7.09.2009
Foolish Man Built His House Upon the Sand
6.29.2009
Michael Jackson's Finances Were THE Thriller
Since the death of Michael Jackson last week, I have been interested in the many articles that describe the tangled web that was his financial life. The more I read, the more I realize that the age old financial principles apply to everyone, rich or poor.
- Know how much you earn
- Know how much you spend
- Spend less than you earn
- Don’t borrow money to finance your lifestyle
6.01.2009
He Lives Vicariously Through Himself
5.28.2009
Are You Paying or Collecting?
5.06.2009
Can I Get Triple Insurance Coverage Please?
In a study by Professor Daniel Putler, a former researcher for the Department of Agriculture, he made a very interesting discovery in an expansive study of all egg purchases in southern
5.05.2009
Can You Change Everything?
In a knowledge based economy, one in which knowledge is key to success, not strength or length of time, it is critical to accumulate knowledge at a much faster and more effective rate than before. This means that learning cannot end after college or you will get downsized or outsized.
Every morning I spend an hour a day reading various newspapers, articles and blogs in an effort to learn and to ultimately think differently to produce superior results. One of the great marketers and bloggers is Seth Godin. He had a great post yesterday about changing your situation and gave 45 suggestions of things you can do to jump start your business and/or life. Enjoy!
Can you change everything?
You might not be as permanently stuck in a rut as you think. The rut you're in isn't permanent, nor is it perfect. There are certainly less perfect ruts, but there may be better ones as well. The certain thing is that you can change everything...
- Buy a competitor
- Sell to a competitor
- Publish your best work for free online
- Close your worst-performing locations
- Open a new branch in a high-traffic location
- Hire the best salesperson away from the competition
- Join the competition
- Host a conference for your competitors
- Connect your best customers and organize a tribe
- Fire the 80% of your customers that account for 20% of your sales
- Start a blog
- Start a digital bootstrap business on the weekends
- While looking for a job, spend 40 hours a week volunteering and freelancing for good causes
- Go on tour and visit your best customers in person
- Answer the customer service line for a day
- Learn to be a killer presenter
- Let the most junior person in the organization run things for a day
- Delete your website and start over with the simplest possible site
- Call former employees and ask for advice
- Move to Thailand
- Listen to audio books in your car instead of the radio
- Sell your cash cow division to the competition and invest everything in the new thing
- Find more products for your existing customers to buy
- Become a gadfly and tell the truth about your industry
- Quit your job
- Move your operations to another city
- Become a vegan
- Have all meetings in a room with no chairs, and everyone wears a bathrobe over their clothes
- Open your offices only four hours a day
- Open your offices 24 hours a day for a week
- Find every project that is near the danger zone (in terms of p&l or deadlines) and cancel it, no appeals
- Go for a walk during lunch
- Get an RSS reader and read a lot more blogs
- Go offline for longer than you thought possible
- Write five thank you notes every day
- Stop sending spam
- Do your work somewhere else. Set up your chiropractic table at the mall
- Have everyone at work switch offices
- Give your most valuable possessions to a stranger
- Go see live music
- Start a company scrapbook and take daily notes
- Hire a firm to make a documentary about your organization
- Buy some art
- Make some art.
- Do the work.
5.04.2009
Get Compound Interest on Your Side
There is a reason that Albert Einstein declared, “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest”.
Compound Interest can be your fiercest enemy or your most powerful ally.
Compound interest is the concept of adding accumulated interest back to the principal, so that interest is earned on interest from that moment on. The act of declaring interest to be principal is called compounding (i.e., interest is compounded). A loan, for example, may have its interest compounded every month: in this case, a loan with $100 principal and 1% interest per month would have a balance of $101 at the end of the first month.
Here are some examples of the power of compounding:
- $4350 a year in interest
- If you never made a payment, would climb to $683,812 in 15 yrs
Latte for $3.50 for five days a week
- If saved money instead and invested at 6%
- In 10 years you would have $12,000
- In 15 years you would have $21,189
Car payment of $300 month from age 22-52
- If paid for car in cash and saved and invested money instead at 6%
- In 30 years you would have $284,609
401k at work investing 10% of your $50,000 annual salary
- If invested with a 6% return
- Over a career of 30 years you would have $395,290
Keep your first house as a rental property
- original purchase price of $200,000
- 4% home price (national average since 1942)
- In 30 years the value would be $648,679
- …and the mortgage would be paid off now
Rental Income on your first house
- $1200 when you first rent it out at age 30
- Assuming a 3% annual increase in rental rates
- At age 60, rents would now be $2912
- …and the mortgage would be paid off now
Compound interest is a double edged sword. Great to have on your side and miserable to have working against you.
4.28.2009
Where Does the Time Go? I Know
4.17.2009
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
4.16.2009
What the Fish Can't See
4.15.2009
Abe Lincoln's Formula for Prosperity
So much wisdom in this piece. These are great principles to live by when building a company, a family, or a community.
- thrift is the precursor to prosperity
- we all need to work together to be successful
- cannot spend more than you earn
- initiative and independence build character and courage
- teach a man to fish and he will fish for a life time
4.09.2009
They Are Not Your Friend
The Wall Street Journal reported today that Bank of America is raising interest rates on 4 million US Credit Card customers who are carrying a balance. This means that even if you have always paid your account on time, you can expect your rate to go up if you don’t pay off the balance at the end of each month. WSJ reports:
“The bank's move follows similar rate increases that other banks, including Citigroup Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., and American Express Co. have implemented in recent months. The banks, facing rising delinquencies, blame the economic turmoil. Many have been tightening the screws on people with less-than-perfect credit, but now they're pinching a broader range of customers who have good credit records, but carry a balance.”
With money I do not have
To impress people I do not know
4.08.2009
Interesting Way to Save Money...
A Couple of More Ways to Save Money: