Thanks for checking out my ebook!  Feel free to learn more about it by reading below.  Or if you’d like to order a copy (either digital or print), you can use this link to jump straight to Amazon.

“How much money do I need to retire?” … Isn’t that the magic question?

No matter what your plan is or how you intend to go about achieving financial freedom, we’ve all got some idea of what the “number” is.  Inside of our heads, we all have some amount of money that we think we need to shoot for in order to finally feel secure enough to be able to quit our jobs.

But how many of us really know what our number is based on? How did you come up with your goal? Are you assuming that you’ll need the same amount of money in retirement that you do right now?

What if you could be just as happy living on $10,000 less? After-all, did you know that every $10,000 less that you need in retirement works out to $250,000 fewer that you need to save in your nest egg?

Are you basing your goal on the 4 percent rule?  Or are you listening to one of those “doom-and-gloom” headlines that try to convince you that you’ll only be able to pull out as little as 3 or 2 percent in the future?  Worse yet, did you actually calculate your number, or are you simply following along one of those sensationalized headlines from a major media outlet that says we’ll all need at least “a couple of million dollars” in order to live happily ever after?  Please!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the thousands of early retirement posts, articles, and books I’ve read over the years, it’s that you in NO WAY need “a couple of million dollars” in order to retire successfully at any age you want!  With the right know how and a tiny bit of math, I can show you that a nest egg half that size will be able to create all the passive income you’ll ever need for the rest of your life!  The trick is in knowing what the right values are to use for your plan.  To do this properly, you need to separate fact from fiction.

This is exactly what we’re going to explore in my new ebook “How Much Money Do I Really Need to Retire and Achieve Financial Independence?” from our Early Retirement Solution series.

The Dangers of Over-Saving

Why write an entire book on this topic?

Because like many things in personal finance, I’m trying to help you make your life BETTER!

By that, let me explain …

As I mentioned above, when it comes to planning for retirement, you’ll find no shortage of articles that talk about what an awful job most people are doing on building their nest eggs.  Hence, the bland advice and generalizations that we should all be saving “a couple of million dollars” for retirement.

But there’s something I’ve noticed about that kind of advice that you don’t hear a lot of people talking about.  And I didn’t realize it until I was out at lunch with a friend one day.

My friend was doing a pretty darn-good saving for retirement.  But he was blindly saving towards one of those generic goals of thinking he needed a couple of million dollars to be secure.  Hence, he had no idea what his “number” truly was.

What’s the problem with this?  Over-saving!  Thinking he’ll need more money than he actually needs could end up causing him to:

• Work for longer than he needed
• Save harder than he needed to
• Enjoy less of his money in the present

Who wants to do that?  When it comes to putting your money to work for you, I want you to get the most amount of value out of your money that you can possibly get!

And if that means figuring out a way to retire sooner, saving less, and enjoying more of your money right here and now, then so be it!

Being Realistic With Your Goals

A big part of your success will start with the one major decision you need to make about your future: How much money you think you will need in retirement each year.

Whether it’s whatever you make right now, more, or less, it doesn’t matter!  You have to have some sort of goal in mind.

Don’t worry! I’m not going to try to beat you down and convince you that you need to live at near-poverty level in order to retire more quickly.

I don’t want to do that! And I don’t think anyone else should have to do that either.

You should enjoy your financial freedom the way you want to!

Instead, we’ll talk to you about two main things: Being realistic and understanding what sorts of challenges the number you pick might mean for you.

In addition, we’ll also cover a few income-reducing techniques that you may not have previously considered.  For example:

• If you think you will need the same income you’re making right now, did you consider that in retirement you won’t have to pay the same 7.65% FICA (your Social Security and Medicare) that you are now?
• You also won’t be saving for retirement when you’re retired. So that might be another 5 to 15% off your current income target.
• What if you could have your house paid off by then? That might be almost $300,000 less you’ll need to save.
• How about stretching out driving your car so that you don’t have to make car payments? Saving $500 per month would knock off another $150,000 in savings that you’ll need.

There are lots of these little tricks you can use to whittle-down how much you’ll actually need.  And as a result, each of them will only help lower the amount of money you’ll need to save.

What Exactly Is a Safe Withdrawal Rate?

Another thing I’ve discovered on my own personal finance journey is that the rate at which you plan to withdraw money from your nest egg will have a HUGE impact on how much you’ll ultimately need to save.

For example, if you want to generate $50,000 of income but plan to conservatively withdraw only 3% per year, then you’ll need $1,666,667 in savings.  But what if a number as high as 5% could work?  If it that was possible, then you’d only need $1,000,000.

So how do we find out?  What would be the implications of using a higher (or lower) safe withdrawal rate?

