New Orleans - Commentary on U.S. culture.

If you were running out of thing to blog about, the disaster in New Orleans and Mississippi is worth a billion blog posts!!

It's interesting to see how developed the U.S. culture and economy is. When you see people on CNN who have been stripped of all of their day to day 'conveniences' and their reactions to that, you can learn alot.

Catastrophe survivors are stripped of:
• Food stores
• Clothing stores
• Restaurants
• Automobiles & transit systems & gas stations
• Schools
• Work places
• Refrigerators
• Stoves
• Phones and cell phones
• Air conditioning
• Toilets and sinks and showers
• Computers and internet
• MP3, radios and all other entertainment systems
• Banks and ATMs for cash, credit card, debit processing

This is a highly sophisticated and developed city and infrastructure. The people have relied on these services as part of their lifestyle.

I can't imagine what a shock to the system to have most every thing you know and trust stripped away in a moment. It's going to take these people along time to rebuild the infrastructure along with their emotional state.

The weaknesses of a highly developed city is quite evident in a once in a life time event such as this. This disaster will be the topic of conversations and studies for another century or more.

QUESTION: Should we be relying this heavily on technology? Is it healthy or safe?

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New Orleans - Mississippi Devastation - Let's reflect upon our personal value system

There are many people who write about money in their blogs. As this blog is titled, I'm trying to get to the financial maturity side of money and people's values.

After watching the undescribable devastation in New Orleans and Mississippi, I am trying to assimilate the whole situation into a valuable article for today.

New Orleans & Mississippi:
• 1 million people HOMELESS
• several people dead
• Pictures of people looting for food because they're starving
• People can't sleep because of the water
• Possible mosquito infestation on top of everything.
• the levy's are breaking which is bringing more water.
• 30,000 people stuck in the New Orleans sports dome with no food or toilets etc.
• Nowhere for the 1 million people to move back into

If that doesn't help you refocus on yor financial and life priorities, nothing will.
I can't imagine what the people are going through there. Their complete and total lives are on hold. Their job life, social life, family life, entertainment life, economics etc are completely stopped.

These people don't know what they're going to do.
They don't know where they're going to work next.
In some cases they're worried if loved ones have perished in the devastation.

It goes to show that our contemporary life style is pretty fragile if you get a horrendous catastrophe such as this. The urban life can become pretty miserable pretty quickly if you've got 1 million displaced people with no food, water, sanitation etc.

Let's take a moment to reflect on this.

Some how the petty problems of credit cards debt, credit bureau reports, credit agreements, collection agencies, day to day expenses are paled in comparison.

I wish all the best to the folks in New Orleans and Mississippi. God Speed.

Walter Cavanagh Has 1,497 Credit Cards - $1.7 million worth

Walter Cavanagh of Santa Clara California wins. He's got the most credit cards of any person in the world. He's got 1497 valid credit cards, and the Guiness World's record.

He must have a really long credit report.

What can you say about a guy who's the best at getting credit cards? He must have a tired wrist from filling in all of those forms!

Man Has 1,497 Credit Cards

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Credit Card Companies aren't perfect - Lawsuits

These were just some websites that I found when I googled for law suits and credit cards. There are different reasons people are suing the credit card companies. Identity theft, charging higher rates than agreed upon etc.

It seems like credit card companies have paid out in some cases.

Recent Lawsuits Against Top Ten Credit Card Companies Or Parent Firms

Class Action Lawsuits Filed Against Credit Card Companies

The class-action suit was filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco against CardSystems Solutions, Visa and MasterCard on behalf of California credit card holders and card-accepting merchants, according to a copy of the suit.

Breaches of customers' data" trigger lawsuits

MADIGAN: LAWSUITS ALLEGE TWO FLORIDA COMPANIES TARGETED ILLINOIS’ LATINO RESIDENTS WITH CREDIT CARD SCAM - Illinois Attorney General

Fleet Credit Card Class Actions

Credit card suit now seeks damages

Credit Card companies secretly change the rules Now they're hard to sue.

FTC Has alot of information
The FTC Federal Trade Commission gives a great deal of material regarding credit cards and loans. Check out this site to make sure that the credit card companies are treating you properly.

INSTANT COFFEE FACTS - Most expensive coffee - hilarious

Save your money for this. Monkey poop coffee beans that give you an 'earthy' coffee flavor. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmy!!.

The luxuries that some people come up with. Hilarious.

According to this UK publication:

THE world's most expensive coffee comes from beans that have passed through the digestive systems of Indonesian monkeys. The brew, called Kopi Luwak, costs around $7.50USD a cup and has an "earthy" taste. Mirror.co.uk - News

1.1 million MORE Americans in poverty in 2004

According to CNN there are currently 37 million Americans living in poverty.

How can there be this much poverty in such a rich and powerful nation?

This is 12.7 percent of the population.

Brother can you spare a dime?

DISCLAIMER FOR LIFE: Prove all things!!

The more I read blogs and people's opinions and arguments etc, I keep seeing a continuing problem. One sided, uneducated comments.

I see many one sided comments about why this is good, or that's bad. People complain that they a problem with this drug, or that credit lender. They complain about it like it was the service providers fault!

With regards to a health topic, "I've heard that a little old lady took the advice of a health guru "quack" and became dehydrated and had to go to the hospital". I feel bad about the old lady story.

SPEND THE TIME TO RESEARCH THE TOPIC.
Here's what people should do. If you hear something about finances or health, do some research about the topic. Get some contrasting points of view. Go to the library or book store and buy some books about the topic. Read up on the topic on internet web sites. DO LOTS OF RESEARCH!

IT'S YOUR FAULT IF YOU'RE UNDEREDUCATED
IGNORANCE IS BLISS... you're the one to blame if you're under educated on a topic.

(Obviously there are some topics that are beyond the average person's scope of knowledge and understanding. ie... don't do your own brain surgery. In this case, consult some authorities in the industry. ) It you've got a health problem, consult a doctor and a naturopath. Get two opinions. If you've got financial problems, contact different financial experts.

If you don't have money for the experts, there are usually non-profit organizations or government agencies that will help you to a certain point, for FREE.

Once Again, DON'T BE UNDER-EDUCATED. With the amount of information on the internet, there is no reason to be undereducated. If you're complaining about a "quack" of some sort, please do your homework. There are always two sides to a story.

For financial services, I talk to people on a regular basis who aren't well informed about their credit or other financial agreements. That's their fault! You CAN get educated on these matters. You CAN read your contracts and agreements that you signed with the financial institutions.

Imagine running a corporation with out ever reading the contracts you've entered into. NOT!! Corporations have legal teams that pour over the financial agreements that they make with others. This is part of their structural make up.
The individual then should take a lesson from the corporation.

BIG ADVICE
"Don't enter into a contract unless you understand what's written in the contract. "PERIOD.

If you enter into a contract without reading it and understanding it, and then get hammered over the head because of your lack of knowledge and understanding of the contract, that's your fault!

PROVE ALL THINGS
I learned a lesson many years ago which says, Prove All Things. This has helped me quite a bit over the years. Whether you're having finance problems or health problems, it's ultimately your responsibity to learn about and research the problem. It takes hard workand diligence. Learning about the problem and the solutions to the problem will make you a much more confident and happy person.

For the rest of you "one sided argument" people. Please use your whole brain. A one sided argument only uses half your brain.

Can you be frugal with $250,000 / year income?

dictionary.reference.com defines frugal as:

1) Practicing or marked by economy, as in the expenditure of money or the use of material resources. See Synonyms at sparing.
2) Costing little; inexpensive: a frugal lunch.

I have no idea what point number 1 means. It speaks mysteries to me.

Frugal has a whole bunch of synonyms:
adj : avoiding waste; "an economical meal"; "an economical shopper"; "a frugal farmer"; "a frugal lunch"; "a sparing father and a spending son"; "sparing in their use of heat and light"; "stinting in bestowing gifts"; "thrifty because they remember the great Depression"; "`scotch' is used only informally"

Point #2 Costing little; inexpensive: a frugal lunch.

What happens when you make $250,000+ per year, have enough retirement savings and are generally set for life? I'm assuming that you have a great job or business, make piles of money and are already set up financially for life.

(I'm listening the Katrina Hurricane disaster coverage on CNN while I'm writing this. People are not going to have electricity for 4-6 weeks. This topic seems irrelevant at the moment.)

Should you continue to be frugal or can you spend a little?
According to Frugal For Life blog and Savvy Saver, you should always be frugal no matter how much money you make.

I think that if you're making excess money you should enjoy life a little. Chances are if you're making $250,000+ per year, you've worked hard, put in alot of time. Work deserves reward.

I think you should be frugal by buy the cheapest high end cadillac!

I NEED SOME HELP HERE READERS
What's the financially mature thing to do when you're making excess money?
• Save some more?
• Replace old items with more expensive things?
• Travel More?
• Visit more expensive restaurants and theatres?
• Help out non-profits?
• Quit your job / business and retire?

Opinions?

Will the world help USA - New Orleans - Mississippi??

After the U.S.'s recent help to the tsunami victims, I'm just wondering if other countries will rush to the aid of Louisiana and Mississippi.

I haven't heard any talk about that on CNN or otherwise.

I don't want to ask this question for some reason.

I hope that the rest of the world will show some love.

Data-protection turf war pleases banking & credit lobbyists

Data-protection turf war pleases lobbyists: "

So they do have banking and credit card lobbyists. Interesting.

While I was looking for information regarding credit card lobbyists in Washington I came across this article.
They are having trouble deciding who's jurisdiction data, banks and credit card providers come under with regards to data theft, etc.

This is pretty scary. So.. you get your data stolen, it's hard to figure out who to complain to.

It's difficult to even define an industry here because you have so many different kinds of companies who have suffered breaches, data providers, banks, credit-card providers. It's difficult to decide who would have jurisdiction, said Abby Stewart, a lobbyist at Jefferson Consulting Group, which represents one of the businesses that recently has endured the public-relations nightmare of a personal-data breach."

It sounds like a data breach epidemic. "There are so many different kinds of companies who have suffered breaches." That's pretty harsh to admit to in public. No wonder Identity theft is so rampant.

Has anybody reading this had problems with identity theft? Is it easy to get resolved?

Deluged with credit card mail? Help is coming

This is pathetic. Credit card companies are hammering people with direct mail pieces.

New FTC regulation makes opting out option more obvious

It's nice that credit card companies are going to have to make opting out of their lists easier.

So people, listen up!! If you want to get opted out of credit card direct mail, contact the credit card companies and tell them so.
If you want to be very business like about it write them a letter. This way you'll have some back up.

This is also a pretty interesting study:

According to Synovate, which tracks the industry through consumer surveys, an estimated 1.4 billion applications were sent in the first quarter of this year. That’s 5.8 applications per household every month.

No wonder there are credit card problems. The credit card companies are hammering the consumer.

This needs to stop. If you want a credit card, order a credit card. You shouldn't have to be so heavily marketed to.
IMO the credit card companies deserve the amount of defaults that they get if they're marketing this heavily.

Deluged with credit card mail? Help is coming

Credit Addict grave site

Credit Addict Grave Site

Credit Addict Grave Site

This is a picture of 3 credit cards discussing how they finally killed the credit addict. I needed a little humor relief this afternoon.

Katrina Hurricane News CNN

Good thing for insurance companies. Their stocks are going to get hammered though.
CNN.com

CNN reporters in the storm reporting on the storm

CNN reporters in the storm reporting on the Hurricane Katrina.
I'm just watching them on CNN.

That's job commitment.

What the heck are reporters doing in a hurricane, for the sake of your news/entertainment?

That's crazy

I wish all the best to New Orleans and area residents

I'm watching CNN coverage of the New Orleans exodus etc. Yikes.

That's pretty scary. I wish all the folks in New Orleans and area all the best. That hurricane sounds like it's going to be pretty devastating.

Best wishes.

DebtXS Listed 17th on Entrepreneur's 11th Annual Hot 100 List

DebtXS legitimizes the debt settlement industry with this article.
Even though they're a competitor to my advertiser, with "$15 million in sales in 2004 and currently employs 150 people." they're on Entrepreneurs 100 list of fastest growing companies.

Interesting... Debt Settlement is a growth industry.

Too many credit cards ==> Too much consumer credit ==> Debt settlement growth industry

Press Release: DebtXS Listed 17th on Entrepreneur's 11th Annual Hot 100 List | PRZOOM

Interested in Debt Settlement? - shameless promotion for my advertiser.

