Joe Withrow's Blog, page 20

Shedding the “piecemeal” mindset when it comes to money…

The sad truth is that in the new millennium, government-funded school systems are simply not teaching children about the real world of money.

That’s Steve Forbes, Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine. Forbes points out that the public school systems teach nothing about personal finance. Thus, we’re left to figure it all out for ourselves.

But here’s the thing – ever since the 1980s there’s been a concerted effort to push what I call a “piecemeal” approach to money and investing. It’s the idea that we should always be chasing that hot stock or exchange traded fund (ETF) that’s set to soar in value.

Therefore, we tend to think about growing our money in a piecemeal manner. You know what I mean here?

We tend to make investments in a vacuum. We hear about one idea… and we follow it. Then we hear about another idea… and we follow it too.

Of course, there are all kinds of television shows and movies that glorify this model. Jim Cramer’s Mad Money… Shark Tank… all the movies about Wall Street – they each feature the piecemeal mindset.

The problem is, no single investment is likely to move the needle for us. And if we’re not rooted in a foundational system, we’re likely to buy and sell things on a whim… always looking for the next big thing.

This isn’t a winning approach. I learned that the hard way.

Like many of us, I started with nothing. I had no assets, a small income, and $30,000 in student loans to pay.

Now I know that may seem like small potatoes compared to student loans today. But at the time it was a big deal for me.

And I started my career in corporate banking… but I hated it. Every Sunday afternoon I’d just get this sense of dread knowing that I had to go back to work the next day. It was awful.

But that’s what I went to college for. That’s what I had experience in… so I figured the only way out was to invest hard and grow my money so I wouldn’t need the job anymore.

Needless to say, I made a bunch of mistakes.

I took some huge risks hoping to hit it big. And in the end I lost over $50,000… which was an enormous amount of money to me at the time.

But there was a silver lining. This caused me to slow down. To think. To read. And to do some research.

And I realized I was going about it all wrong. Instead of trying to find piecemeal investments hoping to hit it big, what I needed was a system.

That is to say, I needed consistency. I needed to start doing small things that would turn into big things down the road.

And that’s how I developed, among other things, the two simple habits we’ve been discussing all week.

One of those is buying a little more Bitcoin every single week, regardless of the price. This fits into a larger asset allocation model.

The other is adding notes to my crowdlending portfolio each week. If done correctly, this approach can turn $500 into $50,000 in just four years’ time.

And that’s not hypothetical. Unlike, the stock market, we don’t have to deal with price volatility within our crowdlending portfolio. With the right approach we’ll maintain a consistent rate of return.

The key point is this: when it comes to financial success, forming good habits and sticking with them consistently is the winning recipe.

And here’s the best part – this approach is simple. There’s nothing fancy or complicated about it.

Plus, we can get started with any amount of money. There are no barriers to entry.

You know, I read a book back in 2003 that completely changed my life. It’s called The Instant Millionaire by Mark Fisher.

It took about a decade for the ideas in that book to truly sink in. But once they did, my life took an entirely different course.

So I would like to leave you today with my favorite passage in that book. It’s an idea that hooked itself deep within my mind… and completely changed my worldview. Here it is:

External circumstances are not really very important. Keep this well in mind: all the events in your life are a mirror image of your thoughts.

Words of wisdom…

-Joe Withrow

P.S. Don’t forget that we’ve made The Financial Consistency Bundle available through Saturday at midnight Eastern. That means there’s just over 48 hours left to claim it.

This is the very first bundle we’ve ever put out. It allows people to get two of our top financial courses for the price of one.

The first course is Finance for Freedom. It’s our flagship course on how to build a robust asset allocation model.

And the second is The Income Snowball Strategy. This one lays out our approach to building a crowdlending portfolio. Here we share the strategies that can turn $500 into $50,000 in just four years.

We’re trying out the bundle idea really just as an experiment. Is this something people might be interested in? I’m not sure.

That’s why we’re going to pull the offer on Saturday evening and see where we are. So if you are interested, please give it a look before then.

More information right here: The Financial Consistency Bundle

The post Shedding the “piecemeal” mindset when it comes to money… first appeared on Zenconomics.

The post Shedding the “piecemeal” mindset when it comes to money… appeared first on Zenconomics.

How to turn $500 into $50,000 by becoming the bank…

We’ve been talking about consistency this week. About developing small habits that lead to big results.

