H.J. Chammas's Blog, page 9

Limiting Belief 5 - Failure is bad and mistakes are a reflection of my incompetence

Limiting Belief Failure is bad and mistakes are a reflection of my incompetence
Most of us fear failure and mistakes, which is no surprise. Throughout our years at school and university, failing an exam resulted in a feeling of shame and incompetence. Even in most of our life as employees, failure to deliver on our objectives will eventually lead to a bad performance evaluation, and in extreme cases the door will be wide open for us to leave our job.

Some mature companies accept failure as part of the learning curve of their employees, but those failures need never be experienced more than once, and they should not lead to a major financial loss. In other words, those mature companies are projecting an image of a culture that welcomes failure as part of a learning organization. But when the shit hits the fan, the employee who made a mistake will be looking for a new job in a new company sooner rather than later.


In my professional life as an employee, I still fear to make large mistakes. But in my professional life as an investor, I have made rather large mistakes and realized that failure is an integral part of my success. When I learned how to convert “fear of failure” into “opportunity of failure”, I developed creativity, flexibility, agility, and the ability to explore new ways of achieving my goals.

In fact, the biggest mistakes I have made in my investment life have taught me lessons not only about how to avoid them in the future. The solutions to those mistakes have taught me more important lessons about how my how-to can become more rigid and can deliver better results.

When you fail in an important endeavour, you affiliate yourself with some of the most famous people in the world. I am confident you know two famous quotes from Thomas A. Edison, known as America’s greatest inventor. One quote is “I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work”, and the other one goes “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”. The moral of the story is that you fail only when you give up.


Another impressive story is that of Abraham Lincoln, who served as the sixteenth president of the United States. After facing several failures, such as losing his job, failing in business, having a nervous breakdown, being defeated for speaker of the house, being defeated for nomination in Congress, being defeated for the US Senate, and being defeated for nomination for vice president, he overcame each of them as it was time for a better outcome, and was eventually elected president. He is also famous for saying “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other”. What those great achievers taught us is that determination for success will keep us going and trying again and again until we succeed. Who we become in the process becomes as important as success itself.

In summary, I encourage you to start “learning to learn” by learning to unlearn in order learn again and again.

Learn More!
Get The Employee Millionaire Audio Book For Free With 30 Day Audible Trial

Limiting Belief 4 - The government and My Employer are Responsible for my Financial Well-being

Limiting Belief The government and My Employer are Responsible for my Financial Well-beingThe best thing about history is that it helps us predict the future. In the last 100 years, there have been several recessions across the globe. The well-documented facts show us that employees were laid off and unemployment shot up to high double digits. Employers who had to let go of their employees never thought they were responsible for the financial well-being of those laid-off employees. To me, no job looks secure.


On the other hand, governments across the world have genuine obligations to improve their economies and provide jobs for their citizens. They have attempted to boost their respective economies with quantitative easing and other forms of easy money so that companies will borrow money for free to invest in their businesses and recruit people. The result of lowering unemployment did take a long time. In most cases, although unemployment went down in percentage, the quality of the jobs created and the respective pay cheques were far from the levels before those recession hit.


The fact of the matter is that you alone are responsible for your financial well-being. I encourage you to start changing your mindset and put yourself in control. I urge you to take advantage of your current employment status and invest in income-producing assets that will work hard for you to generate income. This unearned income is what will look after your well-being in the event you ever have to (or choose to) leave your current job.

"The Employee Millionaire" discusses the “how” in detail. It will take you through the steps of investing in single-family rental properties that will put you on the journey of being financially free.

Learn More!
Get The Employee Millionaire Audio Book For Free With 30 Day Audible Trial

Limiting Belief 3 - Saving Your Money is the Wisest Investment

Limiting Belief Saving Your Money is the Wisest InvestmentMost responsible and caring parents advise their newly graduating adult children who are about to join the workforce and build their careers to make sure they save their hard-earned money in long-term savings plans that generate some kind of interest.

Our parents’ advice is sound, but it can never lead to wealth if the saved money is never put to hard work by having it invested in income-producing assets that generate unearned income and build wealth.


