Founder & Creator of DebtFREE.com
President & CEO of Centricity, Inc (a business consulting firm)
Member of the Advisory Board of the United States Organization for Bankruptcy Alternatives
Speaker
Entrepreneur
Married to wife, Stacyann, with five boys
GUEST
Anthony Manganiello: The Debt-Free Millionaire
CBN.com
– At an early age, author of The Debt-Free Millionaire Anthony Manganiello developed a poverty mentality. He grew up in a single-parent home and money was scarce. When he was 11 years old, he had his first job working with his uncle in a dry cleaning business. Manganiello earned $50.00 a night. He would then spend every dime he made trying to feel like he fit in with his peers.
During college Manganiello began to incur financial debt due to his spending habits. He remembers trying to buy a stereo for $200, but was turned down because he had no credit. He planned to become a chiropractor but eventually quit school after he ran out of money and went to work.
Manganiello began to believe the myth that “good things were for everyone else, but not him.” One Saturday morning he woke up to the phone ringing. “It was another debt collector trying to get me to pay what I owed with money I didn’t have.” At that time in his life phone calls from collectors and creditors called regularly. After hanging up the phone, all Manganiello could think was, “How did I wind up here?”
During this time, some of his friends from work had been witnessing to him. While driving in his car one day, Manganiello remembers calling out to God in desperation. He broke down and gave his heart to the Lord.
“During the first months of my relationship with Jesus, I continued stumbling through life,” he says. It was in April of 1992, at a weekend retreat, that he realized,”Jesus isn't just my Savior, He is also my Lord.”
After his conversion Manganiello took a steady job and began to pray that God would give him a wife and a family like he had always wanted. While leading the youth group at his church, Manganiello met a woman. He asked her father for permission to take her to dinner. Two weeks later they were engaged and four months later they were married. The couple has now been married for 15 years.
Manganiello began his professional career in the late 1980s where he started as a financial services professional. During this time, he learned that many people had the desire to plan for a secure financial future, yet few had the resources. In February of 1995, he began working with John Cummuta, his father-in-law and author of the successful Debt-FREE & Prosperous Living and Transforming Debt Into Wealth systems.
In September of 1999, Manganiello and his wife, Stacyann, acquired the publishing company where he was working, and he began to devote himself solely to the debt elimination message he had learned while working with Cummuta. They discovered that the majority of people who were looking for help at that time needed more than just a strategy; they needed real debt and credit intervention. This dilemma was the genesis of a research and development process that spanned nearly a decade, an investment of millions of dollars, and tens of thousands of interviews with every day people looking for help with their debt and credit problems. The end result was the creation of the Cash-FLOW Analysis.
FINANCIAL CIRCUMSTANCES: A MIRROR IMAGE
If you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see, bending the mirror to satisfy your expectations would be foolish, right? Before you make any kind of intelligent decision regarding your financial future Manganiello says you need to have a very good understanding of your financial circumstances. He refers to this system as Cash Flow Analysis (CFA).
CFA is the starting point to mastering how to manage your cash flow. CFA is designed to help you focus on the monthly consumption of personal income. The CFA is a simple yet powerful tool that enables you to understand the dynamics of your financial circumstances and financial behaviors that cast a reflection on your credit report, which is used to generate your credit score. The CFA breaks your cash flow up into four categories: net monthly income, monthly living expenses, secured debt expenses, and unsecured debt expenses. A positive CFA means you have some cash left over after every month after you’ve paid all your bills. A negative CFA means you are in the red each month and behind on your bills. He says you can do your own CFA or go online and complete the free CFA at TheDebtFreeMillionaire.com. The online CFA will help point you in the direction of a debt relief service provider that should be able to work within our financial limitations from the start.
BECOMING DEBT-FREE MILLIONAIRE
Unfortunately, in our culture, debt has become an all too common way of life. Anthony remembers a while ago being interviewed by a journalist who asked him about if there is such a thing as good/bad debt. He just laughed and said there is no such thing as good debt. “It’s never a good thing to commit future, non-guaranteed, yet to be earned dollars for past purchases,” says Anthony. However, there is something he refers to as necessary debt such as when you can’t pay cash for a house or car. Necessary debt – for the most part – can be avoided. The problem is that most people choose not to avoid it because they’d rather have what they want now. “Debt is the difference between generating wealth and accumulating wealth. The more you continue to commit to future income for past purchases and pay interest on those purchases, you will be consuming your wealth before you’ve had the chance to earn it, let alone accumulate any of it,” remarks Manganiello.
To understand your credit you must understand how your credit score, your credit report, and your financial circumstances and behaviors work together. Your credit score is a reflection of your credit report. And your credit report is a reflection of your financial circumstances and behaviors over a period of time. If you desire to cast a more positive reflection, you don’t manipulate the mirror. What you do is work on what’s casting that reflection in the first place. There is no magic formula or recipe to creating a certain credit score like 720 or beyond. With that said, Manganiello says when you learn to manage your personal cash flow good to great credit will just sort of happen. You’ll create an environment where:
- You’ll be able to pay your bills on time.
- You’ll eliminate debt, which means you’ll increase the spread between any balances owed and lines of available credit.
- Your need to use credit at will be minimal because you’ll be your own bank. You want need to use the types of credit instruments that can cast a negative reflection on your credit.
Most people have an internal belief that a millionaire is what they see on the cover of those magazines in the check out counter. These people (those on the cover of the magazines) are living a fantasy. Yet, the people in the check out lines are actually potential millionaires in the making. “Throughout your lifetime you’ll probably generate much more than $1 million in income. The challenge isn’t earning the million it is accumulating it,” says Manganiello.
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