For me, one of those habits is to add $100 worth of new notes to my crowdlending portfolio every Monday morning. This doesn’t have much impact on my finances at first… but over time it becomes quite meaningful.

Now, crowdlending is an alternative to traditional bank financing. It allows investors to become the bank and lend money to borrowers for a specific purpose. Debt consolidation, home improvement, and medical expenses are three of the most common purposes.

This is done through a crowdlending platform.

Borrowers apply for the loan and provide their financial information. Then the platform pulls their credit report and assigns the loan a specific risk rating. This is what determines the interest rate.

From there the loan is added to the platform’s investor portal. This allows investors to browse the listings and choose which loans they want to contribute to. And in return, they receive monthly principal and interest payments… just like a bank.

What I love about this approach is that, if we’re consistently growing our loan portfolio, our passive income snowballs in a big way. Let’s illustrate this with a few examples.

Suppose we start with $500 and begin building our crowdlending portfolio. And let’s say we follow the rules of success and kick in an extra $100 every week.

If we assume a 9.2% return on the portfolio, which is what I’ve experienced, we’ll have a nest egg of $25,923 in four years’ time. Not too shabby.

Now let’s say we start with the same $500, and then we kick in $200 more every week.

Assuming the same rate of return, our portfolio will balloon to $51,182 in four years. Who wouldn’t want to turn $500 into $50,000 in just four years?

And here’s the thing – there’s no market risk involved here. Unlike a stock portfolio, our loan portfolio will not fluctuate in value every day based on how the stock market moves.

That makes it possible to earn a high rate of return consistently.

Sure, some loans won’t work out for us. But we account for that with equal position-sizing. Which is to say, we put the same amount of money into every loan we fund. If we’re kicking in $100 or $200 a week, $25 per loan will do the trick.

So this is a simple yet powerful way to build a small nest egg. The key is to take consistent action.

And that’s why we recently put together a new course on the matter. We call it The Income Snowball Strategy.

The course lays out all the steps to building a crowdlending portfolio. We also teach an expert approach to risk assessment. If we’re going to become the bank, we better think like the bank.

And here’s the best part – right now we’ve got this course bundled together with our flagship program on strategic asset allocation. The bundle enables investors to get both courses for the price of one.

This offering will be live until Saturday at midnight Eastern. More details right here:

The Financial Consistency Bundle

The post How to turn $500 into $50,000 by becoming the bank… first appeared on Zenconomics.

The post How to turn $500 into $50,000 by becoming the bank… appeared first on Zenconomics.

Two habits, two goals…

Yesterday we talked about two simple habits to break out financially. The first is routinely buying Bitcoin – regardless of what the price happens to be. The second is adding new notes to a crowdlending portfolio each week.

We’re piggybacking on an old world success principle here. That is to do small things consistently that will eventually add up to big things.

This is something business guru Jim Rohn talked about frequently. And this is what Darren Hardy’s book The Compound Effect is all about.

The fact is, good habits accumulate over time – so long as we have a clear and definite purpose behind them.

So today let’s talk about our driving purpose for consistently buying Bitcoin and building a crowdlending portfolio.

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that these two asset classes should make up our entire financial picture. Not at all.

But they are the two assets that we can be mechanical about. Largely because the dollar amount we commit to our routine purchases doesn’t matter much. It can be as little as $25.

When it comes to Bitcoin, our goal isn’t to put dollars in, watch the price go up, and then get more dollars out later. That’s not the right approach.

Instead, we want to routinely buy Bitcoin to accumulate a material position… so that we have plenty of bitcoins. That is to say, we want a portion of our assets to be denominated in bitcoins, not dollars.

The reason for this is simple.

Bitcoin isn’t just another speculative asset. It’s sound money that’s governed by its own monetary system.

There are very specific rules around how and when new bitcoins enter the market. Nobody can alter or game these rules. It’s quite a transparent but resilient system.

And think about this: there are only 21 million bitcoins that will ever exist. And 19.4 million of them are already here. That’s 92% of the maximum supply.

Yet, the last bitcoin won’t be mined until the year 2140. That’s hard-coded into the system and cannot change.

So the last 8% of Bitcoin’s supply will trickle into the market over the next 117 years. Talk about scarcity.

This scarcity is why we want a portion of our assets denominated in bitcoins. Bitcoin protects us from inflation – which is critically important these days.

Of course, scarcity only matters if an item has utility. And that’s where Bitcoin shines.