Interest rates on saving accounts vary widely across countries, especially in their respective local currencies. On average, interest earned on savings is around 3% for accounts. Let’s see how many years it takes for $100,000 to double if deposited in a saving bank account at 3 per cent interest.


In the 1400s, the Italians gave the world a method to estimate the doubling time of an investment, often referred to as the rule of 72. The rule number, 72, is divided by the annual interest percentage to obtain the approximate number of years required for doubling. Although scientific formulas and calculations do provide more accurate figures, the rule of 72 is quite useful for mental calculations and when only a basic calculator is available. Using the rule of 72 to compute how many years are required to double an amount of $100,000 deposited in a saving account at 3% annual interest, we divide 72 by 3. The result is 24. So it takes twenty-four years to double an amount stashed in a savings account at 3% interest.

Let’s now compute how many years it takes for money invested in an income-producing asset that generates 10% ROI. If we divide 72 over 10, we will get 7.2 years.

If the ROI is 15%, the resulting number will be 4.8 years.


You will agree with me that it will take seemingly forever to double your money when saved in the bank at low interest rates. But it can take fewer years when the money is properly invested at double-digit returns. Investments can result in high double-digit ROI if properly invested in income-producing assets and with the use of leverage, good debt.

Learn how to invest your hard earned money into wealthy rates of returns!

Get The Employee Millionaire Audio Book For Free With 30 Day Audible Trial

Limiting Belief 2 - Debt is Bad

Limiting Belief Debt is BadIt was considered a privilege to carry a credit card back in the eighties. Nowadays, credit card companies harass people who have steady incomes to offer them free-for-life credit cards. Things have evolved in a manner that you can take a cash advance with zero down payment and zero interest for a number of months. The trick here is that most people will fail to repay those credit card loans within the few months’ window and then get penalized with huge interest rates that can range anywhere between 24 to 36% per year. This is when the borrower becomes captive to those high-interest loans.

With good marketing campaigns that play on consumers’ psychology, bankers and big companies convince us to buy goods and services that will provide instant gratification. They have also made it easy for consumers to get a suite of credit cards, personal loans, and car loans with reasonable monthly payments to make it a no-brainer to buy those goods and services even if we cannot afford them. It is normal to see offers from retailers tempting consumers to use their credit cards to buy now and pay later at zero interest over three, six, nine, or twelve months. The caveat is that by the time the debt is repaid, those goods and services are worthless.


Most of us have fallen victim to tempting instant gratification offers with delayed payment plans. We started to fear being captive to debt. Our parents, the school, and the community have each played a role in teaching us that debt is bad and that it must be avoided at any cost. And they are correct when it comes to bad debt.


On the other hand, good debt, which is debt incurred to purchase income-producing assets, sets you on the road to wealth. In an earlier article, I shared the idea that you will become as rich as the amount of good debt you take in your life. I would even dare to claim that you can almost never become wealthy without incurring good debt. Think of it as borrowing yourself to wealth. Pay attention: I mentioned good debt, which is the kind of debt you incur to purchase income-producing assets.

Want to learn more on how to acquire income-producing assets? Want to learn more on how to become wealthy and achieve financial freedom?

Learn More!
Get The Employee Millionaire Audio Book For Free With 30 Day Audible Trial

Limiting Belief 1 - A Job Provides Financial Security for Now and at Retirement

Limiting Belief #1A Job Provides Financial Security for Now and at Retirement
Almost all of the poor and middle class were programmed to graduate from school to seek a high-paying job that would provide them security and eventually lead them to wealth. This might hold true for CEOs and other corporate executives with hefty pay cheques.


But to the majority of employees, this remains a dream they chase until one day they retire, only to be surprised by a bank account and pension plan that can barely sustain their lifestyle for a few weeks or months. Then reality kicks in—when it is too late. The fact of the matter is that a job, for the majority of us, merely supports the basics of life, the essential expenses.

The drug that keeps all employees addicted to their job is seeing their income increasing from the day they start working till the prime of their income-earning years. This false evidence of prosperity leads to a false feeling of security. As a result, more and more of their income gets channeled to discretionary expenses, and those who can afford it start to spend on the appearances of wealth. One day their income starts to go downhill, and like a drug addict who cannot have the same high doses of drug anymore, they wake up to the fact that this fantasy is over and that they have to cut down on their expenses. The few exceptions will be corporate executives, who are only a minority of the general population.


