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Cart before the horse- part 2

Hows the start of 2021 looking?

When we wrote the last article “The cart before the horse” we gave a brief outline of why we came to starting a “flatpack” style house before we secured buying a piece of land.
We started this year with full force clearing the land and planting. Having found the piece of land that we feel fit our overall goal and aspirations it was full speed ahead. However clearing and start planting on a 3 acres of land with just us two and a few pieces of equipment is not a small feat, did i also mention with potty training a 2 year old and life schooling a 5 year old? We wouldn’t want it any other way though!

Theres progress everyday, we have cleared and are working on 1 acre now. This update on how and where we are with the land will be a 6 monthly update. In this 6 month update section i will be breaking it into this small overview:

  • Why the update & a brief outline of the lay of the land. (this post)
  • Trees as a form of generational wealth.
  • landscape update- Overall grounds plan of the initial three acres.

The reason for us sharing this and making this mini series is to share our journey and keep you up to date.

The order in which we decided to tackle the set up was important for us. Seeing as we are doing practically all the work ourselves, we are taking our time in the way we are managing the work load. Doing the flatpack style house enables us to balance our everyday life with the children whilst clearing and planting. The other part was to get a heads up on the the building whilst we were looking for land and finalising on it.

The first thing we started doing was to clear the initial homesite. We have drawn up a ground plan and knew where we wanted the house, the vegetable gardens etc. The land was bush, complete with a whole lot of rocks and roots to clear out. The first couple of months was clearing the bush out and de rocking the general area. As the land started to clear and more of the soil was exposed we started to change things like the placement of the vegetable garden. This is one of the things that can only be learnt through presence. Even though thorough planning and draft after draft of the design is a saving grace there are some things that life only brings that you only figure out by living through it.

The main changes to the land in this time has been:

  • the well that has been hand dug- we have been using the water already for the plants and the construction of the utility building. With the kids having a few showers during the days with some of the buckets that come up, its been a whole lot of fun splashing around.
  • the toilet hole completed- franks set up all the pipes so once the house is up, its a plug and go right away.
  • the majority of the fence done- We’ve used reject wood, left overs from the house, to build the immediate fence around the 1 acre were currently working on. We then went ahead and start torching it as another means of bug prevention.
  • the utility building started this month, the rammed earth pillars are the first lot to go in. This is the first rammed earth element on this one acre. The subsoil (marl) we are using for the pillars is what’s come up from the well.

The landscaping and vegetable garden start and on going progress will be covered in the next post as there has been a lot of changes on that front as well.

Although we have and from time to time do face challenges i hope your main take away is to never give up. No matter what curve ball comes your way keep an eye on your goals and keep going.

Blessings,

Asli

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Rest & Reset

The most important element of not just self reliant living but life in general is to have the ability to think clearly to be able to operate 100%. To do this we need to ensure that we are fully rested and give ourselves the time and space to rest and reset.

There is a lot of talk around self care, how and when to put time aside for it. Self care isn’t an act of selfishness. I can attest to the fact as a mother and partner i need to remind myself of this regularly. Building a self reliant life whilst raising two young children is not easy, it takes a lot out of you. It isn’t possible nor healthy in any way to pour from an empty cup. Most definitely not sustainable! More often than not both myself and frank find ourselves just being on the go, one thing after the other because there is so much to do, all the time and forgetting to pause.

Being stressed seems to be the norm in today’s fast-paced society that pressures us to devote our lives to work and “earning” a living. This way of thinking is hard to shake off even as a family that have made the conscious decision to live a sustainable life. Finding balance in ourselves and in turn helping pass it on not just our children but help others along the way.

Refreshing your mind and body will increase your efficiency when you come to rely on your mental and physical state. The more refreshed you are, the more effectively and efficiently you complete tasks. The more effectively and efficiently you complete tasks, the more time you have to rest and relax!

While many of us have become “night-owls” in response to lengthy working hours and other pressing responsibilities, studies have shown that people are generally more productive when they start work early in the day and concentrate on their most challenging tasks while their body is fresh and their creative energy is peaking. Try going to bed an hour or two earlier so you can wake up earlier and really smash those challenges you have in front of you!

There are immense number of studies done on the subject but there is only so much theory you can indulge in. Try to set a routine and priorities rest, and then let me know how that changes your life.

This is the end of the small series on self reliance. I did this write up because i wanted to give you an idea on different elements required in order for you to set yourself up for a self reliant living. Dreaming of a different life is a great start but there is a lot of preparation one needs in order to have the best set up to a self reliant life.