To know for sure, we’ll take a deep-dive into the world of retirement planning research.  We’ll see what kind of facts these authors have uncovered and what this could mean for our savings efforts.

We’ll start with the gold standard: The 4 percent rule.  As it’s widely known, the 4 percent rule says that you can start off your retirement taking out 4 percent of your portfolio and then you can keep making that same withdrawal inflation-adjusted every year for at least 30 years with a high-degree of success.

How high?  This is where it gets interesting.  People often mis-quote the 4 percent rule as having a 95% chance of success.  But this was the result reported in the second of two papers that made the 4 percent rule famous: A paper called the Trinity Study (1998).  In the original article from 1994 that first suggested the idea of the 4 percent rule, the author Bill Bengen actually concluded that you would have a 100% chance of success for a minimum of 33 years!

A 100% chance?  That’s pretty good!

And notice we said “minimum”.  That means out of all the dozens of time-periods he back-tested, 33 was actually the lowest number.  For a great number of those same time periods, the 4 percent rule actually worked for 50 or more years!

What else is interesting about both Bengen’s original article and the Trinity Study is that there was a ton of other useful conclusions made.  For example:

• If you want to retire early and want your money to last 50 or more years, Bengen found that a rate of 3.5% would accomplish this for nearly every rolling period he back-tested!
• If you could be flexible with making inflation adjustments, you could actually increase your safe withdrawal rate all the way up to 7.0%!

But we’re not going to stop there.  We’ll also look at:

• An economic indicator called the Shiller CAPE and what how that might allow you to use a higher safe withdrawal rate.
• Some of the skeptics of safe withdrawal rates and the alternative strategies they offer instead.

Once we put all of this together, you’ll have an arsenal of ninja-moves to use to put together one super-powered retirement plan!  You’ll have options, and be able to customize each of these strategies to make it fit to your own unique needs.

Download Your Copy Today!

If you’d like to know more, then please: Download “How Much Money Do I Really Need to Retire and Achieve Financial Independence?” today!  Your return on investment may help you to save hundreds of thousands of dollars less, knock years off of your time-table, and give you the confidence and peace of mind that you’re looking for!

And as a favor to me, after you finish reading, please leave a review on Amazon.  It will help me to know how I’m doing as well as let other readers know if you believe there’s value in what they’re about to learn!

Thank you in advance!

Featured image courtesy of Amazon / MyMoneyDesign

The post Ebook 5: How Much Money Do I Really Need to Retire And Achieve Financial Independence? appeared first on My Money Design.

Age 59-1/2 is when the IRS says you can finally begin to access the hard-earned retirement savings you’ve got in your tax-sheltered accounts like your 401(k) and IRA.

For most people who retire at age 62, the age 59-1/2 requirement is no problem.  But if you’re a diligent saver and on track to reach financial freedom long before then, this can be a huge log in the road!

I had this problem for years.  In my twenties when I first started learning more about personal finance, I began to realize how powerful compounding returns were and started making strives to save more and more into my 401(k) and IRA every year.

I kept re-running the numbers, and found I could retire as soon as age 55 … then age 50 … and now as soon as age 46!

But then I hit a wall!  I noticed that almost every type of retirement account did not allow withdrawals until age 59-1/2.  If you did try to take out your money early, then you’d have to pay an annoying 10% penalty (which would really dig into your gains).

I was frustrated …  and there had to be a way around this!

Finding the Solutions

I knew that other people from online blogs and books I had read had somehow been able to pull off this whole “retire early” thing.  And so I began to do my research.

For the next few years, I immersed myself in the stories of early retirees and carefully paid attention to how they were able to pull it off.  I dissected the finances they reported and took note of any strategy they used to create income streams before age 59-1/2.

Sometimes their techniques used little-known IRS loopholes to gain early access to their savings.  Other times it included creating alternative ways to make money.  Everything was on the table for evaluation!

That is what my latest ebook (#4) “Early Retirement Solutions: How to Unlock Your Savings Before Age 59 ½ Without Penalty” is all about.  It’s my collection of all the best tricks and techniques I’ve found for tapping your money when YOU want to.

Each of the strategies we’ll go through are ones that are used by real retirees found on personal blogs and other online forums.  Wherever it’s applicable, I’ve also included links back to the actual IRS pages that also highlight certain rules and exceptions that will help you along the way.

Knowing what your options are and that you have the ability to exercise them can make years of difference in when you decide to declare your financial independence.  As you’ll find out, your money isn’t truly “locked up”.  There are actually quite a few different ways you can get access to it and start making withdrawals as you need them.  There will, of course, be some rules and things to watch out for.  But if you’re clever enough to have come this far on the path to early retirement, then you should have no problem following along and being successful.

