Business
The Secret Method for Establishing Your Child’s Financial Future
The innate drive I have as a parent to teach, influence, and leave a legacy for my children was unexpected. It was sparked at the hospital when they were born and hasn’t stopped since then.
While I was growing up, I wasn’t taught much about money, investing, business, and entrepreneurship. I had to learn a lot of painful lessons. I have been fortunate to establish a financial system from which my kids are already benefiting.
My system runs contrary to the traditional financial system parents and grandparents used to save for their kids’ future in many ways.
But the only way to get uncommon results is through uncommon means. This is my system for establishing for your child’s future.
The Unnecessary Burden of a 529 Plan
The 529 plan, also called a qualified tuition plan, is a tax-advantaged savings plan designed to encourage saving for future college costs. These plans are very popular and have become a sacred cow, even though they have only been around since 1996.
When my two girls were born, my dad was insistent on contributing to a 529 plan for college. At the time, I was barely into my first job out of college and hadn’t learned what I teach now, so I decided to open one up.
Today, millions of people have them, and your kids and grandkids are attached to them. In my experience, saying no to a 529 plan is like telling a mother her baby is ugly.
I don’t want to say what you’re doing is bad. You’re planning for your child or grandchild’s financial well-being, which is commendable. But if you look at the nature of a 529 plan, it’s not set up for your best interests or the best interests of the child or grandchild.
It’s pitched to you as a benefit, but it’s just another way for Wall Street to sell you mutual funds and make money off your desire to do well by your kids.
The objective of the 529 plan is to put money away and pay for future college expenses while getting a tax benefit for doing so. The catch is, if the money is not used for college or some other qualified higher education expense, you have to pay penalties for withdrawing it. What if you don’t need the account anymore—your kid decides to skip college, for instance—and you want to use that money for something else? Is the penalty you pay on the 529 plan worth it from the beginning?
Additionally, the burden on families to completely fund college has an opportunity cost that is difficult to quantify. Because of that, the financial future of the family may be put in jeopardy. I have seen it bankrupt a few.
The 529 in Practice
Here’s an example of what I mean. Assume your child is five years old and you have committed to taking care of their educational costs for a four-year degree.
Right now, the average annual cost to attend a public university is $25,000, rising by 5 percent a year. That means that by the time a five-year-old today is 18 and ready to go to college, tuition would be almost $50,000. Over four years, factoring in tuition rises, that comes to a total cost of $213,344.
For a 529 account to pay out that much when it’s needed, it has to start with $100,000 and earn a net 5 percent every year through graduation.
Or, you could just save $8,147 a year for 18 years.
To really drive this point home, the opportunity cost for the family during their later years is really where the price is paid.
If you saved $8,147 a year for 18 years and then let it grow past that point until your future retirement, your balance at the end of 35 years would be $551,602.
If you spent that down through a 20-year retirement, the cash flow would be $42,154.24 per year, for a total lost opportunity cost of: $843,084.80.
A More Certain Future
The opportunity cost that comes with following the typical college path doesn’t simply disappear if funded through a WMA—it only gives you more options.
You’re trying to prepare for something in the future that may not happen the way you think or may not happen at all. Consider the opportunity cost of that money—what that money could do between now and the time your child goes to college.
When I learned about what I do today, I cancelled the 529 plans I had and opened Wealth Maximization Accounts on each of my kids. Today, I have multiple policies for each of them.
However, the idea isn’t simply to treat these as 529 comparisons. The money inside a WMA can be used now, without any restrictions. In my experience, that has been a most powerful tool to teach kids, including my own, about money.
Instead of saying no to things they want, I can say yes. The money is borrowed against their policies, however, so it becomes their responsibility to pay it back. We call it our family bank.
For example, my daughter Meghan has used her policies to buy numerous types of electronics and a $400 gymnastics mat, amounting to thousands of dollars cumulatively. She had to create a payback plan before she was given the money. She felt she could earn enough for the payments by doing homework online and increasing the amount of babysitting she did in the neighborhood.
She also researched ways to earn bigger tips by giving better service, such as making little videos of the kids, making sure the house was cleaner than when the parents left, and leaving a handwritten note. This experience has given Meghan an appreciation for where money comes from, what a loan is, and what interest is—both the interest you pay and the interest you earn. I know that will benefit her in the future.
Wealth Maximization Accounts for your kids are the ideal way to teach them about money and also to prepare for their future purchases, such as a car, college, and beyond. Properly structured plans are a superior alternative to a 529 college savings plan. For more resources take a look at Paradigm Life.
Take “family game night” to a whole other level with this outstanding quiz maker.
Let’s be honest – nowadays it is somewhat of a trying task to try and get the family together. Social media and online video games are the medium of entertainment that children and teens are so wholly engaged in.