The different aspects shared in the previous posts are all great starting point if you are in your planning stage. We offer in depth consultations Book a free first session where we go through and support you on taking the leap.

I hope this mini series has been useful as a starting point to get you going with your dream.

Peace and blessings,

Asli

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How did our paid subscriber service, Decentralised Portfolio do in its first six months?

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This blog post contains parts of our first financial review of our investment recommendations at Welcome to the Decentralized portfolio our paid subscriber service..

A little back story for new readers;

We started the decentralized portfolio just a few months ago in August 2020, mainly as a result of friends consistently pushing us to make available our investment research.

(we think maybe our friends wanted to know what exactly we’ve been up to thats enabled us to lead life on our terms) and that’s fine with us.

But ultimately we thought they were on to something, so we decided to share our investment research through a subscription service to make it available to anyone who subscribes.

We even toyed with the idea of making this service free, but unfortunately data shows that typically information that’s paid for is valued more than free information, and we didn’t see the point in making an effort to do in-depth time consuming research and then to write up something that might only get your attention in passing and ultimately find its place in the trash along with everything else we all get bombarded with on a daily bases.

We want our subscribers to actually take the time to read through our research and take action on it, if it seems right for them.

So we charge a small annual subscription fee, mainly in the hope that our subscribers take their investments as seriously as we do. 

Our research is based on companies we invest in ourselves, we won’t publish investment ideas that aren’t good enough for our money.  we don’t think those ideas would be good enough for your money either.

And so here we are doing our first review of the first six months of this service from august 2020 until the end of January 2021. In the future we may decide to offer quarterly reports or something similar, but for now let’s review the first six months.

So how did all our positions do in our investments, let’s take a look;

Firstly, congratulations to all of our paid subscribers, we know it takes a lot of effort and trust to pay for a subscription service, read through all the info and take action, putting your hard earned money into anything with some risk attached is not a decision to be taken lightly, it’s stressful! so thanks to all of you for committing to our service, we think it’s been well worth it so far!

(ok it’s s still a new service so there’s only a few of you, but still, we are very happy with the last six months and knowing that if you, our subscribers keep making superior gains, our membership will grow over time)

For those that took the time to follow our recommendations at the time we made them and kept uniform position sizes, congratulations on your outstanding gains! your portfolios are up by an average gain of 154% in six months !!!!

 We think 2021 is going to be a very exciting year and we hope we can continue to deliver outsized gains into the future.

To be fair to our paid subscribers we can’t reveal the exact investments we recommended to them, but we can say this;

Over the course of six months, we recommended a total of 11 investments, 

We had 7 recommendations in the natural resource sector and 4 recommendations in the technology sector.

Out of the 11 positions, our worst performing recommendation was -21% and our best performing recommendation was +700%

And the average gain over all 11 positions was 154% all within less than a six month time frame, 

And that’s not all; each of the positions we recommended is still growing and has a lot more upside to come, we’re not selling yet in other words, and we’re starting to add new recommendations going further into 2021, the first of which went live a few weeks ago.

We always suggest allocating uniform position sizes, meaning that, whatever capital you had available to allocate for investing should be split evenly throughout the recommendations, and not on cherry picking one or two positions, uniform position sizes help create diversified spread and help mitigate risk.

It’s been an incredible six months for our subscribers  at Decentralised Portfolio, and I can’t wait to see how things pan out in 2021!

If you’d like to join us, it’s not to late, you can sign up here Subscriptions

Until next time,

Frank  

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Financial literacy and Generational wealth: Part 8

 The importance of Teaching your children how to invest and thrive for the future.

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Part 8: what the wealthy do differently 

Today we continue to explore the way people with generational wealth think, we call this “old money” how does old money think?

If we want To know how to build generational wealth, then we need to look at how people with generational family fortunes think.

Making a Public Spectacle of Yourself – Not Cool

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Old money likes to keep things private. It favors 

private businesses, private information, private investments, and private lives.

Private businesses are more profitable, to their owners, than publicly quoted stocks. They pay fewer legal fees, fewer accounting fees, and spend much less money trying to please investors and the media.

Today, publicly traded businesses in the U.S. distribute an average of 60% of their profits to shareholders. A privately owned, privately controlled business, on the other hand, may turn over 100% of its earnings to shareholders.

 In a public company, much of the earnings go to paying CEOs and corporate managers. In a privately controlled corporation, the owners decide who gets the money.

Accurate information-cool

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Old-money discounts public information – the stuff you get from newspapers and TV – and puts a premium on their private information sources. 

They trust their own eyes and ears… sound state of mind, and their personal contacts.

