would do better.

For more information please contact my mortgage planner Omar Smith 443-271-5952 and get all the facts.

Wishing you Wealth Wellness and Wisdom

Manager of Wealth

If your Rent/Mortgage is greater than your savings deposits make these changes ASAP

I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves. Harriet Tubman

There is no simplistic answer to getting out of the trap that many have created by choosing to consume before choosing to save. The reasons why someone makes the choices that they do early on in their professional career are many and varied. Some people own certain homes and automobiles because the bank said yes ,not because they had the money to outright purchase them. In that sense for most people the idea of signing up to 30 year contracts on houses and up to 6 year contracts on cars seems like a great idea at the time. It is about ten years into these decisions that we start to feel a little trapped by them. They are limiting our freedoms,  limiting our travels, and limiting our ability to change careers. At least that is what we begin to believe.

It’s very common to say that debt is economic slavery but no one makes you get the credit cards , cars or home loans. On the reverse side of that statement, no one can make you keep going forward in those bad decisions.

Your freedom is in changing course quickly and with as little damage as possible.

Don’t do anything crazy, crazy got you here, so let’s do something practical. Let’s sit down and figure out what we want to accomplish with our money and second if our current actions are moving us toward that goal.

Our money does two things very well.  It can enrich our lives and the lives of our families or it can enrich the people we owe obligations. The money you save enriches you. The money you pay in bills enriches others.

At this point in life, what do you want? I’d like to expand my career in financial education and make a huge difference in how my people build wealth, realize dreams, and transfer knowledge to future generations. I’d also like to have as few monthly bills as possible and no personal debt. In addition, I’d like to travel at least 8 weeks a year for pleasure outside of business. Most importantly, I am building a system that will provide my family the income and information to generate wealth for generations to come.

Your goals are the fuel to get you through any of your past missteps so start with them. If you start by looking at your errors you may become distracted and unmotivated. Defend these goals with all your might. Taking your eye off your long-term goals can get you caught up in short-term money traps. Owning a series of cars can keep you from owning your dream car and owning a series of ever more expensive homes can keep you from ever purchasing your dream home. Add up all the car payments you have paid for all the cars you have ever owned. For most people by the time they are 45 yrs. old you have paid for a Bentley with all the car payments. Break the cycle and pay cash for the next car even if that means going to the auction and buying an affordable car.

Where is all the money going?

What is your salary or income?  How much is going to taxes? How much is going toward housing? How much is going toward your car or cars? How much toward household expenses? How much toward education for children? How much toward charity? How much is going toward long-term savings? Right it all down because it’s all going to help free you from bondage.

Don’t just look at these numbers and come to the conclusion that you need to earn more money. Thinking you just need to make more money without getting into the proper relationship with money will just cause you to make much bigger and more costly mistakes when money begins to come in. I have seen households with over $200,000.00 a year in earning that can’t save 20,000.00 a year. This is because when there are no strong goals and  plans to get there, all you have left is consumption.

Now that you see what your money is going toward you reduce the big money items. Maybe you should sell your house and get a more affordable house to create cash. If the house is worth less that you owe now is the perfect time for a short sale. I am seeing clients reduce their housing expensive by 1500.00 dollars or more a month just by selling and going to rent in a smaller home but a better neighborhood that meets their needs. What would it mean to your stress level to go from a $3500.00 mortgage payment to an $1500.00 a month rental payment. How much financial pressure is being relieved.

What about the car

Can you trade your car and car payment for one that is totally paid off or much more affordable? I have had clients trade in their cars with big car payments for used car in great condition. Don’t be afraid to turn in a car if the payment is killing you financially. I hear people saying but that will hurt my credit. Being broke will mess up your life and it’s only a matter of time before you drown in your payment.  What would it feel like to go from a $700.00 car payment to a 150.00 car payment or no car payment?

Reduce Your Income Taxes by Starting a business

This is a whole other topic but the easiest way to reduce taxes is to start a small business on the side to create expenses that can be deducted from your gross income. Seek the advice of a great accountant and you will be amazed at how many of your travel, food, entertainment, transportation, and housing expenses can be written off. Reduce your tax basis, this is huge! The system in America was set up to favor small businesses and land owners not working people. Remember this at all times.

While you are considering the move make sure to move to a great school district

It is better to rent in a great school district than to own in a bad one. Many will disagree it is their right but great public schools pay for themselves in two ways. First private schools can cost $1000.00 to $1500.00 per month. many people have more than one child and 12 years of schooling is the difference between them retiring with millions of dollars for retirement or retiring in poverty. Your kids need to be educated well and unless a private school is going to give your child a scholarship, save yourself a fortune and move to a great district. I’ve seen people move from $500,000.00 single family home communities to large townhouses in a great school district and save $2000.00 a month on housing and another $2000.00 per month on school. How much faster could life get better if you were able to save $4000.00 per month?

