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This is a guest post from Kevin Mercadante of Out of Your Rut. Kevin is also author of Lighten Your Load, an e-book focused on reducing living expenses while still maintaining a comfortable lifestyle.Like this article?This is a guest post from Kevin Mercadante of Out of Your Rut. Kevin is also author of Lighten Your Load, an e-book focused on reducing living expenses while still maintaining a comfortable lifestyle. Like this article?__________________________________________________

How to Afford Anything

2010-06-09T08:30:00.001-07:00

How to Afford Anything
© 2008 KenRockwell.com. All rights reserved.

I get my goodies at Ritz, Amazon and Adorama. It helps me keep adding to this site when you get yours from those links, too.

January 2008

Introduction

I personally buy from Adorama, Amazon, Ritz, B&H and J&R. I can't vouch for ads below.

People ask me how I afford all this camera stuff. Easy: I beg, borrow, and sometimes even buy it. I certainly don't still own everything I've reviewed here since 1999. I've also had real jobs for many years which pays for what I do buy, and I live like a hermit otherwise.

That's the easy answer, but then I realized that I've always had a knack for buying expensive toys long before I'd ever had a job. Hopefully my cheapskate tricks can help you, too, which is why I share them here.

Our ability to buy expensive toys has nothing to do with how much money we do or don't earn. Like everything in life, it has everything to do with how well you use what you have.

I bought my first expensive single-lens reflex camera when I was an 11 year old kid. I saved my allowance, and still couldn't afford film. My dad was kind enough to buy me a roll every month or so if I was good.

When we were little kids, my brother asked my dad "How come Kenny always can buy expensive things, but I can't, and we get the same allowance?" My dad responded that it was because my brother insisted on going out and buying everything as soon as he wanted it, but that I waited, saved, and did my homework to find the same things for less.

Today that same brother, who has never had a real job as far as we know, has been traveling the world ever since he was in college. When asked how he does it with no particular source of income, he responds that "most people are too stupid to be poor." By that he means that most people waste what money they do have on stupid things, like new cars and eating in restaurants, and don't instead buy their food at the grocery store while traveling. He travels by carefully checking auctions for other peoples' unused weeks of time shares, so he will travel when he can bag a week in Paris or Tobago for just a couple of hundred dollars. He has to be ready to travel on a moment's notice when he wins these auctions, another advantage of having no real job.

When I was in college I bought one of the world's first digital audio recorders to record my music gigs. I had never had a real job in my life. This was in 1981, two years before the CD came out and back when digital audio was beyond the means of most professional recording studios. Digital audio recorders cost the same as a house!

I was 19. I bought the then-revolutionary new Sony PCM-F1, which sold for the amazingly low sum of $1,900 in 1981 ($4,400 in today's money). The next cheapest recorder had cost $50,000 the week before. I also had to buy a Betamax video recorder on which to save the data, an additional $1,100. Back in those days, VCRs were still as exotic as helicopters. This cost me a total of $3,000 in 1981 dollars, or $7,000 in today's money.

How the heck could I do that? For comparison, my car had cost only $650!!!

If a kid can afford toys more expensive than Nikon D3s, using their own very limited funds, anyone can.

Sorry if this article starts to read like a self-help video, but honestly, if you can't afford these things today, you're going to have to make some changes in your life if you want to. It doesn't take money. It takes the guts to be a cheapskate.

What I'll describe has always worked for me. I hope it helps you. Everyone's situations are different, but hopefully my skinflint lifestyle will give you the idea. This is all about prioritization and not wasting what you do have, so if you prioritize differently or enjoy spending money on something I consider wasteful, go right ahead. I certainly don't intend to offend anyone.

Cheap versus Frugal

I usually use the word "cheap" instead of frugal, but I mean frugal. I use "cheap" because it sounds funnier.

Cheap means buying something obvious crappy, and only stupid people do that since they usually cost themselves more in the long run. For instance, a cheap person hires the wrong person to do a job, and winds up paying more to have a competent person have to fix the damage done by the first workman. Cheap means giving your girlfriend flowers picked out of a funeral home dumpster, and leaving the wrong sympathy card attached to them, That's going to cost you a lot more than you just saved!

Frugality is entirely different. Being frugal means using your money well and not wasting. Being frugal often involves spending large sums on the right things, like hiring competent professionals to do a job, or buying a more durable, quality product that lasts far longer than a regular one.

Everywhere I use the word "cheap" below, please realize I mean "frugal."

Yes, as you may guess, I am part Scottish.

Prioritization

Half of being able to afford what you want is to spend your money on what you really want.

This should be obvious, but most people are suckered out of their biggest chunks of money by blowing it on the wrong things. People spend money on the wrong things because the people who take that money make it so comfortable and easy.

Never Buy a New Car

I've only bought one new car in my life. That was over 20 years ago.

When I sold it just a few years later, I had lost $15,000 in today's money. Wow. That was stupid! That was three exotic Nikons lost forever. I've never bought a new car since. Think I'm rich? Guess again!

Millions of Americans buy new cars every year. Every one of those people just pissed away much more than the price of an exotic new camera.

Sure, I drive a Mercedes. Actually, I drive two Mercedes! I bought my first Mercedes from a friend in 1992. It looked and drove as if it was brand new. I sold it to my insurance company a year and 12,000 miles later after someone drove into it for $1,000 more than it cost me. I made money on this deal, far better than losing $15,000 on my new Ford that I sold when I got that Mercedes.

I bought my second used Mercedes in 1993 for less than my sillier friends paid for a new Ford Taurus. All my pals thought I was loaded, since I was now driving what looked exactly like the new Mercedes you could buy at the dealer. Back then, Mercedes were still rare, expensive and exotic: my bottom-of-the line Mercedes sold new for the equivalent of $50,000 in today's dollars, and just like most Mercedes, looked exactly like the middle-of-the-line $80,000 (today's dollars) Mercedes of its day. I bought it after many months of searching for just the right one in perfect condition. I drove that Mercedes for 12 years and 80,000 miles, and sold it for only $6,000 less than it cost me! It still looked new, and the only reason I'm not still driving it today is because my vain wife wanted me to be in a newer looking car.

Today I drive a couple of shiny Mercedes. Big deal. Sillier people think I'm rich. One of my two Mercedes is a convertible that cost over $100,000 new, but for which I also paid less than everyone else pays for new Ford Taureses. I bought this convertible after I had been unemployed for over two months, hah! Guess what my convertible will be worth when I sell it? About what I paid for it. It's essentially a free car!

Maybe you can, but I simply can't afford to drive a Ford.

The people who want to sell you a new car do everything they can to make it easy to take your money. It takes a great deal of self control to resist. Let's face it: everyone deserves a new car every couple of years, and if you can afford it, why not? Simple: because it costs you tens of thousands of dollars that you could spend on more fun, or even on better cars if you do your homework and buy used.

Don't Commute

I've never commuted by car.

Call me wishful, but I've made this happen by only applying for jobs in places near my home, or in places to which I'd enjoy moving. I would never apply for a job someplace in which I would not want to live.

I've always taken my bicycle, or walked.

Like many things, it takes longer to find something, but the savings and quality of life more than makes up for the wait.

Let's look at fast numbers. The shortest reasonable commute is 10 miles (16 km) each way. (Anything shorter is bad for your car, since it won't heat up all the way and boil off the water that condenses from the exhaust in your cold engine. This water dilutes your oil and rusts your exhaust. Engine wear is far, far greater in the few miles during engine warm up, too.)

10 miles each way is 20 miles a day. There are 250 work days a year, or 5,000 miles a year for commuting. At 50¢ a mile, the latest averages for running a car, that's $2,500 a year.

$2,500 a year???? Eliminate this expense alone and you just saved enough to buy yourself every professional Nikon camera as soon as it's announced! Honest–a new $5,000 camera comes out less than once every 2 years today. For instance, you could have bought yourself:

1957: Nikon SP

1959: Nikon F ($1,000 in today's dollars)

1971: Nikon F2 ($1,000)

1978: Nikon F2AS ($1,500)

1980: Nikon F3 ($1,500)

1988: Nikon F4 ($2,000)

1996: Nikon F5 (Less than $2,000)

1999: Nikon D1 ($5,000)

2001: Nikon D1X ($5,000)

2004: Nikon D2X (5,000) and Nikon F6 ($2,300)

2007: Nikon D3 ($5,000)

This is easy. You can't spend $2,500 a year buying Nikon's top cameras even if you tried. Commute any more than 10 miles each way, and costs skyrocket. It costs an extra $250 a year for every single mile you add! Commute 40 miles each way, and that's $10,000 after-tax dollars down the drain that could have been used for toys.

But wait - $2,500 a year lets you buy and keep all these exotic new cameras. I don't know about you, but I dumped my D1H as soon as I got my D70. Sell each camera as the better one arrives, and you also greatly reduce the cost of buying them.

I once flinched when I had to spend a whole $40 for new tires for my mountain bike. I realized that if I hadn't been riding my bike to work, that I wouldn't have put all the miles and wear on my bike. Then I considered the cost if I had taken my car to work each day instead!

Another advantage of not commuting by car is the benefit to our environment. Buying a new Prius is the worst thing anyone can do for the environment, but it's exactly what big car makers want you to do. Car makers and tire makers and the oil companies want you to keep buying and using new cars. The last thing they want you to do is to do the healthy thing (take your bike,) which would make you stronger, fitter, better looking, happier and more resistant to disease simply by changing how you get to work.

Another advantage of not wasting your car to get to work is that you can have fun cars. Instead of being stuck in a boring commuter car for hours every day, you can get a real car worth driving. You won't be wearing it out. Heck; I honestly can't even remember when I last bought gas for any of the gas-sucking V8 hot rods sitting in my garage, since I drive them so infrequently. My wife's 521 horsepower twin-turbo V-8 minivan uses far less gas than any Prius, simply because she never drives it.

Don't Eat Out

I've never needed to budget because I've always been so cheap that I've never needed it.

In 2003 when I wanted to see if I could quit my real job to work on this website instead full-time, I for the first time mapped out every dollar I had spent the past year. I needed to see just how much it cost me to live.

I was amazed at how much money I spent at restaurants, and I rarely ate out. It added up to hundreds of dollars every month, and I usually cooked for myself!

Unless you're eating off the dollar menu at fast food (as I have always done), cook your own food!

Don't Buy a Big House

Live just a tiny bit below your means and you'll always have more money than you need. I always have been a cheapskate and always will be.

One rule by which I've always lived is that if you only spend 99% of what you have, you always have more money than you know what to do with. Heaven help you if you spend just a drop more than comes in, say 101%, because you now will always be in deeper and deeper debt. You're screwed!

I bought my first condo when I was 25. It was much less than I could have afforded, but so what: I'll be darned if I was going to spend money on a mortgage instead of enjoying life. I lived there for almost 20 years, and only left when my wife insisted I move into her fancy-dancy house. (Houses are her hobby just as I'm into photography, so she's had more nice houses than I've had cameras.)

My condo was so nasty that I cried when I moved in. It was awful, but it was a place I came to love as the years rolled on and I renovated it. It also meant I always had cash to burn on anything that really mattered. I also was where I wanted to live, far more important than in what you live.

But don't people always make money in real estate?

Yes and no.

After selling my condo of 17 years, sure, I sold it at the top of California's recent real estate bubble for four times what I paid. But wait: unlike a financial investment, I had to pay mortgage interest, taxes, utilities, repairs, homeowner associations and loads of other expenses. I added it all up, and I made an average of only 1% a year! If I wanted to make money, I would have been far better off putting that money in any bank savings account.

It's important to realize that the benefit received from owning real estate is being able to live in and enjoy that property. It is not financial profit, in fact, because so many innocent Americans people believed that real estate only goes up, many are now homeless.

Here in California in 2008, we see thousands of former home-owning Californians joining the ranks of the homeless as their adjustable-rate mortgages adjust to more then they can afford. Responsible salespeople would never sell someone something like this, but not all salespeople are responsible.

Just like the gigantic sales, advertising and marketing engines which make everyone buy new cars, real estate salespeople spend their lives trying to mortgage you to way beyond your means. It makes them more commission to sell you a bigger house than you can afford. Worse, if you get evicted after defaulting on your loans, real estate people earn commissions again in the foreclosure sale! Real estate salespeople, just like stock brokers, make money every time you do a transaction, regardless if you're wining or losing.

So yes, buy a house, but do it to have a place to live. Don't do it because you think it's going to enable you to buy more toys.

If you buy and sell often as my wife has, one learns never to sell in a down market. Rent your pad out and sell in a couple of years. Today, buy in California's imploding real estate market and hold until it comes back.

If houses are your hobby, as they are to my wife, go hog-wild. If you want to have fancy cameras and travel the world enjoying them, then get a decent condo as I did.

Patience and Diligence

I take a lot of time to find what I want to buy. I waited for over twenty years before I bought my first personal computer, since I couldn't bring myself to buy one knowing next week they would be better, faster and cheaper.

I only bought my first computer when I needed a Mac to develop this website back in 2000 when the sorry windows computers my employer provided wouldn't cut it. (If all you do are email and web surfing, all I ever used were my employer's computers. I wouldn't buy my own computer for anything that I could do at work for free.)

When I buy a used car or camera, I may spend months looking until the perfect sample appears. When it does, I jump all over it, but if it doesn't, I don't worry.

Sadly digital cameras don't work this way. I buy used lenses all the time, but would never buy a used digital camera. Digital cameras go obsolete faster than their used prices drop. I certainly would sell a digital camera as soon as I finished with it, since it's not going up in value!

Thrift

"A luxury, once sampled, becomes a necessity."

Don't try or borrow fancy stuff. The first time you touch that new camera, you're going to think you need and deserve it.

Rent or test drive a nice new car, and suddenly your perfectly good one seems crappy.

Stay in a really nice hotel once, and suddenly you think you "need" to stay in better places.

Don't do it!

If You Must Eat Out

I'm really cheap. I always order the least expensive thing, and skip beverages and extras. This sounds silly, but if you eat out often, simply skipping these high-profit extras can buy you an expensive camera in a few years.

I eat off the dollar menu at fast food. I don't get suckered into buying a drink or fries. I love the $1 double cheeseburger at McDonalds, but if I ordered a drink or fries, I just padded the bill up to triple what it might have been.

I always drink just water. I love water! Almost every fast food and real restaurant operates a water filtration system for all its beverages and cooking. When you order water, even if you order "just tap water," it almost always is reverse-osmosis filtered and tastes great. I'm a big fan of water and notice these things.

Always Check the Check or Register Scan

Always make sure that your restaurant check has the correct items and prices. About one out of ten times we eat out, someone has tried to cheat my wife out of a few dollars here or there. Don't be embarrassed to ask to look at the menu again: when we think the price for an item on our check is off by a dollar or two, it always is.

When checking out at the supermarket, pay attention to the register as it scans. Often my local Von's wouldn't bother to update the sale prices in their computers, so less eagle-eyed shoppers wouldn't notice that items were scanning at the regular price instead of the lower sale price posted in the aisles. Your county may vary, but here in San Diego, when a scan comes out at a different price than the price marked, you're entitled to that item, FREE. That's free as in FREE, not as in at the lower price.

A lot of people get ripped off by supermarket staff and management "forgetting" to update the sale prices in the computer system, but at least a few of us get freebies.

Be polite yet firm. The whole line will have to wait while they send another checker back to check the price on the shelf. Be sure to point out to the others behind you in line that you're all having to wait because it's the store trying to rip you all off, not because you are a problem customer.

Go Dutch

This isn't the way to win favor among women, but it is a way to save money.

I've never paid for my girlfriends, but this was more out of bad upbringing than cheapness. I never knew better.

My wife has explained this to me today as something I'll need to know if she ever croaks, although of course we still both pay our own ways.

Live with Your Parents

I'm serious: This is what I did!

If you want fancy gear and don't make much money, don't move out!

I only moved out because I wanted a garage for my fancy cars, and mom and dad already filled the garage. I also wanted to move from New York to California, and that made it a clear choice.

My fancy car at the time was a 4-speed 455 HO 1970 GTO convertible which I was restoring. It was 14 years old when I bought it.

When I first started working after college, my pals all wasted their money on new cars. They all laughed when I started driving my pre-restoration $1,100 GTO to work, complete in varying shades of primer. They poked fun of me all the time.

I then drove my first parts-getter car, my $650 1974 Plymouth Duster mentioned at the top, to work for the next few months while the GTO was in the body shop. When I drove my sparkling-new white GTO, complete with brand new bumpers and chrome to work, they all presumed I had buckled to pressure and bought a new car, but since this was 1985, they had no idea what the GTO was.

When I explained that it was the same crappy dung-heap I was driving a few months earlier, but now restored externally, they then all changed their stories to "Oh, we always liked that car." My hot-rod cost me a third of what they paid for their forgettable Japanese appliances, and what do you think a 1985 Civic is worth today compared to the GTO?

I sold the GTO in 1986 when I bought my new Ford Mustang GT convertible, which was much faster, but cost me dearly as you read above as my only new car ever. My excuse was that it honestly was the first new car in 15 years that had genuinely high performance as the first car to be designed to work well natively with all the emissions controls.

By living with my parents I saved gazillions of dollars, which let me buy whatever toys I wanted. Unless I was getting married or buying my own place, this is a huge money-saver.

Don't Buy on Credit or Take out Loans

Only buy what you can afford. Don't buy anything until you have the cash to pay for it.

Half of America doesn't get that, and spends all its money barely making the minimum monthly interest payments on their credit cards each month. GAG!

This is awful. Few people have enough self control not to spend. We get all the pleasure by whipping out our card and satisfying ourselves today, while the payment part is way off in the future.

Sadly this is the genius plan of credit card companies, for whom your 30-day future becomes every day for the rest of your life making interest payments. They want you to get in so deep you'll never be able to get out!

When it comes time to pay, VISA or Mastercard doesn't want your money! They want you to make the bare minimum payment and get in deeper. They love charging you far more interest than any other loan would. The credit card companies collect 18% interest from you, while the money they loan to you costs them only a few percent.

They easily take in 10% profit per year from you on every dollar you have racked up.

They love it when you max out your cards and have no possible way to pay off the balance. This is the slavery condition in which they would love to have every cardholder. That's why they give away cards like candy, especially to students and other people they know can't possibly pay them off.

The few people that they do break (bankrupt) aren't a concern. These companies make so much money on the other people that it easily covers the defaults.

Don't let this happen to you. The only way to use a credit card is to pay it off in full each and every month. Never buy anything for which you don't have cash ready to pay the bill when it becomes due. I always have, and have never paid one penny of credit card interest my entire life! Credit card companies have a insiders word for people like me: freeloaders. Tough, call me whatever names you want, I'm not going to fall into their credit-card Hell.

Never, ever use a credit card for credit, simply because the interest rates are too high. If you need a loan, go get one, and pay it off fast.

If you can't afford it, don't buy it. That's the most important rule here.

Read and Understand the Fine Print

You can screw yourself with variable-rate loans. When I bought my condo in 1988 I had an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) at 13%. It could adjust up by up to 5%, but it never did.

If it did, my rate would have been 18%. Not good, but not catastrophic for me since before I signed any papers I made sure I could pay my mortgage even if it hit 18%. My payments would have been less than 50% above what they were at the start.

People are defaulting on loans and becoming homeless today in California because they were stretched too far by shifty short-time salespeople into ARM loans at 3%. This was great and helped them to qualify, and if the market only went up, all would be fine since if they really got tight they could sell their home for a profit.

Of course the market also goes down. These recent ARMs also had adjustment caps of about 5%, but that means that the interest rate could adjust from 3% to 8%. Whoops! That means that the monthly payment could more than double. People, already stretched too far, can't find two or three times as much for their monthly payments, and are evicted from their houses which are now worth less than the paid. Whoops! The people who sold them these loans probably never explained that part!

Don't Rent

I've never rented a house or apartment. Whenever I've moved to a new city I've always just rented a room in house from the owner who also lived there, even when I had real jobs that paid me six fat figures, before I bought something myself.

Rent is money pissed away and never seen again. If you have a good time or it's a business expense which makes you more money, great, but if you want to have more money than you need, this is not a good idea.

Renting a room is cheap. Renting an apartment. or a house is serious money never seen again.

Don't Worry About Being Embarrassed

The people who want to take your money want to embarrass you into paying full price, embarrass you not to use coupons while out on a date, embarrass you into not wanting to make returns or ask for a deal.

I find it far more embarrassing not to be able to afford something I need because I was too weak to stand up for myself in front of strangers. Do it.

Don't Worry About What You Own

Rule one: How rich you are is determined by how much money you have, not by what you own.

What you own is how much money you've given away to others! Once you've bought this junk, you no longer have your money.

I like nice cars, and work on them as my hobby so they don't cost me anything as I've explained above. When one group did a survey a few years ago, they discovered that the most popular car owned by millionaires was a Ford. Why? Simple: the people who still had and grew their money didn't waste it on luxuries to show off. All showing off does is make others spend more effort trying to scam you.

Don't be Afraid to Ask for a Deal

Americans are the only people on the planet who walk into a store and pay the price on the sign.

My wife and I always ask for the deal. I've gotten price concessions even at Sears! I love my wife because she is such a deal-getter. I couldn't afford not to have her, for instance, last week she haggled a mattress store down to half of their bottom-basement posted sales price on a floor sample! She paid about one-third the new sales price of the item. Few Americans have the mettle to haggle as well as she does.

Deals happen when you're the only buyer, usually for oddball stuff like floor samples and slightly-damaged or discontinued merchandise. We also shop bad neighborhoods, where we can get deals on premium merchandise that won't move in the disenfranchised areas.

We love Wal-Mart and Costco. They have the best prices on almost everything. We're not afraid to admit it; we think people who shop boutiques to buy the same things in fancier surroundings are stupid. Now that we've been so cheap for so many years, we own far more fancy stuff than our vainer acquaintances who threw their money away.

Deals don't happen for new, hard-to-get items for which there are waiting lists, like new digital cameras. People offering deals on these are scams.

My favorite book about getting a better price anywhere is Herb Cohen's classic You Can Negotiate Anything. This $8 book has saved me tens of thousands of dollars. For instance, it saved me $20,000 on my condo back in 1988 when I made a ridiculous offer, and the seller took it! (I didn't pay $8 for the book; I borrowed it from the public library for free, and later bought a copy for $1 from their discard rack.)

Return What You Don't Want or Don't Need

I return what I don't need. It's always a little embarrassing, since stores don't want to take your returns and most people are too shy to admit they screwed up.

I've returned a $50,000 BMW after 9 months for full price, and my wife, the "Return Queen," not to be out done by an amateur like me, once returned a $2.8 million dollar house.

The BMW, used of course, had been damaged by the dealer after I bought it. It took nine months of persistence, but they took it back.

Warning: It is fraudulent to buy something with the intent to return it when you are finished using it. Return-fraud costs retailers billions of dollars each year. The losers who used to kid about "renting" a camcorder from Circuit City have now made it more difficult for the greater majority of real customers like me to return something that genuinely needs to be returned.

Only Buy from Stores that Give Full Cash Refunds

I've been buying from Adorama and B&H since the 1970s not only because they have the best prices, but also because if something doesn't work as well as I'd like it to, I can return it for a full refund.