If we hold our bitcoins in a non-custodial wallet, we can send any amount of money to anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time on any day of the week. There are absolutely no restrictions.

This is what makes Bitcoin so valuable.

Note that I make a clear distinction between Bitcoin, which is the network, and bitcoins, which are the currency units within the network.

It’s not bitcoin the currency unit that’s terribly important. It’s Bitcoin the network. That’s what we are buying into as we accumulate bitcoins.

So to my way of thinking, Bitcoin is about financial security. It’s incredibly scarce. It’s immune from tampering. And it gives us the ability to transact value at any time for any reason.

What we’re talking about here is the opposite of a speculative asset… which is how most of the world still views Bitcoin.

On the crowdlending siding, our goal is to build a nest egg that compounds itself at a high rate of return. And there are multiple strategies for accelerating this process.

Our crowdlending portfolio throws off more and more passive income for us as it grows. But here’s the thing – we can get started with just $25. There’s no barrier to entry.

That means we can build up this portfolio at our own pace. Then, once it reaches a certain point, we can use these funds to acquire rental real estate. That will grow our passive income even more. And it will provide us with some incredible tax benefits.

So Bitcoin is all about financial security. And crowdlending is about quick and easy passive income that grows. That’s why our two little habits are so important.

As I mentioned yesterday, we aren’t going to see the needle move much when we’re first getting started with these habits. But if we stick with them consistently for years, we’ll be amazed at what we end up with.

I think Darren Hardy put it quite well in his book The Compound Effect. Here’s Hardy:

Small, smart choices + consistency + time = radical difference.

Well said.

-Joe Withrow

P.S. Would you like more information on the topics we’re discussing today?

Yesterday we released The Financial Consistency Bundle to provide just that… and a lot more. This product packages two of our core financial courses together for the price of one. This is the first time we’ve done that.

Within the bundle you’ll find Finance for Freedom and The Income Snowball Strategy.

Finance for Freedom is all about building a robust asset portfolio. This includes the ins and outs of Bitcoin. The goal here is financial security.

And The Income Snowball Strategy lays out several strategies for building a crowdlending portfolio capable of generating returns between 9% and 15% consistently. That’s how we generate quick and easy passive income.

To learn more about our new bundle, just follow the link below. We’ll keep the offering open through Saturday at midnight.

The Financial Consistency Bundle

The post Two habits, two goals… first appeared on Zenconomics.

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Two Things To Do Every Monday to Break Out Financially…

Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals… Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

That’s Jim Rohn writing about success.

Rohn left this world back in 2009. But in his time he was considered a leading authority on personal development and business success. His books and programs reached millions of people around the world.

As Rohn so eloquently points out, success doesn’t come from luck. It comes from consistency.

To be successful in any endeavor, one needs to first develop the good habits that will bring success about… And then stick with those habits day after day after day.

And here’s the thing – those habits don’t need to be major undertakings. In fact, they shouldn’t be. Instead, success habits should be small and hardly noticeable.

That’s because it’s very easy to stick with habits that are simple. And there’s a cumulative effect that goes unseen when we apply good habits consistently.

This is the secret of success. It comes from doing little things over and over again.

To that end, I do two little things every Monday morning to improve my financial situation.

First, I buy $100 worth of Bitcoin. That’s regardless of whatever the price happens to be.

Then I go into my crowdlending portfolio and I purchase $100 worth of new notes. This boosts my passive income ever so slightly.

I do both of these things every Monday before I start my work day. I’ve done so for a long time now.

I add to my Bitcoin stash every week because I see it as sound money that’s more scarce than gold. And as the world awakens to the importance of sound money, Bitcoin’s dollar price will rise significantly.

In fact, I fully expect to see Bitcoin trading north of $100,000 within the next 24 to 36 months.

On the crowdlending side, I add to my portfolio every week because it’s a quick and easy way to build a nest egg that compounds over time. I’ve been able to generate returns over 9% consistently with this strategy.

We’ll talk more about both Bitcoin and crowdlending later this week.

But what I want to emphasize today is this – no single $100 purchase has much of an impact on my overall financial situation.

In other words, I do these two things every week even though that particular action alone doesn’t move the needle in any tangible way.

That’s why I thought very seriously about ending these habits on multiple occasions in the early days. After all, if we’re doing something that doesn’t produce a noticeable impact, why continue?

It’s all about the cumulative effect.