With smartphones now becoming an integral part of our everyday life, gaining attention from others can be a difficult task and even more importantly trying to get the attention of our own family sometimes can be difficult.
However, “family game night” can be taken to a whole other level with a software called Typeform.
Typeform offers you the ability to make a quiz out of anything you have interests in. If your kids are a lover of the famed and popular Star Wars franchise, then you can make a game out of that.
Or if your children are fans of the superhero movies – that have deluged the cinematic world – then you will also have the ability to create outstanding trivia games that will keep your children interested and entertained. But more importantly, it will be a great way to bring the family together for the family fun night.
This software allows you also better to promote your online business or to make better lesson plans if you are a teacher.
If you own a family business or if you are a stay at home mom and dad, as that is becoming quite popular, then you will be able to significantly boost your online sales and your online presence with Typeform as you will be able to interact with your customers and clients significantly. Many statistic have shown that more sales and more engagement are most often done when people can visually see something, i.e video advertising. With this online software, you will be able to gain and boost leads.
But the best part of all this are the learning quizzes that Typeform offers, which can turn Typeform from a fun game tool to a serious learning tool, without taking out the fun! This is a great way to prepare kids of any age for those inevitable exams that seem to be always coming up. And since kids already associate it with fun, they are much less likely to resist when it comes time to study.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start, no problem! Typeform offers a plethora of templates, from geography quizzes to trivia quizzes to math quizzes.
Make a quiz – and this is quite salient as this can also be used to help your child or kids to study for their test the next day. This is an outstanding way to prepare them for the day ahead and to help give them the confidence they will need to tackle the exam the next day.
Never again will studying be boring.
Take back your family fun night and enjoy what it is to be a family again.
If you would have told me five years ago that I was going to build a successful porn company, chances are I’d say you’re crazy (or probably call you something worse). But here I am, CEO and co-founder of ManyVids, and I could not be prouder or more professionally challenged. This is my dream job, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
So how does a girl like me wind up in a place like this? It’s been a wild ride. Starting my own business was always in the cards, from setting up a lemonade stand as a child, to studying business in University. Everything seemed to be going according to plan as I was busy running my own clothing store, but when a flood destroyed my inventory and wiped me out financially, that’s when things went from bad to weird. Desperate for cash, a friend of mine suggested I could make some quick money as a cam girl. I had never heard the term before, so as soon as he explained that “camming” involved stripping or performing simulated sexual acts in front of a camera, I let him know exactly what I thought of his not-so modest proposal. There is no way I would EVER do something like that! But two weeks later, amid growing debt and no light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, there I was, adjusting the lighting, fixing my hair and setting up for my first cam show.
I soon put everything I had into being the best cam girl there was. I researched it day and night, worked on my wardrobe, my technique and building a loyal audience. Spending this time inside an industry that is pretty much in the unknown to most people, I was shocked to discover a world I had never given much thought to. The people who work in the adult entertainment business, from the men and women creating amateur cam videos to porn stars in adult films, they were all lovely, gentle, and clever human beings who deserved to be treated with respect and have greater control over what they do. Porn is a multi-billion-dollar industry and from what I can tell, these “porn stars” weren’t making their fair share of the profits.
So, I put on my entrepreneurial hat once again and decided to step away from in front of the camera to build a website that was an e-commerce platform for these sex workers that would make each one of them entrepreneurs as well. They would have their own marketplace, where they set up what they’d like to sell, setting the price, producing and promoting their content on their terms, and they would have full copyright ownership of their work, a huge deal in an industry full of pirated content. Plus, we would promote sex-positivity and raise awareness about the issue of abuse among sex workers. And so ManyVids was born. In the beginning it was just the three of us, Sed, my friend and now boyfriend who had originally introduced the idea of camming, along with our friend Gino. Together we worked in a basement apartment, the guys worked on the coding and the back end for the website and I came up with the marketing plans to launch our product and managed all the financial aspects of running the business.
After 3 months of intense work, things started to take off and it kept growing faster and faster. As the company grew, success came with a whole slew of different problems: basically, how do we keep up? There were cash flow problems, lack of resources, lack of experience, lack of time and lack of space. We converted our apartment into our official ManyVids Office. We kept one room to sleep in and transformed the rest of space for working. At that time, every decision we took was a huge risk. Because of the lack of funds, one wrong move and everything, the business, our dreams would be over. We hired our first team members without having the proper funds. We believe it was the right decision and it was. We moved the MV Offices from the basement apartment into a much bigger, much nicer office space, moving a few times as the team grew, to our current 16 000 square feet office in Montreal, Quebec.
Today, almost 4 years after the initial launch of ManyVids.com, the MV Team is composed of over 100 dedicated team members that believe in our vision and mission and wish to help adult content creators from all over the world become successful independent entrepreneurs.
