1 Million Dollars in 365 days…

I’m running a marathon - that’s 42 Kilometres! It’s the 45th Annual Rotorua Marathon which is held in Rotorua, about 65 km’s from where I live in Tauranga, New Zealand.

The furthest I have ever run was about 5km. So this is certainly quite a goal I have set myself - and like I say, when you challenge yourself, you grow and evolve a lot faster than if you were just cruising through life.

So where do YOU come in? Well, part of the drive behind my desire to do a marathon, was to raise some funds for a charitable organisation. I have narrowed it down to four charities below and I would really appreciate it if you could vote for your favourite charity.

The winning charity will be the charity with the most votes on 28 February 2009. The winning charity will receive all the funds that I have managed to raise on the 4th May 2009. My goal is to raise $10,000.00 for the winning charity, so I appreciate you taking the time to vote today.

The purpose of this post is to let you decide which charity I will support when I run my first marathon in May this year! I’ve narrowed it down to the following short list - so I would really appreciate you voting. If you have something that you believe is a worthy cause - then please send me an email and you never know!

There is a belief that the more money you give away, the more money will come back to you. Now it sounds strange and not very logical, but I think there is definitely some merit to this idea.

Part of my personal wealth strategy is to invest 10% of all my earnings in charity. That means, every month I have a considerable amount of money to disperse to what I consider worthy causes. You know how good that feels? To be able to give to a cause that you feel strongly about, to be able to contribute to improving someone else’s quality of life!

I remember when I started out - I thought, how can I afford to give away 10% of my earnings when I can’t even afford to pay all my bills with my current income? It was a crazy thought - however I took a moment to gain some perspective. I had a roof over my head, I had a job with a regular income, I had food for myself to eat, I had a loving family and  I had my health. How many people in the world would be grateful even for just one of those things in their life?

So I began to save 10% of my income. Every time I got paid, I immediately put 10% of my earnings into another bank account. Then I started to pay my bills. Strangely enough - I didn’t seem to have any less than I did before my decision to give away 10%.

Stranger still - my income began to increase. Not majorly at first, but things started to happen - opportunities came out of nowhere, and my income steadily increased. As my income increased, I stuck to giving 10% of my earning to charity - so that amount grew too. I felt great that I was in a position to be able to give to those less fortunate than myself.

Now whether you want to invest a percentage of your savings in a charity or community group is completely up to you!

Over the past week I have been working with a group of people to ensure that my idea meets any legal requirements. As I don’t want to invest too heavily in something that can fall over down the track.

There are so many things to consider when starting a business:

• Who will I work with?
• How much time will I put into this business on a regular basis?
• What functions will I perform to make this business work? (more…)