If we purchase $100 worth of Bitcoin every week for years, we’re going to end up with a material stash. There’s no way to quantify this accurately simply because the price is constantly fluctuating.

But if we stick with this habit, we’ll end up adding tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to our net worth over time. And the best part is, this worth will be denominated in bitcoins, not dollars.

On the crowdlending side, it’s much easier to quantify the compounding effect.

My approach to risk assessment has been able to generate a 9.2% return on my crowdlending portfolio thus far. Assuming that rate of return, $100 a week will turn into $5,576 after the first year.

From there, the portfolio will grow to $11,578 in two years. And if we keep at it for five years, we’ll have a nest egg of $33,266. And then the portfolio will throw off about $600 a month in passive income.

There’s nothing eye-popping about these numbers. But they come simply from making small $100 investments every single week. They take no more than fifteen minutes to do.

So this is my Monday morning routine. It’s like clockwork to me.

Pair these two simple habits with a more extensive wealth strategy and we’ll be on the fast track to financial independence.

And in the spirit of financial independence, I’d like to try something completely new today.

We are packaging our Finance for Freedom program and our course on The Income Snowball Strategy into a single bundle. We’re calling it The Financial Consistency Bundle. This will enable people to try out both courses for the price of one.

So if my two Monday morning habits strike you as worthwhile, these two courses will lay out exactly how I go about doing both.

Finance for Freedom discusses the best practices around buying and storing Bitcoin… and a whole lot more. It also spells out the hidden secrets of money and asset allocation in full.

And The Income Snowball Strategy will convey my approach to risk assessment when it comes to crowdlending. Proper risk assessment is critical to generating high returns.

But here’s the thing – we’ve never bundled these two programs together before. So we’re going to make the bundle available for this week only.

If you’re interested, you can get more information right here:

The Financial Consistency Bundle

But please don’t delay. We’ll shut down the offer on Saturday, April 29th at midnight Eastern.

-Joe Withrow

The post Two Things To Do Every Monday to Break Out Financially… first appeared on Zenconomics.

The post Two Things To Do Every Monday to Break Out Financially… appeared first on Zenconomics.

Truth and Community

Asha is the path of righteousness, the straight path, the path that is true. Druj is the path of falsehood, the crooked path, the path that is false.

Choose the path of asha, for it leads to happiness and joy. Avoid the path of druj, for it leads to suffering and pain.

This is a quote attributed to Zoroaster. He was the founder of the ancient religion Zoroastrianism.

Zoroaster taught that life was a battle between truth and falsehood. He called truth “asha”. And his term for falsehood was “druj”.

To Zoroaster, the purpose of life was to seek asha and defend it against druj. I’d say that’s a good philosophy.

I only know this because I was researching the origins of the Russian oil trade this week. That’s something I’m writing about in our April newsletter for The Phoenician League.

In 1876 a wealthy Russian industrialist discovered acres upon acres of untapped oil fields in and around the ancient city of Baku. It’s located right on the Caspian Sea in the modern country of Azerbaijan – just south of the Russian border.

It turns out that Baku was once a major outpost of Zoroastrianism. Marco Polo wrote about it in his famous 13th century book The Travels of Marco Polo.

And it’s likely this Russian industrialist traveled to Baku specifically because of what he read in the book. Marco Polo reported seeing oil gushing out of the ground in the ancient city. The Zoroastrian temples harnessed it to fuel pillars of fire.

We’ve been talking about community and American mutualism all this week… and I felt like this old idea from Zoroaster fit right in with our discussion.

From my perspective, the belief that there is objective truth in this world is fundamental to the progress of western civilization. If we think about the modern comforts we enjoy today, they are all thanks to the work our ancestors did.

For most of human history, the world was a cold, dark, and often hostile place. But our ancestors constantly strove to discover the secrets of the Universe. And as they did so, they used this knowledge to make human life easier.

Fire… steam power… electricity… modern methods of energy production… advanced power tools – each of these developments came as a result of people seeking truth. Often under very difficult conditions.

So I wanted to leave you with a thought this week…

In many ways, our lives are a continuation of those who came before us. Many of us were instilled with the mindset that it’s up to each successive generation to take what they receive and build upon it.

But we don’t do this by electing the right politicians and passing the right legislation – no matter how many interest groups want to convince us of such.

Instead, we advance human civilization by building up ourselves first… and then by building up our community. Those are the things that we can control.

