Author, Entrepreneur, Speaker
If you’re a family of 4 in America earning $22,350, you’re eligible for the following free* goodies:
Poverty in America means a family of 4 is living on gross income of $54,301, getting more in government taxpayer money then they earn. No wonder we’re broke.
*Free to the recipient, extremely expensive to everyone who pays taxes.
Why aren’t you rich? Probably because you fall into one or all of these categories:
You don’t have an education
To succeed in America, you must have a high school diploma and either a college degree or trade skills. You don’t have to spend have a lot of money on your education, you just have to know enough to get a job. Spending too much on your degree defeats the purpose of your schooling. Go to school to get a job.
You don’t have a job
Get a job. Any job. Worry about the salary later.
Work hard. Learn stuff. Solve problems. You’ll soon be rewarded with opportunities to earn more money.
You’re single
A few caveats: 1) Don’t go into debt getting married; 2) You and your spouse must each have an income; 3) Don’t marry someone with debt. Single with no debt is better than married with debt and a spouse who doesn’t work.
You have kids (and aren’t married)
Single-parent households are more likely than 2-parent households to live in poverty. Same goes for the children when they reach adulthood. Ladies, here’s the easiest way to create wealth: keep your legs together until you’re married to someone with a job, have a job yourself, and are debt-free.
You have an addiction
Alcohol, drugs (legal or otherwise), gambling, smoking or shopping. I’m sure I missed one or two. Rule of thumb: If it costs money, makes you unemployable, damages your health or otherwise interferes in your ability to control the first 4 items on this list, stop doing it.
You love to play the victim
You can never catch a break. You blame others for your problems. You expect society to take care of you and yours. Until you change your mindset, you’ll never be successful, wealthy or happy.
Adam Carolla profanely and succinctly cuts to the chase:
Pull out, get a fucking job and stop counting on the government. We’re Americans. We don’t hope for shit, we do shit.
Walter Williams sums it up a little more genteelly:
Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.
Now you know the secret to getting rich. It’s time to take control and build your perfect life.
Oh yeah!
Forget the Super Bowl. Read these articles instead. Okay, read them during the commercials.
This Deadspin article about the replay process is either groundbreaking or a waste of time. You decide.
44% of challenges on 1080i-broadcast games resulted in a reversal, compared to only 38% on 720p broadcasts. Taking the different number of challenges on each network into account, a replay challenge of a game broadcast on NBC, CBS, or the NFL Network was 5% more likely to reverse the call on the field than one on other networks.
Greg was welcomed back at ProBlogger with this article about blog carnivals.
I’m not talking about running guest posts, nor contributions from freelance or staff writers. I mean leveraging the work of dozens of other bloggers in your genre, for your mutual benefit.
Kathryn at Kathryn’s Conversations explains why ugly people have such a hard time in life:
Even when no sex is involved, good-looking people charm interviewers, get hired faster, are more likely to make more sales and get more raises. You look good and you’re compensated in return. People like to do business with people that they like, and people they like to look at. Being good at your job is a bonus.
Kathyrn’s bio tells us she’s “an expert in cutting through the onslaught of excess information; I read over fifty daily news briefs and pop culture trends (more on my research experience below), then curate and communicate any information that will help you to grow both financially and personally.” Which means she can curate and communicate to us that attractive means to attract attention, prosperity and admirers.
I like when people agree with me. Eric Nisall at DollarVersity.com wrote:
Rather than choosing something that is realistic and achievable, people tend to set their sights on things that are unrealistic, then look to point the finger elsewhere rather than take responsibility and be accountable for the decisions they make.
Keeping with the responsibility theme, Teacher Man from MyUniversityMoney.com tells recent college grads to (wo)man up and get on with their lives:
I can see the attraction to piking your head out of the proverbial gopher hole that is your university/college, being terrified of the chaos around you, and diving right back into safer surroundings in the form of a graduate degree. This will definitely extend your period of youthful bliss and allow you to feel intellectually superior to man around you; HOWEVER, it is probably not what is best for you in the long-term, at least not from a personal finance perspective.
No wonder those college students don’t want to leave academia. Atlanta’s CBS TV affiliate looked into the startling trend of college students receiving food stamps.
A sum of $200 is awarded to program participants each month, which is to be used toward grocery bills.
According to this story, a basic meal plan at Georgia State University runs $1,700. Why doesn’t the state just buy these students said meal plan and save $700?
Finally, 2 entries from the category of “Who put this guy in charge of the economy?”