Get your copy from Amazon now!  And as a favor to me, if you enjoy this book, please leave some honest feedback on Amazon.  By doing so, you’ll make it easier for other people just like you to find this title within the Kindle bookstore and learn about the same useful strategies.

The Start of the “Early Retirement Solutions” Series

The title “Early Retirement Solutions” is the name I’ll be giving to a series of other ebooks I plan to write over the next few years targeting other specific questions you might have about early retirement and how to get there.

When it comes to financial freedom, there are so many things that can trip you along the way.  Everything from the best ways to save your money to tax avoidance and knowing just how much is the right amount to withdraw safely.  I plan to spend a little bit of time with many of these sorts of topics and do a deep-dive into each one individually.

If there are any special questions or topics you’d like to see me cover, please feel free to let me know by commenting below or sending me an email.  I’d be glad to hear what you’re interested in knowing more about.

Technical Notes

In case you’re wondering how I was able to write another ebook so quickly after the release of my third ebook “Retire Sooner”, the truth is: I didn’t!

The contents of this book are notes I’ve been collecting for years.  I started drafting them into an ebook format in the late Fall of 2015, but then hesitated to finalize it because I was considering using the content to start a new website instead.  In the end, I concluded that information was better suited as a ebook, and so I went ahead with the publishing.

One other fun fact: For this ebook and my last one, I’ve actually learned how to format ebooks for Kindle myself.  As it turns out, it’s not that complicated.  This is a big advantage for me because it means that I’ll now be able to revise and release ebooks whenever I want without having to wait for someone to format it for me.

Readers – What strategies are you using to fund your early retirement?  How are you going to bridge those years between when you declare financial freedom and age 59-1/2?

Featured image courtesy of Amazon

The post Unlock Your Retirement Savings Before Age 59-1/2 to Retire Early With My New eBook appeared first on My Money Design.

30?  40?  50+? ….

What if there was a way to simply knock years, even decades, off of your retirement plan?

That’s what the focus of my new ebook, Retire Sooner!: How to Optimize Your Plan to Achieve Financial Freedom, is all about!  In this book, we’re going to take the “normal” path to retirement and turbo-charge it with a bunch of different tools that will have you accelerating towards financial freedom before you know it!

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met in my life (like in this story here) that are forced (perhaps even brain-washed) into thinking they need to work until they are 60 or 70 years old, all to save up to some unrealistic savings goal of thousands or maybe even millions more than they actually need.  That’s so crazy!

No matter how old you are or where you’re at in the retirement planning process, these will be tricks you can use to speed things up.  And you’ll be able to use them without having to sacrifice the lifestyle you want to live.

The Failure of Conventional Retirement Planning Advice

It’s no wonder most people feel like they will NEVER retire ….

During my research for my writing, I came across a lot of really “bland” news articles with overly-simplistic retirement planning advice.

I thought it might be fun to take that tired advice, put it into a retirement calculator, and see what you get.

Do you want to know what I found?  Following all of this minimal advice, it would take you almost 66 years to reach your retirement savings target!

How insane is that?  Get a job at 23, and work until you’re 89 years old …

That’s when it came to me: I know LOTS of great tips for improving your retirement plan.  For years, I’ve been trying to optimize my own plan by shaving a year here or a decade there; all with the goal of reaching a point financial independence that I will be happy with.

So I decided that this should be the theme of the book.  But I didn’t want to stop there.

In order to really demonstrate the power of these tips, I wanted to do something that you’ve probably never seen done in any other ebook – I wanted to “quantify” just how much each piece of advice was going to improve our plan.

That’s why at the end of every chapter, we’re going to take that “66-year” plan, apply the advice, and watch the years roll off!  This way, you’ll be able to fully appreciate the impact that each tip could have on improving your financial situation.

You’ll be amazed at how low we’re able to hack this plan down to!

Knocking Off Year After Year, Decade After Decade

Whenever I tell someone of my plans to retire early, they always ask me: How exactly are you going to do this?

The amazing thing is that there is no “one” secret.  It’s really a combination of secrets that, when grouped together, form an incredibly powerful force!

For example, did you know that:

Investing more aggressively in stocks over bonds throughout your saving years will result in a 32% reduction in the number of years you need to save?

Or, did you know that:

Paying off your mortgage early can cut off 29% of the number of years you’ll need?

If we were to keep going with the rest of tips, do you know how many years you’ll be able to cut that 66-year plan down to?

… Almost 15 years!

You read that right!  Using realistic options to save more, avoid taxes, and invest more aggressively, you’ll create a power-packed punch that will have your retirement plan down to less than a fourth of what it was originally!