To that end, I wanted to introduce you to a non-profit that we recently formed. We call it the Foundation for Human Civilization.

Our mission is to help enable vibrant, self-sustaining local communities.

And our first project is to drill a centralized well in rural Uganda. It will service the remote villages of Mwera and Bugolo-Kireku.

These two villages are home to about 2,000 people across 220 households. Children make up more than half of the population.

Yet, the villages have no running water.

Residents must collect rainwater and/or travel to a natural spring to fill up their jugs. The closest spring is up to three miles away from residents in these two villages.

By drilling a centralized well, we’ll reduce the need for residents to travel to the spring each day. This will free up their time to engage in more productive activities… which in turn will help the villages become more prosperous.

If you would like to learn more about our little project and how you can support it, I invite you to visit the Foundation’s site right here:

Foundation for Human Civilization: Uganda Water Project

-Joe Withrow

The post Truth and Community first appeared on Zenconomics.

The post Truth and Community appeared first on Zenconomics.

The Forgotten History of American Mutualism

Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small.

Americans use associations to give entertainment, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes. In this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools.

Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate. Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association.

That’s French ambassador Alexis de Tocqueville writing in the 1830s.

The French government commissioned de Tocqueville to travel to the United States. His job was to study American society and politics. And what he found amazed him.

That is, Americans worked together to manage society and take on important projects. This was done through private associations. And everything was self-funded.

Nobody was forced to do any of the things de Tocqueville mentioned. And the government levied no taxes to fund these projects.

Instead, those who found the projects useful and necessary came together to complete them. Everything centered around community at the local level.

What’s more, many of these associations also served as “safety nets” for people.

I’ve done a little bit of research on America’s great mutual aid networks of that time period. A great (but certainly not complete) resource for this is David Beito’s From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services.

I don’t think many of us realize just how robust and self-reliant Americans were back then. The mutual aid networks were incredibly comprehensive.

Members shared ideas and boots-on-the-ground intel… They facilitated skills-training and jobs-training programs… They matched each other up with career and investment opportunities… They banded together to take care of physical infrastructure… And they instituted programs that made access to quality health care cheap and accessible to all members.

That’s where the term “lodge doctors” came from.

Many of these networks would keep doctors on the payroll. Then, when a member needed medical attention, their lodge doctors were immediately available. And at far reduced prices since they were already on retainer.

A few of these old mutual aid societies are still around today. The Moose Lodge and the Order of Elks are two examples.

The thing is – these associations are extremely watered down today. They only do a fraction of what they once did.

That’s because the Welfare State crowded them out. And then the virtue-signaling philanthropy industry kicked them while they were down.

We’ve been talking all week about the America is going to the dogs narrative that’s prevalent today. It’s pushed upon us through both traditional and social media. It’s all about the perception that America had a good run… but now it’s on the decline.

And maybe that’s true in the major cities. Especially the poorly governed ones.

But from my perspective, there are still plenty of strong communities out there in this country. And I think people are feeling the need to band together with those of like mind more than they have in about a century.

This is a dynamic Robert Nisbet explored in his book The Quest for Community. In the book, Nisbet pointed out something that I found quite insightful.

The rise of the Welfare State enabled what’s often called “radical individualism”. This is the idea that it’s every man (or woman) for himself… and that somebody else will handle any problems that may impact society or its infrastructure.

This is quite ironic.

Proponents of the Welfare State claim that it’s necessary specifically because of so-called radical individualism. But the history of 19th century mutual aid in America says otherwise. Americans were far more community-minded before big government came to power.

The point is – America only falls if we let it.

And that’s because America isn’t one giant entity. Fundamentally, it’s an idea. The idea that individual liberty is a natural right… and that nobody has the right to infringe upon the liberty of others.

America is the idea that every man should be the king of his own castle, as Thomas Jefferson put it.

In other words, America exists at the local level. It’s all the countless communities dispersed across this great landmass.

That means we are in control. Each of us. As my friend Paul Rosenberg puts it awake, engage, act.

-Joe Withrow

P.S. Do you get the feeling that the principles of western civilization and American history are being lost?

To me, it’s clear that government-approved textbooks do them both a major disservice. In fact,

I’m amazed at how little I knew about our heritage. That is, until I sought out independent educational sources.

And one of the best resources I’ve found is Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom.

It features 33 video-based courses taught by some knowledgeable and passionate people. Several of them are professors at small private colleges that accept no federal funding. That provides them with full autonomy.

Liberty Classroom features basic history courses on both western civilization and American history. There are also courses on the culture of the early American republic as well as the early days of the western frontier.

Then there are courses on “freedom’s progress”. This is the history of political thought in the western world. There are several fascinating courses on mythology and science fiction in western civilization as well.

And finally, Liberty Classroom features quite a few courses on free market economics. That is to say, real economics. Not the hypothetical economics taught in all but a handful of American universities today.

Put it all together and this is the education I wish I had received in high school and college.

And it’s about more than just personal development.

This material provides a solid foundation for understanding the modern world. That includes the ability to parse through biased information to identify incentives. If you can find the incentives, you can get much closer to the truth.

So I can’t say enough good things about this program.

If you would like to give Liberty Classroom a look and browse its course offerings, just go here:

Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom

The post The Forgotten History of American Mutualism first appeared on Zenconomics.

The post The Forgotten History of American Mutualism appeared first on Zenconomics.

Why I changed my tune on America…

We talked yesterday about the manufactured America is going to the dogs narrative.

There seems to be an agenda in motion to convince us that everything is falling apart in this country. There was a time when I believed this. But not anymore…

My own observations suggest otherwise. We’re seeing a resurgence of self-reliance and self-responsibility in America once again.

I see homeschooling as a great indicator of this.

Not too long ago people considered homeschooling to be weird. Many looked down upon it.

Today it’s estimated that ten or eleven percent of American households with children are now homeschooling. Talk about a turn-around.

The Covid hysteria served as the catalyst for this rapid shift.

Of course, it started when they closed the schools and went to a “remote learning” model. This showed parents that their kids could in fact learn at home. It’s not hard to facilitate.

But more than that, parents finally got a glimpse of just how bad the public school system is.

In the best scenarios, the kids simply aren’t getting an education that’s suited for the modern world in which we live. The schools do not set kids up for success in the 21st century. They are a relic of the factory era.

In the worst scenarios, the teachers are pushing disturbing ideas onto the kids. Gender fluidity… the idea that all white people are systemically racist… a love of communism – I’ve heard stories of public school teachers pushing all these things and more on their students.

As a result, millions of families have taken their children’s education into their own hands. That’s the American spirit at work. I love it.

The other thing the Covid hysteria taught us is that we still retain a lot of power and control at both the state and local levels in this country. American federalism can still serve as a check against centralized government power… just as it was intended to do.

That is to say, we’ve learned that state and local governments still have a lot of control. They can refuse to adopt policies handed down from the federal government if they deem them harmful or unnecessary.

I’m incredibly encouraged by this. And I think it paves the way for a renewed sense of mutualism in this country.

Americans are seeing the need to work together to solve problems at the local level once again. Despite its promises, the federal government is not the ultimate arbiter of civilization.

And this is why I just don’t buy the America is falling apart narrative.

It looks to me like many Americans are willing to roll up their sleeves and work together to solve their own problems. Just like they used to do by default. We’ll talk about the great mutual aid networks of 19th century America tomorrow.

But I think the key insight here is that we, as individuals, have the power to shape the world around us.

Our energy is incredibly transformational when it’s focused on a clear and specific task. Clarity of purpose might be the most powerful force in the Universe.

That’s why I love the work Connor Boyack and the Tuttle Twins team is out there doing.

If you aren’t familiar with the Tuttle Twins, it’s a series of children’s books that convey critical lessons. Personal responsibility… accountability… mutual collaboration… empathy… standing up for what’s right. Each book portrays these values in some capacity.

What’s more, the Tuttle Twins books instill a mindset of self-empowerment. They depict individuals and communities that work together to solve problems and accomplish tasks. I think this is critical in our world today.

So for anyone in need of gift ideas for the kids or the grandkids – the Tuttle Twins books are a great pick. You can browse the book selection right here:

The Tuttle Twins Book Collection

-Joe Withrow

The post Why I changed my tune on America… first appeared on Zenconomics.

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The Plot Against American Reality

The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors.

That’s Thomas Jefferson writing about the primary news media of his day – newspapers.

Many of us today see the news media as biased and sensationalist. We tend to blame the 24-hour news cycle and social media for this… but Jefferson’s writing shows that it’s a timeless issue.

I bring this up today because something of an insight occurred to me over the weekend.