Recap

1. Unless you are saving money in your account you are working for free, what you keep is what you earned the rest belongs to the banks

2.Write down your life’s goals

3. Write down where your money has been going, now and what it could earn you if it was going in your savings

4. Until you can afford to buy the house and the car your dreams only buy foreclosures, distressed property, and vehicles from dealer auctions. This will save you hundreds of thousands in payments and interest

5. Reduce taxes by opening a small business

6. Live in a great school district and educate your kids for free

7. The more money you save the more free and secure you become, personal debt equals economic slavery

8. Remember if you can’t get out of economic slavery your children won’t be able to get free either

Get help with reducing your large expenses now. Call me if you need help 410-484-2717

Wishing you Well Wellness and Wisdom

Manager of Wealth

If your Mortgage/Rent payment is higher than your Savings deposit you are in Trouble

The title of the article says it all. Simply put, If you are paying more for your home than you are into your savings every month it is just a matter of time before you fall into major trouble. After a decade of being a mortgage broker and two decades of working with people’s investment needs I have noticed a trend that supersedes all others. 90% of the middle class pay more toward mortgages than toward retirement. This is very dangerous.

Growing trend among American professionals

The professional with all of her bills paid on time, perfect credit, and everything going according to plan is who I’m talking to. This article isn’t about those struggling but about those who are seemingly doing better than ever before.  The last boom in the economy came just in time for my generation. Chances are that if you are a professional person you have earned between $75,000.00 and $125,000.00 a year for the last decade. Last year I interviewed over 100 such professionals average age 39 with 15 plus years in the work world. For the last decade almost all had earned between $750,000.00 and $1,000,000.00 but not more than 6 had saved more than $100,000.00. I’m not talking about people who bought a lot of fancy cars and partied it all away. I’m talking about average joes who purchased their piece of the American dream.

Why is this trend a disaster waiting to happen? We live in an era of “defined contribution “plans(ie IRA and 401k) not an era of “defined benefit” plans(ie, pension plans) like the last generation. All we will have when we retire is what we have saved and the interest in can produce.  If the majority of our income goes toward houses, cars, private schools and taxes we are going to have a huge number of very poor seniors about 25 years from now.

Our system allows you to spend 30% to 40% of your before tax income on housing. Our system also takes about 30% of your income in taxes. The taxes you pay locally pay for public schools but many parents are sending one or two children to private school at an average cost of $1000.00 per month. The car payments average $450.00 per month.  The last consideration is being able to set aside 10% to 15% of income for savings.

Upward Mobility has a cost

For most the cost will be financial stability in their senior years. A $320,00.00 home with a $2500.00 payment will cost you $900,000.00 in mortgage payments. $2500.00 monthly payments into your savings over thirty years at 6% earns you $2,600,000.00 which will totally secure your retirement. So the house is costing much more than money.

The same is true for cars and expensive private school educations. Making these purchases before setting up a proper savings plan is costing you. It feels so good right now to live in a great community, drive a great car, and send your kids to great schools.  You won’t feel the pain until you turn 50 and realize you have a few years to correct your financial mistakes. Of course most never do.

Everyone teaches you that the answer to this problem is simply to make more money. It’s not. With more money you will make the same errors in judgement on a larger scale. Ask anyone making $300,000.00 in 2008 who lost their job and now can’t find one.  Ask them what kind of house they bought when they were making $300,000.00 a year and ask them how hard it is the pay for it now.

Common Sense is not so Common

You can fix these financial issues pretty easily if you have courage, a goal, and the heart to follow what you know to be right. Use my plan and you can have your cake and eat it to. Use the plan that 90% of African-American professionals are using and you can eat your cake for a little while until it runs out.

Tomorrow I will give you the steps to getting on track to have the best decade of your life.

Wishing you Wealth Wellness and Wisdom

Manager of Wealth

In Life as in Theater, A Professional Production has an Understudy waiting in the Wings, Amateurs hope for the best

Yesterday I was talking with a dear friend who is starring in a wonderful stage play and is playing every night to rave reviews. In live theater, every night it is a different experience for the actors and the audience. In short it’s like real life.

My usual questions were about how last night’s performance had gone and how the critics reviews were going when I learned something  interesting. Two nights ago the entire production was thrown into jeopardy because one of the main actors had overslept and the show could not go on without him to play his role. Being naive I asked, why the understudy couldn’t take his place. I learned that in most regional and community theater there are rarely any understudy.

Apparently one monkey can stop a show in regional theater. On broadway, in movies, even in Vegas there is always a backup plan but in everyday theater if one cast member gets sick or has an emergency it can bring the whole production to a  halt.

It seems that regional theater is run like most Americans run their family lives. Everything is ok as long as nothing major happens. If something does happen there is rarely a real well thought out plan.

The recession caught many of us without a plan. Deadly car accidents catch families unprepared everyday, when parents are suddenly taken away and no provisions are made. Deaths from cancer, heart disease, and diabetes are killing more young people in their 30s and 40s than ever before.

How many funerals have you been to in the last few years for young people? Few had a really solid plan in place to take care of their families and continue the work they had been engaged in everyday of their lives. No plans to replace income or address the expenses that come from a parent not being there. No college plan left in place. No financial legacy left for the next generation.

There were however devastated and overwhelmed survivors; there are always survivors. Devastated by the lost and overwhelmed by having to carry on life without a partner or parent.