I promise this isn’t going to be one of those hokey plans where someone tries to convince you to survive off of $1,000 per month, sell all your stuff, move to a third world country, or some other radical thing.  We’re going to create and refine a plan that captures YOUR life – the way you want to live it!

No matter where you are at with retirement planning or how much money you make, you don’t have to feel lost.  You don’t have to feel like financial independence is some goal you’ll never be able to achieve.  You can rise above the situation and take some major leaps and bounds forward.  You can hack your retirement plan and easily turn it into something you’ll be able to achieve.

Get your copy of RETIRE SOONER now!

Readers – What do you do to optimize your retirement plan?  How do you accelerate your savings, and how many years have you been able to cut your own plan down to?

Featured image courtesy of Amazon.

The post Find Out How You Can RETIRE SOONER with My New eBook appeared first on My Money Design.

If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to lately, I’ve been working behind the scenes on my next ebook project.

And now I need you to help me pick the title that sounds the best!

The new book will be a collection of awesome optimization strategies for knocking years off your retirement plan.

We’re going to start the book with a “conventional-style” retirement plan, and then work through it piece by piece.

By the end of the text, the plan will down to a fraction of its original timeline!

Keywords:

Here is the title structure using a few choice keywords that I would like to use.

Which ones do you like the best?

Main title:

• Retire Sooner!
• How to Retire Sooner!
• Retire Quicker!
• Retire Faster!

Subtitle:

How to Optimize Your Plan …

• For Achieving
• To Achieve
• For Finding
• To Find
• To Reach
• To Discover
• For

… (last phrase)

• Financial freedom
• Financial independence

Examples:

How to Retire Sooner!  Optimize Your Plan to Achieve Financial Freedom

Retire Sooner!  How to Optimize Your Plan for Achieving Financial Independence

Retire Quicker!  How to Optimize Your Plan for Finding Financial Freedom

Readers – Please leave a comment below and let me know which one you like the best, or any other suggestions you might have.

I’d appreciate it!  Thank you!

Featured image courtesy of Flickr

The post Readers – Please Help Me Pick the Title for My Next Ebook (Number 3)! appeared first on My Money Design.

Both opportunities present some benefits as well as challenges.  I’ve always wanted to be an author and well-respected figure associated with personal finance, and so having yet another ebook in my portfolio can help me with this.

But then creating websites is something that has, without a doubt, put money back into my pocket month after month.  I’ve been able to do this with some degree of success, and so to add yet another one to my collection would only increase my chances for success even more.

Believe me … if I had the time, I would probably take them both on.

But I probably don’t have to tell you – time is a pretty scarce asset.  And the last thing I want to do is invest a whole lot of time on something that doesn’t payout well in the end.

With that said, here are my arguments for and against both projects.

Writing a New Ebook

Earlier this year, I finally became an official author on the Amazon Kindle digital bookstore.

Writing ebooks was something that I’ve read a lot about throughout the years as being a very lucrative passive income opportunity, with the potential to make tens of thousands of dollars every month!    Just check out this one here.

All that for writing a few 50-100 page books?  Sign me up!

And so I did – not once, but twice this year with the release of Save Better and Save More, Earn More.

Motivation:

Writing ebooks for profit was not really my only motivation.  My true intentions actually go back a lot further.

I cannot tell you enough how much books have helped me on my journey to financial freedom.

Ever since my early 20’s, I’ve found a lot of great enthusiasm and motivation from reading the success stories of people who’ve “made it” and the wisdom they’ve shared through printed word (or digital now … I guess).

As a matter of fact, part of the motivation for starting My Money Design all those years ago was that I hoped it would lead to some sort of book deal eventually.  How great would it be to walk into a book store and see my name on the side of a book or two with my name on it up on the shelves for future savers to learn from?

The Problem:

But the times they are a changin’ (to quote Bob Dylan) …

With the advent of ebooks, now ANYONE can write an ebook.  This is both a good and bad thing.

It was a good thing because a person like myself who has quite a bit of knowledge about personal finance and retirement planning can bypass big-time publishers and put a quality book out there that I truly believe will help people, and I can do it with literally no obstacles in my way.

The bad thing – every hack from every part of the world can scrape together some words that they found off the internet and Frankenstein them into a meatless 20 page book with a fancy book cover and 100 fake positive Amazon reviews.

I speak from experience … I cannot tell you how many simply-awful ebooks I’ve downloaded from Amazon that weren’t even worth the keystroke it took to down load it.  One of them was so bad I had this review to write afterwards …

And that’s exactly the problem.

With all those garbage ebooks out there, my two books have unfortunately been lost in an over-crowded marketplace and are getting maybe one download per month if I’m lucky.  To date, I think I’ve made probably less than $100 total from my ebook sales.

So much for passive income!

Don’t Give Up!