I encourage you to start looking at your job in a different way. Consider it as a form leverage that acts in your favor. It is about having your job work smarter for you while you work hard for your job. It's a win-win term.

The objective of "The Employee Millionaire" program is to enable you to leverage your position as an employee to qualify for bank loans (good debt) to purchase income-producing assets that will generate unearned income in excess of your monthly expenses and therefore put you on the road to being wealthy.

As you may know, banks generate profits from lending money to people. The interest they charge the borrowers is the bank’s income. Banks like to lend money to creditworthy people. They want reasonable reassurance that borrowers have steady incomes that will enable them to repay their loans. Banks will look at the length of time the borrowers were in their current jobs as their reassurance of steady income. The first step of the wealth building process is to take advantage of the fact that you have a steady income that qualifies you for a loan that you can take to purchase income-producing assets.

You might start asking yourself some questions now ... "what kind of income-producing-assets shall I purchase?", "How to purchase them?", "How to qualify for loans?", "How to fund my investments?" ... all of those questions are answered in "The Employee Millionaire".

Learn More!
Get The Employee Millionaire Audio Book For Free With 30 Day Audible Trial

Limiting Belief 1: A Job Provides Financial Security for Now and at Retirement

Limiting Belief #1A Job Provides Financial Security for Now and at Retirement
Almost all of the poor and middle class were programmed to graduate from school to seek a high-paying job that would provide them security and eventually lead them to wealth. This might hold true for CEOs and other corporate executives with hefty pay cheques.


But to the majority of employees, this remains a dream they chase until one day they retire, only to be surprised by a bank account and pension plan that can barely sustain their lifestyle for a few weeks or months. Then reality kicks in—when it is too late. The fact of the matter is that a job, for the majority of us, merely supports the basics of life, the essential expenses.

The drug that keeps all employees addicted to their job is seeing their income increasing from the day they start working till the prime of their income-earning years. This false evidence of prosperity leads to a false feeling of security. As a result, more and more of their income gets channeled to discretionary expenses, and those who can afford it start to spend on the appearances of wealth. One day their income starts to go downhill, and like a drug addict who cannot have the same high doses of drug anymore, they wake up to the fact that this fantasy is over and that they have to cut down on their expenses. The few exceptions will be corporate executives, who are only a minority of the general population.


I encourage you to start looking at your job in a different way. Consider it as a form leverage that acts in your favor. It is about having your job work smarter for you while you work hard for your job. It's a win-win term.

The objective of "The Employee Millionaire" program is to enable you to leverage your position as an employee to qualify for bank loans (good debt) to purchase income-producing assets that will generate unearned income in excess of your monthly expenses and therefore put you on the road to being wealthy.

As you may know, banks generate profits from lending money to people. The interest they charge the borrowers is the bank’s income. Banks like to lend money to creditworthy people. They want reasonable reassurance that borrowers have steady incomes that will enable them to repay their loans. Banks will look at the length of time the borrowers were in their current jobs as their reassurance of steady income. The first step of the wealth building process is to take advantage of the fact that you have a steady income that qualifies you for a loan that you can take to purchase income-producing assets.

You might start asking yourself some questions now ... "what kind of income-producing-assets shall I purchase?", "How to purchase them?", "How to qualify for loans?", "How to fund my investments?" ... all of those questions are answered in "The Employee Millionaire".

Learn More!
Get The Employee Millionaire Audio Book For Free With 30 Day Audible Trial

Limiting Belief #1: A Job Provides Financial Security for Now and at Retirement

Limiting Belief #1A Job Provides Financial Security for Now and at Retirement
Almost all of the poor and middle class were programmed to graduate from school to seek a high-paying job that would provide them security and eventually lead them to wealth. This might hold true for CEOs and other corporate executives with hefty pay cheques.