NEW!! - Credit Card Condom Contraceptive.

You've seen it here first. The world's first CREDIT CARD CONDOM. The first credit card contraceptive.

Stop the needless spread of credit.

This new credit card condom product includes barbed wire ribbing, and hydro-chloric acid lubricant so that you won't touch the card. It will be off limits to anybody who wants to do impulsive shopping.

Helps stop rampant credit card disease.

Tell your friends about it.

Post #100 for Financial Maturity Blog

Thanks for reading...

Hopefully we'll enjoy the next 100 twice as much!

Post #100 for Financial Maturity Blog

The Movie industry in the toilet? - Chapter review

I've read some articles and some blogs that the movie industry seems to be in a bit of a rut. For personal finance bloggers the prices of tickets are just too high.
Movie box office sales seem to be in a slump.

I was reading in THE BEST BUSINESS STORIES OF THE YEAR - 2004 (below)
page 415 Chapter -The Monopolist.

Connie Bruck is mentioning that back in 1948 the movie industry hit a big snag. Attendance dropped because of the television becoming popular.

"movie attendance had fallen dramatically and television was commonly viewed as the culprit."

Who are the movie industry's current competitors / problems?

TOO MUCH INEXPENSIVE COMPETITION
• DVD's Walmart sells millions of movies for in the $6.88 bin. They're even selling all types of old movies and TV shows for 99¢.
• Cable TV - hundreds of channels
• Tons of 'made for TV' movies.

THEATER PRICES TOO HIGH
• The cost of movies and popcorn doesn't justify the entertainment level.
• Paying a baby sitter is too much on top of the price of movies and popcorn

I personally think that people are just too tired to go to movies these days.
With both parents working full time jobs, etc, etc, it's just too taxing to get dressed book a baby sitter and then sit through a 2 hour long movie.

RETAILERS ARE FLOODING THE MARKET
Everytime I'm at Walmart they've got these cheesy, horrible movies for $6.88 .
The movie companies must contract with Walmart directly to make these things. They're cheap, horrible and not very entertaining. But Walmart sells millions of them. Walmart and other retailers are flooding the market with DVD's of all of the old movies. There are thousands of them. It's hard to watch a fraction of them.

I think the movie industry is going to a hit for the next while until people get into the mood of going out for a night on the town and to watch a MOVIE.

Just one more thing: An actor knows that his career is finished when he ends up in one of the $6.88 DVD bins at Walmart!! It's the new stigma for actors.

World's Most Expensive Hotels 2005

Yep... That's It.. The most World's most expensive hotel room
I NEED TO stay in a $34,000 per night hotel room.

Isn't a person's money better spent on something more useful? If a person's rich enough to spend $34,000 per night on a hotel room, shouldn't they donate that money to the poor?

I understand that wealthy people value their time and want the best for themselves. What are they getting for that kind of money?
• Extra security?
• Better food?
• Better service?
• Exclusivity and privacy?

It would be interesting to know what a person gets for $34,000 per night at the world's most expensive hotel room.

World's Most Expensive Hotels 2005 - Forbes.com: "World's Most Expensive Hotels 2005

The most expensive hotels in the world cater to a tough, albeit well-heeled, crowd.

Rap stars, tycoons, royalty and CEOs know the difference between the sublime and the merely impressive. What's more, if the champagne is not properly chilled, the thread count on the sheets inadequate, the luggage not brought up with alacrity or the morning coffee served anything less than piping hot, they may take their Black cards and Gucci shoes elsewhere. "

It bothers me when people ONLY complain.

DON'T BE ONE SIDED
I've been reading some blogs. It really bothers me when people are one sided and only complain. They don't talk about a positive side. All they do is point out the negatives.

People who write about Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad Poor Dad come to mind. There are some blogs that just hammer on Robert Kiyosaki. They must think he's the worst guy in the world by the way they talk about him.

I am now going to complain about people who only complain.

I understand that it's probably therapeutic to write in blogs about things that bother you. Sometimes you just need to rant about something to get it out of your system.

To every negative attribute, every person's got an equally positive attribute.

I am excited to hear all of the negative things about a person. It gives a realism to somebody, especially when they're in the public eye. It's nice to get the real facts on what a person is saying. Robert Kiyosaki is world famous for his real estate books etc. Apparently he retired in 1994. That's what he says in his book.
There are people out there who literally are tearing the guy apart. They've even gone to see Robert Kiyosaki's house where he lives to see the value of it. It's scary when your critics do a drive by your house.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI MUST HAVE DONE SOME GOOD!!
Robert Kiyosaki has sold millions of books and audio sets.
What these ultra critics are saying is that NOT A SINGLE PERSON who has purchased a Robert Kiyosaki product has benefited from using the product.
They saying that the millions of people who purchased the product completely wasted their money.

THE POINT: If you're going to criticize something, add some positive things to say as well. There always two sides to the story.

I want to hear the negative, reality items, but I also want to hear the good things about a person or topic.

National Foreclosures Increase for Second Straight Month According to RealtyTrac

This is a good reason to stay debt free and develop a healthy cash reservce. Foreclosures.
According to this article Nationwide foreclosures are up to 78,979.

The means cheap real estate for those who can afford to assume the mortgages.
One of the best times to buy real estate is during a down turn in the economy. When people want to dump their properties because they can't afford them.

That's one of the cardinal rules of real estate investing. Don't buy unless people are really motivated to sell.

RISMedia - Residential Real Estate's Largest Independent News & Information Service - Immediate access to industry news,top real estate professionals,and the nation's most respected product and service firms real estate referral,real estate tr: "National Foreclosures Increase for Second Straight Month According to RealtyTrac(TM)

RISMEDIA, Aug. 26, 2005 � RealtyTrac(TM) (www.realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, released its July 2005 Monthly U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which showed that the number of properties entering some stage of foreclosure nationwide rose to 78,979 in July, a 4.7-% increase from June and the most new foreclosures reported in any month year-to-date. New foreclosures have jumped more than 12% in the last two months, pushing the nation�s foreclosure rate to one foreclosure for every 1,465 households.

RealtyTrac publishes the largest national database of pre-foreclosure and foreclosure properties, with more than 550,000 properties in nearly 2,000 counties across the country, and is the foreclosure data provider to MSN House & Home, Yahoo! Real Estate, AOL Real Estate and HomeGain.com. "

Greenspan sees risks from gains in home, stock prices - Aug. 26, 2005

CNN is reporting that Alan Greenspan will retire in January 2006. I've always considered Alan Greenspan to be VERY level headed.


Greenspan sees risks from gains in home, stock prices - Aug. 26, 2005: "JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. (CNN/Money)

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan issued a veiled warning Friday on the risks to the economy from trade and budget deficits -- as well as the recent run-up in home prices.
In his opening remarks at a Fed conference here, Greenspan, who is set to retire in January, said the central bank needs to pay closer attention to trade barriers, changes in assets and liabilities such as rising home prices and mortgage financing.

IMPORTANT PARAGRAPH HERE
'Our analysis of economic developments almost surely will need to deal in greater detail with balance sheet considerations than was the case in the earlier decades of the postwar period,' Greenspan said in his prepared remarks. "

"balance sheet considerations", This is a polite and diplomatic way of saying that individuals and corporations are way over extended in their credit. Their balance sheets are way off.

ASSETS = Liabilities + Shareholders' Equity

Web of consumerism

Getting caught in the web of consumerism

I LOVE THIS QUOTE ABOUT CONSUMERISM
In 60 years we have gone from other-focused to self-centered, from sacrifice to self-indulgence, from commitment and fidelity to easy divorce and promiscuity, from $3 fill-ups to $3 a gallon.

How exactly did that happen? When did we become a self-centered society? I wasn't born 60 years ago. I was born in the mid 60's when consumerism seemed to be starting full force.

I can only remember this 'consumerism mentality' in and around my neighbourhood. At an early age, consumerism is, "I need that toy. My friend has that toy, and I need one just like it" Consumerism is pretty much like that at an older age as well!

Consumerism - The Telegraph Online:


Cal Thomas
Published: Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2005
I recently took my youngest son on a visit to two of the three places in the Washington, D.C., suburbs where I grew up.

The first is down the same street on which I now live. It was an apartment among many apartments then inhabited by mostly wives and children of men in the service during World War II."

Governments must be wary over fuelling gambling addiction

Dear financial maturity blog readers:
Just to confirm,
Gambling Addiction is bad for your money situation.

Please, take a moment. If you have a problem with gambling, GET HELP right away!!


The Province

Chicago Woman Who Claimed 'Shopaholic' Defense Gets Probation

My oh my... there's a new defense every day, especially in Chicago.
I'm sorry for stealing $250,000, I'm a shopaholic.

According to KWQC TV this was her third sentence.

What lawyer in their right mind would site that defense? Where is the legal precendent for that defense? Unbelievable.

Some possible other defenses for this shopaholic lady:
1) Judge, I forgot that stealing $250,000 was illegal.
2) Judge, I thought Anderson Consulting wouldn't mind, they're a big company.
3) Judge, I started seeing flying saucers made of wood in the sky. There were yellow pig / giraffe monsters waving out the window of the flying saucer. This prompted me to buy $250,000 worth of stuff.

Shopaholicism is something that affects millions of people.
It's a huge topic.

Here's all I know... LADY, SHOPAHOLISM isn't a really good excuse! You're sick! Get some help!


Woman Who Claimed 'Shopaholic' Defense Gets Probation
POSTED: 11:28 am CDT August 23, 2005
CHICAGO -- A Chicago woman who claimed a "shopaholic defense" is getting five years probation.

Elizabeth Roach said chronic depression led to wild shopping sprees that she financed with money she stole from work. She was accused of taking $250,000 from Andersen Consulting.

TheMilwaukeeChannel.com - News - Woman Who Claimed 'Shopaholic' Defense Gets Probation

My memories of 9/11 - Orlando Florida

I VIVIDLY REMEMBER 9/11
I have this dollar bill hung up on my wall. The writing on the bill is faded. The top says Orlando Florida, The bottom says September 11, 2001. My apologies if it's hard to see.

September 11, 2001 , 9/11 I was in Orlando Florida at the airport coming back from visiting with a client.

I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT
I was in a bookstore purchasing a book to read on the plane when I heard the lady at the counter saying that the World Trade Center building in New York had just been blown up. She was speaking spanish so I didn't really take note of what she was saying.

I then headed to the ticket counter to get my NWA tickets to head back to Saskatchewan Canada. (Orlando, FL and Saskatchewan are approximately 2500 miles apart.)

THE ORLANDO AIRPORT SHUTS DOWN
I was approximately 20 feet from the ticket counter when they shut down the ticket counter area. It was off limits because "there were some problems with the airlines" "Some flights may be grounded" is what I heard.

I didn't think much of it. I thought that this must happen all the time in U.S. airports.

I went to get a coffee and at the coffee stand was a TV showing CNN's coverage of the World Trade Centers. I sat in shock and disbelief for the next 1 1/2 hours watching all of the coverage. Everybody in the airport was panicked, and rightly so.

This was unprecendented.

As I was taking the shuttle to the rent-a-car place there was a fellow sitting next to me. He explained that he was on vacation and worked at the World Trade Centers. If he had returned to work a day earlier, he might have been killed! Even worse, he worked with 600 people who might have died in that horrific terrorist attack.

I've seen alot of things in life.. I was completely speechless and shocked, as was the rest of the world.

After the shock subsided somewhat, I figured that I should rent a car and a hotel room and watch was going on in New York. It was apparent that I wasn't going anywhere.

I'LL DO SOME SIGHT SEEING - NOT A GREAT IDEA!!
After getting a rent a car I thought, "why not drive down to Miami Beach while I'm here". I drove down to Daytona, Cocoa Beach, and then Vero Beach. On the radio I heard that the FBI were searching for possible terrorists in Vero Beach, at the exact time I was there.

Hmmm.. now I'm scared. Here I am a Canadian in a rental car in Vero Beach. Of course I'm not a terrorist, but I was feeling pretty vulnerable, especially with the heightened panic.

THE AIRPORT IS SWARMED WITH ARMY, DOGS AND MACHINE GUNS
The next day I went back to the airport in Orlando. There were army people there with machine guns all over the place. There were dogs sniffing luggage and armed personnel swarming the airport.

People had no idea what was happening as far as flight schedules. They didn't know if planes weren't going to fly for the next few days or weeks. I was stuck in Orlando.

