I recently got an email that had some results from a nationwide survey designed to discover one thing: What’s up with people and their money?

The results confirmed what I had feared – as Loral Langemeier would say, “People are saving themselves straight into the poor house.”  They spend so much time following the Suze Ormans of the world, cutting back and getting small that they are living small right on top of it. A stunning 35.93% have been “not at all successful” in increasing their income. Although 44.3% said that “starting a business” was the way to increase their income, more than 63% said that “self-employment” is “moderately to very risky”!

The biggest risk you can take is to take no risk at all.

These people are risking it all by being afraid; by “saving for a rainy day” which means that they hoard money away, instead of letting it create new cash for them. And as we all know inflation WILL go up. A dollar now, tucked away in a savings vehicle that is making next to no interest, is NOT going to be worth what it was now in a few years. What if, oh say 10 or 20 years ago, you saved a dollar, presuming it would buy you a certain amount of gasoline? See what I mean?

Retirement should equal constant cash flow from investments and a cashflow business, NOT waiting on a check from a broken system which may or may not be around for us at all.

The good news in all this is that 51.58% of the people who answered the survey have their primary focus in the right place – earning more. 52.22% have read books, attended classes, or taken on jobs to build the skills they need to achieve their earnings goals.

That means it’s time to “let the clutch out” and actually engage the gears! Learning is one thing – but it means nothing if not coupled with ACTION!

I hope you are enjoying the segments from Darren Hardy about the network marketing industry – it’s my opinion that this is one of the best ways to get some part time income coming in, on a cashflow basis.

A little while ago, I met a woman who really galvanized me to educate people about money. I met her in a networking group. She was a lovely woman in her early 60s – well dressed, well spoken, the picture of success. I asked her out for coffee, and at the coffee, found out a bit about her story.

She had been a corporate executive – but then was downsized in a merger. She had gone along for a number of years after that using the expertise she had gained as an employee as a consultant…until the economy shifted. Now, she was “desperate” (her own words) and “one step from living under a bridge.” Also her own words – said very matter-of-factly, not with lots of drama. We discussed network marketing for a bit, but she was too close to the edge, she was “praying” for her upcoming birthday, so that she could get a Social Security check, that she hoped would “save her life.”

I found out recently that she’d had to sell her house, and actually had moved to another state where the cost of living is lower. She is still trying to find consulting work (as she can do it over the Internet), but I know that she fits the statistics quoted above. She WILL get some Social Security money (she was within a year of getting her first check), but will YOU? I am fairly sure that I will not, and I’m probably 10-20 years older than many of you reading this post. We have to rely on what we have squirreled away – OR what is coming to us as fresh money from a cashflow proposition we have built up as a retirement vehicle.

I once told a fellow network marketer that the thing that made me feel the best is when I was able to help someone when the “wolf was on the path” – but once the “wolf had reached the door,” it was usually just too tough. You generally can’t make a huge amount of money in network marketing until you have built the business for a while. That makes sense, of course, with any business – you need to build up that “Know, Like, Trust” factor, as Ivan Misner of BNI likes to say. People sometimes imagine that network marketing will be the “Hail Mary Pass” (to use a football metaphor) that they need to stay afloat, but it’s just like any other business that you could start – except of course that the framework is already done for you, and if it’s over a few years old, it has a pattern of success for you to follow. That’s something you can’t say about any other business – but that doesn’t make it a “Hail Mary Pass” either. You have to work it to succeed.

Who do you know who has the wolf “on the path” – but not quite “at the door”? Who would be willing to do some work now – so they never have to work again? I would love to talk to them, to see if there is a way I can help them get a little income into their lives, and start them building their way towards financial freedom.