This attitude informs the old-money to be ahead by having the facts and makes better investments. Rather than invest on the basis of what everybody else knows, or thinks they know, they try to pin their investments on what they know that other people don’t. 

Cash Flow – Not Cool

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It’s capital that counts, not income. Most people – even high earners – are on a treadmill. They earn. They consume. There isn’t much left. Since their consumption depends on their income, they are eager to increase their income at every opportunity.

Not so with old money. It knows that, in the long run, income barely matters. It knows, too, that expenses normally rise with income, but not with real capital gains.

In other words, when you earn more money, your taxes rise… and you tend to spend the extra money on lifestyle enhancements. But if the value of the family farm goes up, the extra wealth tends to stay put. 

Old-money families don’t care as much about income as they do about capital. Often, they live in houses that were bought many years ago (no mortgages)… They drive cars that are fully depreciated (no car payments; no loss in value)… And they eschew costly fads and fashions of all sorts.

In most households, a young person is encouraged to go out and get the best-paying job he can find. Then he enters the labor force and spends the rest of his life trying to stay ahead of his expenses. He becomes a living example of the old expression “Too busy to make money.”

Tell your children: “Don’t worry about how much you make. Worry about what you learn… and what you end up with. Tell your employer you’d rather have equity than a salary increase.”

This is true in your career. And it is true in your investments. If you worry too much about the current yield, you are likely to miss the real payoff later.

Trading out of winning stock positions, for example, can trigger taxes and incur trading costs. In your work, as in your investments, you are better off ignoring income and short-term gains in favor of long-term capital growth.

Until next time,

Frank

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Finding and connecting to your tribe.

The word “tribe” in the western hemisphere is a word that has increased in circulation in the past few years. Certainly in the years coming up to 2020 and the need for it more so due to the isolations. More than ever before people have started to rethink their life and the way they want to live. The need to reconnect to a more natural way of life and with likeminded individuals. People need people. Isolation can have serious implications upon both our physical and mental health. A study performed by Karl Landis and Debra Umberson in 1988 which spanned over two decades, found that social isolation “is as significant to mortality rates as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, and lack of exercise.” What is especially interesting about this article is that it also noted that this comes at a time when the norm towards social isolation is strengthening.

As the world continues to appear as though it is spinning a little faster each day, everyone trying to make sense of the virus and how to best stay safe as well as healthy and the added layer of the increasingly detached manner of society due to an increase in the use of technology. When we live our lives in isolation we cannot benefit from the unique gifts others possess that we lack, and no one can benefit from our unique gifts in their lives.

Having likeminded humans around you offers you a support system, motivation and inspiration when times get tough or help you accelerate your work, thoughts and actions. Oftentimes they have the same fears, have made the same mistakes, and are generally fumbling through their lives in a way similar to the way you are fumbling through your own life. For us the biggest support system and motivation is our two little people, as we are working on building a bigger tribe of likeminded families here on the land with us.

Finding your tribe can look very different for different people, but one thing remains the same regardless of your method- finding your tribe means being intentional about who you choose to surround yourself with, and then working to cultivate those relationships in a healthy way. What are your goals in life? What are your core values? How do you envision your life? What are your goals? Make a thorough plan of what it is you want from life and how you envision yourself and your surroundings.

I hope this finds you in peace and love,

Asli

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Financial literacy and Generational wealth: Part 7

The importance of Teaching your children how to invest and thrive for the future.

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Part 7: what the wealthy do differently 

Today we continue to explore the way people with generational wealth think, we call this “old money” how does old money think?

If we want To know how to build generational wealth, then we need to look at how people with generational family fortunes think.

1. Spending – Not Cool

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Give a million dollars to an average person, and he/she immediately thinks of what it will buy. But give a million dollars to an old-money family, and it goes into a business… an investment… or a new entrepreneurial venture. Big difference!

What matters for old money is producing, not consuming. We don’t want to consume goods and services. We don’t want to consume information and ideas. We don’t want to consume Wall Street’s fee-stuffed “HNWI” (high net worth individual) products, either.

Let others drive their fancy cars, carry their expensive handbags, and have addresses in the chic ZIP codes. Old money doesn’t show off by buying things. It prefers to keep a low profile… and a low cost of living.

It knows that investment costs have to be kept down, too. And the best way to do that is to avoid hedge funds and structured products. Stick with simple, low-cost, long-term investments.

2. Spending the Family Fortune – Even Less Cool

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“Never touch the capital” is a long-standing rule and a hallowed tradition among old-money families. You may spend the interest on the family fortune – even the capital gains it produces. But woe betide the heir who draws down the principal.