But to the majority of employees, this remains a dream they chase until one day they retire, only to be surprised by a bank account and pension plan that can barely sustain their lifestyle for a few weeks or months. Then reality kicks in—when it is too late. The fact of the matter is that a job, for the majority of us, merely supports the basics of life, the essential expenses.

The drug that keeps all employees addicted to their job is seeing their income increasing from the day they start working till the prime of their income-earning years. This false evidence of prosperity leads to a false feeling of security. As a result, more and more of their income gets channeled to discretionary expenses, and those who can afford it start to spend on the appearances of wealth. One day their income starts to go downhill, and like a drug addict who cannot have the same high doses of drug anymore, they wake up to the fact that this fantasy is over and that they have to cut down on their expenses. The few exceptions will be corporate executives, who are only a minority of the general population.


I encourage you to start looking at your job in a different way. Consider it as a form leverage that acts in your favor. It is about having your job work smarter for you while you work hard for your job. It's a win-win term.

The objective of "The Employee Millionaire" program is to enable you to leverage your position as an employee to qualify for bank loans (good debt) to purchase income-producing assets that will generate unearned income in excess of your monthly expenses and therefore put you on the road to being wealthy.

As you may know, banks generate profits from lending money to people. The interest they charge the borrowers is the bank’s income. Banks like to lend money to creditworthy people. They want reasonable reassurance that borrowers have steady incomes that will enable them to repay their loans. Banks will look at the length of time the borrowers were in their current jobs as their reassurance of steady income. The first step of the wealth building process is to take advantage of the fact that you have a steady income that qualifies you for a loan that you can take to purchase income-producing assets.

You might start asking yourself some questions now ... "what kind of income-producing-assets shall I purchase?", "How to purchase them?", "How to qualify for loans?", "How to fund my investments?" ... all of those questions are answered in "The Employee Millionaire".

Learn More!

Did You Ever Make a Self Talk to Understand the Current State of Your Finances?

Did You Ever Make a Self Talk to Understand the Current State of Your Finances?

When was the last time you have evaluated the current state of your finances? Whether you are in a financial disaster or in a financial health, have you ever asked yourself a question such as: "Why Am I Here?"

When I examined my poor financial situation back in 2008, dozens of questions and ideas came to my mind. In some instances, I comforted myself with some irrational justifications about my financial ruin. It was like covering a bad story with another bad story. Finally, I had to face reality and objectively analyse what brought me to this situation. During this same time, I looked at Forbes’s list of billionaires and started to ask myself questions about how those billionaires and other wealthy people attract money like a magnet, whereas people like me and my fellow colleagues, employees in general, seem to repel it. Being determined to discover the answers, I talked to dozens of people, including ones who were poor, middle class, well off, and wealthy. As I met people who were low-, medium-, and high-paid employees, self-employed, investors, and business owners, I began to notice that people who depend on earned income, irrespective of their income level, have much in common. On the other hand, people who have acquired multiple streams of income from their income-producing assets also share a lot in common. The difference between those classes was astonishing.

People who have accumulated wealth have let go of an incredible number of misconceptions and limiting beliefs. In fact, the wealthy have managed to subscribe to a new set of empowering beliefs that contradict what the majority of the population still hangs onto.


It appears as if we are all programmed to believe in a set of false assumptions that become limiting beliefs. Too often the poor and the middle class hold tightly to a set of limiting beliefs about money and investing. Meanwhile, those same beliefs hold them captive and prevent them from achieving financial freedom.

When I first looked at my personal financial statement, I had the same set of limiting beliefs. It was only when I understood how those beliefs were enslaving me to a state of financial ruin that I managed to let go of them. I had to understand the personal truth about my negative thoughts in order to overcome them and replace them with empowering beliefs.

Over the next few weeks, I will be writing different articles, each one explaining each of those beliefs from the perspective of the poor, the middle class, and the rich. You will see how the poor and the middle class look at those beliefs differently—actually in opposite ways - as compared to the rich and wealthy. The poor and the middle class have adopted limiting personal beliefs, whereas the wealthy have adopted empowering personal beliefs.

You’ll never embark on the road to wealth if you let such negative thoughts constrain you. The poor and the middle class will most probably remain in the same financial situation if they conjure up any number of excuses for not choosing wealth—excuses that say more about their inner thoughts than about the difficulty of achieving wealth.


If you’re embracing negative thoughts, you need to understand what they really mean. It’s time to dig deep and unearth your personal truths. Jot down negative statements you whisper to yourself, and, after some honest soul searching, record the personal truth that lies beneath each. Once you become honest with yourself and accept that those beliefs are limited only to the extent you allow them to be, you will experience a transformation of those beliefs into empowering ones. Self-awareness is critical in this transformation. Before you change your life, you need to change your mind. Your thoughts and beliefs are deeply entrenched, so deeply rooted that you may not even be aware of how much they’ve impacted your financial situation.

Watch out for the next article, which will discuss the first Limiting Belief: "A job provides financial security for now and at retirement"

Learn more on www.employeemillionaire.com

Talk to you soon ... H. J. Chammas

What Does "Location Location Location" Really Mean in Rental Properties Investing?

What Does "Location Location Location" Really Mean in Rental Properties Investing?
When looking for rental properties, investors ask themselves the question: "what am I looking for?

Location is the first criterion that allows the decision-making to be focused. It allows the search for investment properties to be narrowed down to a certain geographic area. Zooming in on a specific location allows the investor to become an expert in this area by becoming specialized in a certain city or community. This empowers the investor to better understand the factors that determine local property values and rental rates. An important lesson I learned from my mentor: Location determines the price of a property, all other things being equal . The wise investor will choose a location first and then pick a property.

“ Location, location, location ” is the slogan used in almost every reference on real estate investment and even on retail businesses. My mentor taught me to turn this cliché into an actionable process for choosing a great location. He told me to write down the word location three times and to underline the letter C in each of the words. I ended up with three Cs. He told me that the Cs in location, location, location refer to country , city , and community respectively.

My mentor explained that getting clarity on those three Cs will enable me to narrow down my search criteria and start identifying great deals by looking at the different properties within my selected location. He emphasised that the most important of the three Cs is the third one, which is community. Investors, who become experts in a certain community, will be able to compare local property values and rental rates, which will enable them to identify great deals from the average ones.

Learn more on www.employeemillionaire.com

Check out my book on Amazon in paperback, kindle, and audio book formats:
www.amazon.com/author/hjchammas

You Can Almost Never Become Wealthy Without Incurring Good Debt!

You Can Almost Never Become Wealthy Without Incurring Good Debt! During my five-year assignment in the Philippines, I met a Lebanese-American businessman who lived most of his life in Asia, between China and Philippines. He was in the business of producing clothes and garments in China and the Philippines and exporting them to the US. He was also a landlord to many residential and commercial properties in the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, UK, and the US. He was well connected in the Philippines to influential people. His employees and business partners treated him and respected him like a father figure. He became my personal coach and mentor and helped me change my financial life and achieve financial freedom. In one of our many coaching sessions, he wanted to share with me one of the biggest secrets about good debt. With a loud and assertive voice, he said: “You will become at least as rich as the amount of good debt you take in your life.” My brain started racing while trying to figure out what he meant. He explained that if I want to receive $1 million in the future, I need to borrow $1 million in good debt. He then raised the numbers and continued that if I want to receive $10 million in the future, I need to borrow $10 million in good debt. My eyes were flashing and my brain was racing in all direction trying to make sense out this. If you reflect on this, almost all of us are programmed to limiting beliefs about debts. I often hear a statement like that: "Debt is bad. It signals captivity. I must avoid it at any cost." If we dig deeper into your own brains, your personal truth could be about a bad experience in debt that you have taken towards the purchase of goods and services that became worthless by the time the debt was paid ... and this is almost correct for most people. What my mentor has taught me is something that goes counter intuitive to the common life and society programme we've been set for. He taught me to have empowering beliefs like: "I need to start investing in income-producing assets that will generate unearned income. I understand that debt allows for higher returns. I can never become wealthy without incurring some form of good debt in my life." Whenever I start having Limiting Beliefs, I always think about my own Personal Truth, and then consciously reprogram my brain to have Empowering Beliefs. Thoughts about this?