I never get stuck with something that doesn't measure up to the expectations set by advertising.

If a store charges restocking fees, avoid them.

Of course the places that do offer refunds require you return the item exactly as you bought it. I never throw away my boxes, and in fact have never even opened the printed manuals and software for my years-old Nikon D70 with the view of eventual resale. (I get all the software and manuals online.)

Use Coupons

Do I use coupons at restaurants? Yes! Did I use them when I was on dates? YES! Would I use a two-for-one coupon for the $1.50 hot dogs at Costco? YES!, if they offered them.

I have a pal who retired from being very high-up in one of San Diego's largest businesses. We never chatted about it, but since most rank-and file employees there had been multimillionaires from stock options for many years, and he was there for decades longer, for all I know, he's a billionaire.

One time we set up a double-date, and he asked me "are you far along with this girl for us to use coupons?" I busted out laughing, and pointed out that I used coupons on the first date!

An even better story was from a friend who was out golfing in Arizona. A weird little old guy who looked vaguely familiar came up to them, and was all excited at the coupon he had just used to save $10 off his greens fee. He was so excited and friendly he offered them a couple of the extra coupons he had. They thanked him and didn't think much of it until they were reading the paper a few days later and recognized a picture of the funny old guy. He was a local billionaire!

Don't whine to me if you think coupons are below you. They are only below me when they take more time to collect and manage than the money saved.

I use coupons because I like to keep my money. It impresses no one if you're silly enough to throw money away that you don't have to.

Investments versus Expenditures

Some things, like cameras and houses, can be resold. Their real cost is what you pay minus what you can get for it later.

As you've seen, I'm crafty enough to drive my Mercedes for free, since I spend a lot of time finding used ones in new condition and keeping them that way.

Otherwise, cars are always an expenditure. Beware some car makers that lie to us pretending that buying a car is some sort of financial strategy: it isn't.

Cars are always an expenditure. Even though I often don't lose anything selling a car or motorcycle (I sold my BMW motorcycle 20 years later for exactly what I had paid for it), I enjoy my toys and expend considerable energy on their upkeep and finding them in the first place. This harkens back to what my dad said about me doing my homework: doing homework costs time.

Cameras can be almost free. My friend, humanitarian photojournalist Karl Grobl, first observed this a decade ago when he sold his Nikon N6006 after a few years of hauling it all over the world and getting a huge amount of use out of it. It was expensive when he bought it new, but he sold it, after much use, for not much less than he paid for it. After that, he realized that cameras, especially if you use them to earn your living as he does today, don't cost much at all.

Karl also was smart enough to invest in lenses, not cameras. The N6006 was a cheap body, but he used the professional 80-200mm f/2.8 and 20-35mm f/2.8 lenses with it, which he used with his next Nikon, and would still work flawlessly today on the D3.

See also Lenses vs. Cameras: Where the Smart Money Goes. Digital bodies are always a bad monetary investment, and lenses are almost always good long-term photographic investments. Where you spend you money is all about your prioritization; see also Is It Worth It?

Avoid Addiction

If you enjoy something so much that you're wiling to sacrifice other things, go for it. If not, don't fall prey to addictive drugs used to keep you buying products you don't need.

Caffeine

Many Americans each waste many dollars every day on products laced with addictive narcotics.

Caffeine is an addictive drug called 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine by scientists. It has the same effects and addictive qualities as its sister drug, cocaine. Coffee and cola products come from the same fields in Central America. Coca-Cola is named after the first four letters of cocaine.

Caffeine is added to products to addict us to ensure we keep buying more. As I recall, Consumer Reports drove across to Canada and bought some drug-free versions of cola products. CU then ran taste-tests against the dope-laden American versions, no one could taste the difference in blind tests!

Please forgive my self-help tone here, but I prefer to wake up before dawn and get plenty of sleep.

I'm always loaded with energy precisely because I don't drink Coke or Pepsi products during the day, and I certainly don't drug myself with coffee in the morning.

I love the taste of cola. When I've drunk it for lunch, I get the high from it that afternoon, but it's harder to settle down and get to sleep. When I try to get up the next day, I'm tired from less sleep from the night before. By lunch the next, day, the best-feeling thing to do is drink more Coke or Pepsi to jolt myself back up.

Most Americans do this to themselves every morning with coffee.

When I enforced my own ban on caffeine, after a day or two I was astounded at how much better I felt. I pop out of bed before dawn raring to go, and I fall right to sleep at bedtime. I get far more done, and feel far, far better.

If you save $5 a day by skipping a latte, you'll feel better, make more money, have more fun and save almost $2,000 every year. I don't know how much Starbucks actually charges for each dose, but give it up for a couple of years and you again just paid for a free new exotic camera.

Nicotine

I won't even go here. You people know who you are.

I have a friend who beat her addiction simply by stopping and toughing it out. She is from Texas; I don't know if mere Americans are tough enough to beat nicotine this way.

Government isn't here to help you. The only way to beat this is on your own.

If big business has its way, which it usually does since those with the gold make the rules, business will suck every penny you have out of you until you can't earn any more and are left dead or dying. This is the way a competitive economy works: there are winners and there are losers.

The great thing about America is that anyone who wants to can achieve anything, limited only by their imaginations, but the bad thing is that those who just want to slide along in life usually slide off a cliff to the benefit of those who are paying attention.

Television

I spent decades working in television, but I haven't watched TV since the 1960s. It's like people who work in a rat poison plant: they would never actually eat the product themselves.

Watching television makes you stupid.

More serious than long-term stupidity is that you fall behind when you waste your time watching TV or playing video games. For every second that one person wastes watching TV, another person is using that same time learning or doing something productive. In a free economy, life is a race. If you're not moving, you're falling behind.

When I was seven years old I realized that although I enjoyed great shows like "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Star Trek," "The Munsters" and "Get Smart," that watching them wasn't making me any smarter or more interesting.

Today's TV is far worse. Just don't watch TV, and that goes double for PBS. PBS makes you just as stupid, even if it lets you pretend that you're smarter than other people. If you enjoy comedy as I do, go watch one of those shows I mentioned that we all considered stupid back then. By today's standards, they are fine classic theater. They have intelligent humor, plots and real storylines that make it through the entire show.

I'm serious about not watching TV. I haven't owned a TV since the 1960s.

If you must watch TV, watch kid's cartoons. Kid's cartoons still have plots and characters. Try Sponge Bob and The Fairly Odd Parents.

Forget Extended Warranties

In fact, forget any sort of insurance for any loss you could cover out-of pocket.

It always costs more to pay money into a system, have them manage it, and hope that they pay out when needed.

Extended warranties on electronics are always just to make more money for stores.

Personally I love getting the factory extended-warranties for my Mercedes, but that's because Mercedes really does stand behind it, and the presence of a factory warranty makes a car very easy to buy or sell. It makes me feel good, but costs me more than paying for any repairs if needed.

When I bought my own health insurance, I had a plan that was inexpensive, but had a $5,000 annual deductible. If I had a serious problem, I could find $5,000. I saved about $3,600 in annual premium (I paid $300 a month less for this insurance) by not having a small deductible, and always came out ahead. Never ask an insurance company to pay something you could afford to pay for yourself. You pay heavily for that privilege, if they pay out at all.

If you have your own business, then taxes may change this. Ask your accountant, not me.

The Poor Man Pays Twice

If you really want something, buy it, or wait until you can.

Don't buy something that isn't what you really want. If you do, you'll keep dreaming about what you really wanted, and eventually get it. When you do, you've just paid twice.

Worse, as mentioned at the top, if you have a job done by the lowest bidder, you're going to need to pay the highest bidder double to fix the damage done by the first guy.

Tip Big

I always tip big. Anyone who is helping me out and to whom I don't have to pay anything deserves a huge tip.

Tipping isn't an expense: it's an investment in good times for all. If you can afford the service, then you can afford an even fatter tip.

If you're on expense account, tipping costs you nothing: you're tipping with other people's money.

People who receive tips almost always appreciate the tip far more than you do, effectively magnifying your money. When I drop a $10 tip on a $40 meal, that $10 means more like $20 to the server. I've turned $10 into $20. You can't afford not to tip.

Single guys: women don't give a crap what kind of car you have. They don't even know what it is, besides the color. They do look very closely at how you tip. They look closely because it tells everything about your character. Since tipping is optional after a service is rendered and after the person providing the service has no way to get you back if you don't tip, the fact that you tip big or small is far more important than your weiner. A Porsche tells every woman that you're a little short in some areas; a big tip just made points. (Not that I really know any of this stuff about women!)

Tip big. When you get to apply for entrance into Heaven, your tipping records are among the first things reviewed. They are reviewed for Christian Heaven, Hindu Karma, and probably every religion on earth. Tipping is always a great idea. Some things are more important than saving a few bucks now - stingy tips are always a bad idea.

If you can't afford the tip, then you can't afford the service. Stay home and go out when you can, which saves even more money.

If service sucks, which it rarely does, hold back, but be sure you give what you held-back to the next person you tip.

Marry Smart

This isn't about marrying someone rich–that's marrying well.

Marrying smart means to marry someone as cheap as you are.

Your woman is always in charge. If she's as silly with her money as most people, after you're married, you can forget about having any money ever again.

A woman's job is to spend your money. If she hasn't shown that she can spend her own money well, she certainly won't spend yours any better.

I got lucky with my wife. She's even cheaper than I am, but she's rare.

Want to know how cheap she is? She hates flowers because she can't bear knowing that they die in a week and then the money is gone. She'd rather just have the money. I sometimes leave a $20 on the counter. When she asks "what's this?" I respond "flowers." She then gets all smiley. Marriage is weird.

Don't Have Kids

I won't go here either. Kids today are an expensive luxury. It's not 200 years ago when we all lived on farms and needed them to help with the milking.

Not only are they scaldingly expensive, they are the root cause of all pollution and environmental destruction.

Think about it. Do you have any idea from where more people come for whom we need more oil and for whom we need to bulldoze more virgin landscapes to build tract homes for them to live and raise more kids?

Sure, my kid is special: it's not my kid, but everyone else's kids that cause pollution, poverty, shortage and crowding. Think again.

Kids go far deeper than the thousands of disposable diapers each consumes. The worst environmental crime any individual can commit is making more people. Sure, my kid might cure cancer, but we are up to something like 7 billion people on this planet and no one's kid has cured it yet. My kid is far more likely to degrade your environment and cause more cancer than he is ever likely to cure it. Isn't hope grand?

Even more expensive than the monetary cost is that they consume any time you ever thought you might have to better your personal and professional development. They are far worse than watching TV.

Ever wonder why half the ads on TV are for baby stuff? Because half our economy goes into paying for that baby stuff.

Sorry, Ryan, I said I wouldn't go here, so I won't.

How to Make Money

I saved this for last because how much money one makes has nothing to do with much of anything. In fact, I had a lot more fun when I made a lot less money. When you have a lot of money, it's a pain to deal with. Jesus wasn't kidding when he told us that the way to Heaven is to sell all your crap and give it to the poor.

As you may have noticed, I would probably scrape along just fine with no money at all. I've only worked real jobs because I've enjoyed them, not because I owe anyone anything. As I've said, I quit my last real job in 2004 so I could piddle around on this website full time instead of working for a living.

Don't Become a Photographer

According to Education Portal in 2002, the average annual salary of people employed as photographers was $24,040. See more about why becoming a pro photographer is a bad way to make money at How to Go Pro.

Gag! If you want to make real money, get a real job. That's how I have always afforded everything!

Go to College and Get a Real Job

In high school, I wanted to graduate and become a photographer, a musician, a radio/TV broadcast or studio design engineer, or a music recording studio recording or design engineer. In high school I already had the skills to make good money doing any of these.

My dad, who had a real engineering degree, advised that no matter what I wanted to do, that I invest a few years in a real 4-year engineering degree. This is because, regardless of what I eventually did, I'd get paid double simply because I had the degree.

I really wanted to start making the big money immediately and skip college, but I knew my dad was always right.

I got my real BSEE degree at a real four-year university.

Dad was absolutely right. I made far more than I had ever dreamed.

Even if you skipped college, I suggest doing whatever you have to to get your degree today. I think it was my uncle who decided to go off and earn money right out of high school, and then had to spend many more years of night school getting his real degree. It took a long time, but it was worth it.

In America today, unless you're running your own business and really good at it, a minimum of a four-year college degree is mandatory if you plan on working for anyone else and making decent money. Do whatever you have to to get it. Never give up!

Go to College and Go Yachting!

Luxury yacht captain Tedd Greenwald wrote me to share his hot tip for the new millennium.

He says the real deal now is get your 4 year degree then take a job on a big yacht as a mate. You will start at $60K/year (tax-free take-home) with room, board and uniforms included.

Get your captain's ticket in 2 years with some course work and sea time. Entry level captains now start at $90-120K/year, and the work is tons of fun, presuming you enjoy always being in the sun with lots of girls in bathing suits. Do this when you're young and in 10 years you should have been able to save $250K and blow the rest on motorcycles and stuff. It's the best deal going.

The captain who wrote me is on his 8th year. Pro photography is not a good way to go. Working pros can't afford the really cool gear like they can.

The captain also shares that the chairman of Trinity Yachts, Felix Sabates Jr., has said "The guy who buys our type of yacht isn't affected by the economy."

In 2008, 916 verified yachts over 80 feet are being built, up from 777 in 2007 and 688 in 2006. Are you seeing the trend here? The demand for crew is causing a "crewing crisis."

The captain is very happy with his 6-figure income. Look on Craigslist. You find up-and-coming high school kids with D300's advertising to shoot your wedding for $100, and they are pretty good! Screw pro photography. While you're young, get aboard the gravy train of big yachts. We don't have enough crew for the boats, plus fields that service boats like air conditioner repair, watermaker technicians, painters, welders, professional chefs are all in serious demand. Haul your butt to Fort Lauderdale or Monaco. The Caribbean is better when you come home with a ton of cash. Just don't buy your camera gear down there, get it from B&H.

Thus spake the captain.

More Information: Kinko's founder Paul Orfalea linked to this article from his personal blog article Rainy Day Role Models. I agree with him that even I don't agree with everything I've said above either! Reading Paul Orfalea's Blog I find it loaded with great stuff – much better than what I write. Check it out.

PLUG

I support my growing family through this website.

If you find this as helpful as a book you might have had to buy or a workshop you may have had to take, feel free to help me continue helping everyone.

If you've gotten your gear through one of my links or helped otherwise, you're family. It's great people like you who allow me to keep adding to this site full-time. Thanks!

If you haven't helped yet, please do, and consider helping me with a gift of $5.00.

It also helps me keep adding to this site when you get your goodies through these links to Adorama, Amazon, B&H, Ritz, and J&R. I use them and recommend them all personally.

Yes, Everyone Really Does Hate Performance Reviews

2010-04-21T09:26:00.001-07:00

Yes, Everyone Really Does Hate Performance Reviews
by Samuel A. Culbert

It's time to finally put the performance review out of its misery.

This corporate sham is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of corporate activities. Everybody does it, and almost everyone who's evaluated hates it. It's a pretentious, bogus practice that produces absolutely nothing that any thinking executive should call a corporate plus.

And yet few people do anything to kill it. Well, it's time they did.

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Don't get me wrong: Reviewing performance is good; it should happen every day. But employees need evaluations they can believe, not the fraudulent ones they receive. They need evaluations that are dictated by need, not a date on the calendar. They need evaluations that make them strive to improve, not pretend they are perfect.

Who, Me?

Sadly, most managers are oblivious to the havoc they wreak with performance reviews. To some extent, they don't know any better: This is how performance reviews have been done, and this is how they will be done. Period.

Here's a simple experiment you can try. Ask yourself: How often have you heard a manager say, "Here is what I believe," followed by, "Now tell me, what do you think?" and actually mean it? Rarely, I bet.

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The performance review is the primary tool for reinforcing this sorry state. Performance reviews instill feelings of being dominated. They send employees the message that the boss's opinion of their performance is the key determinant of pay, assignment, and career progress. And while that opinion pretends to be objective, it is no such thing. Think about it: If performance reviews are so objective, why is it that so many people get totally different ratings simply by switching bosses?

No, instead, the overriding message is that the boss's assessment is really about whether the boss "likes" you, whether he or she feels "comfortable" with you. None of this is good for the company unless the boss is some kind of savant genius who can read an employee's talents with laser accuracy -- and then understands what motivates the employee so perfectly that he or she can push just the right psychological buttons to get the employee to use those talents.

Unlikely and even more unlikely.

The Damage Done

At this point, you may be asking: So what? So what if you can't speak your mind to your boss? So what if the performance review forces the boss to focus on an employee's "weaknesses" (since most bosses are told they can't give everyone top grades)? What harm does it really do?

Sadly, it does enormous damage. Forget, for a minute, the damage it does on a personal level -- the way it makes work lives miserable, the way it leaves employees feeling depressed and anxious, the way having to show so much tolerance at work leaves them with too little tolerance at home. Just think about what it does on a corporate level, the enormous amount of time and energy it wastes, and the way it prevents companies from tapping the innovative, outside-the-box thinking that so many employees are capable of. If only, that is, they weren't so afraid.

A Better Way

The good news is that none of this is the way things have to be. The one-sided, boss-dominated performance review needs to be replaced by a straight-talking relationship where the focus is on results, not personality, and where the boss is held accountable for the success of the subordinate (instead of just using the performance review to blame the subordinate for any problems they're having).

In this new system, managers will stop labeling people "good guys" and "bad guys" -- or, in the sick parlance of performance reviews, outstanding performers, average performers, and poor performers to be put on notice. Instead, they'll get it straight that their job is to make everyone reporting to them good guys.

If you're a boss, and your subordinate isn't succeeding, something is broken here. Doing more of the same isn't going to cut it. It's now time for you to ask, "What do you need from me to deliver what we are both on the firing line to produce?" And just as important, it's time for you to listen to the answer.

Asking and listening. Imagine that. It's called a conversation, and it's a rarity in workplaces today. Only by hearing what the other person thinks, and putting that person's actions in the appropriate context, can you actually see what the person is saying and doing -- and how together you can get where the company needs you to go.

Performance reviews won't get you there, because that's just about the boss getting the subordinate to buy into his or her way of thinking. It's a mirror -- not a window into the other person. But take away the performance review and you might actually have straight talk.

Rotten Milk

Proponents of performance reviews say that the problem isn't the review itself, but poorly trained reviewers. Sorry, but that doesn't fly: The performance review done exactly as intentioned is just as horribly flawed as the review done "poorly." You can't bake a great cake with rotten milk, no matter how skilled the chef. They also say you need performance reviews to protect against lawsuits by laid-off workers. Nonsense: Most performance reviews hurt a company's case because they aren't honest assessments of a worker's performance.

Also, before you start griping about how I don't understand Margaret, the woman in your department who wants to do as little work as possible, or how Tom is so distracted by his life outside the office that he can't get anything done at work, let me stop you and say: I know that not everybody deserves to stay in their jobs. Getting rid of performance reviews doesn't get rid of slackers. Not everybody will leap at the chance to get better and grow.

But everybody deserves the best shot managers can give them. And they can't get that shot with performance reviews.

Adapted from "Get Rid of the Performance Review! How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing -- and Focus on What Really Matters." Copyright 2010. By Samuel A. Culbert with Lawrence Rout. Published by Business Plus, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group Inc. All rights reserved.

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6 proven ways to make habits stick

2010-04-13T14:17:00.001-07:00

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/6-proven-ways-to-make-new-habits-stick.html

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The Lost Practice of Resting One Day Each Week | Zen Habits

2010-03-11T14:34:00.002-07:00

The Lost Practice of Resting One Day Each Week | Zen Habits

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Live in "daytight compartments."

2009-09-29T16:27:00.008-07:00

Photo by THE B.S. REPORT

We toss and we turn sensing danger around every curve in our life, yet the battles we've lost have yet to manifest. One technique that I use to guide me through my hectic day was revealed to me in the book aptly titled, "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living," by Dale Carnegie. Seems that not enough of us live in what Sir William Osler called, "daytight compartments."
A few months before he spoke at Yale, Sir William Osier had crossed the Atlantic on a great ocean liner where the captain standing on the bridge, could press a button and-presto!-there was a clanging of machinery and various parts of the ship were immediately shut off from one another-shut off into watertight compartments.

“Now each one of you,” Dr. Osier said to those Yale students, “is a much more marvelous organisation than the great liner, and bound on a longer voyage. What I urge is that you so learn to control the machinery as to live with ‘day-tight compartments’ as the most certain way to ensure safety on the voyage. Get on the bridge, and see that at least the great bulkheads are in working order. Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the Past-the dead yesterdays. Touch another and shut off, with a metal curtain, the Future -the unborn tomorrows. Then you are safe-safe for today! …

Shut off the past! Let the dead past bury its dead. … Shut out the yesterdays which have lighted fools the way to dusty death. … The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. Shut off the future as tightly as the past. … The future is today. … There is no tomorrow. The day of man’s salvation is now.
Waste of energy, mental distress, nervous worries dog the steps of a man who is anxious about the future. … Shut close, then the great fore and aft bulkheads, and prepare to cultivate the habit of life of ‘day-tight compartments’.”

Did Dr. Osier mean to say that we should not make any effort to prepare for tomorrow? No. Not at all. But he did go on in that address to say that the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm,on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.”

What about you, are you living in daytight compartments?

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Ten easy ways to unstress your life

2009-09-12T16:13:00.019-07:00

Ten easy ways to de-stress your life

1. Take a long walk under the full moon.

You would be surprised as to the calming effect the full moon has had on Earths denizens since the beginning of recorded history. A subject of much mystery and folklore, the moon is also known for having a tranquil effect on those that ponder under, and meditate on it. Sit outside on some calm summers night with the sound of crickets filling in the background just once and you'll be hooked. Walk under it after a hard days work and you'll come away feeling relaxed and refreshed.

2. Take a long drive out in the country or mountains.

Another great way to de stress and come up with new ideas for your life. Many answers that we seek to our daily confusion come to us when we least expect them to. Personally I have found that walking under the moonlight or driving the mountains and country roads where I live offers an insight into my life that may have taken months to come full circe.

3. Meditate.As little as 15 minutes a day has produced remarkable results in my life. Not only am I calmer but I can focus and learn much easier.

4. Sex. If I had to explain this then you wouldn't understand.

5. Jog. I rarely missed more than two days at a time since I began jogging in 1977. I am the same weight now as I was in 1988 6'00 @ 200 Lbs. All thanks to exercise. When I get off of work after a particularly stressful day and am exhausted, I always find that once I get on the treadmill the fatigue goes away. There is a difference between physical exhaustion and mental exhaustion.

6. Visit friends. Even monkeys, when isolated for long periods of time exhibit signs of mental retardation. Get off the kindle and get with your friends.

7. Call someone that you haven't spoken to in years. Nostalgia is food for the soul.

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8.Listen to classical music. I grew up on Mowtown, and the Rolling Stones but there comes a time when nothing even comes close to classical music for relaxation and stress reduction. I never listen to anything but classical before noon and after 8 pm.