NOW, in fairness, I attribute part of my failure thus far to the fact that I only have two books out there.  If you follow anything by Steve Scott or other ebook authors, they have often said that you don’t get rich writing one book, you get rich from offering a whole portfolio of ebooks.

Perhaps I’m giving up too early!  If I was up to 5 or even 10 ebooks, maybe I would start to see some of this mystical revenue actually roll in.

But before I launch into writing yet another one, I have to objectively ask myself: Is it worth it?  Writing is a fun process.  But it’s not very fulfilling if no one ever reads your work.  AND its especially a punch to the face if you made $0 in return for your efforts.

And that brings me to my next point …

Creating a New Website

Anyone who has read my monthly income reports knows that I’ve had some positive success with building websites.

Though I’m no Pat Flynn, I have been able to create some regular affiliate revenue, get on the first page of Google for my main target keyword, rank some more articles for a few select supporting keywords, and attract an audience.

I attribute a lot of this success to the fact that I used each of my niche websites as a training grounds and opportunity to experimentation.  I’ve been able to find out what content ranks well, which ones don’t, what SEO tactics to try, who to listen to, who’s full of it, and so on.

The Itch to Try Something New:

Like I mentioned in my last Niche Website update, I’m starting to reach a point where I’m not sure how to mature some of my websites any further beyond the point where they are already.  This is mostly due to some fundamental mistakes I made in the beginning as far as site structure, content, keyword selection, and so on.  If it wasn’t such an overhaul, I’d love to go back and re-write almost every post on a few of the sites using the knowledge I know today.

SO … why not then start a brand new site?  Something that encompasses all the lessons learned to date.

And what better way to do this then to use all the content and material I was going to write anyways IF I choose to write an ebook?

With a website, I have a lot more confidence that people will actually be able to find my material, read it, appreciate it, and learn something useful.

And on the business side of things, I’m very confident a new website could generate a few hundred extra dollars per month (just like most of my other websites have done for me thus far).

The Problem:

The only issue with starting a new website is that much like the whole ebook thing websites are becoming a crowded space as well.

It used to be a lot easier to rank for certain keywords, but not so much anyone.  For practically every phrase you can think, you pretty much have major competition from the likes of Forbes, CNN, and dozens of other high authority websites that are just dominating all the major high traffic words.

Why is that?  Because Google is starting to favor these ultra high corporate websites more and more with every algorithm update.  (… probably nothing to do with advertising relationships …)

So while I have had some success with ranking pages, I have to ask myself: How long will my tricks continue to work?  How long until home-made websites like the kind you and I make are things of the past and rubbed out by major corporate content generation machines?

What to Do?

So there you can see my dilemma.

I could possibly continue to perpetuate my fantasy of being a personal finance author and continue to expand my portfolio of ebooks.  By having more ebooks to offer, I might actually turn a new leaf and start seeing more sales.

Or they could continue to fall flat, generate absolutely no revenue at all, and never be read by anyone ever.

On the other hand, I could create yet another website.  I’ve had some success in this area that I’m sure I could recreate in this new project.  But with the way Google has been transforming and favoring major corporate websites, I might have more challenges ahead of me than I realize.

Readers – What project would you take on – Writing a new ebook or creating a new website?

Featured image courtesy of nerovlvo | Flickr

The post Should I Write a New Ebook or Start Another Website? appeared first on My Money Design.

That’s what my new ebook, Save MORE, Earn MORE, is all about!

Everyone knows financial freedom sounds great!  And we all know we’re supposed to save/invest our money if we want our nest eggs to grow into the life-preservers we want them to become.

… but how do we get there?  How do we do a better job of saving and managing our money?  And how do we actually make more of it (beyond our regular paychecks) so I can have more to save?

You don’t have to tell me how hard it is.  My wife and I started out in exactly this same situation.

I remember when we were got together we struggled to save even $100 per month for the things we knew we’d want some day like a house, college for our kids, and retirement.

A lot of other people are in the same boat.  According to the Trading Economics, the most recent personal savings rate in the U.S. is 5.1%.  That means for a family making the U.S. median income of $51,939 they are only saving $2,649 per year.

Despite the best of intentions, those figures unfortunately just won’t ever add up high enough to financial freedom let alone any other big goals we have.

When I realized this fact, I decided I needed to do something about it – and in a BIG way!  I read books, went online, and did a ton of research on how a regular guy like myself can do a better job at becoming wealthy.

Fast forward to now.  This year we’re on track to max out our 401(k), 403(b), and both our IRA’s!  And we’ll be able to do it without even breaking a sweat.

Do you want to know something?

You can do it too!

That’s the whole basis of “Save MORE, Earn MORE”.  Out of all that research I did, this book is 21 of my favorite and most practical tips for putting more money back in your pocket.