It came to me as my wife and I were out to our monthly dinner. I’m walking down Main Street of this historic town nearby, and a thought came to me. Everything is mostly normal.

Then I had to stop and think… why does such a thought strike me as insightful? Shouldn’t I expect things to be normal?

That’s when it hit me – there’s been a concerted effort to convince us that America is going to the dogs.

I suspect this agenda has been in play for quite a while now. But it certainly ramped up in 2020.

First we had the Covid hysteria. They told us we had to cover our faces and avoid close contact with other people at all costs.

Then they facilitated and amplified the riots and looting leading into the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Some news outlets portrayed these as “peaceful protests”. They had reporters on the street proclaiming them as such… while fires raged in the background behind them. That’s nothing short of an extreme psychological attack on viewers.

More recently I’ve seen a lot of coverage around shoplifting epidemics in cities like Portland, San Francisco, and others. We’ve also seen violence and homelessness skyrocket in these areas.

This is often portrayed as the same “America is going to the dogs” narrative. But the fact is, it’s all due to those cities decriminalizing shoplifting. Apparently they now refuse to prosecute criminals in those select cities.

These are things I’ve noticed over the years… but I haven’t paid them much mind.

I refuse to spend any energy on things that I cannot control. As such, I didn’t recognize that these were all breadcrumbs that lead to the same manufactured narrative.

It was only when I started using Twitter again – albeit briefly – that I finally put it all together.

Whenever I write one of these emails, I have my email management platform automatically link to it through my Twitter profile. So occasionally I’ll go check and see if anyone actually clicks on my posts. Then I’ll take five or ten minutes to see what a few folks I respect are posting on Twitter as well.

I noticed that there’s a certain account that’s always front and center in my Twitter feed. It’s listed as promotional content. That means somebody is paying big bucks to make sure it’s always showing up.

And this account appears to do nothing but post videos of Americans getting into arguments and sometimes fist fights with each other. That’s it.

It’s stupid. Consuming junk like that is that fastest way to poison our beautiful minds. So I always scroll right past and give it little thought.

That is, until this weekend. It suddenly occurred to me that this is all part of the same overarching narrative. America is going to the dogs.

But here’s the thing – this narrative is manufactured.

Sure, civilized life has declined in those places where they have intentionally incentivized crime. Whatever you enable, you get more of. Incentives are powerful.

But for those of us who live in places that still respect American traditions and the rule of law… everything is mostly normal. Most people are still going about their lives as they always have.

Walking down this historic Main Street over the weekend, I saw young couples out on dates. I saw parents strolling their children. I saw business people enjoying happy hour. And I saw older folks walking around and enjoying the break of Spring in the mountains.

Shopkeepers were tending their shops. The restaurants were bustling. And for the most part, everybody I interacted with was positive, polite, and considerate.

In other words, everything was as it should be.

And that’s when it all came together for me. This country isn’t falling apart. That’s just a manufactured narrative. And I suspect it’s part of a sinister agenda designed to weaken the American spirit.

Let’s not fall for it.

You know, most of the time I conclude these emails with a link related to money, finance, and investing. I’d like to do something different today. I would like to introduce you to my friend Paul Rosenberg.

Paul is one of the most interesting men I’ve ever met.

He was an electrical engineer who helped lay the first fiber optics lines in America. He was directly involved with a group of individuals who were working on a cryptocurrency system more than a decade before Bitcoin was born. That work directly paved the way for Bitcoin to come together. And Paul has one of the most keen minds out there when it comes to spotting big-picture trends before anyone realizes they are happening.

Paul posts weekly entries on his Free-man’s Perspective blog site. And right now Paul is offering a risk-free 90-day trial for his paid newsletter.

This is something I look forward to every month. Paul’s insights and analysis have shaped my own thinking in a myriad of ways.

So I highly recommend that you give Paul’s work a look. You can find it right here: https://freemansperspective.com/our-subscription-newsletter/?wlfrom=%2Fyour_member_homepage%2F#regform-LEYDLVKV

The post The Plot Against American Reality first appeared on Zenconomics.

The post The Plot Against American Reality appeared first on Zenconomics.

Shifting Our Focus to Monthly Passive Income

Investors are always looking for new ways to generate a return on their money.

But as we discussed yesterday, those who have fixated on the stock market haven’t fared too well over the last fifteen months. That’s why we’ve been talking about an alternative investment strategy all week.

We call it the Income Snowball Strategy. It’s all about creating passive income outside of the stock market.