I called the rent a car places. Mostly they were all booked solid. Not a car to rent. The ones that weren't wanted $2500 - $3000 for a drop fee. This means that I would pay $3000 extra to drive my car directly to Saskatchewan, and then they would have somebody return it.

Now I'm really scared. Stuck in orlando and no way to get home.

TAKING THE GREYHOUND BUS BACK TO CANADA - 4 DAY TRIP
It then occured to me to contact Greyhound bus. They charged $149 for a one way ticket back to Canada!! That was pretty cool. The only problem was that it was a 4 day non-stop trip. I wasn't crazy about it, but I just wanted to get back home.

So.. I took the Greyhound bus back and it took a LONG 4 days. Greyhound was way overbooked because of the grounding of the airplanes. People were pretty rude and aggressive when it came to getting on the bus. They pushed and did not stand in line.

THESE MEMORIES ARE BURNT INTO MY MEMORY FOREVER
Anyway... these events are burnt into my memory as they are with all Canadians and Americans. I can remember very vividly what happened on 9/11. That's one of the reasons I'm posting about this. I find it interesting that I can remember the exact details of most of that day. I guess it was because I was scared out of my mind for the whole day.

There's alot more to my story, but I only have time to talk about the important stuff.

WE STILL REMEMBER THE FOLKS AFFECTED BY THOSE TRAGIC EVENTS
We are still remembering the horrific tragic events of 9/11 in New York city and the World Trade Center.

Google's Earth Software makes the world SMALL

Google GlobeTrotting

They're showing planes taking off and landing at various airports in Florida and the U.S. These are all satellite pictures that let you see from as far as 400 ft above ground level. I've seen my house and my car with Google Earth Software. Yikes.
The good things is that you can't make out who people are.

That's pretty scary to think that people can watch when planes are taking off and landing. I hate to say "terrorism." Doesn't that give potential terrorists in far away countries some more information about what is going on in ANY country?

The advancement of technology is good, however, it's also pretty damn scary!

Google's Earth Satellite viewer

Try to find your house today!!
USE COMMON SENSE: Please do not use this software and satellite technology for anything other than entertainment purposes.

Top 500 Blogs - Feedster

I thought it would be interesting to show who the top 10 of the top 500 most popular blogs are.. This is based on the Feedster.com website.
Surprisingly and much to my shock and horror, Monty Loree's "Financial Maturity Blog" didn't make it into the top 500!! :-)

Gadgets, Deviant Art, Boing Boing, AlbinoBlackSheep, DailyKos, Fleshbot are popular ones.

It also seems that political blogs are hot. People LOVE to talk about politics. Ann Althouse made the top 500.
Other popular bloggers are those who talk about webmarketing and blogging. Some of the internet gurus such as John Battelle and Google GlobeTrotting

Engadget
(54,380 links) | (rss)


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Freddie, Gene, Mick, Paul Some survived, some didn't

Rock 'N Roll is a vicious game (April Wine). Rock and Roll is a magnet for artists who love to work in a fast paced, exciting environment. :-)

There are so many one hit wonders because the life style is so gruelling and unforgiving to your bodies.

• Freddie Mercury - Queen
• Gene Simmons - KISS
• Mick Jagger - Rolling Stones
• Paul McCartney - Beatles

Are all larger than life celebrities who made some huge money in the rock and roll entertainment business. It's interesting to look at some of the big celebrities to see how big money turned up the volume on their lifestyle.

We'll take a look at these artists as the days progress.

Freddie Mercury - Queen died in 1991 of aids.
Bohemian Rhapsody
Killer Queen
Another one bites the dust
Too much love will kill you.

Monty Loree's Email Address

If you would like to contact me directly my email address is as follows:



I put it into gif format to keep away the internet email scrapers.
I learned my lesson about putting my email addresses on my websites.
Now I am blessed with 200 spam emails per day.

Don't be afraid to write and let me know what you LIKE/DISLIKE about my blog.

Thanks

New York Daily News - Business - The Ticker: Rush is on to file for bankruptcy

Well, I can't really say much more than that.
People are rushing to file bankruptcy because of the new laws. That's a completely pathetic sign of the times.

It's as if people have gone out on a drunken bender, and are having a hang over the next day. People have taken out so much credit that it's as if they're vomiting in reaction to what they've done. They're not living up to what they agreed to because they can't or don't want to.

This is a pretty serious. 308,028 Chapter 7s in one quarter. That's 1,232,112 per year. That's .41% of the entire U.S. population declaring bankruptcy in a year. That percentage would increase if you only included the people who actually credit. This number shouldn't include people under 18 years.

People are rushing to file bankruptcy because of the new laws. I think I should vomit because of complete shock and disbelief.

New York Daily News - Business - The Ticker: Rush is on to file for bankruptcy: "Rush is on to file for bankruptcy

Personal bankruptcy filings in federal courts surged 18% in the second quarter from the prior quarter, as consumers rushed to beat the deadline for a new law that makes erasing debt more difficult, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said.
The number of filings under Chapter 7 of bankruptcy laws, designed to allow individuals to keep certain assets while remaining property is sold to repay creditors, jumped to 308,028 in the quarter.
Under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, signed by President Bush in April, debtors who earn more than their state's median income and can repay at least $6,000 of debt over five years won't be able to file for Chapter 7. The law takes effect Oct. 17."

Martha Stewart set to break out - CNN Money

Okay... I like Martha Stewart - "M Diddy" as a media icon and persistent self marketer. She has branded her name exceptionally well.

I think it's absolute crap that she has the PRISON ANKLE BRACELET removed and is now ready to resume her career.
Alright, Martha Stewart has done her time. Martha Stewart has paid her debt to society.

She's going to be glorified in the publics eye again and make tons of money for doing it.
She's got television and radio deals. She's the next Apprentice host.

The whole prison thing was a wonderful publicity stunt that gave billions of dollars worth of free press.
I mean.. it's expensive personally to go to prison, however, I hope Martha got some value as a person out of it.
It seems that she's going to be even more than business as usual.

I think that they should put a ankle bracelet icon on all of her television shows and printed materials as a reminder of this little "spot" in history.

Has America learned anything by Martha Stewart's prison stay. Has Martha Stewart learned anything from her prison stay? She doesn't seem to have mellowed at all.

I certainly hope that she relays some wisdom from her prison experience in the days and months to come.

Martha Stewart - You are a publicity getting genious!!

Happy 38th Birthday America

That should raise some eyebrows.

38 Years Old Consumer Credit Wise
America is obviously more than 38 years old. But since credit is relatively new in North America we haven't experienced a full cycle of benefits and problems to enjoying an excess of consumer credit.

• Age 20 - You're full of fire and more zeal and energy than brains
• Age 30 - You've experience 10 years of life and learning. You're becoming more responsible. You're taking your life, family, job, credit more seriously.
• Age 40 - You've had 20 years of going hard. You've enjoyed many material items and have achieved many things in your career. You're satisfied to relax and reflect a little about the things you've done. You don't have a desperate need to experience new things all the time. Yes.. you still have ambition, but you're developing some reasonabilities based on 20 years of experience.
• Age 50 - (I'm not there yet) I expect to be still working hard, but enjoying my time and family more than ever. Hopefully enjoying some of the fruits of my labour.

I say that America is turning 38 because it hasn't had a full generation of credit usage and abuse to fully understand it. At the age of "40" hopefully there will be enough lessons learned by the collective population that it will take credit a little more seriously.

LEARNING FROM THE PAST IS GOOD
abileneblues said it best. "Americans are future thinking people" I am this way myself. We have a 5 minute memory. We really strive to look to the future for all of the solutions to our problem.

If you're only looking to the future, you're not enjoying the past. As well, if you're only looking to the future, you're not going to be very well anchored in your life. Always wanting bigger and better things is a way to continuously keep yourself in debt and in a state of discontent.



I don't think that Americans have had the experience yet. they haven't had a full out crash to their consumer credit yet. Maybe it doesn't happen all at once. Maybe it will take a few years.

WE WILL BE ABLE TO LOOK BACK 10 YEARS FROM NOW
10 years or sooner from now, we will have enough history and documentation to really understand the time we're in.

Per my chart above, I don't believe that the consumer debt can go much higher than it is. More debt would have to be sustained by more income based jobs. In that sense, the American economy isn't going to grow leaps and bounds to support more debt.

If debt isn't going to go up, it's only got two directions left. Level off or start to decline. I'll be interested to see the numbers as the next several months roll out.

MONEY Magazine: From debtors to millionaires overnight - Aug. 18, 2005

Hmmm... It seems that even though the people in this CNN article are going to inherit $1.35 million in cash and real estate, they still have to take care of some debt, they're still going to have a $230,000 inheritance tax bill.

They have to settle the tax bill, rent or sell the property which is 3000 miles away. This seems to be a lot of work for the money. This work is thrown into this couple's already busy life style. Hopefully they can hire some of this work out.

Inheriting other people's assets creates a whole new set of issues.

MONEY Magazine: From debtors to millionaires overnight - Aug. 18, 2005: "A million-dollar windfall may sound like something out of the movies. But, in fact, as wealthy boomers die over the next 50 years, it will become almost routine. Over that time, a mind-boggling amount of wealth -- estimates start at $41 trillion -- will pass between generations, according to Boston College researchers Paul Schervish and John Havens.
Much of that wealth will be in the form of real estate, leaving heirs with tough financial choices -- why sell when real estate is so hot? -- and sometimes even tougher emotional ones. Can you sell a house that's steeped in family memories? "

A million-dollar windfall may sound like something out of the movies. But, in fact, as wealthy boomers die over the next 50 years, it will become almost routine. Over that time, a mind-boggling amount of wealth -- estimates start at $41 trillion -- will pass between generations, according to Boston College researchers Paul Schervish and John Havens.

Much of that wealth will be in the form of real estate, leaving heirs with tough financial choices -- why sell when real estate is so hot? -- and sometimes even tougher emotional ones. Can you sell a house that's steeped in family memories?

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster feedster:b126d23032fc5c5b624341010a593a12

Imagine... Canadians have opinions about American Politics and Economics

Canadians watch the Americans pretty closely. I call myself American as being part of North America. Canadians are pretty tied into the U.S. economy.

It's the equivalent of a chihuahua walking beside a 2 ton hippo on a 10 mile walk. The chihuahua watches very closely the hippo's every movement.

American politics and economics greatly affect Canadian business and our economy. We are very concerned about when President George W Bush goes into Iraq and stirs up a hornets nest. Canadians have NO control on the U.S.'s political activities, yet it affects Canada pretty directly.

Because of the Iraqi situation, Canadians are forced to tighten up their borders and security. This is not a bad thing to be more secure, but the issues have arised directly since September 11, 2001, and subsequently the U.S. entry into Iraq a few years later.

Also, the Canadian dollar has risen from 63¢ USD to 82¢ with in the last few years. This really hurts all export business. The US dollar's strength is based on the US economy along with creditors who lend money to the U.S.

The weakening US dollar has cost me several hundred thousand dollars in currency exchange loss in the last few years. I've had to learn to deal with it.

So.. Yes.. Canadians have different political views than Americans. They are different countries with different personalities. Canada and the U.S. have different populations, different climates, different ethnic make up.

The chihuahua MUST watch the hippo.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Financial maturity is for both the U.S. population and the Canadian population. The stuff I'm talking about is highly relevant to the North American continent.

Michael Schaeble - My step brother.

Michael Schaeble became my step-brother about 4 years ago when my mom married his dad.
Michael is a successful author and now is into TV productions as you'll see on his biography website.

Michael is an international correspondent for Flare Magazine.

He's currently involved in the following:
Michael Schaeble
Michael's charming wit and engaging personality have made him an exciting new presenter-journalist-stylist with television credits including:

Celebrity Swap II (Five) - celebrity makeover series
Strictly Dance Fever (BBC3) - studio guest, contributor
Jordan Gets Even (C5) - one off documentary
Gender, Age and Posh Swap (C5) - celebrity makeover series
Men's Health TV (Bravo) - men's style & grooming contributor
Straight Dates by Gay Mates (Living) - co-presenter of 10 part dating series
Fashion Avenue (US TV) - style & shopping travel show, co-presented with supermodel Jodie Kidd
Bra's Unpadded (Sky One) - documentary, contributor
How Gay Are You (ITV) - game show, contributor
Britain's Biggest Celebrity Mingers (Sky One) - entertainment, contributor

Sue Rider Management - Michael Schaeble

Parable of the Onion and the Potato

Publishing Genius... The Onion and the Potato!


I was trying to think of a basic topic to talk about with regards to financial maturity.

Potatoes and onions are pretty basic ingredients to cooking many fine meals.
A potato or an onion by itself uncooked is unsavory to most peoples taste.

Potatoes and onions can be cooked with steaks, roasts, vegetables, bar-b-ques. They can be steamed, fried, baked, cut up, frappéd, etc. French Cuisine, American Cuisine, German Cuisine, etc.

Great chefs of the world have been working thousands of years trying to perfect different recipes that include Potatoes and Onions.

PEOPLE DON'T LIKE TO EAT RAW POTATOES OR RAW ONIONS
Americans have developed a pretty sophisticated taste for the foods they eat. This is in comparison to the developing countries who are starving, in relative terms.

Unless something is made up to taste great, we aren't going to eat it. Restaurants like McDonalds and Burger King spend millions of dollars each year having "taste developers" make their food taste great.

American's crave this kind of food. We need delicious food as a part of our lifestyle.

WHAT IF YOU HAD TO SCALE BACK YOUR LIFESTYLE?
Let's assume a worst case scenario. Let's say the U.S. gets into another depression like there was in the 1930's. People lose jobs and unemployment is high. Interest rates go up and people start losing their homes.

Not only do Americans like good tasting food, they also like nice things for themselves and their families. They like nice houses and cars and furniture and vacations and club memberships, etc.

AMERICA HAS EXPENSIVE TASTE
As humans it's very difficult to go backwards taste wise, when you're used to luxury. Once you develop your taste for more expensive things, going back to basic things could make you feel bad, or lower your self esteem or what ever other problems arise.

The point is: it's a great idea as part of the financial maturity process to keep in mind that at some point in your career, you may have to go back to having a less refined life style. You may have to ratchet down your taste level.

YOU MAY HAVE TO EAT RAW ONIONS AND RAW POTATOES
If this happens, it's good to learn to live with basic items. It's good to learn how to eat raw potatoes and raw onions. There is no dishonor to scaling back your tastes. It will take work but you can do it.

This is my Potato and Onion economic philosophy.

shellen dot com: Blogger for Word add-in

This is interesting for those who don't like to edit html.

Blogger for Word add-in.

The benefits to this are easier handling for writing and editing. This new system helps you with saving drafts on your hard drive and organizing how you manage them.

Also there is better capability to edit posts.
This was referred by Jason Shellen who works at google.

Is it okay to drop out - financially?

This is a "what if" scenario inspired by a true story.

A lady (Xlandia) comes from a upper class home. Her family of origin is worth substantial money and has a great deal of respect in the community.

Xlandia goes to Harvard University where she gets a prestigious law degree. She finishes the top of her class.

Xlandia is hounded by Law firms all over the world to get her to work for them. She is offered $150,000 to start. She is offered other perks, such as a top level BMW, a upper class condo near the office, and three weeks paid vacation at her favorite resort. (Xlandia is pretty good at what she does, and is well connected)

Xlandia works for this illustrious law firm for 15 years. In that time she marries and has three children. She is now earning $1,000,000 per year, because she made partner 5 years ago.

One day, Xlandia wakes up and wonders what she's doing with her life. She starts to have a major crisis in her mind. She is horrified that she is living a lie. She doesn't want to be a lawyer, and she doesn't like the high pressure life style that she is now living. She also wants quality time with her family.

Xlandia decides to quit her job, sell her mansion and move out to the country. She buys 40 acres on the side of a mountain, with a 1200 sq ft bungalow. She has a large garden plot, and all her furniture is pretty inexpensive.

Xlandia's world has completely changed. She has gone from being "royalty" to being a commoner. Her family is furious and confused. How could she give up this gorgeous world that she lived in. She has enough talent and brains to become president of the United States, if she wanted.

She had the country clubs, yacht clubs, finest restaurants, vacations, highest level of friends and contacts. She had job security for the rest of her life. She had the most expensive and richest of everything.

Xlandia made a tough decision. If she quits her life, she'll lose credibility and won't be able to gain back this same life style again.

Xlandia has decided to drop out of her "rich" life and take up the "common" life.

Is this the financially mature thing to do?

How you CAN make money blogging

It's kind of a funny question: "Should I make money blogging?"

Will making money take the fun or purity of thought out of my blog? I'm sure that there are two ways to think about it.

1) Some people blog as a business or source of income.
2) Other people just blog for the health benefits of journaling.

It's a pretty simple answer.
For those that need health benefits,
don't advertise on your blog. Spend time recording the times in your life, and talk about everything that you feel you need to talk about. Invite some of your close friends to read your blog. Do not publish your blog. Don't encourage links to your blog. don't encourage the search engines to pick up the content in your blog. The more public your blog, the more your feelings will be exposed. Also, if your blog becomes too well known, you'll start to get advertisers knocking on your door asking for eyeball space.

For those who want to make money blogging:
Don't give up your day time job for a while. Blogging is not easy to make money with to start. Blogging is all about relationship development with a whole bunch of people.

Imagine trying to walk into a busy mall with thousands of people and make friends with them all in 1 day. You can't do it. Even if you stood up in the middle of the mall food court and shouted, "look at me, my name is Monty Loree, and I want to be your friend", several times per hour, you're still not going to make many friends. People will think you're crazy.

Money making blogging is all about publishing, search engine optimization SEO, writing interesting information that people want to read. It's about writing alot of good material on a daily basis that keeps people reading and commenting. That's all!!

If you're making money blogging then it's kind of like a business. Most business fail in the first few years because the work is too hard , and / or the business owners realize that it's not really what they wanted.

As with any new business, you need to work at it 12 hours per day, six days per week, in order to develop your skills. You need to work at your blog until you're exhausted.

As I always say, people will buy from you, or be your friend or spouse for three reasons.

The three basic reasons of relationship development:
• THEY KNOW YOU
• THEY LIKE YOU
• THEY TRUST YOU

IF YOU WRITE IT, THEY WILL COME
You've got to write enough high quality, credible material that the readers know you, like you and trust you. This will take a while. If you're not getting much participation in your conversations, you need to try different things. Write about new and different things. This could mean hundreds of articles or posts.

SEARCH FOR YOUR KEYWORDS
Search for keywords on search engines that you think people would look for if they were looking for your blog. If your blog is about RED INDUSTRIAL WIDGETS, then you need to make sure you use the words RED INDUSTRIAL WIDGETS several times in your blogs. This way the search engines knows what you're writing about.
(NOTE: This post cannot cover all of the intricate details of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO) This is a basic tip. The main thing is that if you can't find your blog on the search engines nobody else can!!

CONVERSE WITH OTHER BLOGS - DEVELOP COMMUNITY
If you carry on an intelligent conversation on your blog as well as other blogs, people will start to notice you and like you. If you contribute valuable input to other blogs you may eventually become an expert. If you contribute enough to another blog, the blog owner may link back to you in an article, or directly from their links on their blog. This is how you make friends in the blog world.

SEARCH ENGINES LIKE LINKS
Search engines like good quality, constantly updated content that gets linked to by other websites. When a site links to you, it means that they value or respect your input.

If a site has 1000 other sites linking back at it, the search engine will rank that site higher than a site with only a few links. A site with 1000 links means that there was enough valuable information on that blog for 1000 people to link back to it. This is the equivalent of 1000 people standing around in the mall saying that "so and so" is a really great person. If 1000 people told you that another person was really great, you'd be inclined to think that person was great as well.

Good Quality Articles ==> Comments ==> Inbound links.

FIND ADVERTISERS
After you've done all of this, you need to find advertisers for your blog.

Wait... before you do all this work, make sure you find out if your subject material will attract enough quality and quantity of traffic to attract advertisers. I would hate for you to spend thousands of hours building a blog that ultimately doesn't have any hope of generating an advertising dollar.

I mentioned the following above:
• Publishing
• Search Engine Optimization - SEO
(For SEO info see Search Engine Forums and www.webmasterworld.com)

• Writing interesting information that people want to read.
• Writing alot of good material on a daily basis
• Get people to comment on your blog.
• Find advertisers who will spend money with you
Check out google adsense. Google adsense is the easiest advertiser to find for your blog, but doesn't make you the most money.
There are also: www.adbrite.com www.blogads.com blogads is by sponsor only.


These are all very complicated parts of the blogging business. People who have tons of traffic to their blog haven't done so accidently.

I REALLY WANTED TO HEAR WHAT THEY HAD TO SAY
I was at the WebmasterWorld conference in New Orleans in June of this year. For the first time ever, I believe, there were 10 Google engineers visiting with web masters. This was a golden event. There was so much noise in the room where the meet and greet was with the google engineers. I was so interested to hear what the google engineers had to say, that I literally leaned way in to hear what they were talking about. I really wanted to learn about everything they said.

THE LIGHT WENT ON
At this point a light bulb went on in my head. The google engineers would be extremely good content writers. They had a captive audience from some influential players. They could easily drive traffic to their blog by what they had to say. It was a very good lesson in high quality, credible content that people are desperate to hear.

This is an outline of what it takes to make money with your blog. As with all things, good blog writing is difficult, tedious work. It takes hours of thought and preparation to write something that will be valuable for others.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Leonard Cohen - He thought he had $5 million - He's actually broke.

This is a truly sad story. Leonard Cohen who is 70 years old, thought he had amassed a fortune of $5,000,000 or $5 million dollars.
He's actually broke and has to mortgage his house to pay for his mortgage bills.

Here's a really talented , world famous guy. He's made tons of money.
Now at the age of 70, he's got to work some more to pay for his money issues.

Part of financial maturity is keeping a strong eye on your money, even if you are 70 years old. It's too bad when you lose control of your money, or your the person who is responsible for your money is either irresponsible or dishonest.

I hate to see stories like Leonard Cohen's. I guess people need to go and buy his music so he can pay for his tax bill. Just like the fans did with Willie Nelson.

Search - canada.com network

Good news for Saskatchewan - finally!

This is good for people in Saskatchewan. (Just above Montana and North Dakota)


Canadian Press
Tuesday, August 23, 2005

CREDIT: Canadian Press
Prime Minister Paul Martin announced a gas-tax rebate for Saskatchewan that he insisted Tuesday will offer residents a better quality of life.

SASKATOON -- Prime Minister Paul Martin announced a gas-tax rebate for Saskatchewan that he insisted Tuesday will offer residents a better quality of life.

But critics say the deal, along with similar ones already signed by Ontario and other provinces, ties the hands of municipalities and does nothing to save weary travellers from bone-rattling roads and bridges.

The Saskatchewan deal will see $147.7 million in federal gas taxes given to municipalities large and small across the province over five years.

Stop the spread of blog spamming

This is hilarious but good.

The comments section in blogspot.com uses rel="nofollow" in the anchor text. This means that you don't get credit with search engines regarding page ranks with regards to inbound linking.

I got a link spam in my credit repair blog for the first time. It's intrusive and meaningless. Blogs should be about good quality posts and conversation.

Stop the spread of Viral Link Spam today

Big Brother 6 - Howie and Rachel

I'm not going to comment much. Howie is a likable guy and so is Rachel. Their opposing team is a viscious "nerd herd".

TLC, HGTV are bad for your wallets.

I was watching some TLC and HGTV while in Calgary.
Debbie Travis, The Designer Guys, While You Were Out, etc.

Then there are the personal make over shows. The ones that show you how beautiful you CAN be.

I love watching these shows. They're all about self-improvement.

The only problem is... they're telling us that our living rooms, bed rooms, kitchens could use a face lift. These shows create doubt in our minds that what we've already got isn't good enough. These shows are making our current home decor obsolete in our own minds.

THE HOME DEPOT ERA
These shows are fueling the big box era. The Home Depot era. Home Depot loves these types of shows. These are just really good marketing shows for every home improvement vendor out there.

The problem is that these shows are making us go out and spend money on our credit cards to make our homes more beautiful.

I'll write more on this in the days to come.

My cousin Guy Rodgers - QAS Honorary Chair

While in Calgary, I realized that many of my cousins and relatives are in the publishing - arts - advertising business.

My cousin Guy Rodgers who lives in Montreal is a mucky muck in the writing, film making arena.

Agenda for the Quebec Arts Summit: "Guy Rodgers, QAS Honorary Chair "

George W Bush, USA spent $333 billion for/in Iraq?!??

I heard a news item that indicated that America has spent $1/3 trillion dollars in Iraq. Apparently President George W Bush is going to stay in Iraq for a while longer.

QUESTION: Is that financial maturity on a national level?

Trying to force Iraqi culture to be more like America isn't going to work, IMO. Iraq has their own culture. I'd be interested to see how much money it takes for America to change Iraqs 6000 year old culture.

This is equivalent to me coming into your house and trying to change the way your family lives and operates to the way I think. It's probably not going to happen no matter how much money I spend.

Additionally:
Bush vows to stay course in Iraq
President Bush Monday expressed confidence that Americans would remain "steadfast and determined" in Iraq.
According to this article, "54% of Americans polled think that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake."

History - Diners Club Card- Started in 1949!

History - Diners Club 1950
The idea of the first credit card came in 1949. The first credit usage came in 1950 by Frank McNamara according to the Diner's Club website.

CREDIT CARDS SINCE 1950
People have been using credit cards since 1950. That's 55 years that the plastic culture has developed. This will be important to note later on when we study the history of credit and credit usage.

Calgary Alberta was great

I enjoyed our trip to Calgary Alberta this weekend. It's approx 550 miles away from Regina, Saskatchewan where I live. The weather was perfect all around.
Calgary is by the Rockie Mountains in Alberta. The view is absolutely gorgeous.

While driving and visiting I thought of many new fresh ideas to write about with regards to money and financial maturity.

As I was visiting my mother and her new husband, we talked about credit. How long they've had it and what their attitudes were first like to credit in the late 50's early 60's. It was an interesting visit that way.

NHL - Are they worth it?

NHL = National Hockey League
NHL = Not Here, Losers!!

Watching NHL - National Hockey League hockey is like watching my mail man deliver mail. I wouldn't pay $100 per ticket per person to watch the mail man walk down the street delivering mail. The mail man is a unionized worker. So is the NHL player.

I think that the NHL should be boycotted this season (2005-2006) so as to punish the players and the owners for their one year temper tantrum. A rookie makes USD$850,000, which is USD$71,000 per month. That's the highest union salary that I'm aware of.

Union workers are important to each industry. I just wouldn't spend $100 per ticket to watch them. Imagine... spending $100 to watch some GM employees make cars for 8 hours. What could be more fun?

SHOULD AN 18 YR OLD ROOKIE GET $71,000 PER MONTH?
Sidney Crosby gets $850,000 for his first rookie year. Sidney Crosby just turned 18 years old recently. Is it good for an 18 year old to make $71,000 per month even though he's a really good hockey player?

Does the NHL give their unionized rookie employees money counseling when they get their first pay check? It must be a huge shock to a young person's system when they get more money than they can imagine in the first month of their job.

TOO MUCH TOO SOON
As I mentioned in a previous post that "too much money too soon is like shoving a fire hose down your throat and turning on the water." You just can't handle it emotionally all at once.

BTW... $850,000 = 17,000 tickets @ $50 each.
17000 people have to purchase NHL tickets at $50 each to pay for a rookies salary.

Brad Loree - My cousin "The Stunt Guy"

Brad Loree This is my cousin Brad Loree - He's in the film industry in Canada.

He was in Xmen2, Final Destination 2, Dream Catcher, Cody Banks, halloween Resurrection, Halloween 8.

He's been pretty busy.

Hey Brad, stop by and say hi.

Off to Calgary Alberta for a few days.

I'm off for Calgary Alberta for a few days. Will be back on August 23, 2005.

As always I don't take any computers or other gadgets when travelling, just to unplug. I'll post some more opinions then.

In the meantime, while I'm away, please spend hours and hours commenting on all of the posts I've made. :-) (Humor)

But seriously, I appreciate all of your comments.

Cheers.

I love credit cards.

This is picture of my credit cards. I love credit cards. I respect credit cards.
I pay my balances off in full every month.

I mean... what other types of pictures can you put on a Financial Maturity Blog?

PhatInvestor - Submit your financial, stock market, business blog here

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Get your rss feed listed on this site.
PhatInvestor - Submit your financial, stock market, business blog here

Thanks Phatinvestor for the traffic!

Put your MONEY where your MOUTH is!

Hmm.. That's me - Monty Loree with my American Express card stuck in my mouth.

Dr Trina Read quoted here ... - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com

I am pretty excited and proud of my sister Dr. Trina Read. Trina Read has her doctorate in sexology, kind of like Talk Sex with Sue Johanson.

Trina is so good at what she does, she's now being quoted in MSNBC.

I guess writing and publishing run in the family...

Dear Trina Read, how do "I" get quoted in MSNBC?


When you care enough to risk everything ... - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com

Dearest America, do you LOVE or HATE motivational people?

So... pfblog hates motivational books, especially Robert Kiyosaki, because John T Reed says so.
Who the heck is John T Reed. He must be SOMEBODY.

This strikes me as funny...

THE AMERICAN DREAM
America is all about the achieving the 'American Dream'. This means that you're wealthy, live in a big house, live like a Rock Star etc. What ever the American Dream means to people, I'm sure it's all individual.

It's all about the pursuit of the American Dream.... Hollywood talks about it. I mean.. Hollywood is about the American Dream. Las Vegas calls to people. Las Vegas is all hype and flash... truly the American Dream... Making money from nothing.

America is all about business... making things and selling things... That's the American dream... It's an all consuming preoccupation.

AMERICA LOVES SELF PROMOTION
America is all about motivation and feeding itself it's own self promotion. All of the ad agencies in the U.S. are all about this self promotion. The U.S. is world renowned for its self promotion. It's economy would crash if advertising stopped for 1 minute.

Everybody knows that advertising is all about smoke and mirrors. It's all perception. It's all hyped perception. Hyped altered reality.

Robert Kiyosaki is a good promoter. He sells books. He's good at it. Robert Kiyosaki sells lots of books. Because Americans need to keep motivated to chase after the American dream.

Why then does pfblog.com and johntreed.com need to criticize this great promoter? According to what they're saying, if people don't buy motivational books and keep motivated, the U.S. economy is going to crash. Isn't that the truth?

motivational_books - PFblog.com re: don't buy motivational books
www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html - John T. Reed's analysis of Robert T. Kiyosaki's book Rich Dad, Poor Dad

MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKERS ARE JUST REALLY GOOD AT SELF PROMOTION
PS.. the only really wealthy person I know who has written a motivational book is Donald Trump.. The only reason Donald Trump is writing a motivational book is because he has one of the largest egos in the U.S. and must keep it properly fed on a regular basis. I can't disagree with him.

Every other motivational speaker is usually just a huckster who is really good at self promotion. I challenge anybody to tell me of a really successful person who does the motivational circuit because he loves the lifestyle.. Motivational speaking is gruelling. If a motivational speaker is worth millions and is still doing the circuit, then he is probably not well grounded and doesn't enjoy a happy family life. Why would a person who is financially independent do the motivational circuit.

(Written with a little tongue in cheek and sarcasm. And YES, I do love motivational speakers.) See comments.

Housing market ready to bust?!

I just watched an interest news item on www.cbs.com which talked about 10 states that were at least 40-50% at risk for a real estate depreciation trends in the next two years.

They mentioned that the head of a major real estate administrative group mentioned that the median price of real estate has peaked at a top level.

STUDY REAL ESTATE TRENDS IN YOUR AREA
Here are some tips to know if you're in an area where the real estate prices are at the top.
• Look for sale signs in your area.
• Pay attention to how long properties have been listed for sale. The for sale sign hasn't moved in months. If there are alot of houses in your area listed for months this will give you an idea of what your house may do.
• Compare how many rentals are listed in the news paper compared with for sale.
• Ask a realtor how many houses are listed in your area. Then ask, how many of these houses are selling per month. If there are 400 houses for sale and only 100 houses sell per month, you're probably going to be waiting a while to sell. There is a real estate inventory glut in your area. Prices will be forced to drop with over inventory.

CAN PEOPLE AFFORD THE REAL ESTATE IN YOUR AREA
A very interesting point was that they also measured the median income in the area.
They see a problem when the median price of real estate goes higher than the median family income in an area. This means that on average, people can't afford the real estate in a certain area.

EXPERTS SAYING MARKET IS FATIGUED!
The expert interviewed on cbs news said that there has been a steady nationwide increase of real estate property prices for the last 37 years. However, over the last 150 years there have been times when the prices have dropped across the nation. The real estate market has depreciated in local areas, but over a national scope.

The experts are saying that they're strongly suggesting that the market is at a peak. They mentioned that the market is fatigued because of pricing.

So... if you're looking at selling your home, I would start doing homework right now. Don't wait months to see the tell signs in your area. It may be too late.

PRICES ARE ABOUT SUPPLY AND DEMAND
It's all about real estate supply and demand. Prices are based on supply and demand. If people can't afford their houses, they're going to want to sell and will get desparate if they can't. If they get desparate, prices will fall sharply.

Big Brother 6 - Kaysar on the block - again!!

Ok.. I've figure out why people would watch a reality show like Big Brother 6.

People have 24 hours per day to think about and strategize about how to position themselves to be the winner.

If everybody had this amount of time to have pinpoint concentration on their money making, people would make more money.

This is unlikely in reality. Most people just don't have the idle time to sit and think about things like these Big Brother 6 players.

Jennifer is playing the game. She nominated Kaysar. She probably did the right thing as he is a threat. Kaysar is interested in winning.

Big Brother 6 - episode tonight

So.. Kaysar is back... I voted for him on CBS.com to return back to the house!

Jennifer makes a promise with her fingers crossed behind her back. She promised Kaysar that she would elect two of her people if she became head of household. Kaysar has promised that he's going to stir up the place when he gets back in.

Usually I don't have the time of day for reality shows. I started watching this Big Brother 6 when I was out in Newfoundland for two week vacation. There were only two channels at the parents in laws place and the viewing was limited.

I was intrigued by the interaction and grew curious of what the characters were going to do next.

WOULD I DO A REALITY SHOW LIKE BIG BROTHER?
The question that frequently crosses my mind is: Would I play a game like this, for all of the world to see, for 3 months removed from reality for the possiblity of $1 million or what ever the prize? I would if I was making more money there than what I normally do. I would strictly do it for the money.

I'm wondering if the other players at least get some money for being away from their respective jobs. Also, the guys that were sequestered, Eric, Michael, and Kaysar.. Did they get paid for sitting in their rooms locked away for those weeks while they waited to possibly get voted back in?

I'm trying to figure out why I've watched this show pretty faithfully for the last 5 weeks.

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Poker Greats -Stu Ungar - Broke - Rich - Broke - Rich - Broke

I just finished watching High Roller: The Stu Ungar story. It was a documentary / drama.

Here was a guy who was absolutely brilliant with poker. Apparently, he was a millionaire and went broke 4 times apparently.
He won several poker championships in Las Vegas.

This was a pretty sad movie. Stu Ungar did drugs for 20 years and died of being "self abusive" at the age of 45.

What happens to a guy like this? He had a wife and daughter and completely destroyed the relationship because of his drug abuse.
One scene in the movie shows Stu Ungar with a prostitute to whom he gives $30,000 just because.

I personally don't think the guy was grounded as a person at all. He had nothing to live for.

To me, even though Stu Ungar is reputed to be one of the best poker players of all time, he was the best example of being the worst at financial maturity. He's on the complete opposite end of the spectrum of any sense of financial or emotional management. He just didn't get it. I would be interested to know if Stu Ungar was a serious manic depressive. This may explain his lack of control, or his lack of interest in being controlled.

It's really important to study people like this, so that we can learn from their experiences.

Poker Pages: Poker Greats -Stu Ungar

AAA: Unleaded gallon, diesel strike new record highs - Aug. 16, 2005

Gas prices...
Gas prices are $1.10 per litre in Canada.

That's approx $4.50 per gallon U.S.
What bothers me is that the oil companies are raking in record profits.

I tried to negotiate a discount at the gas pump. The gas station attendant wouldn't go for it.

Electric Cars Please!!
AAA: Unleaded gallon, diesel strike new record highs - Aug. 16, 2005

GEM Cars- "Driving around town has never been this FUN!"

Check this out.. From Daimler Chrysler.
The Gem car... Global Electric Motorcars, LLC

With gas prices soaring, it's not surprising that the electrical models are starting to come out. These are pretty neat designs.

However, I don't think they would hold up in Saskatchewan in
-30C weather.

Electrical cars are on their way that's for sure. 5 years from now our roads will have a different look to them. You'll maybe have to plug in at the office and at home. A whole new economy/industry is going to be built in the next few years around electrical transportation.

Taking that a little further, solar power, green power is going to become pretty important as well.

GEM - "Driving around town has never been this FUN!"

Fear Factor & Las Vegas - favorite shows.

Some of my favorite shows to watch are Fear Factor and Las Vegas.
We're in rerun time..

Fear Factor
It's amazing to watch Joe Rogan host Fear Factor. He meets and interviews alot of people on the show. It's interesting to hear what people are going to spend their $50,000 on. It's also interesting to know what people would do to win $50,000. Is it really the $50,000 prize, the fame, or the title of Fear Factor champion that drives people to do all those crazy things.

If you notice, Joe Rogan says the same thing over and over again. His script rarely changes. "Yo, what's happening"

Las Vegas
I can't understand how people can spend $$thousands of dollars on gambling.
On Las Vegas, Sam is in charge of the "Whales". I think it's pretty interesting that people spend millions on gambling. Is it the thrill of gambling or that they get treated like royalty when they're at the casino.
This is a pretty glamorous show. I was at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where they shot the first few episodes of Las Vegas. A lady who worked at Mandalay Bay said that they moved the whole set to California. That's a pretty lavish set.

I believe that this show has to be somewhat real. When I was at the Bellagio, I saw slot machines for $100 and $500 per bet. That's crazy.

And that's why I like Fear Factor and Las Vegas.

I contacted the Rich Dad Corporation

After my last post I figured I should do some investigation to back up what I saying about the Rich Dad book series.

I spoke to Vicki at Rich Dad corporate head office. She was kind enough to spend some time answering some of my questions for this blog post. I mentioned to Vicki that we were talking about the Rich Dad series being light on details of how to buy and rent real estate.

She mentioned that the Rich Dad books were designed to get you thinking about developing your wealth. Vicki then mentioned that the audio package entitled -"Six Steps to becoming a successful real estate investor" gives you alot of nitty gritty details on how to invest and pitfalls to look for.

Vicki mentioned that this audio set includes the following information:
• Forms to fill out with contractors, renters, etc.
• Forms that show you what to look for when you do a walk through in a prospective property.
• Doing a walk through with a tenant
• What to do with pets
• How to figure out the taxes on a property
• How to figure out the utilities on a property
• ... more

Vicki also mentioned that Rich Dad has speaking engagements where you'll learn even more
nitty gritty info from the experts who've been there and done that.

Vicki said that there were three levels of developing your wealth.
• Think it. You've first got to think about being rich and how you're going to do it.
• Learn it. You've got to learn what you need to do before you start into the process. This is where the audio series comes into play.
• Do it. Now that you've trained yourself to think about wealth and began learning about what you're doing, the next main step is to get out there and do it.

I appreciate Vicki from the Rich Dad corporation taking time to visit with me.

I'm going to try to find a link for this audio set. It's on Rich Dad's website. Here's a link to an audio set that's close.

WTH? PFBlog.com hates motivational books?

Don't Waste Money On Motivational Books from pfblog.com ???????

Here's an article that I cannot completely agree with.

Fatboy is writing about his experience with purchasing a few motivational books by Robert Kiyosaki.
$bull; He's indicating that these motivational books are a waste of money.
$bull; He's indicating that motivational books are cancerous.

But first, the point I do agree with. "Even so, I have to give him credit for inspiring me to take the first step towards financial freedom. For that, I'm eternally grateful."

MOTIVATIONAL BOOKS ARE FOR..UMM.. MOTIVATION
I have to strongly disagree with the rest of his post.
The premise of motivational books is to motivate people to action. As everybody's life and interests are different, the books can only touch on the surface of subjects. Books can't pretend to speak to each individual's circumstances.

Many successful people I know invest in their knowledge. It's an ongoing process. The way I look at it, if I spend $30 bucks on a book and get 1 good idea, it's worth it.

My personal example.
I have been in business for many years but I didn't fully understand the following concepts until I saw them illustrated in Robert Kiyosaki's book.
The premise behind Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad - Poor Dad books are his financial quadrant.
1) Employed
2) Self Employed
3) Business Owner
4) Investor

Moving away from self-employed to Business Owner and Investor makes you freer as a person and delegates the responsibility to somebody else. This is with the understanding that the less you work, and the more your money works, the wealthier you are.

The rest of the book was an interesting read, but it is kind of basic. This four quadrant concept however was worth way more than the $30 bucks I spent on the book.

I agree with fatboy that you need to find all types of sources of information to help you with your wealth management. Much of research material type information is not terribly motivating. While I consider myself a self motivated individual, I always need some encouragement on a regular basis.

People that are successful, need as many motivational books as possible, to keep them inspired and educated.

Unsuccessful people will tend to blame the motivational book for their lack of success. ie.."I read this book and it should have made me rich" What a bunch of crap, in my opinion.

The only success I know is by hard work, on a consistent basis, over a long period of time. Over that time you make mistakes and get yourself into rough situations. At this point you need a bunch of reference materials to inspire you and give you ideas to dig you out of your situation.

When you've achieved your goals, you need motivation to make more goals. You need to learn from the people who have been there.

MOTIVATIONAL BOOKS CAN'T GIVE DETAILS.
Motivational books don't usually get into the details of the actual industry that they're talking about. Sometimes the people who write the books will put on seminars where they will give you the details. Generally you have to learn the details by research, and by practicing your trade. The more experienced I get, the better I understand what the motivational books actually mean.

So... fatboy, I have to disagree with most of your blanket statements. People SHOULD buy motivational books as a part of their ongoing, educational diet which leads them to
success.

Let me ask you a question fatboy.. for people just starting off in business with NO education in say real estate etc. where should they start? A motivational book in my opinion is the starting point to the educational process.

Here's a link so that people can buy Robert Kiyosaki's books:

ancient coins - What was financial maturity like back then?

What was financial maturity like when this coin was brand new?
How did people treat money in these ancient biblical times.


Marcus Aurelius, 161-180 A.D. - Orichalcum Sestertius, 161 A.D.

What was financial maturity like when these coins were brand new?
How did people treat money in these ancient biblical times.

What kinds of credit cards, lines of credit did they have back in 1000 B.C.?
ancient coins - Google Image Search Nice pictures of ancient coins.

Warning: These are not pictures from the mechanical credit system that we've got today. These go back to a time when money and relationships were tied a little more closely.

Robert Kiyosaki Quote about making MORE MONEY

A Robert Kiyosaki Quote. I love this one.
I have a problem with too much money. I can't reinvest it fast enough, and because I reinvest it, more money comes in. Yes, the rich do get richer.
Robert Kiyosaki - Money - Investing - Rich -

Problems with too much money
You either have too much or too little money. It's interesting that Robert Kiyosaki says that once you learn how to make money, you'll make more money. Then you get too much money and you still have to reinvest it to make even more money. It's a vicious circle. It's fun to make money to start with. After you've got way too much, you still have to invest the money rather than leave it sit still. Money hates to sit still, it's always got to be flowing places. That's why the rich get richer. And, sometimes the rich are NOT happy about getting richer.

Robert Kiyosaki Biography www.woodipoo.com Quote furnished by www.woodipoo.com and as well in the Rich Dad Poor Dad series.

Another of my favorite Robert Kiyosaki quotes
"The poor work for money. The rich make money work for them,"

This is along the lines of what Robert G Allen says about leveraging your money. "Wealth is when small efforts produce large results. Poverty is when large efforts produce small results." Robert Allen is saying that you're wealthy when you personally spend less time making the money and leverage all of your assets to make money.

A criticism that I've got with Kiyosaki, and it's a criticism that I have with most motivational speakers, Motivational speakers don't heavily caution novices who are just starting off in the money making / investing business. You never get a real sense of the blood and sweat that they spilled getting to where they are. They don't talk about failed marriages time they didn't spend with their children.

Making money to start off with is NOT easy. It's not for the weak of heart. However, if you're willing to put up with all of the hard experiences, it gets progressively easier.

Another thing, you don't want too much money all at once anyway.
ML Quote: "Too much money all at once when you're not used to it is like shoving a fire hose down your throat and turning on the water full blast." You get the idea.

Marriage - fighting about money?

www.freemoneyfinance.com article about Money and Marriage: Five Remedies for Couples who Argue About Money got me thinking about marriage and fighting about money problems.

Coincidentally, they're using material out of Suze Orman's article in yahoo.com

Money or an issue that costs money (let's say the water heater breaking down) frequently starts a fight. The fight is about how to solve the problem with the water heater.

You realize that you just spent $200 on a pair of Reeboks the day before and could have used that money on the water heater emergency.

Your spouse then blames you for financial imprudence because of the running shoe expenditure.

You then blame your spouse for spending $100 at the candle party and $75 at the lingerie party two weeks ago.

Then you start fighting about the crappy candles and the lingerie that lasted only a week.

Then you keep going and going and going. The fight lasts for hours and you end up sleeping on the couch.

During the you were fighting, you tore several strips off of each other and made each other feel really bad about yourselves and your relationship.

At this point in the fight, you wonder to yourself, what exactly were we fighting about? And when you remember, you ask yourself, was the water heater problem really worth making my spouse cry? She's not going to talk to me for the next few days.

I'm sure I'm not the only one this has happened to. :)

The fight started because you were upset about an emergency that happened. An uncontrollable event that you couldn't have helped even if you wanted.

The point is to identify what you're really arguing about. If you're fighting about the water heater, then make sure you don't bring in personal issues. This is not a fight about your relationship and the points you don't like about your spouse.

The water heater issue could be solved as easily as sitting down calmly and discussing how you can pay for the repair of the water heater. Will you have enough money in the next week's pay check. Can you borrow money from family and friends until that point. There might be an easy resolution.

An important of financial maturity is to realize that money is money, and your relationship is completely different. Money is a resource like a library card. It has no feelings. It doesn't know you. It has no loyalty to you. It doesn't even like you. Money is a trading mechanism that allows you to trade value for value in a succinct way.

Your relationships are about loyalty friendships, feelings etc.

Once you learn to separate money issues from relationship issues, you'll cut down on many unnecessary fights.

As yourself... what is this fight about? Is it about a money issue, or is it about my relationship? In the water heater incident listed above, the issue is a very clear cut case of "money can fix this, leave the relationship out of it".

That was a nice post on www.freemoneyfinance.com . Thanks

Robert Kiyosaki and Suze Orman Blog search

OK now I'm stoked...
Now I need to know what people think of Suze Orman and Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad).

They're both evangelists of different types for money management and wealth development.
Have you read their books, seen their seminars, seen their TV shows (Suze Orman).

Do you like / hate Suze Orman's philosophies?
Do you like / hate Robert Kiyosaki's philosophies?

After reading some blog reviews on Suze Orman, people have mixed reaction to her.
Some people say she's downright annoying and wouldn't watch her for more than 3 seconds.
Other people say that she's really helped out their finances and given them a good wake up call.

Personally, I think that she speaks about common sense financial stuff in a marketplace that doesn't understand common sense financial stuff. I make this bold statement because America is in the worst shape financially on record.

• American's have a record amount of personal debt.
• Bankruptcy's are on the rise.
• Debt counseling and credit repair services are advertised all over the place.

I would venture to say that if interest rates went up to 12-15% as they were in the 80's people would be in big trouble. Many people would be defaulting on their credit cards, lines of credit, auto loans, mortgages etc. in record numbers.

Suze Orman is doing her best in her market niche to bring some well needed advice to nation that is drunk in debt. Just my opinion.

What do you think of Suze Orman and Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad)?
____________________________________________________
Just for fun I searched for Suze Orman and Robert Kiyosaki site:blogspot.com on google.com

I found robertkiyosaki.blogspot.com and suzeorman.blogspot.com. These are spammy blogs created to develop adsense traffic.

Other than that, I'm going to keep looking.

How to Create Your Own Luck - book review

I purchased the book How to Create Your Own Luck by Susan RoAne because I just loved the title. It's a philosophy that I try to work by. The other saying is "The harder I work, the luckier I get" I find this statement to be true all the time.

Susan's book talks about the "eight traits of people who create their own luck"
• They talk to strangers
• They make small talk
• They drop names
• They eavesdrop and listen
• They ask for and offer help
• They stray from their chosen paths
• They exit graciously with out burning bridges
• They say YES when they want to say NO!

This book is all about relationship development and generating leads by working with people. It's like the example where you're on an airplane and strike up a conversation with somebody who is completely valuable to what you're doing. If you didn't talk to strangers, you wouldn't ever create this luck.

People who I talk to who aren't successful usually give all sorts of reasons as to why they can't do this or that. This book turns it around and really encourages people to look for opportunities.

Maturity comes into play when you have to do things like "Exit Graciously".
Don't burn bridges that are valuable. Even if the person really up set you.

Chapter 2 Lemons to Lemonade, Susan refers to the "You never know it alls". These are people who say things to people who 'You never know who they are talking to'. You never know when the good you do is going to be noticed by people that make the decisions, or by people who know people who make the decisions.

The point of this book is to network, network, network. Do lots of good for people and eventually you'll start to create your own luck.

Saturday Special - pfblog.com, Robert and Suze

I want to write something intelligent and stimulating today, but I've been writing all day for my Canadian Money Advisor website. (Sorry for the shameless promotion)

Here are some questions that I had regarding the Personal Finance Blog area.

Who is www.pfblog.com?
They have great articles, a great google PR, they've been around since 2003 from what I could find. Tons of people link to pfblog.com.
I did a whois search on www.domains.ca

It says that pfblog is owned by the following:
registrant-firstname: Money
registrant-lastname: Manager
registrant-street1: 1 Microsoft Way
registrant-pcode: 98052
registrant-state: WA
registrant-city: Redmond
registrant-ccode: US
registrant-phone: +425.8828080
registrant-email: webmaster@pfblog.com

Is www.PFblog.com owned by Microsoft or an employee of microsoft? Maybe even Bill Gates? ;-) This is not an important thing, I just thought it was interesting.

If you own PFBlog.com can you come by and visit. Thanks.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Have you posted your blog to the following places:
www.technorati.com
www.bloglines.com
www.feedburner.com
www.syndic8.com
Do you have your blog set up on RSS feed?
What are other ways you're marketing your blog?

-------------------------------------------------------------
SUZE ORMAN - WHERE ARE YOU?
I am officially inviting Suze Orman to come by and visit my blog and talk to me about personal finance and financial maturity. So... if anybody knows Suze Orman or is associated with Suze Orman's Television show, please let me know how I can discuss personal finance etc with Suze Orman. This is an official invitation.

I think Suze Orman is a pretty straight shooter.. I agree with alot of what she says, however, there are somethings I don't agree with. Such is true with everything in life.

-------------------------------------------------------------
ROBERT KIYOSAKI - WHERE ARE YOU?
This invitation goes out as well to famed Rich Dad's Robert Kiyosaki. I own and have read most of his books about retiring young and wealthy etc. I am inviting Robert Kiyosaki
to come by and visit my Financial Maturity blog and talk about money and personal finance.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Aside from that, I don't have alot to talk about today.
So... pfblog.com, Robert and Suze, come on down.

Cheers

MONEY Magazine: Declare financial independence! - Aug. 12, 2005

This article deserves a mention today.
Getting in control of your life and your time.

Taking control of your life may be difficult, but it can be extremely gratifying.
MONEY Magazine: Declare financial independence! - Aug. 12, 2005

My Credit Repair Blog

For the most part I try to keep my Credit Repair Discussion Blog
separate from my financial maturity blog although I am passionate about both topics.
Just FYI... if you've got any questions about credit repair, come on over to my credit repair blog.

I'll do my best to help out over there.

For Canadians.. please drop by to my Canadian Money Advisor website and drop into the credit repair area.

IMO.. credit repair and keeping one's credit in perfect condition is a big part of financial maturity.

Developing goals helps F.M.

Goal setting is important for financial maturity. Along the path of life, it's perfectly alright to set and change your goals. Sometimes when you achieve a goal it may be exactly what you thought it was going to be like. Other times a achieving a goal may leave you with a completely different feeling than when you first set the goal.

The smartest goal bench marks to set are as follows:

Setting the "Longest Term Goal"
What do you want to achieve by the time you're 75 years old? What do you want to be written on your grave stone? In my opinion, this is a goal that can get the strongest gut feeling on.

Examples..
• Do you see yourself as being the Leader of your Country?
• Do you see yourself as actually having $100 million in assets, with all of the headaches and jetset lifestyle?
• Do you see your self as having a strong family with a solid marriage and happy children and grandchildren?
• Do you feel that you just want a medium type life? A little success but still have a nice family life?

I believe that even if you're 18 years old, you should be able to have a sense of what you want to "become" by the time you're 75 years old. This is a pretty strong gut feeling that is developed by many different factors in your life.

Question... are your current goals in line with this "longest term goal"?

If you want $100 million net worth as one goal and a strong family on the other side, these maybe conflicting goals. If you strongly want a solid happy family, being a work-a-holic over a long period of time is maybe not the way to go.

Next.. set 5 year goals
One of the most important things to do when setting up your next set of five year goals is to evaluate your last five years. Even if you didn't set any goals for the last five years, you learned a great deal about what you do and don't like in life.

My experiences
Personally, I over exceeded my 5 year goals in the past, and now have to reset them ALL. As such, I have learned a great deal about what I want and what I don't want our of life. I have to work through some conflicts... I love to work and achieve goals but the 37 sets of burn out are starting to catch up :) I like the money, but I am starting to value family time much more than 5 years ago. I am developing my business so that it is, and I am, way more family friendly.
These are a set of newly revised and refined goals. I feel much better with these goals than my goals for the last five years.

Some practical things to do
I write down on a piece of paper some basic information as follows:
5 years from now is 2010, I'll be age (your age + 5). My kids will be age (their ages +5)
etc.

This is just basic planning, but it's nice to do this exercise once in a while.

Goal setting can't be underestimated. Goal setting is all about hope development. A person without hope is lost.

Getting your goals in perspective along the way is exceptionally important to maintain ongoing financial and emotional maturity and well being.

What do you think...?
Are goals over rated?
Do you set goals?
Have you ever achieved all of your goals?
Do you think goal setting is a waste of time?

Everybody Saving 10% of their money?!!?

Hazzard Everybody loves your money needs some credit for asking this powerful question. What happens if everybody saved 10% of their money. What would happen to businesses, the economy, people who are saving?

I am really interested in this question from the well being stand point of North Americans. What would happen to the emotional well being of North Americans if they were willing and able to save 10% of their income?

I am going to chew on this for a few days... this is an important question fundamentally. I really hope people keep this question alive for a long time. This should become a major question that is discussed amongst personal finance bloggers and their readers.

My assumptions for this question are:
1) Save 10% of your gross income (income before taxes)
2) Save at a bank at 10% guaranteed interest rate
(other investments complicate the discussion)
3) People are able to pay their existing bills and debt payments even before saving.
4) This saving program is mandatory for 10 a year time period.

I thought it would be good to hammer out some assumptions so as to simplify the discussion.

I think that the North American economy would strengthen quite a bit if everybody kept to this savings program for 10 years minimum. The basis for my belief is that a debtor nation is much more vulnerable to internal and external forces than a nation of strong savers.
Quote ML: "Currently North America is in a drunken stupor spending wise."
Quote ML: "The North American individual spending is redlining while the car is up on blocks; People are spending really fast, but are going nowhere!"

What would happen to the North American economy is every individual saved 10% of their gross income. Interesting!!

Quote of the Day from Robert G Allen

I've been reading motivational books and listening to motivational tapes for over 20 years since 1994. One of my earliest tapes is "Nothing Down" by Robert G Allen. Robert Allen was talking about cookie cutter strategies to developing wealth in real Estate.

One of my favorite quotes that I still adhere to this day, 21 years later goes like this:
"Poverty is when large efforts produce small results, Wealth is when small efforts produce large results"

Robert Allen was describing what happens when you leverage your money to purchase money earning real estate.

I look for all of the assets that I have to leverage. This is powerful and true. I try to do things that leverage all of my assets and my time. These assets include everything from my knowledge to my business assets. I don't want to be doing large efforts to produce small results.

Quick Poll - Have you seen your credit reports?

I am curious to know how many people have seen all of their credit reports?
If you're in the U.S., your main credit reporting agencies are:
Equifax
TransUnion
Experian

If you're in Canada the main credit bureaus are:
Equifax
TransUnion

1) Do you know what your credit scores are?
2) Do you know how your credit score affects your interest rates and service charges with the lenders?
3) Do you know ways to improve your credit score?

The Fair Credit Reporting Act is the FTC's rules for U.S.

Each Canadian Province has their own rules for credit reporting agencies.
New Brunswick is the only province that does not have a law that regulates credit bureaus provincially. Canadians also have PIPEDA which is privacy laws to help them federally with credit bureaus.

Now now... don't be shy... let me know if you have or have not seen your credit reports.

Things we take for granted... I need WATER

There are just some things that money cannot buy. The feeling of well being is one of them.

This weekend past, we noticed that there was a crack in our water main very close to our house. We pulled up the floor boards in our basement. (My wife thankfully is comfortable and good at manual type work.) As we chipped into the concrete floor with a small jack hammer, the water started gushing into the basement.

It seems that the water had been collecting around the base of the house for several months. It had no where to go, and started gushing into the house as my wife dug deeper and deeper into the concrete, soil and sand. (By this time, I'm having nervous break down and have to go to the office in to a calm area.) We have a water pump which my wife ran for several hours to drain the gusher.

We then had to have the city come by and shut the water off so that we could get the whole gushing thing under control. The water was off in the house for the last few days. During these days with no water, the heat was unbareable in the house, we were boiling water to clean dishes etc, which made it even more hot.

In thinking about this financial maturity post, I'm thinking to myself, "there are somethings money just can't buy.
Peace of Mind... during the stages of have the basement covered in mud and the furniture all over the place. As well, trying to find people to trench out the yard in front of the house.

Cleanliness - After no showering for a few days, people are more 'noticeable' in the house. We decided if worse comes to worse, we'll go to the YMCA to get a shower.

Figuring out workarounds. We've enjoyed so far working with the kids to talk about how to work around the inconveniences we're experiencing.

In this short time, I am becoming very appreciative of this thing that I continually take for granted..."WATER!"

PF Blog review, questions, opinions, etc.

It's interesting to read other's PF blogs. Personal Finance blogs are a way that people can blow off steam in a masked, anonymous way. I am willing to bet that the people that actually list their assets and liabilities on their blogs wouldn't even show their best friends this type of information. It's extremely difficult for us as people to talk about these personal things.

abileneblues.blogspot.com
has a thoughtful blog. abileneblues has given me some well thought out comments on my blog topics. I look at his blog as a lifestyle discussion with some money mixed into it. After 20 years of marriage he looks like he's got some things figured out.
QUESTION: I'm trying to figure out the direction of this blog. It doesn't seem to be a get out of debt, save money or other type of blog. Can you define it for us abileneblues... do you want to define your blog?

No Credit Needed
I understand perfectly what this blog is about. NCNblog is getting out of debt by October. I like the commentary about his successes and setbacks. I like about how he's describing how he's making extra money on ebay. That's great stuff.
QUESTION: What are you going to talk about after October when you are debt free?

Everybody Loves your Money
Hazzard's on a saving money mission. He loves saving money. I love this kind of passion. Hazzard's got a net worth of $264,000 and is thus pretty qualified to talk about money.
QUESTION: Is Hazzard going for the $1 million in net worth. Can he save his way to that $1 million goal? Everybody loves your money.. what a truthful statement.

JLP - All things financial
I get a sense that JLP is a pretty aggressive and successful fee-only financial planner. He's a pretty analytical thinker and obviously reads alot. He's always got lots of interesting posts to read.
QUESTION: Are you reaching your financial goals? Are you happy with how your personal finances are treating you?

Savvy Saver
It looks like Savvy saver's doing pretty well. Erin gives us some well thought out and explained discussion of her finances.
I have just started reading savvy saver's blog and am not familiar with her situation completely.

Eddie Lampert's stock discussion"
Eddie has a great deal of stock information for investors. This is especially important for investigating stocks you want to purchase. The hardest part of stock investing is knowing stocks enough to be comfortable with them.
QUESTION: Eddie... how are your personal stocks doing? Are you actually making money on the stocks you're promoting?

I didn't have as much time as I wanted to to talk about some of your blogs today.
When you read other's blogs you often have questions that you'd like to ask but are maybe shy to. Sometimes I like to get into the guts of the matter. Interesting blogs are all about sharing value amongst ourselves and our readers.

Have a great day!

Financial Maturity, when too much $$ money is a problem

I saw a program on TV last night about 7 lottery winners. They were trying to glorify the wonderful aspects of winning the lottery. One lady won $91 million, another fellow won $42,5 million. What I was really interested to hear was how they were dealing with it personally and how their friends and relatives were dealing with it.

The fellow that won the $42.5 million said it best. "People around you change the most."
Because wealth is only for 3-5% of the population, it unlikely that these people friends and relatives know what to do with this kind of wealth. Yes.. people have opinions on what they would do with $42.5 million, but they have no idea until they're actually in the situation.

I heard it said that, more money makes your personality more extreme. ie... if you're a nasty person before winning the lottery, you'll be even more nasty after winning money. If you're a helpful loving person before winning the lottery, you'll be even more so afterwards.

Your friends perceptions and attitudes change
It's hard to talk with our friends when we're doing extremely well financially. I've seen it over and over again where people start to make good money and enjoy a life style of their hard work. They can't talk about it with their old friends as their friends don't understand the concept of a continuous stream of big money.

I over heard a conversation once where some friends were talking about taking a taxi across town. The broke friend said, "geez.. it's going to cost $20.00 to take a taxi". The successful friend said, "I'll pay what ever it takes to keep me safe and comfortable!" The broke friend replied resentfully, "well, I just don't have that kind of money!"

You may have to find more ambitious friends
If you're making lots of money, after a while you don't want to talk about money with your old friends because it's embarrassing. They want to know, how much did you pay for this, how much did you pay for that? When everything in your house is from stores that are too expensive for your friends to shop at, you might stop inviting friends to your house.

With regards to socializing with old friends, where as once you thought McDonalds was expensive, now you frequent more expensive places, just because you like the atmosphere and people more. Your old friends can't afford to step into the place. You don't got there to spite your friends or show off, you just go there because it comfortable and affordable to you.

Successful peers become less and when you get into the higher stratosphere of money. ie... how many people do you know would look at you in a "so what?" fashion if you chunked out $50,000 to $100,000 cash out of your pocket on a real estate deal. The "so what?" people have had to do this a few times to get bored with it.

Find people who make bigger money than you!
Successful people enjoy when they're talking to people who are way more success and they tell them about their bigger better deals. It's refreshing. You can't go around bragging to people who don't understand money and finance that you just shelled out $100,000+ cash that you took from cash flow. First they don't understand it. Second they'll think you're a bragging S.O.B. They get resentful and want to see your business crash. You're not trying to brag, you're just explaining the facts of the deal because it's interesting to you.

Money can cause problems
The point is there is a down side to lots of money. All of the motivational books don't touch on this alot because they want to sell you the book. These books just hilite the pros of all the wonderful things you can buy. They don't talk about you sitting in your beautifully done living room by yourself because all your workaholic friends are too busy to socialize.

Finally..
Making money and being debt free is good. Making lots of money can have problems because it may alienate your current set of friends and family. It's important to remember this in our financial maturity trek.

ML

Today's post... Comments about PF blogs tomorrow

Small post today..

Tomorrow I'm going to do a mini review of some personal finance bloggers in the community.
Hold on.. it's not going to be that bad..!!

If you drop by and want me to look for something specific on your blog to comment about, let me know.

Thanks to JLP for the link and kind comments.

Otherwise, I have to go and do some pillow inspection... review the writing on the back of my eyelids for a few hours... or plainly stated .. get some sleep.

BTW... who is experienced with feedburner.com, bloglines.com, technorati.com?


Later

Why financial maturity?

By now some people may be wondering why I go on and on about money stuff and peoples lives. Most personal finance blogs are about a person's own finances.

A little bit more about my back ground. I spent the better part of the last two years trying to develop a credit repair company in Canada. I've spent hundreds of hours talking to people about their problems and hearing about all sorts of things. I've listened to people cry on the phone because their spouse left them and their kids and aren't paying the bills.

I've talked to many people who have dug themselves deep into problems, most of which could have been avoided.

I've spent hundreds of hours writing letters and talking to credit bureaus, creditors, government agencies etc trying to dig people out of their holes. I became more and more intrigued with why people get themselves into trouble. I am also intrigued with how to get credit bureaus and creditors to try to do something in Canada. The level of bureaucracy and politics amazes me. I've fought with top levels of government in Canada just to try to get something done.

I did this while managing my internet advertising company. My internet advertising company grew from $85K in sales to over $1.2 million in sales in 3 years. When i first started the growth process, I virtually had $7500 in credit cards. I had to manage all of that growth on very little credit which was excrutiatingly painful.
So from a personal stand point I've got through several highs and lows with credit and credit cards etc. I've held my business together for the last 11 years.

So between credit repair and managing my own business, I am pretty passionate about talking about the subjects I do. I want to challenge people as much as possible and help them stay out of problems. Hopefully I can lend a little of my hard earned experience to people and save them the pain.

Aside from all of this, I love to talk about money!!

That's a little more about me. Cheers!

Financial Maturity - Boundaries - Helping Family Out

Should you help out family or not?

One potential money drain / usage is helping family members out when they need a hand. I can see helping family when they're in dire situations , but I'm thinking about when the family member is disorganized / irresponsible and keeps asking for money.

The scenario:
You're working hard and surviving paycheck to paycheck. You've got a little extra discretionary money at the end of each paycheck. You're trying to be responsible and settled and live below your means.

Your brother/(sister) makes considerably more money than you. He's deeply in debt, and likes to live the lifestyle. Recently he's gone through some problems and has been spending even more money on gambling and drinking.

The problem is:
Your brother's children have worn out clothes and they don't eat properly. The utility bills haven't been paid in months and their water was just turned off.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO? OR WHAT IS THE FINANCIALLY MATURE THING TO DO?
• Do you shell out your discretionary income to help get your neices' and nephews' water turned back on?
• Do you buy the kids some food?
• Do you report your brother to child services and welfare?
• Should you be responsible for your irresponsible brother? Where can you and should you draw the line?
• Does financial maturity even play into this situation?

Mini Book Review - Books I own & have read

RUSS WHITNEY's Building from rags to riches through real estate
I like this book. It talks about Russ Whitney from the time he started out. He made $5 per hour killing hogs. He figured their must have been a better way. He then worked very hard and learned his way to the top. He shows great diligence.

It also gives the reality of being self employed and some of the tough decisions that he had to make. Russ Whitney is a good marketer. I even went to one of his presentations on Real Estate.

For real estate as an investment, this is a good starter book. It's down to earth!



DONALD TRUMP'S "TRUMP HOW TO GET RICH"
This book is a lie. I bought the book out of respect for Donald Trump. Anybody who's been $9 billion in debt and comes back from near bankruptcy gets my automatic respect.

This book does not talk about how to get rich in direct terms. It talks about Donald Trumps diary and his networking skills. Yes... it gives some basic personal skills such as:
Remember: The Buck Starts Here
Ideas are welcome, but make sure you have the right one
Focus on the talent instead of the title
etc etc

I mean.. this stuff is full of stories and anecdotes from a multibillionaire.
The information is true and fun to read.. I was just expecting a little more practical information from this book.

I don't think I would get rich from reading this book. I think this book is to make money for Donald Trump during his hot 'Apprentice' days.

I did enjoy seeing into the inner life of the business legend Donald Trump.

Life after debt? What are you plans?!!?

This post is inspired by ncnblog in a conversation amongst Hazzard, ncnblog, and abileneblues and myself. They had some really good points. Of course I need uninterrupted blog space to share my own opinion. :-) Caution: tongue in cheek nature with serious material.

There are many bloggers that talk about being in debt and what a wonderful thing it would be to not be in debt. To be debt free. They speak of this day when they become debt free as if it was one of the most important days of their lives.
1) I got married
2) I had my first born child
3) I became debt free
4) I bought my first car

They think that this momentous debt free day is going to make them a better person in all ways.
1) If I become debt free, I'll be a better person over all.
2) Being debt free will make me lose 50 pounds.
3) I'll be a better / smarter person if I'm debt free.
4) Being debt free has made me a better lover.

What are you expecting from being debt free? Aside from the debt free part of it, what type of emotions or results do you think that becoming debt free is going to evoke?

Ok.. next question:
What are you going to do after you become debt free?
Are you going to save money, buy more stuff, learn to invest, get back into debt?

Here's my all important question... If you plan on saving money or learning to invest after you become debt free, why aren't you doing that before you get debt free? I feel that you start doing the things you plan to do now instead of after you become debt free. This is something you can control.

My belief on becoming debt free.
Becoming debt free is REALLY important. I personally hate being under somebody else's control financially. I recommend that everybody become debt free.

Here's my prediction
For all the people who are struggling to become debt free, here's what's going to happen. You're going to feel this wonderful blissful feeling and a huge weight being taken off your shoulders. This wonderful feeling is going to last for approximately 3 days. Then you're going to have to ask your self, what next?

Start looking past the "wall of debt" now and start planning today what you're going to do with yourself and your money after you become debt free.

Cornerstones of Financial Maturity / Boundaries

Wow... this is a tough subject.

I'm trying to think about the cornerstones of financial maturity. When I think of financial maturity, I tried to get an understanding of why people get out of control with their money, their plans for the future and their lives in general.

I ask myself questions like, what do people do when they get unhappy? What do people do to fill that empty feeling inside?

I will try to cover these topics during the month of August.

CONTROL YOUR BOUNDARIES
This discussion brings me back to a time when I felt out of control as a person. I took an anger management course at a local church. It was a pretty good course as the instructor had been through the process himself several times personally and as a teacher.

I didn't understand why I was angry so much, or why I would get angry at the drop of a hat. I thought it was normal. After all I had been this way for several years of my adult life.

The instructor gave us a work book during the anger management course. It's listed below and entitled simply "Boudaries". It was a powerful book that literally turned my life around.

premise of the book Boundaries
Everybody has different things that they deal with in their lives:
• Family / your spouse and children
• Family of origin / your parents and brothers and sisters.
• Job - Making a living
• Hobbies
• Friendships
• Spiritual / worship and inner being time.

Everybody has 24 hours each day in which to take care of things. People usually get angry because they get out of control of different parts of their lives.

If you're spending all your time with work and friends , your spouse is probably going to take issue with that. If your hobbies are costing too much time and money, you're probably not going to have money for necessary items.

The idea then is to define the different aspects of your life and your boundaries.

The concept about boundaries that impressed me the most was the following question:
Assuming that you are completely out of control with your time usage, and you want to do a little gardening, you have to adjust your definitions of what your gardening time and effort should be. You ask yourself, "based on my current time structure, can I handle working on a garden that's only 1 sq ft x 1 sq ft?"

This may seem ridiculous. But the boundaries illustration works perfectly for a garden. In most cases, people would say that they would be able to tend a garden that's 1 sq ft x 1 sq ft. That defines a boundary of what you would feel comfortable doing in simplistic terms.

Here's what I did:
I thought of my different life components as described above in terms of 1 sq ft x 1 sq ft gardens. I made my boundaries so small that I could easily fulfill them. The problem before was that my boundaries had no definitions to them and I was trying to live life components that were too largely undefined. ie.. I worked too much, spent alot of money on building my business, had no time for myself or my family or anything else for that matter.

My boundaries for work were huge, almost limitless. This constricted my time for everything else in my life. This caused constant fights with my family and alienated my friends. The worst part of it was that I didn't know how or why I got my self into such and unhappy situation.

After this Boundaries /anger management course I was very excited to redefine my boundaries. My anger got into control in a very short space after that. (It takes constant practice to get that right, even years later.)

Financial maturity is highly related to this boundaries example. If you're feeling out of control with your money and possibly your life, I encourage you to read the Boundaries book listed below. Getting the different aspects of your life defined and into control will more than likely help with you financial maturity quest.

Let me know what you think.

August already? - Let's get started

It's 4:15 am.. the cat startled me by knocking over a pile of stuff on the table.

Something as simple as that can get a person rattled!

Well, while I'm up, I'm looking forward to seeing some new personal finance blogs and seeing how everybody's doing. It's really neat when people talk about their successes.

My success for this blog was writing consistently for one month and getting money-maturity.blogspot.com visible on www.google.com", www.yahoo.com", and www.msn.com"

MSN has listed the most pages of this blog at 115. Google is next at 22, and Yahoo has published 7 pages. Oh yeah... did I mention that my core business is developing websites in the financial industry that help people get good quotes and service?

It's important to get listedin the search engines. The more pages you get listed, the more visitors you'll attract. I'd be interested to hear ways that people have used to develop their log traffic business. I understand that there are many ways to promote a blog that are different than promoting a regular website.