That’s money that you can apply towards your dreams of financial freedom or whatever else you have your heart set on!

Here’s what you’ll find in my new eBook.

“Save MORE, Earn MORE” is Advice You Can Actually Use:

Every week on this blog we talk about new and cool ideas that are going to put more money back in your pocket.

If I had to sum them up, I’d say those ideas fall into one of two major categories:

1. Spending less
2. Making more

That’s exactly the kind of things you’ll find in “Save MORE, Earn MORE”.  It’s my personal collection of the best of those tips.

Most importantly – they’re all things you can start doing right away – no matter where you live or how much income you earn right now.

For example: Do you know about the “split your raise” technique? 

This is where you take your annual raise and devote half of it to your retirement savings.  It’s one of the first things I ever tried when I started increasing my 401k contributions, and its worked like a charm as I’ve built up my savings level all the way up to the IRS max.

Or how about maximizing out your credit card rewards? 

For years I’ve been able to strategize my purchases to the point where we consistently make over $1,000 in annual cash-back and gift card rewards.  Merry Christmas for us every year!

And then there’s my favorite money-making hobby … Blogging! 

Since I started blogging almost 4 years ago, I’ve added over $50,000 gross to our household income!

You read that right … we’re half way to six-figures!

That’s not a bad return considering it now only takes me a few hours per week to keep my websites going.  And it can easily be done at night on my own time.

That’s not all. 

Over the course of 21 chapters we’ll also talk about:

• How to really challenge your bills
• Getting your full 401(k) employer match
• Avoiding taxes using a flexible savings & health savings account
• Building up your dividend income – the ultimate passive income
• Taking advantage of bank sign-up bonuses
• Selling and flipping items on eBay
• Freelancing
• Plus many more …

Every one of these tips are something that you could get started on right away.  You DON’T need to be a financial expert, rich, or have an MBA to put them to use.  You just have to want to give them a try!

Honestly of the ones I personally use, I’m glad to have tried them and to be adding as much as I am to my income.  That just makes our road to financial freedom that much easier to travel.

Download Your Copy Today!

No matter where in the world you live, whether it’s a big savings goal you’ve got planned or the long-term financial goals, I’m sure there will be something for everyone in “Save MORE, Earn MORE!”  Download your copy today!

Also, please … do me one other favor.  If you do download my book, please be sure to leave a review on Amazon.  When you do it helps other financial readers (like yourself) to make smart judgments about whether or not this would be the right book for them.

And as always, if you have any questions, you can always email me or post a comment below.

Enjoy!

Featured image courtesy of Amazon

The post Learn How to Save MORE, Earn MORE with My New Second eBook appeared first on My Money Design.

Something great like I had made well over $1,000 in my first month or that my book has been downloaded over 10,000 times.

Well …

… unfortunately that’s not how it’s gone at all.

As you may already know, last month I released my first eBook.

Though I’m very proud of what I’ve created, I will say that in all honesty this new venture is proving to be more challenging then I originally thought!

But that’s how these things go.  Developing a true passive income stream is a business, and sometimes you got to try more than one thing in order to make a business really work out!

So in this post I’m going to share with you the brutal truth of how the first month of my eBook sales have gone and what I plan to do going forward with this income generating effort.

Things I Got Right with eBook Publishing:

Not to toot my own horn, but there were a few things that I believe I did somewhat correctly in order to give this eBook venture at chance at being successful.

The eBook Itself:

For starters I can tell you that I’m very happy with the book I created.

Although it was not a quite as long as I wanted it to be, I still feel like it was more than adequate length for what an eBook should be.

On top of that I feel like there was a tremendous amount of value packed inside each and every chapter.  I tried very hard to make the advice actionable!

Research:

Like all new ventures, I did a fair amount of reading success stories before even started a lick of content.

Three resources that really seemed to help me out were:

• A post on Niche Pursuits by Spencer Haws about how to make $100 per day with Kindle.
• An eBook by Chandler Bolt called Book Launch.
• A podcast on Smart Passive Income with Steve Scott. Steve Scott is a self-published author who makes well into five-figures per month with his collection of Kindle books.

Much of the strategy that I used (and some of the other things I’ll try) were from these sources.

Amazon Reviews:

Positive reviews are gold on Amazon!

The more of them you have, the better your chances of moving up in the Amazon placement ranks.

Before the release of my eBook I reached out to several friends, family, and other bloggers to try to gain some early support.

Thankfully a number of them came to my support – and I very much appreciate it!  Angry Retail Banker even wrote a phenomenal review of the book!

Price:

Look around on Amazon and you can find a lot of eBooks that are strong competition for less than the price of a cup of coffee!

So at the strong recommendation of the resources I mentioned above, I decided right off the bat that I was going to play ball and offer my book at the incredibly low price of $2.99.

Kindle Direct Publishing Select:

When you publish a book on Amazon, right away they start pushing this thing called “KDP Select” on you.

And you should do it!

KDP Select allows you to promote your eBook for free for five days.

I know you’re probably wondering …

… I just spent an incredible amount of time and effort creating this eBook.  Why in the world would I want to give it away for free?

Believe it or not, this is a very popular strategy suggested by lots of eBook publishers.  What it does is to get your book in the hands of as many people as possible.

If those people leave a positive review, it will count as a verified review since they actually bought it from Amazon.

That’s good news for you!

On top of that it also increases the chances that they will tell people they know about the book and promote it for you.

In other words, though you won’t make any money, there are plenty of residual benefits that you potentially derive if this part of the strategy is successful.

So How Has My eBook Done So Far?

Unfortunately my eBook has only generated less than $50.

At a price of $2.99, Amazon gives you a 70% royalty.  That means I’ve had just over 20 paid downloads.

I will be completely honest in saying that that is far, far below what my expectations were.

Now the free period was a different story.  During the five days that my book was free I had several hundred downloads.

I’ve heard that this is not uncommon because people constantly look on Amazon to hoard free stuff, especially when it comes to free ebook publishing.

My only hope is that some of those people who downloaded my eBook for free will come back later and leave a positive review and or tell their friends about it.

Things I Realize Now I Should Have Done Differently:

Since releasing my eBook I’ve read a couple of other eBooks about eBooks (… try to follow that …) as well as numerous blog articles from successful self-publishers.

More Promotion During the Free Period:

One of the things I realize now I should have done better: Promoting the book during the free period.

Like I mentioned, more downloads increases your potential for getting more verified reviews. That in turn can help you get in the Top 100 or even Amazon’s Recommended Books.

Kindle Select allows you to make your book free every 90 days. So in another month or two, I may retry this strategy doing more up-front promotion.

ANY Guest Post Promotion:

Why I didn’t line up a number of guest posts on other personal finance blogs aiming to promote my new book, I have no idea.  But its something I should have definitely done.

Not Appealing to a Worldwide Audience:

Seeing just how many countries Amazon works with, I now realize it would have been smart of me to make the book a little more appealing to a worldwide audience.

Most of the principles I outlined in “Save Better!” would actually work anywhere.  However all of my examples were perhaps a little too specific to just U.S. tax-sheltered retirement accounts like 401k’s and IRA’s.  Our friends in other parts of the country like Canada, the U.K., Australia, and other places probably would have loved to see examples of how this could work for them too.

Low Price Strategies:

One strategy I might try to use is to lower the price of my book to $0.99 and then work it back up again if/when it gains more momentum.

Again I realize that may seem insane, but similar to the free strategy a super-low price may attract a higher volume of verified readers.  That could in turn increase my chances of more positive reviews.

Though it doesn’t seem like it, there are a lot of self-publishers who will argue that people are far more likely to download your book at $0.99 rather than if it is $2.99.

Too Competitive of a Niche?

Another thing that is worth mentioning is that probably one of my biggest mistakes was to write a book about personal finance in the first place.

The personal finance niche is completely saturated!

One of the strategies that a lot of self-publishers promote is to seek out topics where there aren’t so many eBooks or publications about them. In other words find a low-competition market to rule!

Unfortunately you can’t say that about the personal-finance niche.

Search any money related keyword on Amazon and you’re bound to find a monotony of eBooks as well as electronic versions of the big-name authors that you would regularly find at a traditional bookstore.

Whether or not that’s true, I don’t really care!

Personal finance is a subject that I am very passionate about.  And I believe that I have a lot to offer anyone who’s willing to listen (or in this case “read”).

So even though the money-book market may be saturated, I do feel in many ways that I have a better mousetrap to offer my customers.

And hopefully over time they agree with me!

Next Steps Going Forward:

All in all, if we take this first month of $50 and project it over 12 months, that’s a return of approximately $600 for the year.

Though that’s not as much money as I had hoped to make from this effort, that is still more than my initial investment.  Plus I’ll take $600 extra this year to help out my savings goals any day!

So with that said I’m still going to continue to research and look further into how I can get better at promoting my eBook so that this effort turns into a success.

I’ll be trying some of the things I’ve already mentioned here as well as looking for new and creative ideas from those who have found success.

Another eBook?

So what does someone do when they’ve had a rough first month of publishing and promoting their eBook?

How about write another one!

You heard me right.

I have already went ahead and drafted a +10,000 word first-draft for my second eBook.

Immediately following the publication of my first eBook, I was very excited about the whole process and quickly came up with about three other ideas for future publications.

