This really is incredible, I wanted to share it with as many people as possible. Can you believe the heart on this dad? Make sure you check out the video on YouTube...

From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. ``He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.''

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every > weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad would sit in the chair and I would push him once.''

Here's the video....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQ

To say things have been busy is an understatement. Finally all the work we've been putting in is paying off. Building our infrastructure, researching products and options, creating presentations, discussing best practices - everything is coming together and it's really exciting.

I'd say the crux of what we do comes down to combining realistic options with a mechanism to build wealth and strive for financial freedom. Most people know that they need to do something, that their retirement plans just aren't going to cut it, but they don't know what to do. There are a million and one different ideas and pitch-men that claim to have the magic cure, but by this point we all know that there's no such thing as a free lunch. That's what makes our planning both realistic and exciting - it combines a somewhat new idea with a proven old one into a "get rich slow" scheme. That's something people can believe in and follow through with.

The proven old idea is investing in real estate. Everyone knows someone who's very wealthy, and nine times out of ten they either got their wealth or they store their wealth in real estate. These are bright, driven people who have many resources available to them and extremely smart people on the payroll, and yet invariably they turn to real estate. And why not, it's IDEAL (I-Income, D-Depreciation, E-Equity, A-Appreciation, and L-Leverage). It's this last one that really puts real estate head and shoulders above other investments - what other asset class will banks lend you 90-100% of the value on and let you keep all the appreciation?

The new idea is the idea of equity management and using the mortgage as a tool to build wealth. This idea isn't something I can present easily in a blog posting, but if you're interested just give us a call and we'll be happy to go through our presentation with you in about 45 minutes. Essentially what we're saying is that the equity in your home is NOT a good investment (it's not liquid, it's not safe, and it has no rate of return). Instead, we suggest getting the biggest mortgage you can afford (afford is key, we don't want to max you out or put you in a position where you're over your head) and putting that lazy, idle equity to work for you.

All in all, the way we've been able to couple the ideas of equity management with effective real estate investing and partnering with financial planners has really been resonating with our clients. Not only that, as of a few months ago we are completely referral-based - we don't advertise or buy leads at all! To me that's the most rewarding part, doing such a great job for people and improving their lives that they are consistently and enthusiastically recommending our services to the people they love most. It's a great way to do business, and you'll appreciate the difference...

At January Financial, our main goal is to help our clients to become financial free by using their mortgage as a tool and putting their equity to work for them. We fully believe in the principles of equity management and have created strategic partnerships so that not only can we help you harvest your equity, we’ve got trusted partners who will work with you to make sure that your equity is working hard and giving you the maximum benefit.

Since equity management is somewhat counter-intuitive and turns conventional thinking on its head, I’d like to give you a “nutshell” version of what we do and why we believe it makes sense. I’ll also share a story of a current client who has been able to liberate his equity and is on track to dramatically increase his net worth over the next few years.

The basic idea behind equity management is that equity trapped in your home is not a good investment. Although it makes us feel safe and we’ve always been taught that we should pay our houses off and get rid of our mortgage, leaving equity in our homes is not a good way to build wealth and can even increase your risks! When looking at investments, we generally run it through the Three Question Test – how safe is it, how liquid is it, and what’s the rate of return? For example, a typical mutual fund would be considered safe and liquid and generally has a decent rate of return.

Home equity, on the other hand, does not pass ANY of the questions in the Three Question Test! How safe is it? Consider what would happen if there were an earthquake where you live? Your home equity would be almost completely wiped out and it could take 15-20 years before you get it back. How liquid is it? Consider that the only two ways for you to tap into the equity in your home are to sell it or refinance. Finally, what’s the rate of return? Many people think that their equity grows as the house appreciates, but the reality is that your house appreciates regardless of the size of your mortgage. The home is the appreciating asset, not the equity.

I’m currently working with a client who used to believe in the “Old Way” – getting a 15-year fixed mortgage, paying extra each month and trying to pay the house off as soon as possible. After going through our presentation on equity management and some of the options we have available to put the equity to work, he decided to refinance to pull out as much equity as possible. The best part was, by using innovative mortgage products that are also in line with equity management concepts we were able to take out over $650,000 in equity and his payment will only increase by $400 per month!

This brings up another key to equity management, which is that the equity that we harvest must be invested and put to work, NOT consumed. If our client goes out and buys a new car and some fancy new furniture, he is not using his equity wisely and will put his family in a much worse position than when they started. Instead, we have referred him to an experienced financial planner as well as introduced him to an investment real estate group that will not only educate him on real estate investing (with our help of course), but they will provide properties on a silver platter.

We also believe in fiscal discipline and conservative financial planning. We recommended that our client put away a year’s worth of payments and income into a safe side account, in this case a CD. We suggested he keep a significant portion with a financial planner to stay diversified and hedge his returns. Finally, we will take the lion’s share of his cash out and help him to invest in conservative, stable, income-producing real estate. By using the magic of leverage and investing right, he will be able to increase his net worth by $1 million dollars in just the next 2 years!

If you’re interested in finding out more about equity management and how we advise our clients so that they can get the maximum benefit from their home and drastically increase their net worth, give us a call or send us an email! We look forward to helping you become financially free.