Today the world economy is in a shambles and many honest, hard working people find themselves the victim of an economic meltdown that they were powerless to stop.
While these events may have landed many in financial dire straits, there is absolutely no reason why anyone cannot take action and remedy their situation.
It will take a bit of time and a bit of application and perseverance, but it sure will beat sitting at home or standing in an unemployment benefits queue! The idea I will discuss here is not new, but perhaps it is a good time to dust it off and for people to relook its potential - especially if you are unemployed or are interested in being more financially independent.
As with all great ideas, it is brilliantly simple and almost anyone can do it.
In fact, in my family we have formed 2 teams - my wife and son are a team as are my daughter and myself.
The idea is that the 2 teams will compete, and at times co-operate, to see which one cracks the million dollar barrier first.
So how does this work.
Well did you know that there are only 28 steps between 1 and 1.
28 million? In other words, if you take 1 and double it you have 2.
Double 2 and you get 4 and so on.
So if you take 1 cent (or penny or any other currency you can think of), you would need to double your money just 28 times to end up with 1.
28 million.
For the mathematically pure of heart, a bit of downward adjustment is done at steps 10 and 20 when the figure is rounded down to 5 and 5000 respectively.
So how do you do this starting with nothing? Quite easily really - just take a walk around any public place (shopping mall car parks are particularly good hunting grounds) and keep your eyes glued to the ground.
In no time at all you will find a coin that someone has dropped lying on the ground.
Do that over the weekend and you probably wont be far short of $5 - and thats already 10 of the 28 steps done and dusted! Now comes the exciting and challenging part.
How to double your $5 and make it $10? This doesn't have to be done in a single step - it might take you two or more transactions to get there, but it will get you thinking about and looking for opportunities.
For example, my kids joined forces, pooled their "car park" money and bought some muffin mix.
They made the muffins and took them to school and sold them.
Soon they had enough money to take the next step - they found a hall where an adult educational institution was conducting lectures on Saturday mornings for distance learning students.
They got permission and set up shop selling muffins and cool drinks to the students during their lecture breaks.
The fascinating thing is that the more you start to contemplate how you could double your money, the more opportunities seem to crawl out of the woodwork.
So why not set yourself the challenge of creating a million from nothing.
It costs you nothing other than a walk round a car park to start, and if you persist, not only will you become a financial success, but you will have learnt valuable skills that will make you recession proof! As for my family challenge, we are currently on step 21 - finding ways of turning $10 000 into $20 000.
After that there are only 6 more steps to go to our first million!