9. Read a good book. Better yet join a book club. Whether reading with the family or alone it doesn't really matter. Nothing smacks of personal growth than reading and I read a new book every month. My favorite subjects are personal finance and self-help.

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10. Set 20 minutes aside a day and do absolutely nothing. This ties perfectly into the meditation period that I recommended earlier. The results are short of spectacular,

Wireless electricity just around the corner?

2009-09-10T16:48:00.003-07:00

Eric Giler wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. Here, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT's breakthrough version, WiTricity -- a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker.

Consumerism vs. minimalism

2009-09-09T10:04:00.006-07:00

Photo by MarcelGermain

There is in most of us a fundamental desire to purchase cool stuff It stems from fears and insecurities, I think, but it is exploited by corporations and advertising. Advertising is designed to get us to desire more, to want to buy, and because it works so well, we end up buying way, way more than we need.

Minimalism is the exact counter to this phenomenon, and for some of us, it’s the answer.
Think of tribal societies, unexposed to consumerism or advertising. They don’t have urges to go out and buy cool new clothes or gadgets or cars or shoes. It’s not that they don’t have desires, but it’s not at the same scale as in our society.

Even in the days before advertising, these kinds of desires for more were not as prevalent. It is advertising and consumerism that have created the desires, or at least magnified them to a hugely exaggerated level. It is extremely effective.

Unfortunately, it means we are always wanting to buy more, and always spending more. Which means we must either get into debt, or work more to earn more. Or both. And today, families must have two wage earners — as opposed to only 50-60 years ago, when there was only one wage earner necessary — in part because we are trying to support a more expensive lifestyle (also because we’re being paid less in real dollars). We’re also more in debt than ever before.

We need to stop and ask ourselves — what is it all for? Why are we working so hard in order to buy so much, to have so much, to be burdened and cluttered by so much?
It’s just too much. Minimalists say, "I’m getting off this merry-go-round. I opt out."
The minimalist first looks at needs vs. wants — is this a real need, or is it just a desire created by advertising? And if it’s a want, a desire, she doesn’t buy it.
The minimalist slowly learns to let go of desires. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it can happen, gradually, with a conscious effort.

Here’s how I do it:
Learn to be more conscious of my impulses when I’m ready to buy something.
Learn to pause, and to breathe, to let the physical desire wane.
Force myself to wait, if the purchase isn’t an absolute necessity.
Let myself think about it, and analyze whether it’s something I really need to buy. Often the answer is no.
Slowly improve upon this, over time, as I always make mistakes.
The minimalist lets go of desires, slowly, so that she buys less and spends less, gets into less debt (or none at all), and as a result, needs to earn less and work less.

This is a guest post from Leo Babuta of Zen Habits. Leo is also author of "The power of less," a book focused on reducing living expenses while still maintaining a comfortable lifestyle.

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Boost your self-esteem

2009-09-03T15:41:00.009-07:00

Photo by webpub

Human life is an ongoing process that involves a constantly changing physical body as well as an enormous number of rapidly changing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.Your life therefore is an evolving experience, a continual flow - You are not a thing; that's why any label is constricting, highly inaccurate, and global. Abstract labels such as "worthless" or "inferior" communicate nothing and mean nothing.But you may still be convinced you are second-rate. What is your evidence? You may reason, "I feel inadequate.Therefore, I must be inadequate.

Otherwise, why would I be filled with such unbearable emotions?" Your error is in emotional reasoning.

Your feelings do not determine your worth, simply your relative state of comfort or discomfort.Rotten, miserable internal states do not prove that you area rotten, worthless person, merely that you think you are; because you are in a temporarily depressed mood, you are thinking illogically and unreasonably about yourself.Would you say that states of mood elevation and happiness prove you are great or especially worthy? Or do they simply mean that you are feeling good? Just as your feelings do not determine your worth, neither do your thoughts or behaviors. Some may be positive, creative,and enhancing; the great majority are neutral. Others may be irrational, self-defeating, and maladaptive. These can be modified if you are willing to exert the effort, but they certainly do not and cannot mean that you are no good.There is no such thing in this universe as a worthless human being.

"Then how can I develop a sense of self-esteem?" you may ask. The answer is-you don't have to! You don't have to do anything especially worthy to create or deserve self esteem;all you have to do is turn off that critical, haranguing,inner voice. Why? Because that critical inner voice is wrong! Your internal self-abuse springs from illogical, distorted thinking. Your sense of worthlessness is not based on truth, it is just the abscess which lies at the core of depressive illness.So remember three crucial steps when you are upset:

I . Zero in on those automatic negative thoughts and write them down. Don't let them buzz around in your head;snare them on paper!

2. Read over the list of ten cognitive distortions. Learn precisely how you are twisting things and blowing them out of proportion.

3. Substitute a more objective thought that puts the lie to the one which made you look down on yourself.As you do this, you'll begin to feel better. You'll be boosting your self-esteem, and your sense of worthlessness(and, of course, your depression) will disappear.

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Rx for saving: A second opinion on medical bills

2009-08-29T14:45:00.006-07:00

Photo by Buzzle.com

Scott Fedyshyn and his wife recently brought home a bouncing baby boy -- and an unexpected $600 medical bill. But Fedyshyn, a trained billing consultant, fought back. He demanded itemized bills from his doctor explaining each charge, and why his health insurance wouldn't cover some items. Soon, he got another statement from the doctor's office – but this one came with a $200 refund check.

Billing errors are common, experts say. Double-billing, typos, upselling, and outright fraud add up to big unexpected medical bills for consumers -- even those who think they are fully covered by insurance. A complex web of bills, forms, and other paperwork mean a lot of Red Tape for health care, and often leads to overpayment by consumers.
Fedyshyn's tale is typical, and simple. A few weeks after the birth of his son, now 10 weeks old, he received the bill. "It said, 'Amount due: $600.’ And there was no real explanation for it," the 29-year-old from Virginia said. "I said I wanted a line-by-line breakdown of what was not covered and why." When he received the breakdown, the reason for the discrepancy was obvious: an ultrasound image of the baby that insurance refused to pay for. The physician's billing department had coded the procedure as if the Fedyshyn family had requested an extra – and unnecessary -- baby image during their initial visit. But in fact the doctor had ordered it because their child was facing the wrong direction when the first "picture" was taken, and the doctor wanted a second look. "So it should have been covered," Fedyshyn said. "After going back and forth a bit, it was changed."

These kinds of small errors in billing and coding can lead to big bills for patients, said Candy Butcher, CEO of the Medical Billing Advocates of America. Her firm trains advisors who sell medical billing audit services to consumers. Most work on contingency basis, taking 20 to 40 percent of the refunds they earn for clients.
"Eight out of 10 bills we see have some error," she said.

Harvard Professor Malcolm Sparrow, author of “License to Steal: How Fraud Bleeds America’s Health Care System,” said many medical bills seem arbitrary.
“Insurance companies and medical provider billings seem to bill on the basis of ‘let's just see what we can get away with,’ knowing that many consumers are too timid to question them,” he said. Recently, when he questioned a bill, he was immediately offered a $200 discount as a “professional courtesy.” “I took it as sure evidence that (the provider) knew the original bill was unjustifiable,” he said. “A sign of how aggressive the billings are would be the apparent ease with which they back off and adjust their demands when called to justify them.”

Errors can occur in many ways. In Fedyshyn’s case, the doctor’s office had incorrectly described its treatment to the insurance company when it “coded” the procedure. Each separate medical procedure, treatment, or drug given to a patient is recorded by the doctor or hospital in software, boiled down into a short numeric code. When providers miscode, insurance companies often reject the bill, and the patient can end up paying the difference. It can be easier for doctors to send patients a bill than to resubmit insurance claims.
Robert Tennant, senior policy adviser for the Medical Group Management Association – a trade group that represents physicians – said it’s hardly fair to lay the blame for overbilling on doctors. The complexity of billing procedures is a breeding ground for mistakes, he said.“With the thousands of health plans, complications galore, the lack of standardization, it’s inevitable that this is going o be the outcome,” he said.

Here’s one glimpse of the tortured billing process doctors face. After a visit, doctors code a patient’s ailment using a standard called ICD-9 (International Classification of Diseases). Currently, doctors must choose from about 17,000 possible codes. There are nearly 10 codes just to signify an ankle sprain, for example. But such coding can still be inexact, and many ailments must be squeezed into one designation or another. It’s obvious how errors might occur. In an effort to improve the precision of the codes, the Department of Health and Human Services (which manages the coding standards with Medicare) has added a host of new designations – there will be 155,000 possible code diagnoses soon. The new system will allow for recording of far more granular details: for example, whether a laceration to the head was caused by an ice hockey stick or a field hockey stick. Doctors must implement the system by 2013. An average small doctor’s office will have to pay $84,000 just to upgrade their systems to handle the new coding scheme, Tennant said. “It’s a very complicated process,” Tennant said. “And it’s going to get even more complex.” Blue Cross and Blue Shield, for example, expect coding errors to increase 10 to 25 percent in the first year of the new system.

The penalty to physicians for incorrect coding is severe: Generally, insurance companies will deny all claims with coding mistakes. And that’s just one of the roadblocks to payment that can spring up along the way. Others abound. There are, for example, about 1,200 potential claim forms used by health insurance companies. So while doctors must wait until long after they have provided care to receive payment – try that with your auto mechanic – consumers end up utterly confused when they look at their bills, and often don’t even know how to begin questioning costs. “What we’re getting at is the question of transparency,” he said. “As a patient, you might ask, ‘Why can’t I just see how much it costs for a medical procedure?’ Well, because it’s very obscure even for the provider … and the reality is because it's so complicated errors do occur.”

RED TAPE WRESTLING: Four steps to fair billing
Fedyshyn, who managed to get a refund from his physicians, knew the right questions to ask because he’s a consultant who challenges balance sheets for a living. But many consumers just pay their bills, happy to be healthy and feeling they don't have the expertise to challenge complex hospital stay bills, Butcher said. Many consumers could do just as well as Fedyshyn, however, if they took a few simple steps during and after their medical treatments, she said. Her tips:
1. Always request a "detailed itemized statement" from a hospital or doctor. Most will provide only a summary statement unless asked. The detailed statement is the foundation for any bill challenges.
2. Nothing is routine. On that detailed statement, many consumers find unfair or excessive charges for routine items like gowns, toothbrushes, gauze, and so on, Butcher said. Many times, those items are supposed to be included as part of room and board or operating room charges.
3. Kits for procedures are often a source for overcharging, she said. For example, she's seen separate bills for scalpels when patients are also being billed for operating kits that include the scalpel.
4. Clerical errors. Sometimes patients are billed for medications for days after the doctor stops administering them, for example. Or four X-ray charges end up on a bill when only two are taken.
Naturally, many consumers are in no position to track all these things during their health care stay. But the original doctor's orders for all procedures should be available to a patient through a request for medical records. Many times, patients should request those records after they receive their initial Explanation of Benefits (EOB) form from their insurance company, which show what costs are covered by insurance and what kind of bill to expect from the doctor or hospital.
Once a discrepancy is suspected or found, Butcher recommends patients go directly to the supervisor of the billing department at a hospital. She suggests patients send a certified letter with evidence of the error, and state clearly a desire that the item be placed "in dispute" and a request for a “30-day hold” on the payment process. That should stall any potential collections activity while the dispute is worked out.

Don’t be afraid:
Challenging a doctor's bill is easier said than done, however. Many consumers feel reluctant to challenge their physician's authority, particularly if they have an ongoing relationship with him or her. Even Fedyshyn said he'd gulped hard after raising an issue with a different pediatrician over tests that had been ordered which weren’t covered by insurance.
But Butcher said that shouldn't be a concern. Virtually all doctors she's worked with have been helpful when errors are brought to their attention.
"Physicians most of the time have no idea what goes on with the billing process. ...This has nothing to do with the care that is provided," she said. "It has to do with people hired to work in the billing department and the coding of items. When we bring things to the attention of physicians, they have been more than willing to adjust it off the bill or give some kind of credit. So people should not be afraid to bring it up to their physician."Naturally, most consumers don't pay a lot of attention to hospital bills unless their explanation of benefits statement indicates they will face a big out-of-pocket expense. But Butcher said patients should scan their bills carefully even if they are fully covered. It pays to watch out for overpayments by the insurance company, she said. Why?
Consumers can run into annual caps and find themselves forced to pay at the end of the year -- or worse.
"Most policies have a lifetime cap, and if you have a terminal illness, it's very easy to meet that lifetime maximum," she said. "Even though it may not benefit you financially now, you should still look over those bills. If the insurance company pays something they should not have, in the long run, that could hurt you, too."
Source: Red Tape Chronicles

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How to spot a market bottom

2009-08-29T14:31:00.007-07:00

I have uploaded this article from money magazine because it proves timeless in its simplicity. Use it today or on the next market recession and capitalize on itss informaion. Market recovery is possible to spot with the right tools. Information is power.

Click on the thumbnail for a larger view.

Tired of all of those websites that ask you to sign up just to get some information?

2009-08-27T16:25:00.005-07:00

Tired of all of those websites that ask you to sign up just to get some information? I was surprised at the amount of data contained here. What isn't listed can be added. Now get a generic login to any website without the hassle of a sign-up. Bugmenot.com is just what the Doctor ordered.

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How to fight Internet abuse

2009-08-20T12:26:00.005-07:00

Photo by media.rd.com

When Vanderbilt University freshman Chelsea Gorman was raped near campus in the spring of 2007, her life was shattered. She told only her close friends about the ordeal and left school for the rest of the semester after she began suffering panic attacks, but by last March she was back in Nashville and putting her life together. Then she got a phone call from a friend. The story of her rape had been posted on the Internet.

"Chelsea Gorman Deserved It" was the title of a message posted on juicycampus.com, a popular website dedicated to anonymous gossip about college students. "Everyone thinks she's so sweet, but she got what she deserved," wrote the unnamed author of the post, who went on to express envy for her rapist. Suddenly the whole campus knew about the devastating attack, and Gorman's fellow students talked about it in front of her.
"That was probably the hardest part," she told ABC News earlier this year. "That something like this is considered gossip is disgusting."

Even more disgusting is how common stories like this have become. Cyberbullying of younger children, usually by other kids, is a familiar story; less so is the online harassment of college students and adults. The cowards who cloak themselves in digital anonymity to smear others are not only hurting their victims but also damaging the sense of trust important to us all, online and off. The effects can range from mere embarrassment to lost jobs to emotional trauma. Meanwhile, the creeps sitting at their keyboards are rarely held to account.
Online harassment is as old as the Web itself. But now it's being actively encouraged by websites that profit from sourceless vitriol.

Perhaps the main offender is JuicyCampus, whose home page promises that "posts are totally, 100 percent anonymous." The website has become a clearinghouse for abuse, ranging from cruel insults and vicious rumors to the outing of gay and lesbian students and the harassment of racial and ethnic groups. How would you like to be the UCLA student who was recently branded "a stinky, ugly Jew … the most hated slut on campus"? JuicyCampus's frequently-asked-questions page—in addition to directing users to "IP cloaking" software to further mask their digital footprint—responds to "I'm offended!" with a flip "Sorry. Also, that's not a question." The website covers 500 colleges and universities, and already there are a slew of trashy imitators, many targeting older adults. Among them is the site gossipreport.com, where "you can anonymously talk about anyone you want. Instead of creating a profile about yourself, you can create a profile about someone else." One post features the photo of an Ohio man along with the message "Watch out, ladies." The post accuses the man of spreading STDs and says he's "a manho who can't be faithful to no one."

At rottenneighbor.com, users can trash the folks next door. Is a house in Boca Raton, Florida, really occupied by "the most obnoxious family alive"? Yes, according to one post, which claims that the girls who live there are sexually promiscuous, not to mention reckless behind the wheel. A street address and a Google Maps image of the house accompany the post. Creepy, huh?

"The business model of these sites is hate," says Parry Aftab, a lawyer who specializes in Internet privacy and security issues. "They're promoting it. They're encouraging you to say outrageous things." Smear someone in a traditional media outlet, like a newspaper or a talk show, and you can end up in court. But the law that Congress passed in 1996 establishing basic Internet regulations prevents website hosts from being held responsible for what outsiders post on their sites. In other words, the law says that the kind of defamation that would get the New York Times sued is fair game on JuicyCampus.

Sure, gossip is an ugly fact of life. But the Internet has changed its impact. Gossip that used to be contained within a relatively narrow social world is now broadcast to a wider audience less able to assess its credibility, says Daniel Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University and the author of The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. And even a completely false allegation can last forever online. "Now we have a kind of permanent digital scarlet letter," says Solove.

We prize our right to free speech, but, experts like Solove say, we need to do more to protect another right: privacy. Meanwhile, some people are fighting back. Take the case of two young women victimized by several anonymous online thugs who posted threatening messages about them on autoadmit.com (which bills itself as "the most prestigious college discussion board in the world"). The unnamed attackers posted the women's photos, claimed that one of them had herpes, and wrote that both "should be raped."

In June 2007, the women filed a federal defamation lawsuit against the dozens of anonymous AutoAdmit users who made the comments (one of whom may have also used tricks to make the slurs appear as top results when the victims' names were Googled). By subpoenaing Internet service providers, the women have acquired some of the users' names; last August they named one publicly and are threatening to out more.
Maybe more cases like this one will make cowardly creeps attacking people from behind their keyboards think twice, lest they see their own reputations ruined in the end.
Do More
Create a Google Alert for your name. You will receive an e-mail anytime you are mentioned somewhere online. Notify the hosts of the website where a smear about you has been posted; they will often take it down. The faster you respond, the less time a lie has to spread.
Companies like Reputation Defender (reputationdefender.com) can help you wipe away lies that continue to appear in the records of Google and other search engines.
Wiredsafety.org provides advice for victims of online harassment.
Daniel Solove's book The Future of Reputation can be downloaded for free at futureofreputation.com.

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__________________________________________________

13 things a mechanic won't tell you

2009-08-20T11:30:00.002-07:00

Photo by Marcelo cK

There are 13 importatnt things that a mechanic may or may not tell you. 13 things which can save you money. Don't depend on anyone for these basic items.

1. "Watch out for scare tactics. Admonitions like 'I wouldn't drive this another mile' should be viewed with suspicion."

2. "Check for ASE [National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence] or AAA [American Automobile Association] certification, as well as a state license. Reputable shops are proud to display them."

3. "Ask, ask, ask. For recommendations, years in business, warranties offered, licenses, and the type of equipment used. Look for a clean garage. A floor cluttered with empty oil cans, worn tires, and dirty rags is a red flag."

4. "Never sign a blank authorization form. Always get a signed work order with a specific estimate for each job and warranties that apply."

5. "It's nuts to take a car with engine problems to a shop without a good engine analyzer and scan tool. Any mechanic who says 'I don't need fancy equipment' should be avoided."

6. "Synthetic motor oils may cost more, but you'll get a lot more miles between changes."
7. "When you go for a second opinion, don't tell the mechanic what the first diagnosis and price were."

8. "Coolant flushes and power steering flushes are very common gimmicks at quick lubes. Check your owner's manual; many cars have fluid that is designed to go 100,000 miles. And cleaning fuel injectors is a waste of time and money. There are additives on the market that do a great job."

9. "Always ask for OE [original equipment] brake pads or at least equivalent material. A $49.95 brake job will usually get you the worst friction material you can buy-it's the difference between stopping short and causing a pileup on the way to work."

10. "Ask about your new tire's 'build date.' If you're getting an unusually good deal, you might be receiving three-year-old treads, especially risky for snow tires."

11. "Lifetime mufflers? What would ever make you think a muffler will last a lifetime? Yes, they'll give you free replacements, but they'll hit you over the head for expensive pipe repairs."

12. "Consult your dealer before you have work done on a catalytic converter or emissions parts. Some of these items carry a very long warranty, and free replacement is often required by law."

13. "It's not okay for your 'check engine' light to stay on all the time. It's probably not 'a loose gas cap.'"
Source: Reader's Digest

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All stressed out and no place to go - Dealing with difficult people at work

2009-08-18T14:51:00.005-07:00

We’ve all been victimized by them at some time or another. The backstabber, the complainer, the perfectionist, and the worst of all the defensive person. Moving from chaos to calm is fairly easy with a little practice.
This is a great self-Help video that you should bookmark when you need coaching.

Major points:
1. Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
2. Have someone make a tight fist and try to open it, about 10% are successful. The harder you try the tighter the fist.
3. The bribe technique does not work.
4. If you try to force someone to change they will either resist or resent us, or both. As a result they become more motivated to defend their position.
5. Raise your awareness level as to what is really going on.
6. Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness at which they were created.
7. Beliefs create interpretations which are congruent to our beliefs.
8. Beliefs create expectations which in turn create our emotions.
9. Our emotions create our behaviors.
10. Chronically difficult people believe that the world is an unsafe place and that the world is out to get them.
11. They suffer from low self esteem.

Another great Self-Help Video worth watching

How to spot a fake Craigslist ad

2009-08-17T16:04:00.005-07:00

Fake Craigslist ads are everywhere to be found on the Craigslist website. Wih just a bit of due diligence spotting a fake ad is not very hard at all.

1.If it looks to good to be true then it is probably fake. Only deal with local people. Only accept cash for what you are selling or buying. Make a bill of sale for more expensive items.

Step 2
Use a secondary email (free email account that you do not care about) when replying to an ad. Ads that are used by spammers to collect emails will only see your secondary email.

Step 3
Use two different ( free email accounts that you do not care about ) emails and reply to the same ad. If you get the same respone back really fast to both of your emails then it is driven by bots and the ad it fake. The fake response usually have different email address but the same content.

Step 4
If you see the same ad show up in other cities then the ad is probably fake. Spammers and scammers constantly post in different cities and countries to be a step ahead.

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Search Craigslist based on multiple locations and categories

2009-08-17T15:57:00.003-07:00

Photo by tcritic.com

CraigsList Reader is a tool to search Craigslist based on multiple locations and categories. Enter your search term and choose your options to narrow down your search result. Set notifications to alert you, or send you an e-mail when new posts meeting your criteria appear on Craigslist. Set it up so that you can find jobs in NY, apartments in Chicago, and cars in LA. Search thru entire world, or just some country or state or city. Select multiple locations. Search thru all the categories/sub-categories. Select multiple categories/sub-categories. Add favorites, sort items by date, location, category, title, or price. Save and load search results to analyze or store.

Download: Craigslist Reader

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Into the unknown

2009-08-16T19:35:00.007-07:00

Photo by Google

Everyday technology becomes more sophisticated and people increasingly spend more and more time swallowing up themselves in it. What ever happened to the days when the masses would spend a nice day out of doors savoring the world? Nowadays people will remain inside and blog about how fine the weather is outside today. How frequently do the masses actually press the off button on their computers and do something else for fun? In today's world not that frequently any longer. People would prefer surfing the web than taking their pet for a walk. This has to be contributing to the ever flourishing obesity rate. Treasure the world while you are still here. That computer is not going to do you any good in the grave. Get out and enjoy what is left of your life. Take a walk in the moonlight. Walk through a garden at sunset and feel the warmth and peacefulness inside of yourself. Turn off the television and ban the spin doctors from entering your mind. All they are out to do is sell you their product any way that they can and that includes scaring you to death when warranted. When people are afraid they spend more money to forget about their fears and problems. The media knows this all-too-well and use it to their advantage 24 hours per day.