I got a little overly ambitious and immediately went straight ahead with writing one of them.  I guess I had a lot on my mind to get out!

Though this new eBook I’m writing right now was originally going to be a leader magnet, once it got close to the 10,000 word mark, I decided it might be more appropriate to use it as my second Kindle publication.

(I will probably end up creating a different lead magnet such as a shorter eBook.  Having a lead magnet is definitely another thing I want to have ready to go before I publish anything further.)

I’ll soon be beginning the first round of editing. Based on how things went during the last eBook, I found this part of the process to be the lengthiest and most intense.

I’m tempted to believe that with the second book I may be able to avoid some of the mistakes I made with the first one.  Plus I feel like this will give me the opportunity to experiment with some of the more refined techniques that I’m coming to learn about eBook promotion.

Success or failure, I would like to see three eBooks to my name available on Amazon before the year is over.

Even though that is a very ambitious goal, I do believe it is something that could take my passive income pursuits to a whole new level.

Readers – How many of you have published an eBook on Amazon Kindle or elsewhere? What kind of strategies do you feel contributed to your success? What would you do-over?

Images courtesy Anita Hart | Flickr, leiris202 | Flickr.

The post My eBook Publishing Update – May 2015 appeared first on My Money Design.

Did you know that by saving your money in an IRA or 401k you’re actually saving as much as $509,774 over 30 years in compounded returns from NOT letting $4,500 slip away to taxes each year?

Or, how about that a Roth-style 401k or IRA might NOT be your friend (contrary to popular belief).  In fact, a Roth may end up costing you over $1 million dollars of lost fortune depending on how you plan to retire.

You Can Save BETTER!

It’s these kinds of things and more that were the kinds of concepts I wanted to pack inside my first eBook: “Save BETTER!  Use the Secrets of the Wealthy to Retire Early, Create Passive Income for Life and Achieve Financial Freedom”.

This eBook is my attempt to sit down with you, one-on-one, and deliver my very best and biggest nuggets of personal finance knowledge.  It contains several of my most valuable pieces of advice and things I only wish someone had taught me sooner!

Though everyone’s financial situation is different, there are so many lessons that are fundamental about money and how to accumulate more of it.  I believe that despite your age or social being, you’ll find that a lot of these tips can have some meaningful impact on your situation.

Don’t Miss Your Wealth Opportunity:

I honestly believe that present-day Americans are in an incredibly wonderful and opportunistic position to turn themselves into multi-millionaires.  Like I mentioned in the beginning, a person working from age 24 to 62 could gross over $7 million dollars in savings by the time they are ready to retire.

There’s just one problem … hardly anyone knows it!  If they really knew any better, than the average 401k balance would be a lot higher than $89,300.

Instead, we allow the media to trick us into thinking that we need to work 30 or more years.  Or that we somehow deserve inflated, under-funded pensions.  Or that we should blame Social Security for our financial shortcomings.  Or that saving a mere 10% of our income will be enough to retire on someday.

The truth: You having the power to save how, when, and where you want is one of the best things that you could have going on for your finances these days.  The old rules are out!  If you want to retire in 20 years, you can do it!  If you want to accumulate millions of dollars, it’s totally possible!

You no longer need to be a big business owner or professional stock picker to have your shot at building a fortune that you’ll be able to live off of for the rest of your life.  Lots of people are getting themselves on the path to financial freedom every day by making significant and substantial changes in their financial lives.   And they accomplish it by recognizing and taking advantage of many of the tips I’ve collected over the years and assembled into these pages.

More of What You’ll Discover:

Here are just a few of the other things within the eBook we’ll go over when it comes to reaching financial freedom:

• How using a 401k or IRA is like getting 33% more money to save every year
• How the Rich use capital gains and dividends to reduce their effective tax rate to far less than what you probably pay
• How not getting your full 401k employer match is like leaving almost $200,000 on the table
• Why a person who saves during the first 10 years of their career will have more than someone who tries to catch up during the last 30 years of their career.
• How you can still continue to tax-shelter your money beyond a 401k and IRA (and no, it’s something better than an annuity).
• How you could structure your retirement savings so that you’d owe NO Federal taxes at all during retirement. How’s that for financial freedom?

Get Your Copy:

If you like reading My Money Design, then you’ll be delighted to know that my intention with this eBook was to give you the same sort of straight-forward financial advice that you find here every week.  But I wanted to give you A LOT more!  This book is far more structured and will feel more like a financial seminar than anything else.

Download your copy of Save BETTER!  today!  For less than the price of a coffee drink, it’s a deal that you can’t pass up!  

Cover image courtesy of Amazon

The post Get Ready to SAVE BETTER! With My First eBook appeared first on My Money Design.