Life is a professional production and it should be run that way. There must be back up plans, understudy, and back up dancers waiting in the wings in case the stars of the show can’t perform. If community and regional theaters want to truly prepare actors then they need to prep for what can go wrong.

You may not be wealthy but you need to have a well thought out back up plan like the wealthy.  The pain caused from not having a plan is greater on a small family. Plan for every eventuality  and you can more easily concentrate on the rest of your life.  Get advisors to educate and train  your family.

Good luck in the professional production called Life.

“Break a leg”

B of A and Wells Fargo signal the Apocalypse for American Seniors and Everyone else

It may already be too late; but in America I am way before my time. For the last few years we have been warning people to take steps to guard their assets and equity from the impending downturn. Now in a major move that should be front page news Bank of America and Wells Fargo are exiting the reverse mortgage market.

Please read the article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/your-money/mortgages/18reverse.html

This is bad news for American seniors because Bank of America and Wells Fargo are taking the position that they don’t want to be overly exposed to the huge downturn in home prices that is about to happen. Instead they are willing to leave 43.6% of the reverse mortgage market on the table and opt for safety. When the two biggest players in a market walk away you can bet they know something that the American public doesn’t know.

If seniors lose the ability to borrow with reverse mortgages they will affectively be cut off from their equity because most can not qualify for loans on their fixed incomes. Great news for banks and really bad news for seniors. This move would also cut seniors off from what could be 85% of their net worth; because 85% of American’s net worth is real estate equity.

Why should the rest of Americans who are not seniors care? Because statistically the baby boomers are holding this country together. 65% to 70% of the wealth belongs to the boomers and 85% of that wealth is the real estate. If the Boomers get hurt we all get hurt and by the way, the boomers are our parents, grand parents, aunts and uncles who will look to their broke children for help.

There is time but not much to get educated and make some much better decisions, Don’t be like the majority of people who simply let their equity evaporate in 2008 even though all the best financial people were warning of an impending crisis. In a high inflation period interest rates soar for lending but they also soar for savings. So you would rather have your equity in a safe place earning interest for the next decade(because it will take at least that long to recover) 0r losing 30% to 40% with the drop in home prices.

And please don’t forget that the government is proposing to raise home down payments to 20% which will further kill home prices and equity.

It is time to make a move.

Watching the whole place burn to the ground is not an option. When the informed money moves away from the table you better wake up and do the right thing before the options are taken away from you.

Manager of Wealth

New York Times Article : http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/your-money/mortgages/18reverse.html

Lebron James’ Failure to Win the Championship is a great business lesson

In case you haven’t heard, the Miami Heat lost the NBA Finals and the Dallas Mavericks are the Champs. The Mavs winning it all is the secondary headline however. The primary story is “Lebron James Failed.”

The Mavs did everything they needed to do to secure the championship. They played hard, smart and made up for each others shortcomings; never putting themselves out of contention. In fact, if you are a real sports fan then you know that this was the closest series ever played in NBA history. 4 points decided the winner from the loser in the games leading up to last night’s victory.

Now the sports media is giving Lebron James the beat down for a season that ended in failure. I think there are a few business lessons in this season that we can all profit from.

First

The decision to go to Miami and join forces with D Wade and C. Bosh was the right decision.

Every team owner in the country does exactly what James, Wade and Bosh did last year. They try to put the best possible team on the floor to win the championship. When the owners bring players together and they get to the finals they are regarded as brilliant but when the players dare to determine their own best interest the media and fans have a problem. The feeling is these dumb jocks need to shut up and play but this is a business and these are business men. Their decision got them within two games of their stated goal. In business you will fail and fall short but you have got to be mindful of your progress. The world will laugh at you for even trying but you are getting closer every second. Don’t get caught up in your failures, they are only a distraction.

Second

Sometimes the environment beats you and sometimes you beat yourself.

If you watched the last two games of this series it was clear Miami failed itself. They simply failed to do their best.

In business, if you can acknowledge that you could have done more and figure out what else you could have done, you give yourself a chance to succeed next time.

Third

Hate is terrible fuel and will often clog your engine at the worst possible time.

Since the 1990′s many athletes and entertainers have said they used peoples’ hate as their motivation. The outcomes are always bad. Think Puffy(death of Biggie), Kanye (total public mental break down), and now Lebron. The reason hate is a bad fuel is that it will get you through many obstacles but when it gets really tough you start thinking about your enemies. You get embarrassed and you start thinking about failing at the worst possible moment. I saw James play the first three series and he was thinking about winning, in the last two games  he was thinking about losing. It was all over his body language.

The mind can only hold one thought at a time, in business you can not allow that thought to be the voice of your competitors or detractors. That voice must be positive and affirming.

Lebron James is on the right track to accomplish his dreams and he is on the right team to make it happen. He just needs to work on his mental game because he came really close and I have no doubt he will get there.

What about you? Have you made the right decisions and surrounded yourself with the best people? Is it your environment or your actions that are keeping you from your goal? Are you fueling your mission with the positive energy of your supporters or the hate of your detractors?

Make the mental adjustments and go win your championship!

Mark Fuller

Manager of Wealth