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How to Become a Better Listener

2009-08-16T18:33:00.005-07:00

Photo by Dumblittleman

Listening to people is a fine art that needs to practiced. If you are like most people, then chances are you often interrupt others while they are still talking. In your defense, you could say that a long-winded, one-sided conversation is the quickest turn off ever, and while this might be true, it just shows basic respect for the other person when we are prepared to listen to them without consistently interrupting their speech.

Written on 8/15/2009 by Monika Mundell. Monika Mundell is a passionate freelance writer and pro-blogger. Her blog Freelance Writing helps new freelance writers to get started in this exciting industry. If you like to work with Monika, feel free to visit her Portfolio site.

Source: Dumblittleman

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Are you a good listener?

How to make a homeade scanner from cardboard and a coathanger

2009-08-15T19:06:00.011-07:00

Photo by Vineet Chauhan

In the modern world, purchasing a scanner-copier-fax for personal scanning intentions is actually rake. A inexpensive solution is getting your digital / mobile camera to function as an image scanner, but that can require a lot of expertise on your part to hold the camera motionless and acquire non-blurry picture. Here is a Do-it-ypurself project that will save you both time and money, and wven without requiring any complex circuitry or over-the-top electronic hugger-mugger, will eradicate the need for an image scanner. Conceptualized by Matt Embrey, the sole requirements for this project are a camera, tough cardboard or 2 coat-hangers and an elastic rubber band. For the cardboard base, survey the plan and trim the cardboard to construct the unit. The coat-hanger base is even easier to construct, barely some muscle-power and a bit of bending. But remember one thing: adapt the height of the bases such that your photographic camera can fit the entire image to be scanned. Pictures speak 1000 words, so go run down the entire procedure in images after the break.

[Click on the thumbnails for a larger image]

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Natmedtalk is a Blog that offers health advice on just about everything

2009-08-13T15:05:00.004-07:00

Natmedtalk.com is a Blog that offers health advice on just about everything that you can imagine, and its goal is a simple one. A quote from the Blog explains in a nutshell the Bloggers goals. An excerpt from his about us section states: “NatMedTalk.com is a forum for those interested in all aspects of health and illness, there are lots of information about natural and alternative ways of dealing with health problems. If you want to ask any health related questions or help others, please join our community, the registration is free and takes only one minute. .” Simple enough but is the Blog worth a bookmark? In a nutshell I love this site. It is jam packed with data that you normally will not find on other Blogs. Topics such as Holistic Brain care and the truth about Nutrasweet gives one an idea of the variety of information available here. After Googling for accuracy of information presents I was surprised to find his information dead on the mark, and that’s not something that I can say for all Blogs that I review. Pay them a visit over at: http://www.natmedtalk.com/

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How a haircut led to a handy Acronym

2009-08-12T16:10:00.008-07:00

Photo by me

This is a guest post from Lynn, a long-time reader of personal-finance blogs. Lynn is a potential Staff Writer for Get Rich Slowly. In her first post, she explained where to find free activities and events in your area. Lynn is the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of her family, and is working hard to increase her financial health after years of many poor financial choices.

From my toddler years on, I’ve had long hair. There were a few years when I would get it cut shoulder length, but I never ventured into short hair territory. That is, until about a month ago. I found a cute hairstyle from the virtual salon at MarieClaire.com (you can upload your picture and try on different styles — it’s free!). I printed my new style and ventured out to the hair salon. I showed the hairdresser the picture and sat in the chair. I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach as the cape was placed around my neck.
I should have listened to my gut — it was trying to tell me something. Before I knew it I heard the scissors and she held up a long clump of my hair: “There’s no going back now.” I managed a nervous smile. No…there wasn’t.
The hairdresser was great. It took about 20 minutes for the cut and then the fancy hair product came out. She explained everything she was using so I could learn what I needed to do. First up was the root boost to give my hair some volume. Then my hair had to be dried with a hair dryer in a specific way to make the ends flip out. To give the style even more “sassiness” as the hairdresser put it, she used a curling iron to curl the ends up. Sculpting wax and hairspray locked the style in.
What did I get myself into? For the past ten years all I had to do was wash, brush and let my hair air dry. It was perfect for my busy schedule. I feel a bit embarrassed about the whole situation because I didn’t do one thing… I didn’t really think through my purchase before I made it. One of the best tips I have picked up from reading personal finance blogs is that I should ask myself whether something I want to purchase is a want or need. That single question has saved me from many frivolous purchases. The decision to get my hair cut passed the want or need test through some creative justification on my part (more about that in a bit). With my haircut experience as my guide, I came up with a set of questions that I felt would help me really think through purchases - beyond the want or need aspect. My memory can be rusty at times so I needed something to help me remember them. It took a while to situate the questions and the wording, but finally I came up with an easy to remember acronym…WEALTH.

Here’s how it breaks down:
Want or need? Even though I was looking for more questions to ask myself, this question is still important and at the top of my list. My haircut was a want, yet I ended up justifying the purchase. I convinced myself that I needed a change since I’ve had the same hairstyle for over a decade. My mind has a sneaky way of justifying things sometimes.

Ego? Was I getting a haircut to boost my ego or keep up with the Joneses? I became fixated on the picture I printed. I thought I would look more attractive with the shorter cut. In hindsight, I didn’t appreciate what I did have with my long hair.

Add-ons? The haircut itself was one expense, but I didn’t take into account the added cost of hair product. The product ended up costing as much as the cut - doubling the amount I originally planned to spend.

Lifestyle? I thought short hair would be easier to handle than long hair. Oops! I should have done more research and asked the hairdresser what was needed to maintain my style even before I sat in the chair. I’m a wash-n-go type of gal, and my new haircut is far from that.

Time? Is the purchase a one time thing or will there be multiple purchases in the future for upkeep? To maintain my haircut, the hairdresser recommended coming back to the salon every six weeks. A $25 haircut was going to be over a $200/year expense (my previous expense was once every few years since I trimmed my own hair). That’s not even counting the cost of replenishing hair product after it runs out.

Happiness? My haircut is cute, but the happiness started to fade the first time I tried to recreate the style on my own. My little pic used for the audition here at Get Rich Slowly was taken right after I got home from the salon - my hair never looked the same again. It didn’t take long for frustration to set in and I found myself spending way too much time getting ready in the mornings. I would rather do other things during that time.

The WEALTH acronym has already come in handy. A relative was selling a canoe in excellent condition that would fit our entire family. It has been a want of ours for some time, but the price was such a great deal ($150) that the want versus need question was teetering. After going through the other questions, there were add-ons to consider (canoe carrier for our vehicle, extra oars, etc.) and I wondered how much a canoe would affect our happiness. After all, we had a problem spending money in the past on things we thought we would use for family fun but rarely did.
In the end, we didn’t make the purchase and the WEALTH acronym had its first success story. Hopefully there will be many more to come - including when it is applied to my next hairstyle — I’m letting this one grow out
Source: getrichslowly.org

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Determine the true cost of health care procedures in your area

2009-08-12T09:44:00.011-07:00

Photo by Heath Care Blue Book

The Healthcare Blue Book is a free consumer guide to help you determine fair prices in your area for healthcare services. If you pay for your own healthcare, have a high deductible or need a service your insurance does not fully cover, they can help. The Blue Book will help you find fair prices for surgery, hospital stays, doctor visits, medical tests and much more. Where I can see this site as being useful is in weeding out the price gougers in the medical field or helping someone in determining whether they can afford an elective procedure. Print out the report and use it as a bargaining tool on your next procedure. But caveat Emptor, do not choose a doctor soley on cost or you could be sorry. Healthcare is complicated and there are differences between methodology and procedure, what's needed and what's not.

Getting Thing Done the David Allen way

2009-08-11T11:05:00.029-07:00

If you are into being perfect on your productivity or near so, then you definitively have to discover David Allen's "Getting Things Done" productivity system. Let's take a closer glance on how to implement GTD in your life.
Getting things done is a "template for organizing your life and projects, unequaled by any other time management opus in the world. If you are a student or simply a CEO ,this is the way to completely organize and execute everything that life can possibly throw your way.

The basic components of this system are:
Inbox \ Action \ Defer \ Delegate \ Waiting For \ Tickler \ File Reference

The Inbox
Everything begins with the inbox. It's in all likelihood the most crucial part of GTD — seizing all of your most pressing projects. Way too many people think of an agenda or a day planner as being synonymous with a to-do list.

Action
The very next thing to be done regardless of time available. This is a must if this system is to benefit you. Actions are the very next thing you do on a task and belong nowhere else in your list.

Defer
Defer a task if you cannot accomplish it until another time.

Delegate
Delegate when you need another hand in helping you in the completion of a task.

Tickler
This is your "someday/maybe" file. Things that you'd like to accomplish.

Reference---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anything that you use on a regular basis and need fast access to such as passwords etc.

Waiting For
If you cannot accomplish the action without the help of someone else i.e. waiting for your Doctor to call back with an appointment slot.

I have implemented GTD into my Gmail inbox (click on Thumbnail) I refer to this every morning and update as needed. Simply add Gmails free "To Do" list and rename the labels accordingly. My productivity has increased exponentially on the fly by using a web based system.

Here is an excellent video by the creator of the GTD system David Allen. Mastering this system will change your life forever. I know it has mine.

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A simple exercise to read faster

2009-08-10T19:58:00.008-07:00

I believe that speed reading through a book on philosophy is damn near the impossible, and I most sincerely believe that speed reading is mostly used for reading fiction books like novels and such. After reading several reviews on this particular technique it does appear to offer some benefit when practiced regularly but don't expect it to work like magic....Catcher in the Rye anyone?

Know the true cost of an item by understanding Capital Costs

2009-08-10T15:03:00.006-07:00

Photo by Ecotrust
Especially for things people often buy on credit, like a car or a house, there's a tendency to divide the ownership into two periods--while the loan is being paid off, where the item is expensive, and after the loan has been paid off, where the item is free. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of capital costs.
Ordinary items are an extreme case of this. A new t-shirt or coffee mug costs a few dollars one time and then lasts for a year or twenty.

Once you pay for it the "expensive" phase is already over, and now the item is "free" for however long it lasts. Items bought on credit only seem different because the "expensive" phase lasts longer than a moment.
Economists and accountants long ago figured out that this is the wrong way to think about capital costs. Each field came up with a slightly different path toward a correct understanding accountants talk about depreciation while economists talk about present value--but it's the same idea.

Imagine that you pay $20,000 for a car that's going to last 10 years. If you pay cash, one way to think about it is that the car costs $20,000 in the first year and then is "free" for the next nine years. That's not an insane way to think about it--that's what your actual cash flow looks like--but it doesn't lead to smart decision making. It's somewhat better to think of it as costing $2,000 a year for 10 years--that'd be pretty accurate in a world where interest rates were zero and you always knew exactly how long the car would last. Since interest rates aren't zero and you don't know in advance exactly how long the car will last, you need to make some adjustments. (Accounting is all about the rules for making those adjustments, so that one company's accounts can be compared to another's. (The tax man has a certain interest as well.)
The insight that the economists had is that what really matters is the interest rate. If you buy a car you might borrow the money--but then you have to pay interest on the loan. Alternatively, might pay cash--but then your cash is tied up in your car and can't be invested in something else. If the interest rates were the same, it wouldn't matter to you which one you did. (At least, it wouldn't matter to an economist.)

In simple cases, like deciding whether or not to take out a car loan, people's intuition serves them well enough-- you know that the interest rate on the loan will be several percentage points higher than what you can earn on your savings, so paying cash makes sense if you have the cash. You also know that making the car last as long as possible is a win however you pay for the car. But in more subtle cases, simple intuition can lead you astray.
For example, suppose the location of your current home means that need to have two cars so that two adults in the household can both get to work. If you moved someplace where one person could get to work some other way (on foot, by bicycle, via public transit), you could get rid of one car. The economic analysis involves comparing the costs of the second car to the difference in rent. But--and this is the key point--it doesn't matter whether the car is paid for or not.

In a situation like that, the simple-minded analysis is just to add up just the cash costs of the car--fuel, insurance, registration, maintenance, etc. This leads you badly astray if you imagine that having a paid-off car is different from having one where you're still making payments. The capital cost of your car is completely independent of whether you're currently making car payments. If you adjust your household situation so that you can get by on one fewer car you reduce your expense profile by the entire cost of maintaining that second car--including the capital cost. (One way to think about it is that you no longer need to be saving up to pay for its replacement.)

From a purely economic perspective, the only difference between buying something on credit and paying cash comes from the difference in interest rates. In the real world, of course, there are other differences--a debt constrains your future freedom, while cash in the bank expands it. But the purely economic perspective is worth understanding so that you don't make this kind of mistake.
Source: Wisebread.com

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10 Little-Known Credit Card Perks

2009-08-09T19:36:00.004-07:00

Photo by nordberg25's

Your relationship with your credit card provider may seem pretty cut-and-dried. But your credit cards may offer hidden benefits and secret perks that you may not be aware of, which go well beyond frequent flyer miles. Some special offers are listed in the fine print of your credit card agreement, but many others aren’t public knowledge at all. These special offers are only available to customers who know exactly what to ask for and how to negotiate.
From avoiding fees to scoring free hotel stays, here are 10 secret or little-known perks that you may be able to score from your credit card provider.
1. Get an immediate credit limit increase. Though credit providers are less likely to increase your credit limit in the current economic climate than in days past, you can still negotiate a higher balance under the proper conditions, says Ken Clark, a certified financial planner and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Out of Debt.
“The biggest trick is to ask for it in conjunction with a large purchase,” says Clark. If you can make the case that you want a balance increase because you want to make repairs on your home or you’re buying a new laptop, says Clark, your request is more likely to be approved than if you’re simply planning to use the card for everyday expenses. It’s also important to be a long-term customer in good standing. If you’ve skipped out on several payments in the past, the request is sure to be denied.
In addition to providing you with more credit to spend on large purchases, this can be a good strategy to instantly increase your credit score, too. “30% of your credit score comes from what is called the ‘utilization ratio,’” says Clark, which is “calculated by dividing your total outstanding balances by your total possible limits.” So, if the credit limit increase is substantial, “or if paired with paying down your existing balances, it can have a significant effect on your credit score (FICO) in a relatively short amount of time.”

2. Delay a payment. “If you’re having difficulty paying, skip a month,” says Sara Petty, vice president of The Members Group payment consulting firm. Times are tough for everyone these days, and sometimes it can be difficult to even make the minimum monthly payment on your credit card if you’ve just incurred a big expense. If you know in advance that you’re not going to be able to cover a monthly bill, call your credit card provider and ask for permission to delay payment until the following month. Assuming that you’re a customer in good standing without a history of late payments, your provider is likely to waive your late fee and continue to report a “current” payment status to credit bureaus until the following month when you can make the full payment. While it’s never ideal to miss a payment, you can reduce your risk of hurting your credit rating by being honest and open with your provider.

3. Waive your late fee. If you attempt to make an online payment that doesn’t go through, or you never receive an invoice from your credit card provider, you have a good excuse to request that the credit company remove the resulting late payment fee on your next statement. Simply call your provider and explain the circumstances, and the fee will likely be waived. Even if the error is your own fault, you may still be able to get the fee removed from your bill “if you’re a great consumer and haven’t missed a payment in a year or two,” says Clark—however, this request will probably only work once, so be careful about paying on time in the future.

4. Negotiate a lower interest rate. This one is easy, says Clark: “Simply call in with another offer in your hand, and negotiate with them for a better rate.” Be polite, and tell your credit card company that you’ve enjoyed using their service, but you’ve found a better value option. Your credit card provider doesn’t want to lose your business, so you can leverage another provider’s offer to reduce your interest rate significantly, matching or even beating the competitor’s offer.

5. Transfer credit card funds into your bank account. “Consumers who have excellent credit, assuming the bank has a zero percent interest balance transfer offer, can ask for blank balance transfer checks,” says Oren Milgram, CEO of StudentMarket.com, an online shopping and credit resource for college students. There is often a $50 to $75 fee associated with the transfer, but if you don’t have any major upcoming expenditures, depositing the credit in a high-interest online savings account, short-term CD, or Money Market mutual fund can be a way to earn interest on your credit card balance until you need to use the card again. However, be sure to repay the initial funds by the end of the grace period (typically six to twelve months), or you’ll face massive interest fees.

6. Get merchant surcharges for credit card transactions removed. With the exception of schools and government offices, it’s generally illegal for merchants to charge an additional fee for credit card users, regardless of the purchase price. When making your purchase, tell the store manager to waive the surcharge. If your credit card statement still shows an additional merchant fee, you can report the incident to your credit card company as a violation according to the instructions listed in their Merchant Abuse Policy, and the fee will be removed.

7. Double your warranty on new purchases. When you make an expensive purchase like a new computer or refrigerator, there’s no need to buy the extended warranty that you’ll be offered at the store. As long as you use a major credit card to make the purchase, “your provider will automatically match the warranty up to a year on new purchases,” says Clark.

8. Take advantage of your card’s free car rental insurance coverage. Many cards offer free protection against damage on rental cars, so call your card provider to find out if you’re eligible.

9. Get discounted stays or complimentary upgrades at hotels, discounted meals at restaurants across the United States, and other travel perks. Major credit card providers offer many little-known discounts and upgrades on food and travel expenses that are each worth hundreds of dollars. Pull out your original welcome packet, or log onto the card issuer’s Web site for specific deals and offers.

10. Some cards, including American Express Gold, provide Best Value Guarantee (BVG) protection on new purchases made with the card. If you see a print advertisement listing an eligible item for a lower price, send the company your receipt and a copy of the ad to receive a refund of up to $250 against your original purchase price.
Source: mintlife.com

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FDA may be moving on the banning Nutrasweet

2009-08-07T15:21:00.011-07:00

Photo by jurvetson
They claim that Nutrasweet can kill fire ants and can prove it. I don't know about you but I don't want anything in my system that has that capability. The FDA may also be banning this horrible product very soon according to the Huffington post.

(Source: (Consumerist) In January 1976, then Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Schmidt testified before Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) that Hazleton Laboratories, under contract to Searle, had been charged with falsifying toxicological data on the sweetener.The FDA subsequently convened a Public Board of Inquiry to review concerns on aspartame's carcinogenic effects in experimental animals. In 1980, the Board concluded that aspartame could "contribute to the development brain tumors." The FDA then recommended that, pending confirmation of these findings, this sweetener should no longer be used.
In 2006, based on highly sensitive and life long feeding tests in groups of about 200 rats and at doses less than usual human dietary levels, the prestigious Italian Ramazzini Foundation confirmed that aspartame is unequivocally carcinogenic. A high incidence of cancers was induced in multiple organs, including lymph glands, brain and kidney.

(Source: NaturalNews) Research has shown a connection between lymphoma, leukemia, and aspartame as far back as 2005. The FDA approved this synthetic sweetener for use in 1981. Currently used in over six thousand products, aspartame is sold under many different brand names, including NutraSweet, Equal Measure, and Spoonful. It can be found in soda, desserts, yogurt, and even in chewable vitamins.In the first year after its approval, the FDA received over 600 consumer complaints about health issues. Migraine headaches and dizziness, insomnia, joint pain, memory loss, hives, rash, abdominal cramping, hallucinations, seizures and even deaths were reported related to aspartame consumption.

The FDA contacted the Center for Disease Control who did not find any consistent issues. Recently, in the spring of 2009, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) also concluded that aspartame showed no carcinogenic potential at the allowable daily intake (ADI) of 40/mg/kg.Over 900 studies have been published on aspartame, including one in May 2009 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. This recent article investigated the link between formaldehyde and lymph cancer.

A study in 2007 on rats showed that aspartame ingestion caused formaldehyde buildup to such a degree that the rat's skin became yellow.Since 1987, formaldehyde has been listed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a probable human carcinogen. Used as an embalming agent, formaldehyde has been indicated in birth defects, and in environmental allergies. It has been shown to cause both lymphoma and leukemia in lab rats and in humans. It is known that aspartame turns into formaldehyde in the body, but it has been thought that this formaldehyde was then being eliminated quickly. However, a study in 1998 demonstrated that dietary aspartame binds to tissues in protein. It was found in liver, kidney, and blood. The report suggested that the buildup of aspartame was cumulative; that is, it continues to build up without being excreted, causing more damage over time. This report concluded that "aspartame consumption may constitute a hazard because of its contribution to the formation of formaldehyde adducts."Based on these findings, it is wise to avoid aspartame and artificial sweeteners. Even sugar is a better alternative than the substitute. Drink regular sodas instead of diet, or even better, diet soft drinks can be replaced with club soda mixed with a few ounces of fruit juice. Use honey or molasses to sweeten foods and to bake. Though aspartame has government safety approval, the facts and the studies suggest that avoiding aspartame is good for your health.

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__________________________________________________

How to overcome fatigue forever

2009-08-04T16:37:00.000-07:00

Photo by Sasha noir

Fatigue often brings out worry, or, at the least, it makes you susceptible to worry. Any Doctor will tell you that fatigue depresses physical resistance to the common cold and hundreds of additional diseases and any psychiatrist will assure you that fatigue also lowers your resistance to the emotions of fearfulness and worry. So preventing fatigue tends to prevent worry.
Did I say "tends to prevent worry"? That's putting it gently. The late Dr. Edmund Jacobson proceeds much further. He has written two books on how to relax: Progressive Relaxation and You Must Relax', and as former director of the University of Chicago Laboratory for Clinical Physiology, he's spent years leading investigations in using relaxation as a formula in medical practice. He holds that any nervous or emotional state "neglects to exist in the presence of complete relaxation". That's another way of saying: You can't proceed to worry if you relax. So, to prevent fatigue and worry, the first rule is: Rest frequently. Rest prior to your getting tired.

Why is that so crucial? Because fatigue accumulates with astounding rapidity. The U. S. Army has disclosed by repeated tests that even young men-men hardened by years of Army training-can march better, and last longer, if they cast off their packs and rest ten minutes out of every hour. So the Army forces them to do simply that. Your heart is just as smart as the U.S. Army. Your heart pumps enough blood through your body day-after-day to fill a railroad tank car. It exerts enough energy every twenty-four hours to shovel 20 tons of coal on to a platform 3 feet high. It does this unbelievable amount of work for 50, 70, or maybe 90 years. How can it endure it? The late Dr. Walter B. Cannon, of the Harvard Medical School, explains it. He says: "Most people have the idea that the heart is working all the time. As a matter of fact, there is a definite rest period after each contraction. When beating at a moderate rate of 70 beats per minute, the heart is actually working just 9 hours out of the 24. In the aggregate its rest periods total a full 15 hours per day."

During the second World War, Winston S. Churchill, in his late sixties and early seventies, was capable of working 16 hours a day, heading the war efforts of the British Empire. A fantastic record. His secret? He worked in bed every morning until 11 o'clock, reading papers, dictating orders, taking telephone calls, and holding conferences. After lunch he hit the sack once more and slept for an hour. In the evening he turned in once more and slept for 2 hours before having dinner at 8. He did not cure fatigue. He did not need cure it. He prevented it. Because he rested often, he was able to work on, energized and fit, until long past midnight.
The tycoon, John D. Rockefeller earned two extraordinary records. He accumulated the biggest fortune the world had ever witnessed up to that time and he also lived to be 98. How did he do it? The primary reason, naturally, was because he had inherited a propensity to live long. Another reason was his habit of having a 30 minute nap in his office every noon. He would lie down on his office couch-and not even the President of the United States of America could reach him. on the phone while he was having his catnap!

In his first-class book. Why Be Tired, Daniel W. Josselyn maintains: "Rest isn't a matter of doing utterly nothing. Rest is repair." There is so much repair ability in a short period of relaxation that even a five-minute nap will help to counter fatigue! Eleanor Roosevelt when asked how she was able to conduct such a draining schedule during the 12 years she was in the White House, she stated that before encountering a crowd or making a speech, she would sit in a chair or davenport, close her eyes, and decompress for 20 minutes.
Henry Ford, when interviewed shortly before his 80th birthday, was asked how he always managed to look fresh and fine said: "I never stand up when I can sit down; and I never sit down when I can lie down." Horace Mann, "the father of modern education", did the same thing as he grew older. When he was president of Antioch College, he used to stretch out on a couch while interviewing students.
　
How does all this apply to you? If you're a stenographer, you cannot take naps in the office as Thomas Edison did, ; and if you're an accountant, you can't stretch out on the couch while discussing a fiscal statement with the boss. But if you live in a small city and go home for lunch, you may be able to take a ten-minute nap after lunch. That is what General George C. Marshall used to do. He found he was so busy maneuvering the U.S. Army in wartime that he had to rest at noonday. If you are over 50 and feel you're too rushed to do it, then buy all the life insurance you'll be able to get. Funerals come high-and suddenly-these days; and the little woman may prefer to take your insurance money and marry a younger gentleman!

If you cannot take a nap at noon, you can at the very least try to lie down for 60 minutes before the evening meal. It's cheaper than a cocktail; and, over a long stretch, it's 1000 times better. If you are able to sleep for an hour around 5, 6, or 7 o'clock, you can add one hour a day to your waking life. Why? How? Because an hour's sleep before dinnertime plus 6 hours' sleep at night-a total of 7 hours-will do you more good than 8 hours of unbroken sleep. A physical worker can do more work if he takes more time out for rest. Frederick Taylor proved that while working as a scientific management engineer with the Bethlehem Steel Company. He discovered that labouring workers were loading up approximately 12 1/2 tons of pig-iron per man every day on freight cars and that they were exhausted at twelve noon. He made a scientific study of all the fatigue factors involved, and announced that these men should be loading not 12 1/2 tons of pig-iron per day, but 47 tons per day! He calculated that they ought to do almost 4 times as much as they were doing, and not be exhausted. But prove it! Taylor chose a Mr. Schmidt who was expected to work by the stop-watch. Schmidt was told by the man who stood over him with a watch: "Now pick up a 'pig' and walk. ... Now sit down and rest. ... Now walk. ... Now rest again."
What materialized? Schmidt carried 47 tons of pig-iron daily while the other men carried only 12 1/2 tons per man. And he practically never failed to work at this pace during the 3 years that Frederick Taylor worked at Bethlehem. Schmidt was able to do this because he rested before he got tired. He worked approximately 26 minutes out of the hour and rested 34 minutes. He rested more than he worked-yet he did almost 4 times as much work as the others! Is this simple hearsay? No, you are able to read the record yourself in Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Let me say it again: do what the Army does-take frequent rests. Do what your heart does-rest before you get tired, and you'll add one hour a day to your waking life.

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The strongest glue available today (And it's only $5.00!)

2009-08-04T14:42:00.012-07:00

It's called J-B Weld and can be found at any Auto-Parts store.
It packs an unbelievable 3900 plus psi and can be used on almost anything.

Here is a short list.
hot & cold pipes
appliances
tools
toys, hobbies & crafts
guns
lighting fixtures
bikes
lawnmowers
fences
furniture
luggage
sporting goods
ceramic tile
water & fuel cans, tanks, and tubs
fuel tanks
radiators
cracked engine blocks
transmission & rear-end casings
cylinder heads & sleeves
generators, starters, water & fuel pumps
axles & hubs
valve guides
press fit bearings
crankshaft pulleys
casting defects
door stops
key ways
stripped threads
body shop repairs
steel, aluminum, & fiberglass boat hulls
trailers
deck gear
galley equipment
pipes
motors & propellers
fishing equipment
metal & PVC pipe
ceramic appliances
hardware

I currently own a very powerful high-torque motorcycle that needs engine bracing to keep the motor mounts from breaking while racing. There are two braces that I have mounted on both sides of the motor that were recommended to be welded on at a cost of $65.00.
To make a long story short I bought a single tube of J-B weld in Laughlin Nevada for $5.00 last year, and the only way to remove those braces now is by grinding them off. This stuff has hundreds of uses and should be kept in your vehicle in case of emergencies. It even repairs gas tanks.

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How to find and buy cars at or below wholesale everytime

2009-08-04T13:55:00.002-07:00

Photo by usedcars.com
WHOLESALERS
Wholesalers are the distributors of cars in the used car business. They move the cars between the lots.
They make the rounds of new and used car dealers to see what they have to wholesale. They buy cars, add a few hundred dollars to the price and sell them the same day to other car dealers. They act as the brokers between the new and used lots, buying and selling everyday. Wholesalers are usually independent and work alone. They know the market. They know who is selling what and who is buying it! When they buy a car,
they usually know where they can sell it. A good wholesaler can tell you immediately what a car will bring wholesale. He is "on the market". After you're in the car business, contact wholesalers. They are an excellent source of good used cars! They'll search and find the cars you want, at a price that will allow you to make a fair profit.
A wholesaler can be an invaluable source of information in knowing how the
market is doing. What's HOT and what's NOT! He can be your insider with all the
contacts.

The best way to find them is to ask used car lot managers. You'll also find
wholesalers listed in the Yellow Pages. You'll also find them renting an office on
independent used car lots. They can find cars for the lot and share the office
expenses. If you see a second sign on a lot for another car company, it usually
indicates a wholesaler has his office there, too.

LEASING COMPANIES

These companies usually sell their used cars through wholesalers. The cars
are going to be the newer, expensive models. These cars are not the ones to buy and
sell using this plan.

RENTAL COMPANIES

Rental companies have become the largest sellers of used cars in the United
States. Hertz sells over 60,000 cars a year to the public. National sells over 25,000.
The cars are the same types as sold by leasing companies. The rental companies
also wholesale some of their used stock. Contact the rental agencies in your area.

Note: Rental companies are getting out of the used car sales business. The
cars they rent are usually leased from companies owned by the manufacturers i.e.
Chrysler Leasing Corporation. The new car dealers have really been complaining to
the manufacturers because the rental company lots have all the one and two year old
cars. To help the dealers get access to these high demand cars, the manufacturer's
leasing companies are now giving leases with the options to return the car to the
leasing company at the end of the lease. These options have been made very
attractive to the rental companies. When the leasing company gets the vehicle back,
they have auctions for dealers only. Now the dealer has a chance to deal in this
attractive market. The dealer puts attractive names on them such as "executive
cars", Ford corporation cars or CLC (Chrysler Leasing Corporation) cars.

GARAGES AND BODY SHOPS

People take their cars in for repair and sometimes can't afford to pay for the
work. The owner of the garage or shop ends up owning the car. The person either
abandons the vehicle or a court awards the shop the car.

Some shops do not want the hassle of selling the car because of possible
problems or returns. The shop owner only wants the money invested in the repair.
These shops will usually sell them to wholesalers.

Make contact with the garages and shops in your area. Let them know you would
be glad to buy these vehicles. This can be an excellent source of good, low priced
cars.

BANKS

Drive by banks and you'll see cars, boats, trucks and RVs out in front for
sale. These are repossessions by the bank. They are normally the newer, high
priced models. Get to know your banker and tell him you are looking for older used
cars. The bank will get those when they are collateral for defaulted loans. Your
banker may be more interested in selling to you than a wholesaler if he wants you to
be a happy customer.

PRIVATE OWNERS

At last! The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! When starting your
business, this is your absolute best source for automobiles for resale.

Remember, more than 50% of the used car sales are made by individuals.
You'll find them in the classifieds, sitting in shopping centers, in front of homes, in
weekly newspapers and in auto sale newspapers. They are everywhere and there are
thousands! Your job will be to decide which are the best and make the deals!

In later chapters, I'll show you how to select cars and how to make the best
deals. Here is the SECRET of this plan. There are people, right now, that need to
sell their car at a very low price. Find this person and your profits are absolutely
guaranteed!

HORSE TRADERS

The horse traders are the common of the used car business. You'll find them
everywhere. They may sell as an individual, have a small garage, a body shop or
even a small car lot. They take "lemons" and make them smell and look like
strawberries. Watch out for them! The best way you can protect yourself is by
being able to properly inspect the vehicle your buying. I'll show you how to do this
in the chapter on inspecting vehicles.

GOVERNMENT AUCTIONS

All governmental agencies, federal, state, county and cities have vehicle
auctions. By law, these auctions have to be publicly announced. Check your local
newspaper classifieds on the weekends.

Call your mayor's office and ask how sales are publicized. Call the police
and sheriff's offices and ask how abandoned cars are sold. Contact your state
representative or senator's office and ask how state owned vehicles are sold.

Contact the following federal agencies in writing. Ask to be placed on the
mailing lists for the announcements of public auctions and sales.

General Services Administration
Centralized Mailing List Services
Bldg 41, Denver Federal Center
Denver, Colorado 80225
www.gsaAuctions.gov

Department of Defense
Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service
National Sales Office
74 Washington Ave., N., Ste
6
Battle Creek, MI 49017-3092
www.drms.com

Your local
Internal Revenue Service
Collections Division Office
(Auctions Mailing List)

Your local
Small Business Administration
Liquidation Officer

Your local
Post Office
Motor Vehicle Service Department

WHOLESALE AUCTIONS

These are auctions open only to dealers. Ask a dealer friend to let you tag
along to an auction. It will be a real learning experience! Understand that some
dealers do this for a fee so individuals can purchase at the auction. If there's no
charge, buy his lunch.

If you become a dealer in your state or have a dealer buy for you, remember
this.........It's the only thing I'll say about auctions!

NOT EVERY CAR AT AN AUCTION IS A BAD CAR,
BUT EVERY BAD CAR GOES TO AN AUCTION!

If you do decide to try auctions, be careful, many who have talked with me
after buying this plan have had BAD experiences with the cars they purchased at
wholesale auctions. The auction block can be a dumping ground.

I don't recommend you buy from any auction until you have experience in
appraising the value and condition of cars. As an EXPERIENCED buyer you will
find good cars at low prices at auctions, but there are no "steals".

CONSIGNMENT LOTS

A consignment lot is where an owner puts his car on consignment to sell.
The owner of the lot attempts to sell the car for either a percentage of the selling
price or a fixed fee. In my area consignment lots charge a set fee based on the
selling price of the car. For example: If the car sells from $0 to $1000 the owner of
the lot receives $100. For $1000 to $2000 the fee is $150. This fee escalates with
increases in the price.

I have found you can get good deals at these lots. Here's why. Sellers who
place their cars on such lots may be unsophisticated in selling cars. They may not
want to be bothered. They may want to sell the car as soon as possible.

The lot owner wants to move cars. The more cars sold, the more profit he
makes. Because of this, the lot owner may not always have the best interests of the
seller as a top priority. The following is an actual example showing this.

A young woman I know spotted a nice four-year old Toyota Camry last year
on a consignment lot. It had less than 30,000 miles and was in perfect condition.
The buyer had put it on the lot asking $9,000 for it. The loan value was $7400.
This young woman offered $7000. While she was standing in the office, the lot
manager called the owner and encouraged her to take this offer. She did. The
young woman paid $7000 for a car that was easily worth $8,000 if the owner had
sold it through newspaper ads. The car lot owner was more concerned about
moving the car than in maximizing the car seller's profits.

Check the consignment lots in your area. They can be a great source of good
autos. When you visit the lot, ask the manager which cars have been on the lot the
longest. This is a way to find the motivated sellers.

RETAIL AUCTIONS

In large cities, you will find retail auctions where individuals and businesses
take their vehicles to sell. As with wholesale auctions you must be experienced
before you purchase. A reminder! When you go to an auction, don't get caught up
in the heat of the bidding. Set the maximum price you'll pay for the vehicle and
DON'T exceed it. Remember, the seller may have friend in the audience to bid the
price up. If you get in a bidding war, it can become an ego trip of I have to win,
rather than a common sense business deal.

One user of this plan goes to these retail auctions and buys cars with minor
physical damage or in need of a paint job. He has a body and paint man who works
cheap. After "fixing" the car cosmetically and doing the detail work, he takes the
car back to the same auction and makes a mint.

WHERE TO FIND THE CARS THAT SELL

When starting your new business, purchase the majority of your cars from
individuals. You will find they sell for the lowest price and are the easiest to
negotiate.

You'll find them in:

1. Classified Ads
2. Bulletin boards at work and grocery stores
3. Local auto shopper newspapers
4. Cars parked in malls and shopping centers
5. Cars parked at homes
NOTE: In newspapers, look under other headings such as legal notices,
estate sales, yard sales and miscellaneous.

Let your relatives and friends know you want to buy cars. Offer them $50
for every car they refer, that you buy. Always be on the lookout for cars. When you
find cars for sale, make some low-ball offers. You may be surprised that they'll
accept your offer! What do you have to lose? Have fun! Remember, you don't
have to buy every car you inspect.

Another good source are wholesalers. To deal with wholesalers, you must
develop a good business relationship. They must know the kind of cars you want.
You will have to buy occasionally from the wholesaler. They place a premium on
their time and don't want to waste it with you if you never buy. Begin with the
individual sellers. Then move into the wholesaler's market after you have a good
understanding of used cars and your ability to sell. You may also run classified ads
saying, "I'll buy your car. Cash! Call Don. 482-XXXX". This will generate calls
you can screen for those who NEED to sell. You can run a small ad like this in local
"shopper" newspapers very inexpensively, week after week.
Another reader gave me the idea of the "would you" program. Have some
small leaflets copied (or use a business card) that say, "Would you take $_____ for
your car? Call 555-1234. This is a great idea for buying specific models and year of
cars. Just prowl the mall parking lots. I would not write a dollar offer. I'd just leave
a note, "Would you sell your car for a fair price? Call 555-1234"
I also heard from a happy "Used Car Gold Mine guy" who prowls his
neighborhood looking for cars that don't seem to ever move from their parking spot.
He looks for trash under the wheels on street parked cars. Then he leaves a note if
he can't locate the owner. He also looks for older couples that have cars that seem to
be idle. He makes offers. He also leaves notes on bulletin boards in elderly
community service agencies and retirement buildings, "Cash paid for your car. Call
Don 123-5678".

HOW TO BUY THE RIGHT CAR EVERY TIME
The first decision to make is the kind of cars you are going to buy and sell. I
recommend you select one brand, model or type of car. This will give you the
chance to become an expert on that car. You'll know the models that have big
demand and sell fast. You'll know the lowest purchase price to buy and the top
price to sell. After you gain experience in one model or type, then expand to others.
You want to deal in reliable cars. This will enhance your reputation and
insure repeat business. The word will get around you buy and sell good, dependable
used cars. These referrals will make your business a success.

Remember the basic rules in selecting cars for use in this plan.

The car should be 7 to 12 years old.

The car should be a "pleasant" car, not necessarily a "cream puff". It should have
no major problems or detractions. It must have "curbside" appeal. A car the
buyer will be happy to own. No junkers!

The mileage should be below 100,000 miles. I'll show you mileage rules later. If
the mileage is above 100,000, your purchase price must be a "steal".

The car should retail for no more than $5995. The price range you'll be the most
successful in turning cars quickly is $2995 to $5995. This price range will sell
fast and for cash.

$500 PROFIT ON EVERY CAR

Remember the following! It will be the difference between you being a roaring
success or a complete flop in this business.

"YOU MAKE YOUR PROFIT WHEN YOU BUY THE CAR "

That's right! You must buy nice cars at a low enough price to sell with a good
profit. It's simple! Do it and your success is guaranteed.

As a rule of thumb, plan to make a profit of $300 to $1000 on each car you sell.
To know how to do this, you must do some homework. You'll have to have a good
understanding of the market. You'll need to study the current selling prices. That's
why I recommend you stick to a single brand or model at first. This lets you
specialize and makes it easier to study the selling prices.

Pricing in the used car market is not scientific. There are no stickers on the
windows. No one can tell you how much a used car is worth! If I look at five
Toyota Corollas they will be worth as little as $300 or as much as $3000, depending
on their condition, mileage and what a buyer is willing to pay.

The National Automobile Dealers Association (N.A.D.A.) Used Car Guide gives
the average prices for cars in your region. It is commonly called the "Blue Book".
It's really orange. You can look at one at your bank or credit union. Large
bookstores and magazine stands sell individual copies. The Consumer Version of
the N.A.D.A guide sold in bookstores is not useful. It gives retail prices only. Your
library reference section will have the Dealer/Bank version. The Dealer/Bank
version gives more information on loan values and trade-in values.. N.A.D.A. also
publishes a price guide for the older models.

The Kelly Blue Book publishes several price guides. They have the "Used Car
Guide" and the "Older Car Guide". You can subscribe to by calling 1-800-4441743. Or write: Kelly Blue Book, Box 19691, Irvine, CA 92713.

Note: The Kelly Blue Book sells to businesses only. Control the flow of
information and you control the market! When you order, it might be a good idea to

use the name of your "new" business. Be creative. Make one up. There is
absolutely no legal or logical reason why any group should exclude anyone from
this valuable information. I know they probably have their own "good" reason, but
it smacks of "BIG BROTHER" to me.

Magazine racks and bookstores also have magazines giving used car prices but
these are not as current as those above. A subscription to the price guides will be a
must once you get started.

Another good way to determine the values of your model is to track and record
local selling prices. This is the way to know exactly what the market is doing in
your particular area. Write down the prices advertised. Keep a log of the dates and
prices. Take time to go to the library and read the classifieds for the last two or
three months. Call some of the old ads. Inquire what they sold the car for. If they
are not sold, seize the chance. Maybe they will now be willing to come down in
price. Check used car lot prices. All this will give you a good start on knowing the
average selling price for your brand or model.

The most difficult and perplexing question for a person starting in the car
business is what is the wholesale market value for a car. Here is a general rule of
thumb. In the N.A.D.A. book there is a price called "average loan value". It is the
lowest price of the three given. This is the amount that your bank will normally loan
using the car as collateral. You should attempt to buy your cars at this price but no
more than average trade-in.

Why? This graph will show you. Let's assume you have a 5 year old Ford. You
open your N.A.D.A. book and find the following values for the car. Average retail
value is $9,000. Average trade-in is 7,700. Average loan value is $7,000. The
vertical area on the graph is the price range that wholesalers and dealers will
negotiate on this car.

Retail Trade-in Loan
$9,000 $7,700 $7,000 $5,000 $4,000

Trade-in value is usually the price that GOOD cars sell for at dealer's auctions.
Trade-in is usually considered to be the market "wholesale" price of a clean, average
mileage car.

This was a real eye-opener to me when I learned this pricing strategy. It was a
greater shock when I found that this same car would be priced on the used car lot at
a price of somewhere between $9,500 and $10,500. This gives the dealer a spread
to GIVE the buyer a lower price; a better deal!
Again, the general rule of thumb is buy between loan value and average trade-in
and sell at the retail price.
If you want to verify this for your area, here's a way to do it. It will be fun, too.
Take your personal car and look it up in the N.A.D.A. book. You can find the

N.A.D.A. books in the reference section of your public library. They usually keep
them behind the desk. You'll have to ask the librarian for it. After you find the
three figures for your car, do two things. First, shop for your car on the local lots.
Second, go to a few lots and ask to talk to the used car manager (He buys the cars
for the lot. Large dealers may have a separate buyer.). Tell him you need to sell
your car quickly and you'd like an offer for it. Compare these prices with the
N.A.D.A. prices for your car.
Here's a hint I learned from an old pro that will pay for this manual a hundredfold! When buying cars use the Kelly Blue Book or Old Car Guide to show the
seller how little the car is worth. These books tend to give lower prices then the
street market because they reflect the prices being paid by dealers.

When selling your cars, use the retail price in the NADA book. This is always
higher than the street (not dealer) market. When negotiating, select prices in the
particular book that will support your price whether buying or selling. Show the
book "PRICES" to the other person. Something in print always makes it TRUE or
at least it has more impact then you just saying it. This ploy can make you hundreds
EXTRA from the inexperienced!

Like this article?

How to save money at the gasoline pumps 24x7

2009-08-02T13:53:00.044-07:00

Photo by tinotopia
How would you like to track gasoline prices on your own, and save money at the pump 24X7?

There's a way to determine how gasoline prices are trading in the futures markets so that you can predict what will be transpiring at the pumps. By making yourself more informed you can empower yourself and save alot of cash over your lifetime of commuting.

Why should you inconvenience yourself by tracking gasoline futures prices?
You should track these prices because it directly impacts you every time you fill up your car at the gas pump. The futures prices are the driving force behind the prices at the pump, so if you track these futures prices you'll be ahead of the game.

How can you track gasoline futures?
Websites like Bloomberg and CNN Money both have commodity futures pages where you are able to track these prices. The prices are delayed by about 30 minutes or so. On this same screen you'll be able to also view the prices of natural gas, crude oil, heating oil, and other commodities.
[http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/cfutures.html]-- [http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/RB]

How long does it take for these changes to happen at the pump?
--More often than not, if gasoline futures trade significantly lower one day on the market, you can expect prices at the pump to move lower within 10 days or so. Plan your purchases accordingly and you should be capable of saving some serious money at the pumps.

Why is the price of gasoline futures so different than the cost at the pump?
--For instance, the price of unleaded gasoline futures may be $2.50, but the price at the pump may be $3.40. The difference here is largely due to taxes. In general it can be expected that the average pump price should be somewhere between 70 and 90 cents above the futures market price. It takes a little time to show up at the pump. With due diligence and a little effort you can save thousands over the lifetime of your driving.

Tips
1. Gasoline futures can swing wildly throughout the day, so be aware of that.
2.Things such as hurricanes or major shutdowns of refineries can cause prices to skyrocket even without futures prices moving a lot.
3. Watch the gas futures on CNBC. In my town, the price of gas is usually $.70 more than the gasoline futures. Find out what the average price for gas above is futures in your town and add the figure to the futures to find out whether the next tick is up or down. When the next tick is up, fill your tank before it hits the street. If the next tick is down, you will know to wait in until they update the price at the pump. I have saved as much as $.10/gallon for a 20 gallon fill up by waiting a day or so, and sometimes go ahead and fill up even though I have half a tank, when I know the price is going up. [Jay@Lifehacker.com]

Using the moon to unstress

2009-08-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

Photo by up_nights_19

For many centuries now the moon has been known for its mystical powers, and its effects on humans.
The moon also affects the tides causing them to ebb, and flow due to the gravitation pull that it exerts upon the Earth.
Police, hospitals, and paramedics also see a spike in activity during the full lunar phase. But did you know that the moon is also a fantastic remedy for stress?
We all remember those summer nights when the crickets would chirp while we were out chasing firefly's and each other around the yard.
Life seemed almost as endless as those summers, and before we knew it we were now adults supervising our own children as they gallivanted around the yard, playing the very same games that we had played decades before.
One of the most powerful tranquilizers that I have discovered to date has nothing to do with medicine, or at least the chemical kind. This medicine is all natural and comes with no adverse side effects or cost, and all it takes is 30 minutes of your time.
A long walk under a full moon after dinner for me has no competition when it comes to unstressing myself.
Whether winter or summer, I find the time to take long walks after my work, and dinner while gazing at the full moon, and clearing out the cobwebs.
Many famous poets have found their inspiration this way, and I can think of no better cure for the mild attention deficit disorder that we acquire throughout the day whether it be by the news, media commercials, or the job.
Try it once during the next full moon, and I can guarantee you that you ll be hooked. Of course this only works if you don't find yourself dodging traffic, or shielding your ears from the blaring of automobile horns, so take that stroll as far away from the hustle and bustle of the city as you possibly can.

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Saving on car repairs

2009-07-27T15:45:00.007-07:00

Photo by spikeblacklab

Are you among those few people who are having difficulty in getting their automobiles repaired and drained of their funds also? If you are, then it's high time you start looking to ways to save on car repairs ,and save more in your piggy bank.
Defective cars aren't even suitable to be sold without undergoing all the necessary repairs. You can't even trade it with another car without getting it repaired.You're left without any choice at all but to get it repaired. The only trouble is that without the suitable guidelines you need in selecting the right repairs, you can be spending more than what you
can give. With the high costs of parts and repairs happening in the market today, no one can
truly afford to have their cars repaired in very expensive packages. So you have to concoct ways to save more on auto repairs.You can cut back on car repairs and save more cash on an
ordinary basis without opting to excessive ways.

Here’s how you are able to save on car repairs:

1. Do your homework
One of the biggest troubles most motorists come across is that they spend more on auto repairs merely because they didn't choose the best auto-mechanic or repair service for their automobiles. Through research, you will be able to identify the proper mechanic and the
right workshop.

2. Take note of the items that need to be repaired
Before you go to your auto-mechanic, it's best to have all the essential repairs listed on a piece of paper. In this way, you will be able to tell your auto-mechanic right away the items that need to be serviced. This will prevent unneeded repairs or misinterpretations on the type of repairs that your automobile needs. Unneeded repairs will only add up to more repair expenses. I keep a $35.00 code tester handy which comes with a manual of generated error codes and their corresponding fixes. It has saved my butt more than once. I simply print out and deliver to the mechanic the results, that way there is no second guessing or padding of the bill.

3. Shop and compare
To get the best quotes on car repairs, try to shop around (I use CraigsList) and comparison shop. In this way, you'll be able to evaluate and compare costs enabling you to find the best quotes possible. Never snap up the first fix-it shop you find. By searching around, you can still find better shops than what you have right now. There are even mechanica on CraigsList that will come stright to you but use caution and instinct. Get it in writing that they guarantee their repair and always get their identification before they leave. (Drivers License) Don't trust anyone if you havent worked with them in the past and observered their standard and quality of work.

4. Try to get every transaction in black and white
This means that before you commit yourself to a particular repair job, it is best to have the estimate written on a piece of paper. Attempt to get a copy of your own. This will prevent the unneeded collection of extra charges, which were not included on the first estimation.
Keep in mind that not all job repairs were made equal and not all auto-mechanics are honorable. So it is best to protect yourself as always.

5. Get your car’s old parts before you let the mechanic start the repair process
There are certain car parts that can still be rebuilt. So never let your mechanic take the chance of acquiring these things. You can have them repaired on some machine shops and cut back your expenses on the next repair.

6. Know your way around
If you don't know your way around auto repairs, it's best to ask someone (definitely not your mechanic) for some second opinions. In this way, you will be able to decide which things need bigger considerations. Besides, if you just let your auto-mechanic decide on your car’s
repair procedure, you might pay more than what you can imagine. Better yet, read some easy-to-read manuals on automobile maintenance. In this way, you'll learn some essential tricks regarding car parts and repairs. This will enable you to distinguish the important repairs from those that you are able to do by yourself.

7. Ask for the warranty
Some car repair shops offer up guarantees on the services that they make. Note this so that you will be able to be sure not to drop another hundred dollars for the same repair in just a couple of days. Furthermore, guarantees can assure high quality repairs so you'll be able to be sure that your car and your wallet are in good hands. Indeed, automobile repairs can not be avoided. These are the particulars that you have to learn to accept.

Finding good fix-it shops aren't that hard. Just try to remember these pointers and you'll certainly spend less with auto repairs. Also, consider learning how to do the simple jobs yourself. That’s where those manuals may come out handy. With just a bit of knowledge you'll be able to manage minor maintenance like oil changes, tune-ups, changing windshield wipers and other simple jobs. Learning to do these yourself will result in huge savings!

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Beat the debt collector

2009-07-26T19:05:00.009-07:00

Photo by djdennyp

More than ever in the recent history of the U.S., credit card companies are willing to negotiate with you if you find you can't pay your monthly credit card statement. This hasn't always been the case, and until recently due to the Economic meltdown, your only recourse was to file for bankruptcy.Not every bank will deal with you, but most will be willing to talk today.If they have to write off your debt you may be eligible to pay the only the taxes involved, but that is only a small fraction of what you may actually owe them. Also keep in mind that if things do get ugly and go to collections, there is a narrow window that these agencies must operate under regarding what they can or cannot do or say.

A short course on knowing your rights:
Know this,if you’re behind in paying your bills, or a creditor’s records mistakenly make it appear that you are, a debt collector may be contacting you very soon.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation’s consumer protection agency, enforces the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), which prohibits debt collectors from using abusive, unfair, or deceptive practices to collect from you.
Under the FDCPA, a debt collector is someone who regularly collects debts owed to others. This includes collection agencies, lawyers who collect debts on a regular basis, and companies that buy delinquent debts and then try to collect them.

Here are some questions and answers about your rights under the Act.

What types of debts are covered?
The Act covers personal, family, and household debts, including money you owe on a personal credit card account, an auto loan, a medical bill, and your mortgage. The FDCPA doesn’t cover debts you incurred to run a business.

Can a debt collector contact me any time or any place?
No. A debt collector may not contact you at inconvenient times or places, such as before 8 in the morning or after 9 at night, unless you agree to it. And collectors may not contact you at work if they’re told (orally or in writing) that you’re not allowed to get calls there.

How can I stop a debt collector from contacting me?
If a collector contacts you about a debt, you may want to talk to them at least once to see if you can resolve the matter – even if you don’t think you owe the debt, can’t repay it immediately, or think that the collector is contacting you by mistake. If you decide after contacting the debt collector that you don’t want the collector to contact you again, tell the collector – in writing – to stop contacting you. Here’s how to do that:

Make a copy of your letter. Send the original by certified mail, and pay for a “return receipt” so you’ll be able to document what the collector received. Once the collector receives your letter, they may not contact you again, with two exceptions: a collector can contact you to tell you there will be no further contact or to let you know that they or the creditor intend to take a specific action, like filing a lawsuit. Sending such a letter to a debt collector you owe money to does not get rid of the debt, but it should stop the contact. The creditor or the debt collector still can sue you to collect the debt.

Can a debt collector contact anyone else about my debt?
If an attorney is representing you about the debt, the debt collector must contact the attorney, rather than you. If you don’t have an attorney, a collector may contact other people – but only to find out your address, your home phone number, and where you work. Collectors usually are prohibited from contacting third parties more than once. Other than to obtain this location information about you, a debt collector generally is not permitted to discuss your debt with anyone other than you, your spouse, or your attorney.

What does the debt collector have to tell me about the debt?
Every collector must send you a written “validation notice” telling you how much money you owe within five days after they first contact you. This notice also must include the name of the creditor to whom you owe the money, and how to proceed if you don’t think you owe the money.

Can a debt collector keep contacting me if I don’t think I owe any money?
If you send the debt collector a letter stating that you don’t owe any or all of the money, or asking for verification of the debt, that collector must stop contacting you. You have to send that letter within 30 days after you receive the validation notice. But a collector can begin contacting you again if it sends you written verification of the debt, like a copy of a bill for the amount you owe.

What practices are off limits for debt collectors?
Harassment. Debt collectors may not harass, oppress, or abuse you or any third parties they contact. For example, they may not:

•use threats of violence or harm;
•publish a list of names of people who refuse to pay their debts (but they can give this information to the credit reporting companies);
•use obscene or profane language; or
•repeatedly use the phone to annoy someone.

False statements. Debt collectors may not lie when they are trying to collect a debt. For example, they may not:

•falsely claim that they are attorneys or government representatives;
•falsely claim that you have committed a crime;
•falsely represent that they operate or work for a credit reporting company;
•misrepresent the amount you owe;
•indicate that papers they send you are legal forms if they aren’t; or
•indicate that papers they send to you aren’t legal forms if they are.

Debt collectors also are prohibited from saying that:

•you will be arrested if you don’t pay your debt;
•they’ll seize, garnish, attach, or sell your property or wages unless they are permitted by law to take the action and intend to do so; or
•legal action will be taken against you, if doing so would be illegal or if they don’t intend to take the action.

Debt collectors may not:

•give false credit information about you to anyone, including a credit reporting company;
•send you anything that looks like an official document from a court or government agency if it isn’t; or
•use a false company name.

Unfair practices. Debt collectors may not engage in unfair practices when they try to collect a debt. For example, they may not:

•try to collect any interest, fee, or other charge on top of the amount you owe unless the contract that created your debt – or your state law – allows the charge;
•deposit a post-dated check early;
•take or threaten to take your property unless it can be done legally; or
•contact you by postcard.

Can I control which debts my payments apply to?
Yes. If a debt collector is trying to collect more than one debt from you, the collector must apply any payment you make to the debt you select. Equally important, a debt collector may not apply a payment to a debt you don’t think you owe.

Can a debt collector garnish my bank account or my wages?
If you don’t pay a debt, a creditor or its debt collector generally can sue you to collect. If they win, the court will enter a judgment against you. The judgment states the amount of money you owe, and allows the creditor or collector to get a garnishment order against you, directing a third party, like your bank, to turn over funds from your account to pay the debt. Lawyers call this a,"license to hunt."
Wage garnishment happens when your employer withholds part of your compensation to pay your debts. Your wages usually can be garnished only as the result of a court order. Don’t ignore a lawsuit summons. If you do, you lose the opportunity to fight a wage garnishment.

Can federal benefits be garnished?
Many federal benefits are exempt from garnishment, including:
•Social Security Benefits
•Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Benefits
•Veterans’ Benefits
•Civil Service and Federal Retirement and Disability Benefits
•Service Members’ Pay
•Military Annuities and Survivors’ Benefits
•Student Assistance
•Railroad Retirement Benefits
•Merchant Seamen Wages
•Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Death and Disability Benefits
•Foreign Service Retirement and Disability Benefits
•Compensation for Injury, Death, or Detention of Employees of U.S. Contractors Outside the U.S.
•Federal Emergency Management Agency Federal Disaster Assistance
But federal benefits may be garnished under certain circumstances, including to pay delinquent taxes, alimony, child support, or student loans.

Do I have any recourse if I think a debt collector has violated the law?
You have the right to sue a collector in a state or federal court within one year from the date the law was violated. If you win, the judge can require the collector to pay you for any damages you can prove you suffered because of the illegal collection practices, like lost wages and medical bills. The judge can require the debt collector to pay you up to $1,000, even if you can’t prove that you suffered actual damages. You also can be reimbursed for your attorney’s fees and court costs. A group of people also may sue a debt collector as part of a class action lawsuit and recover money for damages up to $500,000, or one percent of the collector’s net worth, whichever amount is lower. Even if a debt collector violates the FDCPA in trying to collect a debt, the debt does not go away if you owe it.

What should I do if a debt collector sues me?
If a debt collector files a lawsuit against you to collect a debt, respond to the lawsuit, either personally or through your lawyer, by the date specified in the court papers to preserve your rights.

Where do I report a debt collector for an alleged violation?
Report any problems you have with a debt collector to your state Attorney General’s office (www.naag.org) and the Federal Trade Commission (www.ftc.gov). Many states have their own debt collection laws that are different from the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Your Attorney General’s office can help you determine your rights under your state’s law.

The most important part is to have an answering machine ready to record any infractions. If you happen to hook a fish on tape call your District Attorney and tell them that you have a tape that you believe they need to listen to.

About The Easy Living Sherpa - Personal and Financial Growth For Intelligent People

2009-07-23T10:44:00.063-07:00

The objective of this personal and financial Blog is to assist you in evolving into an efficient and more pro-active person. This includes instructing you on how to feel more motivated and stimulated, aiding you in accomplishing financial freedom, practicing what you love, and leading you to make a genuine contribution to yourself and the world around you -- so you will be able to finally experience the kind of life that deep down, you always recognized you were intended to experience.

This Blog will assist you in making conscious decisions in your personal evolution and financial situation whatever it may be, and aid you in courageously carrying out those decisions. This means possessing the desire and maturity to take one hundred percent responsibility for your wellness, your career goals, your finances, your human relationships, your emotions, and your personal habits. It addresses taking a good look at yourself, your finances, your personal life goals and consciously determining what kind of person you are inside, and then aiming your actions to be in line with your true self and life situation. The goals are to assist you in accomplishing dramatic effectiveness while maintaining inner balance, where your ideas, feelings, actions, and accomplishments are completely working in agreement to produce the life you deserve.

Personal development is difficult work. If you're searching for shallow band-aids and quick fixes, you'll want to look elsewhere. This Blog will help you learn to live a lot more consciously, to mobilize the courageousness to face the unfaceable pieces of your life, and to work out the deep troubles you've not yet been capable of resolving. You will discover practical ideas to arrive at crucial changes in your life, both large and small, so you are able to get your life back in order and on track and start fulfilling your potential. This site cannot teach you to be perfect. Perfection is not the destination. The goal is for you to latch onto a path of practical, positive growth, both personal and financial.

The main subjects of this Blog are:
-Information: Accept reality and free your life of falseness and self-denial.-

-Love: Improve your power to plug into yourself and others.-

-Power: Build your motivation and discipline to produce the living you deserve.-

-Financial Security: Build a powerhouse of information regarding maneuvering through the rough roads and obscure paths to financial independence.-

-Authority: Take ownership of your situations, and see how to make clear decisions.-

-Intelligence: Live genuinely, and convey your real creativity.-

-Technology: Downloads, reviews, and helpful software.-

-Zen Creations: Spotlight on office workspace and backyard Zen creations.-

What to expect:
Here are excerpts from a couple of my self-help articles:
"When you are in an bad mood, determine to let it pass off as merely that: an inescapable human circumstance that will dissolve with time, if you leave it alone. A blue mood isn't the time to psychoanalyze your life. To do so is emotional self-destruction. If you've a legitimate trouble, it will still be there when your frame of mind improves. The secret is to be thankful for our good moods and graceful in our depressed moods - not taking them too seriously. The next time you're feeling low, for any reason, remind yourself 'This as well shall pass'. It will."

What we claim are little things are simply the causes of greater affairs; they're the start, the embryo, and it is the period of departure which, typically speaking, determines the entire
future of an existence. One single black particle may be the starting of a gangrene, of a Violent storm, of a revolution.

The arenas of your life this Blog will aid you to improve include:
-Habits: Create a day-to-day routine that dedicates you a sense of flow.-
-Health: Acquire wellness habits that empower your human body.-
-Relationships: Revel in loving relationships that assist you in growing.-

Where to Begin?
This Blog carries plenty of free personal development information to help you to achieve all of the above and continues to grow everyday. Start anywhere because regardless of where you start, you're only a few clicks away from finding something valuable to you. If you discover an article that you would like to explore further, but you don't have time to read it at this moment, feel free to print it out. If you print a page from this Blog with your browser, you'll capture a nicely formatted printout without any navigation elements and zero advertisements. If you would like to visualize how any page will look when printed, merely use your web browser's Print Preview feature (File -> Print Preview). Try it out it right now on this main page if you wish.

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He spends an unhealthy amount of time here

2009-07-22T19:29:00.000-07:00

That's a 30" big guy!
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Your green tea's not working!

2009-07-22T16:23:00.002-07:00

Photo by mofo

Did you know that most of the free-radical fighters in green tea never arrive in your bloodstream?

But there's a solution. To sustain a better hold on the healthy catechins in your green tea, season your cup with a squeeze of citrus juice.

Green Tea Booster

Catechins -- the antioxidants in green tea celebrated for reducing your risk of chronic disease -- rapidly lose their major power in your intestine. As a matter of fact, as practically 80% of the catechins in green tea are never assimilated. The answer to promoting absorption, is as uncomplicated as flavoring your tea with freshly squeezed and strained lemon, orange, lime, or grapefruit juice.
Taking Tea with the ascorbic acid in citrus could assist with assimilation by increasing the acidity in your small intestine. Other unknown substances in the juice in all likelihood lend a hand, too. Researchers detected a 50-50 mix had the greatest catechin-preserving effect, and lemon did it best, closely followed by orange, lime, and, in last place, grapefruit.

It's Not All Bad News. If you do take steps to boost the power of your green tea, you may even get a few added benefits.
·It may help you lose weight. At least one study shows green tea can stimulate moderate weight loss.
·It may help keep your knees young and strong -- catechins fight inflammation and arthritis.
·It can help your skin look great if used in conjunction with an antioxidant cream. Dab it on.
·It can help you stay sharp -- try 2 cups a day to see benefits.
Real Age Benefit: Getting the right amount of antioxidants through diet or supplements can make your Real Age 6 years younger.

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Google News: Find any image with the "Similar Images" function

2009-07-22T15:59:00.001-07:00

Similar Images
Image Search is a tool you can use to find just about any kind of image, but it can sometimes be difficult to find the right image if you can't describe it in words. The new Similar Images feature was developed with just this in mind. Using it you can now find images that look like an existing result simply by clicking on a link. Using visual similarity, you don't have to refine the text of your search, instead, you can just click on the link of an image you like. For example, if you search for [jaguar], you can use the "Similar images" link to quickly narrow your search.

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Adverse events cannot hurt us, only our perspective of them can.

2009-07-22T14:23:00.002-07:00

Photo by forty-onecrush

“Death has a thousand doors to let out life: one shall find one”

One day as I was lazily pondering the bright clear blue skies of Southwestern Arizona, I had the strangest premonition. I was thinking of all of the people who had lived and died since the beginning of the world, and how they coped with the unavoidable physical and mental pains in their lives prior to their demise. How did each and everyone view their coming death, and how did they cope and come to accept their death when their time passed upon them. And then it hit me. Death is a natural part of living and growing, both physically and spiritually, and should not be feared.
Adverse matters themselves don't injure or handicap us. Nor do others. How we regard these matters is another affair. It's our mental attitude and response that give us problems. Consequently, even dying is no big deal in and of itself. It's our opinion of dying, our thought that it's frightening, that terrifies us. There are so many numerous and different ways to consider death. Scrutinize your beliefs about death - and everything else. Are they genuinely truthful? Are they serving you any goodness? Don't fear death or pain; fear the fear of death or pain. We can't select our outside circumstances, but we can forever decide how we can react to them.

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Get your 35 mm color slides corrected by the pro's

2009-07-22T14:19:00.001-07:00

Slide Scanning Pros boast that they can do one thing and do it very well. I like their attitude. There an extremely useful service that the website offers if you have any 35 mm slides laying around that you must absolutely need corrected. They offer scans at a whopping 4000 dpi, and have the ability to remove dust, fingerprints, hair, and speckles at no extra charge. They can also convert you slides to digital format and crop any picture as needed. They also offer online storage of your images at a safe and secure password protected storage area where you can view the product before you pay, thereby eliminating the need to waste your hard earned money. What I especially like is that they proudly announce on their website that all work is done here in the United States. Their prices are very low and affordable at only 26 cents each. The only thing that that they cannot do is burn to Blue Ray Disc but hopefully this is something they will offer in the future. Many claim to be experts in their field but very few actually are. This company is an expert so if you need their services give them a try. You won’t be disappointed. Website: Slide Scanning Pros

Spotlight: Dale Carnegie's summarized recipe for success

2009-07-22T14:03:00.014-07:00

Photo by leefly

Dale Carnegie was born in 1888 in Missouri, and was schooled at Warrensburg State Teachers College. As a salesman and aspiring actor, he visited New York and began instructing communications classes to adults at the local YMCA. In 1912, the world-famous Dale Carnegie Course was created. He authored numerous best-sellers, including, How To Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Over 50 million copies of Mr. Carnegie’s books have been printed and published in 38 languages.

I am a huge devotee of Dale Carnegie. Though he remained only a name to me until relatively recently, (I was browsing the self-improvement section at a Barnes and Nobles during my lunch hour a few weeks back) His style, thought, and intelligence were an epiphany to me. Though the man died many decades ago, his teachings continue to live on in seminars, his books, and educational institutions. Mr. Dale Carnegie offers astounding insight into life’s everyday problems, and there is something in him for everyone. The rest is up to the reader. Read, apply, and enjoy the fruits of wisdom. I have compiled a brief summary of most of his major lessons.

Principles from How to Win Friends and Influence People

Win People to Your Way of Thinking
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say, “you’re wrong.”
If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
Begin in a friendly way.
Get the other person saying, “yes, yes” immediately.
Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
Appeal to the nobler motives.
Dramatize your ideas.
Throw down a challenge.
Be a Leader

Basic Techniques in Analyzing Worry
Get all the facts. Weigh all the facts – then come to a decision. Once a decision is reached, act! Write out and answer the following questions:
a. What is the problem?
b. What are the causes of the problem?
c. What are the possible solutions?
d. What is the best possible solution?
e.Cooperate with the inevitable. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth and refuse to give it more. Don’t worry about the past.

Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Let the other person save face.
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Become a Friendlier Person
Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
Give honest, sincere appreciation.
Arouse in the other person an eager want.
Become genuinely interested in other people.
Smile. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

Fundamental Principles for Overcoming Worry
Live in “day-tight compartments.” (Translation: Drop the crystal ball and live for today)
How to face trouble:
a. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen?”
b. Prepare to accept the worst.
c. Try to improve on the worst. Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health.

Cultivate a Mental Attitude that will Bring You Peace and Happiness
Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope. Never try to get even with your enemies.
Expect ingratitude. Count your blessings – not your troubles. Do not imitate others. Try to profit from your losses. Create happiness for others.

Break the Worry Habit Before It Breaks You
Keep busy. Don’t fuss about trifles. Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries.
The Perfect Way to Conquer Worry
Pray.
Apply these four good working habits:
a. Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand.
b. Do things in the order of their importance.
c. When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts necessary to make a decision.
d. Learn to organize, deputize and supervise.
e.Don’t Worry about Criticism
f.Remember that unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment.
g.Do the very best you can. Analyze your own mistakes and criticize yourself.

Put enthusiasm into your work.
Don’t worry about insomnia.
Prevent Fatigue and Worry and Keep Your Energy and Spirits High.
Rest before you get tired. Learn to relax at your work.
Protect your health and appearance by relaxing at home.

Please view the entire video to gain powerful retrospect on your life, and the world around you. This is a 5 star video, and I spent several days finding it. After discarding dozens of YouTube videos this is the only one that stood out as phenomenal.Some of the best things in life are truly free!

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Meditation is a powerful life changing force

2009-07-22T12:27:00.005-07:00

Meditating has changed not only my life but many others as well. The benefits are numerous and new discoveries regarding meditations health benefits are happening everyday.

Richard J. Davidson, PhD,findings demonstrate that a short program in mindfulness meditation produces demonstrable effects on brain and immune function. These findings suggest that meditation may change brain and immune function in positive ways and underscore the need for additional research.

Another study provided by the Department of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester found the following results from 22 study participants who were screened with a structured clinical interview and found to meet the DSM- III-R criteria for generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder with or without agoraphobia
RESULTS: Repeated measures analyses of variance documented significant reductions in anxiety and depression scores after treatment for 20 of the subjects--changes that were maintained at follow-up. The number of subjects experiencing panic symptoms was also substantially reduced. A comparison of the study subjects with a group of non study participants in the program who met the initial screening criteria for entry into the study showed that both groups achieved similar reductions in anxiety scores on the SCL-90- R and on the Medical Symptom Checklist, suggesting generalizability of the study findings.

CONCLUSIONS: A group mindfulness meditation training program can effectively reduce symptoms of anxiety and panic and can help maintain these reductions in patients with generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, or panic disorder with agoraphobia.

Break the devastating habit of doing nothing

2009-07-22T11:39:00.005-07:00

Photo by Fork in the Road

"You'll be able to observe a great deal just by observing."To observe is to remove oneself from interpretation. When you ‘simply observe-just watch,’ everything signifies nothing, and nothing is a permanent state of zero. On the other hand, if I watch something and immediately get into my head, and begin pulling in distinctions, all I'll do is discover evidence for what I already think.Transferring to merely observing necessitates that I uncritically watch the situation as it opens before me. As my idea struggles to produce a drama to judge, I discover my mind playing games, then I have to breathe and release that game. In this clearness, I can choose a way to react that's harmonious to the current present moment and situation, without getting tied down in the games and dramas my mind enjoys.

The focused life ("observing by just seeing…") is about acting in some respects that is consistent with your most profoundly held understandings. You can't be passive by yelling… you can't resolve complications by producing chaos. The job of life is to convert to the consistent, persistent, and resistant.

Let me hand you what I hope will become a valuable metaphor. Let's use baseball as an illustration. "Think? How the hell on earth are you going to think and hit the ball at the same time?"
From a pragmatic perspective, when a pitcher throws a baseball at 100 mph, it takes the ball merely four-tenths of a second to stretch to home plate. That affords the batter about two-tenths of a second to make up one's mind to swing or not to swing.
Thus, when hitting a baseball, thinking interferes with the way of acting.
This is dead on target with learning most things. As we learn something, we proceed from complex and slow to easy and fast. (Remember, for example, to how tough riding a bicycle was, till it was not.)

I’m not saying that polishing off a 100 mile an hour fastball is easy to do. I'm alleging that if you're going to acquire this skill, you ought to abandon thinking you can reason your way through it. All you are able to do is swing a bat, over and over. Once your body ‘captures’ the idea, you will be able to then practice graceful hitting, until it turns instinctual. In Zen, we talk of discipline. The key discipline is ‘not-following,’ or not-attaching. You allow each non-helpful thought glide by not adhering to it. Now, naturally, as with many, such thoughts will arise until you die.

I used to possess a poster on my office wall that read,

"If you aim at nothing, you will hit it."
Many people whine about their situations, and their human relationships and my immediate question is this, "Well, what do you want?" Now most may reply, "Here’s what I do not want…" Baloney. Expressing what you don't wish, or where you're not going, or who you're not is fruitless and slothful. "I never want to be in a relationship like this again!" OK, so the next one is worse. You got what you asked for. This happens all the time.
If you consider it, specifying what you don't wish is out of the question, as you cannot address everything.
There's nothing more crucial than discovering the territory (what I want) and securing a map (how to behave and then how do get I there.) It's like utilizing a foreign subway system. If you've a destination, all you've got to figure out is the map, how to reach the proper platform, and which rail car to go into. If you've no destination, you're going to wind up ‘wherever.’
Sure enough, life is hard. There are the bad breaks we make, and bad breaks that simply occur. So what? The only way to really live is to concentrate on what you want, as you cast off your attachment to what you don’t require. Then, begin. Sounds easy, but it requires discipline. Is it worth it? "Uh-huh!"

Remember: your problem is to state, clearly, who you are, what you are about, and wherever you are. From ‘here,’ you decide your next action. Next, insure that you possess integrity. Integrity implies that your actions agree what your mouth is stating. Wandering about all baffled and lost, while bellyaching about how hard you're working at defining what and where you aren’t, is the pinnacle of dumbness.

Listening to others:
"It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much."
A conversation requires full attention, astuteness, and a willingness to be candid and vulnerable. Most people babble to hear their own voices, and to fill up fearsome silence with sound.
Talking (small gossip, accent on small) is the socially accepted way to fill the silence void. We are disciplined to regurgitate small talk, which has zero to do with genuine conversation.
Conversation calls for the willingness to listen carefully, while setting aside judgement. If we don't pay attention, we're nothing more than the total of our pre-judgements-our preconceptions.
Actual conversation is like verbally dancing, because both parties make a sober attempt to communicate, "This is who and where I'm right now." Conversation is sharing who I am through self-reflection, and taking heed to what the other individual has determined of themselves through their self-reflection. Many people discombobulate self-reflection with an incessant whimper about how bad their lives are.

Even when you listen carefully, your ego-based biases have a fashion of perplexing you. Listen once again, with an unclouded heart and mind, and you might discover something different.
Remember: slow down. Utter your truth, from as deep inside at heart as you are able to reach. Give away more and more of you, including the messy, harmful, filthy parts. Then, hush up, watch and take note. As you discover yourself planning a response to what another is articulating (put differently, you've stopped listening,) be quiet and open your ears. A conversation is never an argument, and there's no winner.

"All that you are is what you have thought."
We unceasingly self-describe, and because we believe it, we tend to stop at that place, believing we are what we think ourselves to be. Consequently, to change is, first, to alter your self-description.
Our lives are the testifying ground for our beliefs. Where I'm at in life- right now-is a perfect mirror of who I really am, what I believe, and especially what I do. I can view my surroundings and my mental, emotional, and active state and tell precisely what I believe, and who I am.
We need to search the rules we maneuver under. If we don’t consider what we believe, to see if what we believe adds up for us now, we're condemned to live out some old translation of our life plan, and be completely woeful in the cognitive process.
Remember: ‘a slump’ is an assessment, and makes the thing perceived appear to be something away from your control. If you put the way you are presently into a package tagged "Out of my control," you're well and truly shafted. Alternatively, empty that package. A simple affirmation of, "Here is where I'm at right now" allows for the next clause, "…and here is what I'll do differently.

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.
This is different than just standing there, gazing at the fork, declining to choose, to move, to resolve. Or, you are coming down a road that’s not getting you where you desire to go. You touch on a place for changing directions, yet continue down the stale path. You say, "I may not be becoming what I want, but at least this path is familiar to me."
Others are enclosed thick inertia, declining to reposition anything, including the painful material, until they can be guaranteed that they’ll progress to the ‘right’ destination.
Just standing at a crossroads, incessantly debating the ‘correct course,’ is a losers game regrettably, our existence is filled up with people doing just that-doing zero, while boasting about how much endeavor they're placing into their internal debate.

As they stand there - Doing nothing
Not to choose is to choose. What comes about in our life is about what we acknowledge or give acceptance to. Something different occurs in our situations when we choose to switch our understanding, and then our actions. This path, or that path-no difference, no waiting to discover the ‘right path’-just take the fork in the road.
Remember: life delivers endless forks in the route. Generally, any option we make can be altered at any time. (Life-or-death options come about rarely.) Turning a garden variety alternative into life-or-death ("But… but… what if I make up the wrong choice???") is actually a way to stay baffled. Pick one, and start walking. You don't get the time you consume back at the end of your life.

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How to make money on Craigs List

2009-07-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

Photo by Howstuffworks.com

Craig's List is an advertisement phenomenon. Let's face it, just about everyone has heard of Craig's List, and a lot people have placed advertisements on Craig's List, but I'll wager if you own your own company you never thought about using Craig's List to advertise your company. Am I correct? I'll bet that I am, particularly if you are a new company.
There are two scenarios to take into account when you're thinking about promoting your business enterprise using Craig's List. The first scenario is one in which your company renders a service to the world. Craig's List accepts all forms of classified ads, and offering up services is one of the best things that you are able to place an ad for on Craig's List. As a power user of Craigs List who's gotten some of my best gigs through Craig's List, I can testify to the power of targeting an ad for your services. Best of all placing an advertisement on Craig's List is perfectly free, and although the ad is only online a short time, you'll be able to quickly and easily repost it from your free account. So, if you're a small-scale start-up company without a lot of an advertising budget then Craig's List is an unmatchable way that you'll be able to advertise your services without spending more money. You'll reach a big audience, and once you know who your target audience is, the probability of getting new business is even bigger.

However, there's another business scenario in which you as a business owner will unquestionably prefer to promote your business on Craig's List, and that's when your competitors are. Small companies are not the sole ones climbing on the Craig's List band wagon, large and long-familiar companies do it as well. If you're a small company who has big or even small competitors who are advertising their services on Craig's List, then you can't afford to not do the equivalent thing. When a company doesn't promote in the same arena as their competitors, particularly when that promotion is free, then they're fundamentally forcing all those potential purchasers to their competitors. While understandably if you're small and or a start-up company and you do not have a big budget, then you'll in all probability not be able to reach those potential customers that the kingpins are paying a great deal in advertising for, advertising on Craig's List can grant you a way to contend with the big dogs. However, there's one instance in which you may prefer to consider other advertising avenues, and that's if Craig's List is concentrated with companies in your niche advertising the exact same service. In this case your ad is in all likelihood going to get lost in the ocean of all the other advertisements positioned for the same services on Craig's List.
When advertising on Craig's List it's not merely important to know your audience, but another important component when advertising on Craig's List is to hold stellar advertising copy. I've seen some genuinely bad advertisements on Craig's List, ones from companies that I certainly would never buy services from. Even if you don't know how to compose sales copy, and can't afford to hire someone to do it for you, there's actually no reason to fear. There are tons of free e-books, Internet courses and Internet sites that can train you on how to write an ad that gets read and then followed up on. All it takes is a bit of time and effort, and you should be able to compose a bang-up ad to place on Craig's List.

So, once you've composed your ad, all that's needed is to sign up for a free account on Craig's List, find the city nearest to you if yours isn't listed then complete the form place your add in the appropriate category. You will want to log in regularly because your ad will only be put up for a short time, and if you would like to continue to have it posted, you will have to to repost it once the time limit is up. Advertising your business on Craig's List is to your advantage, not only is it free, but if executed correctly, you'll be able to draw a lot of new business and clients.

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Look out! Credit cards are getting tougher and meaner

2009-07-22T09:34:00.006-07:00

Photo by Medill Money Mavens

What's arising inside the minds of charge card companies now that the charge card reform act is descending on us? A client service supervisor for a major credit card company emailed us to present to us the low-down: decreased grace periods, thinning lines of credit, increased fees on balance transfers, and, naturally, over-inflated APRs. Here's the details:

REDUCED GRACE PERIODS If you've a 25 or 28 day grace period, banks are going to shrink their grace period to the new minimal, 21 days.

CUTTING CREDIT LINES Credit card companies are reexamining account statements for debt-to-income ratio, and lowering lines of credit. "Lets say you owe 40k in debt, and your last reported family income is 60k. Well, if you already owe 40k, and you only clear 50k, how are you ever going to pay that back? So the bank is omitting the line because they do not sense they will ever get paid back if they give it to you. You cant default on another 10k if they don't let you have it in the first place."

DIVY ON BALANCE TRANSFERS Anticipate the fee for transfering balance from one charge plate to an additional one to increase to 5% from 3%

INCREASED MINIMUM PAYMENTS This is a component of the CARD act (http://consumerist.com/tag/card-act/), I think, and will actually help some people liquidate their loans quicker.

APR INCREASES This is the worst one. All the big issuers are conjuring up higer rates. The new polices don't take effect until February 2010, so the banks are acquiring in all the rate increases they can. The new law determines when an APR can be changed, and requires it deceases after 6 months of on time payments. So the banks are putting their rate hikes in immediately, so your new 'steady' rate, is the old 'default' rate. It used to be you had a rate of around 10%, and if you were late you went up to 20%. or more. Just about anyone studying this probably have had their rate increased to someplace roughly about 20% now."

You can fight back and it's not rocket science: Pay ALL OF YOUR BALANCES off asap and, cut the cards up and mail them back to the issuer therefore sending them a powerful consumer message. Better yet only make a small charge once a year to keep the account open and not take a hit on your credit score. (This works only if you're the disiplined type) Only use your credit cards if you can afford to pay them in full during the grace period! This is no game, and your very life, and peace of mind is at stake here.

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Closing a credit card - The pro's and Con's

2009-07-21T20:59:00.003-07:00

Photo by largeprime
You’ve finally paid back that charge card. It’s sitting in that secret location with no more balance on it and you hated ever having it. It’s fetched a high rate of interest and no rewards program and you'll never use it again.
But should you cancel it? This is an interesting argument that frequently occurs in personal finance circuits. I believe there are benefits and problems disregardless of which you select and the “better” answer isn’t unconditional in all cases. So here's the low-down.
If you hold on to the card…
If you choose to keep the card, there is a couple of things you had better think about.

First, merely accepting the card is an identity theft hazard. If you no more actively use the card, the danger is fairly modest, and you will be able to make the risk even lower by taking action.

Second, not closing the credit card opens the doorway to spending frenzy. Apparently, if you have got the forte of character to liquidate all of that debt, you are able to hold the temptation under control.

There are two big steps you will be able to accomplish to bring down the two chances above even more, chopping them down to an unbelievably tiny splinter.

For one, demolish the active card. Cut it in half so that there is no danger of misplacing it or having it stolen. I actually melt the charge cards over a fire (Honestly - I’ll chuck them into campfires).

For another, withdraw your credit card data from any internet retail merchant that might still have it. Look at your Amazon account statement or any other retail merchant you may use and make certain your 0 balance credit card Is not listed there. Just take the information entirely out of the system.

If you close the credit card…
Let’s suppose you select to close the card. What are the problems of canceling it?

The huge one is that canceling a credit card leads to a negative knock on your credit score. This knock vanishes after around a year or so, but during that twelve months, your lower credit score can buoy some short-term negative deductions. It can drive your insurance rates climb. It can slim down your opportunities for acquiring employment.

The big one, though, is that it could also damage you if you are trying to acquire mortgage. An inferior credit ranking right at the time when you are seeking to insure a home mortgage isn't a good option.

So what had I better do?
From my view, the solution is uncomplicated. Before you do anything, ask yourself if you’re planning on switching jobs or acquiring a mortgage or a automobile loan in the next year. If you’re expecting a major change like this in the short-run, do not close the credit card. The gamble of the short term drop in your credit rating is higher than the gamble of just mangling the card and forgetting about it.

Alternatively, hack up the credit card, but hold onto the account till you are beyond that bump that you are confronting in the short-run. When you’ve pulled through, then make the call and close that charge card.

On the other hand, if you do not experience a major change in your future, close that credit card. Doing so extinguishes the enticement to spend and annihilates the (low) gamble of identity theft.

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How to use Craigslist SEO secrets to promote your website

2009-07-21T20:37:00.001-07:00

I came across a great how-to article tonight while browsing Squidoo. If you are an avid user of Craigslist, then you know there are hundreds of "How to make $10,000 a month scams on Youtube and various other Internet sites. This author has basically cut through all of the crap and whittled away at the inessentials to get to his final product. The article is pure Halcyon for those looking to drive traffic to their websites. 18 tips take you through the ins and outs of getting listed in the higher eschelons of page ranking. The air is thin up there but with a little effort and alot of smarts you can see your traffic grow exponentially by following even a few of the basic tips.

..........Click Here

Can't pay your doctor? Charge it!

2009-07-21T19:00:00.023-07:00

Photo by CIMB Petronas

Americans are choosing credit cards over money when it comes to paying up the almost $300 billion they mop up annually in medical charges — the principal cause of bankruptcy — every year, CNNMoney.com announced earlier this month. The result is customers are only sliding down deeper into debt as they attempt to keep themselves healthy enough bring in more money to pay off the credit cards: "Out-of-pocket health care spending was already increasing in good times," said Bruce Carlson, publisher with health care market research firm Kalorama Information. "Now with high unemployment, consumers have to reach into their pockets even more to fund their health care."

The story continues to state that customers are also passing over their bills altogether, furnishing hospitals and physicians all the more willingness to accept credit card payments. Which is fantastic for credit card companies, besides the fact that they're clients are failing on their immediate payment more often.

External Link: Can't pay your doctor? Charge it -----------------------------Gail Cunningham, a spokeswoman for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, an umbrella group for services that help consumers cope with debt gives us valuable and timely advice when you find yourself in trouble unable to pay your medical bills. There are ways to reduce, or at least more effectively manage, medical debt.

---------------------------------------------------------CONFRONT, DON’T IGNORE Procrastinating only leads to trouble. If your bills are turned over to a collection agency, the debt goes on your credit report and will remain there for lenders, and even potential employers, to see. You may have difficulty getting a loan and, if you do get one, you’ll be charged higher rates. So take action — even if that doesn’t mean writing any checks right away.
Proceed to Step 2:
SCRUTINIZE YOUR BILLS Look over your outstanding bills and make sure the listed services actually square with the care you received. Errors are common. If terms or procedures confuse you, call the hospital’s or doctor’s billing department and ask for an explanation.
If your insurer denied one or more of your claims, resubmit the bills, advises Mark Rukavina, executive director of the Access Project (www.accessproject.org), a nonprofit group in Boston that helps consumers cope with medical debt.
“If that doesn’t work, file a formal grievance or appeal with the insurer,” Mr. Rukavina said. “Even it that fails, most states allow insured patients the right to an external review by a certified third party, often a state agency. And patients should exercise this right.”
HIRE AN EXPERT Try first to negotiate with your providers for a discount or an extended payment plan. Explain that you simply can’t pay your bills in full right now, and you need some leeway. If this tactic doesn’t work, or you don’t have the time or energy to haggle, consider hiring a billing specialist — a professional trained to spot errors who speaks the language that medical providers understand and respond to.

(You can find a medical mediator at the Medical Billing Advocates of America Web site, www.billadvocates.com).
Some billing experts charge only if they save you money. Others may ask for a retainer up front. Make sure you clarify the terms at the outset.
BE WARY OF PLASTIC It’s tempting to get rid of your medical debts by paying them off with a credit card. But if you don’t pay off your card balance swiftly, a $1,200 doctor’s fee could balloon to $1,500 or more over the course of a year. Your large debts might also cause a rate increase on other lines of credit. And while medical debt on your credit report is often viewed with some sympathy, credit card debt is not.
If a hospital offers you a medical credit card at zero percent interest, be skeptical, warns Ms. Cunningham of the credit counseling foundation. The rate typically jumps to double-digit interest if you miss a payment.
SET BOUNDARIES If your debts are turned over to a collection agency, you do have rights. “Debt collectors can be very aggressive and frightening,” says Tena Friery of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. “If they call, ask for the name of the caller, and insist that they send you in writing the name of the collector and the amount you owe.”
According to federal law, a collector can call only between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. They cannot threaten you with a lawsuit just to scare you into paying the debt. And they can’t garnish your wages, unless they take you to court and win.

For a guide to debt collection, see the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s Web site, www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs27-debtcoll.htm.

If a collector is harassing you, you can file a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. And many states have their own consumer protection laws on medical debt.
And Next Time...
LEARN YOUR POLICY’S RULES. Study your plan’s Explanation of Benefits carefully so you won’t be blindsided by unexpected charges.
“Not knowing is what gets people in the most trouble,” says Arden Lee Taber, a lead negotiator for HealthCare Mediation, a mediation firm based in Austin, Tex. He handles hundreds of billing disputes each year.
KEEP A DIARY. Write down every instance of medical care you receive — all exams, tests, medications and procedures. This will help you or a mediator when reviewing your bills.
NEGOTIATE BEFOREHAND. If possible, discuss ahead of time the fees you will be charged for a procedure, test or exam. If you expect difficulty paying, ask about price breaks.
“You can often get discounts of up to 50 percent if you offer to pay right away,” says Mr. Rukavina. “We’re seeing more flexibility these days on the part of providers. Everyone wants to avoid the collection process.”

HealthSalon.org - A Health site for everyone

2009-07-21T18:35:00.001-07:00

This weeks Blog review is on HealthSalon.org. http://www.healthsalon.org/
I was pleasantly surprised to find a wide range of timely and valuable information after my "health" keywords landed me here.
This is an extremely well thought out site that covers many of the psychological and physical aspects of living a holistic and healthier lifestyle.Eighteen categories take you through an awful lot of information pertinent to what ever subject you happen to be interested in researching through. I particularly found the nutrition category very helpful and even though priding myself on being somewhat of a nutrition expert I learned something new about Genetically modified foods being deceptive.This is a great Blog for obtaining up to date and timely health information.

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Learn to negotiate properly

2009-07-21T12:37:00.007-07:00

Photo by Orchestra man

Learning how to negotiate properly is a very important skill to have and is Darwinian in nature. (Survival of the fittest). Many people drop the buzzword without really understanding what exactly it means, and just how powerful it can be for personal success and satisfaction.
Here are some tips that have worked for me throughout the years that when done properly yield immediate results. If you're a pinhead then have someone else do your negotiating such as a friend or a lawyer, and remember don't try this at home kids.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) Learn to jerk and flinch. This is one of the oldest tactics for negotiating but also one of the least used. A sudden jerk is a noticeable response to an offer or price. The objective of this negotiation tactic is to make the other person feel uncomfortable about their offer.

2) Recognize that people often ask for more than what they expect to receive.This means you need to defy the temptation to routinely reduce your price or offer a discount. I once asked for a large discount on a television hoping to get 1/2 of what I had asked for. I was pleasurably surprised when the shop owner agreed.

3) The person holding the most information does the best. You will need to learn as much as possible about the other person's situation.

4) Practice at every opportunity. People waver to negotiate because they don’t have the confidence needed. Develop confidence by negotiating at every chance you get. Ask for discounts everywhere. Cultivate the habit of asking for a price break when you buy from a retail store.
Here are a few questions or statements you can use to practice your negotiation skills:"
Is that your best price?"
That's way too expensive for XYZ." Wait for their response, and learn to flinch.

5) Retain your walking away power. It is always a much better decision to walk away from something rather than make too large a concession or cut the price of your product or service too deeply. Negotiating is a way of life in many cultures and is picking up steam in the United States. Apply these tactics and you will observe diversity in your negotiation skills immediately.

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There's a huge storm coming

2009-07-21T09:54:00.004-07:00

Photo by C.I.S.A.

Others call it the end of the world. Each and everyday the news all around us gets more and more serious and devastating. A government that can’t govern its people, millions of job losses, and draconian laws being made so quickly that everyone will be in jail in the next 10 years. The Bible calls it the entry point into Armageddon, while others call it a societal breakdown.
The whole of society is breaking down. An accepted pattern and framework no longer exists, therefore we must return to "traditional standards" such as marriage and the sanctity of the family unit. The new criminal is even more dangerous than anyone can imagine. People are afraid to walk the streets because of the homeless, and many of them are on drugs. This is fact and not personal ideology. Check the statistics for yourself. But we are deep in denial, like a cheated on spouse who knows the sorry truth but tries their best to ignore it. In the last decade or so the spotlight of truth has swung this way and that, and one institution after another was suddenly exposed as being precisely as rotten as we always thought it was.

What's that? The economic boom is an unsustainable fantasy? Riot police can be a little "handy"? CEO’s are greedy? The (soon to be defunct) New York Times might have used underhand tactics to get a story? What next? Oxygen is tasteless? Pigs stink at poker? Children are overrated? We knew all this stuff. We just never had the details. What about each other? Society? Can we trust us? Doubt it. We're probably not even real, as was revealed in the popular documentary The Matrix. Made of pixels. Your co-workers? Pixels. You? One pixel. One measly pixel. You haven't even got shoes, for Christ's sake’s the very fabric of life breaks down around us, even language itself seems unreliable. These words don't make sense. The vowels and consonants you're hearing in your mind's ear right now are being generated by mere squiggles on a page or screen. Pointless hieroglyphics. Shapes. You're staring at shapes and hearing them in your head. When you see the word "trust", can you even trust that? Why? It's just shapes!
Right now all our faith has poured out of the old institutions, and there's nowhere left to put it. We need new institutions to believe in, and fast. Doesn't matter what they're made of. Knit them out of string, wool, anything. Quickly, quickly. Before we start worshipping insects.

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Another "how to drive traffic to your blog" post

2009-07-20T19:53:00.022-07:00

Photo by ultimate iwealth
Many of my readers have aspiring ambitions to be knighted power-Bloggers no doubt. From personal experience I can attest to the fact that it is not an easy task, but with certain caveats and some general guidelines you can get off to a good start. This evening I found this valuable post by Seth Godin. If you have dreams of becoming a power-Blogger then Seth gives some of the most valuable advice that I have ever come across.
Follow Seth’s adventures here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

My friend Fred, a talented blogger, asked me for advice the other day. Here's a partial answer, with a few apologies to Swift: (and when you're done with this list, feel free to read my post about shark attacks).

Use lists.

Be topical... write posts that need to be read right now.

Learn enough to become the expert in your field.

Break news.

Be timeless... write posts that will be readable in a year.

Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic.

Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.

Announce news.

Write short, pithy posts.

Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.

Don't write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.

Write long, definitive posts.

Write about your kids.

Be snarky. Write nearly libelous things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.

Be sycophantic. Share linklove and expect some back.

Include polls, meters and other eye candy.

Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.

Coin a term or two.

Do email interviews with the well-known.

Answer your email.

Use photos. Salacious ones are best.

Be anonymous.

Encourage your readers to digg your posts. (and to use furl and reddit). Do it with every post.

Post your photos on flickr.

Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS.

Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education.

Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.

Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.

Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.

Point to useful but little-known resources.

Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current blog readers--like gadgets and web 2.0.

Write about Google.

Have relevant ads that are even better than your content.

Don't include comments, people will cross post their responses.

Write posts that each include dozens of trackbacks to dozens of blog posts so that people will notice you.

Run no ads.

Keep tweaking your template to make it include every conceivable bell or whistle.

Write about blogging.

Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.

Invent a whole new kind of art or interaction.

Post on weekdays, because there are more readers.

Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don't bore your readers.

Post on weekends, because there are fewer new posts.

Don't interrupt your writing with a lot of links.

Dress your blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting with a stranger.

Edit yourself. Ruthlessly.

Don't promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader's attention.

Be patient.

Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.

Ping technorati. Or have someone smarter than me tell you how to do it automatically.

Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive.

Write in English.

Better, write in Chinese.

Write about obscure stuff that appeals to an obsessed minority.

Don't be boring.

Write stuff that people want to read and share.

Posted via web from Easy Living Sherpa

Living the Zen way

2009-07-19T19:23:00.006-07:00

Photo by RickyDavid

There is much to be said for Zen living and mindfulness. It offers something for everyone and the beauty and power lie in its simplicity to cultivate. I have been a devotee of Zen for a number of years now and keep a journal to constantly reference when a situation arises. Start your own journal today and see your life in the way that it was meant to be seen.....and lived.

1. one thing at a time
Multitasking is impossible. Watch yourself when you attempt it. What you are actually doing is turning your attention from one thing to another, to another, rapidly. And, because changing your focus takes energy, nothing gets your full attention.
Experiment: watch your favorite TV show and have a conversation at the same time.
Zen living: Do one thing at a time. Full focus, to a pre-determined point of completion. Big projects require that you break them into bite-sized pieces, and finish a segment. Then shift attention. For most things, ‘chop wood, carry water.’ Do the task at hand with full attention.

2. speak for yourself
The only authentic pronoun is ‘I.’ All I can reliably talk about is what I am thinking, feeling, and doing.
Experiment: think about something you might consider a ‘we’ thing. "We’re going to play ball." Well, maybe a bunch of people are each, individually, playing ball, but there is no ‘we,’ period. Nor can you say anything reliably about another person. "I know what you are thinking," is impossible. I only, at best, am aware that I think I know what you are thinking.
Zen living: Speak only for yourself, by using "I think…", "I imagine…", "The story I’m telling myself…", etc. Own your experience, and share it, as it’s all you can ever know.
For more hints on how to have an excellent relationship, read this article!

3. choose
You may be able to play around in your head, and come up with millions of options, but (see point 1) you can never enact more than one thing at once. Thus, creating a million options is enacting a single thing - the act of imagining many options. Therefore, choosing to think of options as opposed to picking one and doing it is a choice.
Experiment: See if you can find anything you do (think, feel, interpret, etc.) that you are not freely choosing. Once you get this, you’ll quickly stop messing with yourself, and ’simply choose.’
Zen living: choose one thing, commit to it, and see it through. If you do not like the result (this is important!) choose something else, and try that. Stop doing what does not work!

4. Be grateful
Everything is One, and everything is connected. Nothing exists as a singularity, on its own, apart from something else, and everything comes from something else.
Experiment: Think about the stuff around you, and see connections. For example, I’m presently eating a salad with tuna fish. Apart from Dar, who made the salad for me, imagine the countless people involved in making that salad possible – farmers, fishers, packers, pickers, etc.
Zen living: Be grateful. You wouldn’t last long if not for the people and ’stuff’ that surrounds you – the air, water, land, etc. Call this to mind as you engage with the stuff of life, say ‘thanks,’ and really mean it.

5. No duality
Of course, stuff happens that we know ought not to happen. It is a real, and crazy world out there. That being said, labels are inherently useless. No good, no bad, no right, no wrong. It’s all ‘as it is.’ What is, is, and what is required is not a lecture but an action.
Experiment: This is an exercise in consciousness. If you are attracted to something, move forward and embrace it. Try it out, and see what happens. If repelled, move away, and act forcefully against it.
Zen living: No duality. Know that judging is something you’ll do until you die, but you can notice and stop your mind for a moment, and then act in keeping with your feelings, interpretations, and intentions. Most say, "Isn’t it awful" and do nothing. Instead, say, "It is what it is," act, and move on.

6. Detach
Attachments are silly, and based upon the idea that I can grasp someone or something, and by the act of grasping, keep it the same, or ‘just keep it.’ A friend wrote: "I don’t want the fantasy to end!" Guess what: it already has ended, and had to end, because nothing is static – all is in motion – all is change.
Experiment: Create a list of all of the things, by force of will, that you have kept ‘exactly the same.’ Is a list a list if there are no items on it?
Zen living: Detach. Let go. Hold loosely. When you attempt to grasp someone or some thing, you are actually trying to hold on to, and freeze, the past. To do this requires that you exit the moment, and go into your head, and play with memories. Memories aren’t real. Real is here and now.

7. pay attention
Be Here Now. It’s the only way to actually have a life. Mooning over the past or living in the future "…then I’ll be happy…" is a sure fire way to get into trouble. You snooze, you lose.
Experiment: In Zen monasteries, a bell is rung at irregular intervals. The monks stop, and contemplate their level of ‘presence’ when the bell rang. Find a way to do the same – perhaps set a timer, and see where your attention was when it goes off.
Zen living: Pay attention. As you find yourself drifting off into thoughts and plans, plots and dreams, have a breath and bring yourself back to now. Interesting, real stuff is happening, and can only be appreciated by bringing yourself into the This Endless Moment. And what does it say about you if your fantasy life is more chargy and fun than your ‘real life?’

8. Make contact
Being present by definition is a reaching out and embracing of life, and then a letting go. In this way, my hands are empty and prepared for the next embrace.
Think: Most people live in an invisible bubble, designed to keep ‘bad stuff’ out and ‘good stuff’ my private property. Yet, it is only when I let down my ’shields’ that I can interact with the moment.
Zen living: Make contact as you imbibe life. Take it in, touch it, caress it, set it free. Be passionate about your engagement with what you encounter, never wavering in your ‘present moment’ focus.

9. Don’t do it, be it
Zen living and being is not a game of, "look at my new skill set!" One guy couldn’t figure out how to make time to meditate. I suggested he think of his entire life as meditation. Different focus, different direction.
Zen living: Don’t do it, be it. Live life as an action that encompasses your being or essence. This is tricky to language, but it’s about a full, purposeful commitment to a way of being that includes thought, feeling and action. Take the other 9 points and see them as focusing points as to what such being might look like, as you enact yourself in the here and now.

10. Celebrate
Indeed, you are unique, just like everyone else. Your uniqueness is contained in the gifts you possess and your willingness to empty yourself as you share ‘your song.’ Most are so fearful of being laughed at that they hold their unique song in. How sad.
Zen living: Celebrate. Dance in the rain, sing your soul, shout your art, be your being. You are the only ‘you’ that will ever exist on this planet. Be yourself, and see with clear eyes. Your smile will set the world aflame.

Wayne C. Allen, M.Th is a psychotherapist, and author. His latest book, Half Asleep in the Buddha Hall, is rooted in Zen-based approaches to self-responsibility.

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Structured techniques on how to really relax

2009-07-19T13:49:00.008-07:00

Photo by danete εïз's

Learning how to relax today in such a fast-paced and busy world is more important than ever. Not only will your nerves and emotions thank you but you just may live longer. Stress is like an invisible boxer, you never know where it's going to hit or how hard but when it lands its blow it can be devastating. Heart attacks and cancer have been tied to a stressful lifestyle.You owe it to yourself and your loved ones to relax and live longer. I have developed some steps that have proven tried and true for centuries. You owe it to yourself to begin today.

1. Keep a notebook or scrapbook 'for "inspirational" reading. Into this book you can paste all the poems, or short prayers, or quotations, which appeal to you personally and give you a lift. Then, when a rainy afternoon sends your spirits plunging down, perhaps you can find a recipe in this book for dispelling the gloom. I have kept such a notebook for years. It is a spiritual "shot in the arm".

2. Don't dwell too long on the shortcomings of others! Sure, your spouse has faults! If they had been a saint, they never would have married you. Right? My neighbor who found herself developing into a scolding, nagging, and haggard-faced wife, was brought up short with the question: "What would you do if your husband died?" She was so shocked by the idea that she immediately sat down and drew up a list of all her husband's good points. She made quite a list. Why don't you try the same thing the next time you feel you married a tight-fisted tyrant? Maybe you'll find, after reading his virtues, that he's a man you'd like to meet!

3. Get interested in your neighbours! Develop a friendly, healthy interest in the people who share the life on your street. One ailing neighbor who felt herself so "exclusive" that she hadn't any friends, was told to try to make up a story about the next person she met. She began, in the street-car, to weave backgrounds and settings for the people she saw. She tried to imagine what their lives had been like. First thing you know, she was talking to people everywhere-and today she is happy, alert, and a charming human being cured of her "pains".

4. Make up a schedule for tomorrow's work before you go to bed tonight. Many people feel driven and harassed by the unending round of work and things they must do. They never got their work finished. They were chased by the clock. To cure this sense of hurry, and worry, draw up a schedule each night for the following day. What will happen? More work accomplished; much less fatigue; a feeling of pride and achievement; and time left over to do other less important things.

5. Finally-avoid tension and fatigue. Relax! Relax! Nothing will make you look old sooner than tension and fatigue. Nothing will work such havoc with your freshness and looks!Yes, you, as a person, have got to relax! You have one great advantage-you can lie down whenever you want to, and you can lie on the floor! Strangely enough, a good hard floor is better to relax on than an inner-spring bed. It gives more resistance. It is good for the spine.

All right, then, here are some exercises you can do in your home. Try them for a week-and see what you do for your looks and disposition!

a. Lie flat on the floor whenever you feel tired. Stretch as tall as you can. Roll around if you want to. Do it twice a day.

b. Close your eyes. You might try saying,something like this: ' 'The sun is shining overhead. The sky is blue and sparkling. Nature is calm and in control of the world-and I, as nature's child, am in tune with the Universe." Or-better still-pray!

c. If you cannot lie down, then you can achieve almost the same effect sitting down in a chair. A hard, upright chair is the best for relaxing. Sit upright in the chair like a seated Egyptian statue, and let your hands rest, palms down, on the tops of your thighs.

d. Now, slowly tense the toes-then let them relax. Tense the muscles in your legs-and let them relax. Do this slowly upward, with all the muscles of your body, until you get to the neck. Then let your head roll around heavily, as though it were a football. Keep saying to your muscles, "Let go ... let go ..."

e. Quiet your nerves with slow, steady breathing. Breathe from deep down. The yogis of India were right: rhythmical breathing is one of the best methods ever discovered for soothing the nerves.

f. Think of the wrinkles and frowns in your face, and smooth them all out. Loosen up the worry-creases you feel between your brows, and at the sides of your mouth. Do this twice a day, and maybe you won't have to go to a beauty parlour to get a massage.Hell those lines might even disappear.

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A Beautiful Method to Find Peace of Mind

2009-07-16T15:01:00.004-07:00

How many times have you gotten upset because someone wasn’t doing their job, because your child isn’t behaving, because your partner or friend isn’t living up to his or her end of the bargain?
How many times have you been irritated when someone doesn’t do things the way you’re used to? Or when you’ve planned something carefully and things didn’t go as you’d hoped?
This kind of anger and irritation happens to all of us — it’s part of the human experience.
One thing that irritates me is when people talk during a movie. Or cut me off in traffic. Or don’t wash their dishes after eating. Actually, I have a lot of these little annoyances — don’t we all? And it isn’t always easy to find peace when you’ve become upset or irritated. Let me let you in on a little secret to finding peace of mind: see the glass as already broken. See, the cause of our stress, anger and irritation is that things don’t go the way we like, the way we expect them to. Think of how many times this has been true for you.
And so the solution is simple: expect things to go wrong, expect things to be different than we hoped or planned, expect the unexpected to happen. And accept it.One quick example: on our recent trip to Japan, I told my kids to expect things to go wrong — they always do on a trip. I told them, “See it as part of the adventure.”
And this worked like a charm. When we inevitably took the wrong train on a foreign-language subway system, or when it rained on the day we went to Disney Sea, or when we took three trains and walked 10 blocks only to find the National Children’s Castle closed on Mondays … they said, “It’s part of the adventure!” And it was all OK — we didn’t get too bothered.

So when the nice glass you bought inevitably falls and breaks, someday, you might get upset. But not if you see the glass as already broken, from the day you get it. You know it’ll break someday, so from the beginning, see it as already broken. Be a time-traveler, or someone with time-traveling vision, and see the future of this glass, from this moment until it inevitably breaks. And when it breaks, you won’t be upset or sad — because it was already broken, from the day you got it. And you’ll realize that every moment you have with it is precious.

Expect your child to mess up — all children do. And don’t get so upset when they mess up, when they don’t do what they’re “supposed” to do … because they’re supposed to mess up.
Expect your partner to be less than perfect.
Expect your friend to not show up sometimes.
Expect things to go not according to plan.
Expect people to be rude sometimes.
Expect coworkers not to come through sometimes.
Expect roommates not to wash their dishes or pick up their clothes, sometimes.
Expect the glass to break.
And accept it.
You won’t change these inevitable facts — they will happen, eventually. And if you expect it to happen — even see it as already happening, before it happens — you won’t get so upset.
You won’t overreact. You’ll respond appropriately, but not overreact. You can talk to the person about their behavior, and ask them kindly to consider your feelings when they do this … but you won’t get overly emotional and blow things out of proportion.
You’ll smile, and think, “I expected that to happen. The glass was already broken. And I accept that.” You’ll have peace of mind. And that, my friends, is a welcome surprise.
Post written by Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net

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Retro Futuristic DIY Desk

2009-07-16T14:34:00.008-07:00

Move over Captain Kirk!
Isaac Martinez desk a is a study in Retro/Futuristic/Urban simplicity. The enclosed frosted lighting panels can be purchased from any hardware store for under $20.00. The lighting is supplied by a string of enclosed colored 5 watt bulbs. The entire desk is made from wood supplied at the local Home Depot/ Lowes lumber section, and can be built from any imagined combination of parts that you can think of. I believe the desks support are simple plywood panels measured and painted by hand.The top is custom cut hardwood and finished in beveled edging. A great design simple and relatively cheap, yet very attractive.

Banish Your Irrational Fears Forever

2009-07-16T11:48:00.015-07:00

Photo by ayushveda

In this post you will learn to identify silent assumptions. A startlingly effective method called the " vertical-arrow technique," which allows you to probe your inner psyche. This method helps you feel better because you deprogram the distortions in your thinking patterns.
First, draw a short downward arrow directly beneath your automatic negative thought. This downward arrow is a form of shorthand which tell you to ask yourself "If this automatic thought were actually true, what would it mean to me? Why would it be upsetting to me?" Then write down the next automatic thought that immediately comes to mind.. Every time you come up with a new automatic thought, draw a vertical arrow beneath it and ask yourself,” If this were true why would it upset me?” As you do this over and over you will generate a chain of thoughts which will lead to silent assumptions that you can easily overcome. The downward-arrow method is likened to peeling successive layers of skin off an onion. The downward arrow is a form of shorthand for the following questions: "If that thought were true, why would it upset me? What would it mean to me?" The question represented by each downward arrow. This is what you might ask yourself if you had written down the automatic thought. This process leads to a chain of automatic thoughts that will reveal the root cause of the problem.

Automatic Thoughts
>My boss probably thinks I’m useless.

\/ If he did think this, why would it be upsetting to me?"

>That would mean I was a lousy worker because he's an expert.

\/
"Suppose I was a lousy worker, what would this mean to me?"

>That would mean I was a total failure. It would mean I was no good.

\/
"Suppose I was no good. Why would this be a problem? What would it mean to me?"

>Then the word would spread and everyone would find out what a bad worker I was. Then no one would respect me. I'd get drummed out of the office.

\/
"And what would that mean?"

>It would mean I was worthless. I'd feel so miserable I'd want to die.

Ordinarily you substitute a rational response that shows why your automatic thought is distorted, and invalid. This helps you change your thinking patterns in the here and now so that you can think about life more objectively and feel better. In the vertical-arrow method you imagine instead that your distorted automatic thought is absolutely valid, and you look for the grain of truth in it. This enables you to penetrate the core of your problems. Now review the chain of automatic thoughts in this example and ask yourself-what are the silent assumptions that predispose you to anxiety, guilt, and depression?
There are several:
1. If someone criticizes me, they're bound to be correct.
2. My worth is determined by my achievement.
3. One mistake and the whole is ruined. If I'm not successful at all times, I'm a total zero.
4. Others won't tolerate my imperfection. I have to be perfect to get people to respect and like me. When I goof up, I'll encounter fierce disapproval and be punished.
5. This disapproval will mean I am a bad, worthless person.

Once you have generated your own chain of automatic thoughts and clarified your silent assumptions, it is crucial to pinpoint the distortions and substitute rational responses
The beauty of the downward-arrow method is that it is inductive and Socratic: Through a process of thoughtful questioning, you discover on your own the beliefs that defeat you. You unearth the origin of your problems by repeating the following questions over and over: "If that negative thought were true, what would it mean to me? Why would it upset me?"

Without introducing some therapist's subjective bias or personal beliefs or theoretical leanings, you can objectively and systematically go right to the root of your problems. This circumvents a difficulty that has plagued the history of psychiatry. Therapists from all schools of thought have been notorious for interpreting patients' experiences in terms of preconceived notions that may have little or no experimental validation. If you don't "buy" your therapist's explanation of the origin of your problems, this is likely to be interpreted as "resistance" to the "truth." In this subtle way, your troubles get forced into your therapist's mold regardless of what you say. Imagine the bewildering array of explanations for suffering that you would hear if you went to a religious counselor (spiritual factors), a psychiatrist in a Communist country (the social-political-economic environment), a Freudian analyst (internalized anger), a behavior therapist (a low rate of positive reinforcement), a drug-oriented psychiatrist (genetic factors and brain chemistry imbalance), a family therapist (disturbed interpersonal relationships), etc.!

A word of caution when you apply the vertical-arrow method. You will short-circuit the process if you write down thoughts that contain descriptions of your emotional reactions. Instead, write down the negative thoughts that cause your emotional reactions. Here's an example of the wrong way to do it:

First Automatic Thought: My boyfriend didn't call me this weekend as he promised he would.
I "Why is that upsetting to me? What does it mean to me-?"

Second Automatic Thought: Oh, it's awful and terrible because I can't stand it.
This is useless. We already know you feel awful and terrible. The question is-what thoughts automatically crossed you mind that caused you to feel so upset? What would it mean to you if he had neglected you?

Here's the correct way to do it:
1. My boyfriend didn't call me this weekend as he promised] he would.

"Why would that be upsetting to me? What does it mean to"" me?"

2. That means he's neglecting me. That means he really doesn't love me.

And suppose that were true.,,, What would that mean to me?"

3 .That would mean there's something wrong with me, “Otherwise he'd be more attentive.”

"And suppose that were true-"What would that mean to me?"

4. That would mean I was going to be rejected.

"And if I were in fact rejected what then? What would that mean to me?"

5. That would mean I was unlovable and I would be rejected.

"And if that happened, would it upset me?"

6. That would mean I'd end up alone and miserable.

Thus, by pursuing the meaning rather than you your silent assumptions became obvious: Your real issue is your fear of abandonment. Work on conquering that fear with other forms of cognitive therapy, and you will one day find your depression a thing of the past.

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