The principal must be kept intact. Any distributions should be of interest, after taxes and inflation adjustments. At today’s low interest rates, it is hard to earn much income – safely – from your investments.

Families are tempted to “dip into capital” to make ends meet.

 Once you begin living on a previous generation’s savings, you will find it hard to stop… until the family fortune is all gone.

“Eat only what you kill” is a better way of expressing the taboo against spending family wealth.

It allows you to spend only what you make yourself. The earnings from capital go back into the family fortune, replacing losses from inflation and taxes.

3. Doing What Others Do – Not Cool

Most people want to fit in. They seek social approval by doing what other people do. But if you do what other people do, you will get the results that they get. You will become average – just like they are.

Having wealth is rare. Having it for more than one generation is rarer still. You don’t do that by doing what other people do. You have to think more clearly… and avoid many of the ideas, values, and habits that most people have.

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You must be willing to be different.

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Book a free first session

For the most part we spend a large chunk of our lives day dreaming about somewhere better, in our case a few years ago it was to build a sustainable life. To live and and raise our family somewhere warm. Even though we eventually ended up with a large list and a whole lot of countries to sift through.

The main idea is where do you start? Which comes first pinning down what you want or having the savings to back up that dream? Which came first chicken or the egg?

It can get complicated and overwhelming especially in this day and age where there is so much information out there. As the year 2020 has shown, depending on where you live, freedom of movement is getting tighter. More and more there are restrictions on what one can and cannot do in most places. As far as i know this goes against every ounce of being human. How are you to reach your highest self if you are in gold handcuffs, in most cases for western countries. How are you to live a fulfilled life when what you eat, drink, watch and who you see is dictated by someone else.

Although there is a fair amount of information, and plenty more to come, on our blog already detailing our journey. There are a number of people who are subscribed to the Welcome to the Decentralized portfolio our paid subscriber service. we have come to find that alongside the investment consultations more people have been asking for relocation strategy blueprints. Although we have briefly gone into our recent move Why Belize? this article has been just a scratch at the surface.

So this is a call to you if you feel you are not quite ready for investment subscription but feel you need to have a plan together first on how to;

  1. How to start the plan to relocate
  2. What resources to use
  3. How to take the first step to getting your finances in order
  4. How to narrow down your destination
  5. How to navigate the worries of relocating with children

This is just a few questions that we address with people regularly but everyone has their unique circumstances and we adapt the consultations to your needs.

Wer offering free 30 minutes sessions to start making a plan. Go on Contact Us or select date and time below and let us help you begin your journey to sustainable & holistic life.


In good health,

Asli & Frank

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Financial literacy and Generational wealth: Part 6

The importance of Teaching your children how to invest and thrive for the future.

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Patience and time in building the family fortune.

Today we begin to explore the way people with generational wealth think, we call this “old money” how does old money think?

If we want To know how to build generational wealth, then we need to look at how people with generational family fortunes think.

How is their thinking different from our own? 

What do they do differently from the rest of us?

What separates the truly wealthy from the rest of us?

Specifically one thing comes to mind over everything else;

The Long View!

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What accounts for it? How come some families stay rich generation after generation, while others never have a penny or a nickel?

“Culture,” or “Education,” perhaps. 

But what, specifically, about culture and education is it that makes such a big difference in outcomes?

The wealthy take the long view.

If you thought you’d live forever, would you do anything differently? 

Wouldn’t your attitude toward your money change a little? Wouldn’t you slow down, realising that you’re not in such a hurry to make money? Or spend money?

And wouldn’t you reduce your spending, too, knowing that your money would have to last you a long, long time?

Generational wealth is “forever” and it’s the long view!

Old-Money thinking.

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If you look carefully, almost all Old Money thinking can be traced to a single source: 

A longer-term outlook. The truly wealthy are careful to spend their money on things that hold their values over time.

It’s why they do not trade in and out of investments. Instead, they find a few positions and stick with them – for decades. they don’t rush in or out of anything. 

It’s also why they prepare their families, over the course of many, many years, so that they will be ready for the challenges of managing and enlarging the family wealth.

(Hence why we’re writing this mini series titled “Generational wealth”)

They make sure family members add to their collective wealth, rather than subtracting from it.

It’s why they spend time and money on lawyers and accountants, too, making sure that the structures are in place to pass along wealth and protect it.

It’s why they prefer deep-value assets over momentum investing. Over time, value rises to the top. Momentum slows.

It’s why they will wait a long time – many, many years – for the right investment at the right price.