The beauty of this strategy is that there’s no barrier to entry.

It’s not like real estate investing where we have to come up with large down payments for every property we want to buy. Instead, investors can get started with just $25. That’s it.

And that’s because this strategy utilizes what’s called ‘crowdlending’. This is a financial model that connects borrowers with investors.

In other words, crowdlending allows investors to be the bank. We can pool our money together to issue loans to qualified borrowers.

This strategy provides several advantages for retail investors. They are:

Higher ReturnsMonthly Passive IncomeDiversificationSupports Small Business

Crowdlending provides investors with much higher returns than normal. Certificates of deposits (CDs) and bonds just don’t compare.

As I write, a 10-year Treasury bond currently pays 3.4% interest. And according to Bankrate.com, the average 5-year CD rate in the U.S. is currently 1.2%.

Meanwhile, our suggested approach to crowdlending can generate returns between 9 and 15%. Over and over again.

That’s been our experience. And we use legitimate credit risk analysis to build a robust loan portfolio – just like the banks do.

What’s more, these returns come in the form of monthly passive income. The bigger our loan portfolio gets, the more cash flow we have coming to us each month.

This is money that we can use for anything we want. My preference is to reinvest it. But there are no restrictions whatsoever.

Building a crowdlending portfolio also helps us diversify our assets. It’s a great way to put money to work outside of the stock market.

And finally, crowdlending helps enable small businesses.

It’s a way for small businesses to access capital without going through the banking system. They like that. The banks don’t always treat small business well as it is.

So by helping fund certain loans, we are directly supporting small business ourselves. And in return, those businesses send us a small portion of their revenues each month.

Of course, the key to making it all work is proper credit risk analysis.

We need to do our due diligence and build our loan portfolio strategically. That’s how we maximize our returns with crowdlending.

Ready to learn more?

We just made our new micro-course available to the public this week. Those interested can find it right here: The Income Snowball Strategy

The post Shifting Our Focus to Monthly Passive Income first appeared on Zenconomics.

The post Shifting Our Focus to Monthly Passive Income appeared first on Zenconomics.

Generating Easy Passive Income Outside the Market

What on Earth am I going to do now? It will take forever to regain what I lost…

Alex had been investing heavily in the stock market since the COVID-19 hysteria hit several years ago. He found himself working remotely for the first time… and suddenly he had extra time on his hands.

Like many, Alex began tracking the stock market daily. And he stumbled upon a few Reddit threads full of investors and “day traders”. Making stock picks became a game that the group talked about daily.

Pretty soon Alex began pouring a significant portion of his paychecks into his brokerage account to make new investments.

And for nearly two years he felt like a genius. He watched his investment account grow substantially as the market soared.

But then the market started to fall in January 2022… and it seemingly went down every day. Alex watched in horror as his account began a steep decline.

He thought about selling off some of his stocks to cut his losses. But then everybody in his Reddit groups kept saying the market would rebound as soon as the “Fed pivot” happened.

The Fed pivot refers to the idea that the Federal Reserve would have to cut interest rates to stop the stock market from falling. And everybody on Reddit agreed it was coming…

But it didn’t come.

A few weeks ago Alex threw in the towel. Then he kicked himself for not getting out when his gut told him to last year.

He lost what he considers to be a ton of money by staying firm and hoping the market would soon turn around.

Alex went from feeling brilliant to deeply distressed.

On top of losing his hard-earned money, Alex also watched his living expenses skyrocket – as we all have. A simple trip to the grocery store now costs at least twice what it did not too long ago.

Sadly, this story isn’t unique.

There are countless people out there in a similar position to Alex. They got caught up in the blow-off top of history’s greatest bull market… but then they rode the elevator back down.

To me, this is a perfect example of why the Income Snowball Strategy we talked about yesterday is so timely. It’s all about generating passive income outside of the stock market.

And that’s why we just unlocked a brand new micro-course around this approach. The course covers:

The fundamentals of this alternative investment modelStrategies for maximizing returns while mitigating risksReal-world examples and success storiesBest practices for getting started and growing your monthly passive income

This new strategy is something I think all investors would be wise to implement. If you’re interested, you can get more information right here: The Income Snowball Strategy

-Joe Withrow

The post Generating Easy Passive Income Outside the Market first appeared on Zenconomics.

The post Generating Easy Passive Income Outside the Market appeared first on Zenconomics.