At ManyVids, we have the utmost respect for all our strong and courageous MV Stars. There are over 17,200 performers on our site and the most important thing that we want to get across to them is this:
“You are not alone! You are important and you can and will accomplish amazing things in this world”.
I am incredibly proud of everything we’ve accomplished and it’s just the beginning. There is an incredible amount of work ahead of us that to help change perceptions and conditions for these people who give so much of themselves. I truly believe that it’s possible to have a profitable business that considers caring and helping a top priority that influences everything we do. What could be better than that?
Lets face it, our lives are busier now than ever. Work life balance is a constant struggle and when you’re trying to juggle a family, work, keeping fit and healthy, running a household and try to have some semblance of a social life any little thing that gives back some precious time is well worth it.
One thing that seems to be a huge time stealer is shopping. Dragging yourself and the family to the local high street or retail park is time consuming, often stressful and generally not enjoyable. There are definitely better things to be doing.
Of course there is always online shopping. No need to leave the sofa during those precious spare 5 minutes you have after the children have done to bed but before you have to run around preparing for the following day.
After all any retailer worth their salt invests heavily in a decent online presence. The perfect answer. Greater choice, 24/7 access, competitive prices and delivery straight to your door. It is no wonder it is the busy person’s go to for all their household needs.
Yet even that is becoming tiresome. With access to shops from all round the world, the web is now reaching saturation point. Busy shoppers are becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume and spend hours trawling hundreds of retailers for the right product at the right price.
Step forward the next generation of online shopping – online shopping centres like Buyviu UK have finally opened their digital doors to the British shopper.
Anything you could possibly need, all in one place
Of course the real benefit of online shopping is speed and convenience, any time by any device you happen to have to hand. We want to get what we need quickly and easily so we can get on with whatever the next thing is on our mental to do list.
What we don’t want to be doing is spending hours scrolling and scrolling through hundreds of sites looking for a good price. This is why the online shopping centre is a master stroke. It takes all of that scrolling away doing all the hard work.
It brings together hundreds of retailers and thousands of products in one easy to use site. Imagine going to the biggest shopping centre in the world but without the crowds, the nightmare parking and bored kids.
Buyviu UK does exactly this, bringing together everything from fashion, jewellery and shoes to grocery staples, car parts, home and garden accessories and appliances and sports equipment. It is quite literally a one-stop-shop.
You can find anything you could possibly need for home, family and the odd little treat for yourself. So instead of wasting a whole weekend visiting the garden centre, the pet store, the car garage, the craft shop, numerous clothing stores, the sports store and the home appliance store, you can save yourself hours and not even move from the sofa. Sounds great right?
The range available in this online shopping centre is incredibly wide ranging. Whether it is school supplies for the kids, household appliances, pet accessories and even food. It has everything.
In the fashion section you can find all the top brands in clothing, footwear, jewellery and sports, from Nike and Adidas to Swarovski and Marc Jacobs. And if you are looking for gifts, there is a huge range of toys and baby products or beauty and home products.
So if you find yourself needing a new lawn mower at the same time as a new clarinet – Buyviu have got you covered.
It even sells car parts, sports equipment and arts and crafts. With such a lot of choice, navigating the website needs to be carefully planned. Buyviu make this easy, organising categories by brand or type, with the ability to search and filter by size, price, colour, merchant and material across all products. No matter what you need Buyviu will find it for you and get you to that shop to make your purchase.
Top brands right at your fingertips
The great thing about an online shopping centre is the easy access to all the top brands you know and love. Brands like ASOS, Dolce & Gabbana, Adidas, Nike, Zanussi, Bosch and other well known household names is second to none.
The baby range is particularly good with brands like Baby Bjorn and Bugaboo easily accessible. The site covers everything from potties, to prams and car seats and of course clothes for children of all ages for when they inevitably grow out of absolutely everything in record time.
Within a couple of clicks you have access to hundreds of retailers. There is just no need to spend hours on the internet going for site to site when it is all in one place for you already.
To make it even better, there is also an easy to access outlet section, all year round. The site pulls in discounted products across all the ranges and retailers and puts them in one easy to search location.
No more waiting for seasonal sales, or a long drive to the nearest outlet village for bargain hunting. Shoppers can do it all from the comfort of their sofa.
Discounts on well known brands are incredibly tempting, in places as much as 70% off, with a much greater choice. It is no wonder that shoppers prefer to spend their hard earned cash online, and the great filtering and search speeds the whole process up considerably.
Take back your free time and go and enjoy yourself
So with all those household needs met, and money saved from super bargains, all you need to do know is decide what to do with your spare time instead. Now you can avoid the weekend shopping chaos why not do something more fun for all the family? Nothing is more important and why not make the most of it.
We finally have a new way to surf the net for purchases. The online shopping centre is the way forward for busy people everywhere.
