1 Million Dollars in 365 days…

Hi Folks

You’ve probably just read about me and my crazy goal of making $1 Million dollars in 365 days! If you would like to follow my progress over the next 183 days, I suggest you subscribe to my RSS Feed or free email alerts, in the sidebar on the right.

So firstly I would just like to say thank you for visiting my site. If you’re new here, feel free to look back through my previous posts and hopefully you find something useful. Also, please feel free to contact me if you have any question: ryan at thekiwimillionaire dot com

So - back to me…needing your help. On my journey to make a million dollars, I have learnt a lot of things. One of them being, that:

“by giving to others, you receive more in return than if you chose not to give“.

For that reason, I decided to start a separate project and raise $10,000 for charity - by running the Rotorua Marathon on May 2nd 2009.

WHAT?

This isn’t your ordinary charity. About 1.2 Million children are trafficked each year. TRAFFICKING IS…to be deceived or taken against your will, bought, sold and transported into slavery for sexual exploitation, sweat shops, child brides, circuses, sacrificial worship, forced begging, sale of human organs, farm labour, domestic servitude.

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

You can DONATE - instantly and securely, directly to STOP THE TRAFFIK, helping them help others enjoy what we all take for granted everyday. Here are some ideas:

• Donate the money you would have spent on a coffee tomorrow
• Run a marathon and setup your own donation page (www.justgiving.com)
• Why not take lunch from home this week and donate the money you would have used to buy your food?
• Why not have a competition between your friends to see who can donate the most?

The truth is, if you don’t do this now, you probably won’t do it at a later date - so please visit my donations page - www.justgiving.com/ryankilfoil and donate now to STOP THE TRAFFIK.

Thank you, from me and from the millions of men, women and children that are sold into slavery every year.

Thanks for helping to make a difference.

Kind Regards

Ryan Kilfoil

Every day, people do things that astound me, and the last couple of days has been no exception! Five days ago the voting was going well with over 4,000 votes cast for the $10,000 challenge, which was a massive effort!

When voting closed, at 4pm today (28/02/09), the results absolutely BLEW ME AWAY! We had received a massive 51,247 Votes! I never dreamt that my cause would be able to reach this many people.

And the Winner is…

Congratulations to Stop the Traffik (www.stopthetraffik.org) with their fantastic effort, receiving 92% of all the votes cast!

So they official results are as follows:

1st Place and the recipient of all funds raised by me for the Rotorua Marathon is Stop the Traffik with 47,372 Votes!!

2nd Place was Save the Children with a great effort and 2647 Votes!

3rd Place was the Child Cancer Foundation with 1112 Votes! This charity also blew me away, with the massive support from the public and I hope to be doing something with them next.

4th Place was the Heart Foundation which finished with 146 Votes!

My sincere thanks to EVERYONE that voted and to all the charities that were involved. I know a lot of hard work went into this and I do believe that ALL the charities managed to raise their profile through this exercise.

As charity is an ongoing process, I do hope to work with all these charities over the coming months and appreciate all the correspondence and support I have received so far.

The difficult has now passed - we have a winner. Now all we have to do is raise the $10,000! So keep an eye out for some innovative fundraising activities courtesy of your Kiwi Millionaire!

To donate to STOP THE TRAFFIK please visit http://www.justgiving.com/ryankilfoil

Hi guys, here are the results for the $10,000 challenge so far. Remember there are still 4 days left to vote. So if your favourite charity is not in the lead, then cast your vote below!

Placings as of 9:00am on Tuesday 24th February 2009:

1. www.stopthetraffik.org - 830 Votes - 52% of the votes
2. www.childcancer.org,nz - 543 Votes - 34% of the votes
3. www.savethechildren.org.nz - 177 Votes - 11% of the votes
4. www.heartfoundation.org.nz - 28 Votes - 1% of the votes

Total votes to date: 1578

With only 4 days to go, spread the word and place your vote below:

As most of you have heard I am running a marathon on May 2nd, 2009. I have started training over the last few weeks and run further than I have ever run in my life! I also chosen to raise $10,000 for my favourite charity. Since I could not decide what charity to donate the funds to, I have given the vote to those visiting my blog.

If you haven’t already voted, please do so now. The votes will be tallied at 4pm on Saturday 28/02/2009 and the winning charity announced.

“There are only 7 days left to vote”

http://www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/ryankilfoil/

Thanks for all your support! I cannot believe all the positive comments and emails I have received. And don’t forget to sign up for email alerts (top right of the blog) to keep track of my progress.

Once I chose my four charities, I decided to leave the voting up to the public. I sent an email to each of the four charities to let them know what I was doing. It then up to them to help spread the word.

A special thanks to Lucy from “Save the Children” and Jade from “Child Cancer Foundation” who have both taken it upon themselves to get as many votes for their respective charities as possible.

Currently “Save the Children” are miles ahead with 67% of the total votes - great effort guys! Remember - YOU STILL HAVE TIIME TO VOTE: 17 days in fact - so get voting!

• Remember, the winning charity will receive all the funds we can raise for this event
• Thanks again for your support!!
• Remember to sign up for email alerts (enter your address in the top right of the blog)

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!