It’s why they like investments with long-term payoffs, such as timber, mining, and real estate.

And it’s how they are able to benefit from compound growth, letting relatively modest gains grow over several generations.

It’s why they are almost fanatical about eliminating costs: taxes, investment charges, and unrewarding living expenses. They know that wear and tear, over time, will wreck their family fortunes.

It’s why they develop long-lasting partnerships with the professionals they need to make sure their interests are protected and their plans are carried out.

Time, Time, Time

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It is all a matter of time. Old-Money families have money. But they expect to have it for a long time. So they work hard, investing in education and professional advice, to make sure they have the personal resources they need.

The long view comes into play in almost everything. And over the long haul, it’s time, time, time… the most immutable, inflexible, unforgiving resource under the sun, that separates the rich from the poor. 

It would probably be so much more fun to spend your money now, wouldn’t it?

But the main point is worth keeping in mind: Building wealth is not about getting something. It is about giving up something. 

 It is for the person who wishes to make a sacrifice – even if it is a relatively agreeable sacrifice – so that others may benefit from it, perhaps others whom we may never meet, the future generations. “May the tree you plant today shade and shelter your great-grandchildren.”

Until next time,

Frank

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Self Reliant Living-Acquiring knowledge and the power of habits.

This is one topic that is split into two and in all honesty cannot be covered only in one post but i will touch on briefly, because its a key component to living a self reliant life. My hope is that you walk away with more questions than when you started reading it.

The idea of living a completely self reliant and sustainable life truly begins with educating yourself. As i mentioned previously education doesn’t necessarily mean only schooling. In our previous post Is Schooling Education? we briefly touched on how we are educating our children and the concept of schooling being synonymous with education. Education and learning is a part of our very essence as human beings. How or where you learn is unique to you as an individual. What we absorb whether it be conscious or subconscious shows up in our lives one way or another. This is why it is important to always strive to know more, read more, listen to valuable podcasts etc. To be able to distinguish what nourishes you as a whole being instead of sapping your of your life force.

It is said that we live in the information age, but in many ways it appears that enough people are not utilizing the wealth of information out there. This is doing yourself any incredible amount of disservice on so many levels. For many of us going back to our school days we were not taught anything about the importance of healthy eating, physical activity and/or financial management. Financial Literacy and Generational Wealth:

Taking these seemingly easy parts of our lives for granted and neglecting them leads to us neglected all other parts of our lives. When you cant think clearly because you have overloaded your body with toxins on a regular basis for years on end and are stuck in the loop of a 9-5 or shift work that pays next to nothing, you are unable to live on your own terms. Its very easy to give away your power once you get to a place within yourself where you dont know that living like that is not healthy in any sense of the word. It will appear to be a struggle to go within and find the answers. This loop is habits created slowly over time, that you might not even notice. These very habits as time goes on become harder and harder to step out of. Making you feel over time that you have no choice, that some things are for others but not for someone that either grew up or is in the circumstances that you are in. Excuse after excuse, because you are fearful of what is on the other side of your comfort zone. Anxiety and fear are truly two of the hardest enemies of your evolution to shake off. Give yourself time & educate yourself and you will come to realise that they are nothing but reverse prayer. You are in actuality manifesting & creating situations/circumstances you do not want.

We are all here on purpose, with a purpose. As children we are more connected to the earth and all that is around. Children are naturally more free than adults, more inquisitive and explore more freely to find what fits them. They are closer to the truth, as their minds havent been moulded by their surroundings yet. Thats why ignatius loyola said: Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man. (I have never wanted to quote someone with the history this individual has but the quote fits.) This way of thinking was crucial to certain establishments in order for them to indoctrinate groups of people for their own gain. History has proven that physical strength alone hasn’t won wars.

Going on crusades to wipes out a group of peoples language & spiritual belief has has altered the world as we know it today. There are numerous books and studies on this topic. We just need to start searching.

Why is the world the way it is? What role does history play in the way society treats its people? How and why is the schooling system set up in the way it is? How do you fit into this narrative? How has modern medicine come to be? For millennia indigenous people all over the world have worked with the natural world to cure everything under the sun. So what has changed? Why is the wealth gap the way it is?

There is so much to learn, education doesnt end once you graduate. I hope that these few points in these paragraphs have served as a starting point in you asking questions about your own life & your place in the world.

“All you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation.”

∼Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I have included only a few books in the pictures, as there are numerous topics flowing through these paragraphs and i cannot put our whole library on here but i am happy to share more books, just let me know which topic you would like to know more about.

Until next time,

Asli