Steve Sailor wrote about the Obama family finances:
The Obama thinking appears to have been:
1. Borrow against home equity and consume.
2.
3. Get rich!But, hey, it worked.
Over at the Washington Times, Richard Rahn takes a closer looks at the President’s proposed Buffett Rule:
The actual tax rate Mitt Romney, Warren Buffett and most other wealthy people pay on dividends, when correctly calculated, is about 52%, as reported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes the federal and state corporate-level profits tax burden, plus federal and state taxes on dividends.
There’s a lot more good stuff about double taxation, the difference between dividend, capital gains and ordinary income and how the US stacks up against other industrialized nations vis-a-vis the taxation of these different kinds of income. Read it all before you start talking about inequity in the current tax system.
Exhausted after climbing Florida's highest (mole)hill
Britton Hill in Lakewood Park, Florida is the home to the lowest state high point. The park, along with commemorative marker (shown above), is so far north it’s almost in Alabama. According to Wikipedia: “ …as of 2010, the roof of the Four Seasons Hotel Miami is the highest non-natural point in Florida. Topping out at 789 feet, the tower is more than twice as high as Britton Hill”
Don’t Mess with Taxes included my article Don’t Play Fair in the Tax Carnival #96-Dealing with Tax Dragons
Receive paycheck – deposit – pay bills – hope you have enough to cover them – repeat. That’s no way to live. Nor does it have to be.
You’re just one person, with the same daily 24-hour allotment everyone else has. In other words, how much you can earn is far more limited than how much your money can earn. If you work 40 hours a week and want to double your income, there are two direct ways to do it:
1. Put your money to work for you.
2. Work 80 hours a week.
The people who build wealth via passive income vastly outnumber those who do it just by the sweat of their brows.
Read The Unglamorous Secret to Riches and find out how the people who earn more than you (while somehow having more time on their hands than you) manage to do so.
It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. You don’t have to sell anything, or even talk to anyone. AND NO, IT’S NOT MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING, EITHER. COME ON, GIVE US A LITTLE BIT OF CREDIT.
But it works. And it’s relatively simple. And no, it’s not particularly exciting.
Pick-up my latest eBook through Amazon Kindle:
3 great business reads:
Winning by Jack Welch and Suzy Welch
Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Do you hate to ask for what you want (or think you deserve)? You’re not alone. Linda C. Babcock, professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon and author of Women Don’t Ask, looked at the ways men and women negotiate. She got the idea when her female doctoral students complained that they weren’t offered teaching assistant positions, despite never asking for them:
“The dean said each of the guys had come to him and said, ‘I want to teach a course,’ and none of the women had done that,” (Babcock) said. “The female students had expected someone to send around an e-mail saying, ‘Who wants to teach?’ “
Need more proof? Read this anonymous post from a manager for a multinational tech company:
“…a woman will enter the salary negotiation phase and I’ll tell them a number will be sent to them in a couple days. Usually we start around $45k for an entry level position. 50% to 60% of the women I interview simply take this offer. It’s insane, I already know I can get authorization for more if you simply refuse. Inversely, almost 90% of the men I interview immediately ask for more upon getting the offer.
The next major mistake happens with how they ask for more. In general, the women I have negotiated with will say 45k is not enough and they need more, but not give a number. I will then usually give a nominal bump to 48k or 50k. Company policy won’t let me bump more than 5k over the initial offer unless they specifically request more. On the other hand, men more frequently will come back with a number along the lines of 65k to 75k, and I will be forced to negotiate down from there. After this phase, almost all women will take the offer or move on to somewhere else, not knowing they could have gotten more if they asked.
At the end, most of the women I hire make between 45k and 50k, whereas the men make between 60k and 70k. Even more crazy, they ask for raises far less often, so the disparity only grows.”
The First Rule of Negotiation: Ask for What You Want
Whether it’s a salary, a promotion, a specific behavior, or getting the best deal when buying a car, you have to know the outcome you want and what you’re willing to do to get it.
Babcock conducted experiments to figure out why women wouldn’t ask for what they wanted. She claims that her results show that men don’t want to work with women who ask for what they want. Babcock also quotes the absurd trope that women make 23% less then men, so I’m disinclined to take her word*. It’s more likely that the men weren’t turned off by women asking for what they wanted, but by the way those women did so:
The Second Rule of Negotiation: Keep Your Emotions in Check
Be willing to walk away from any deal. As women, we often show our emotion by talking loudly or shrilly. We talk too much. Or worst of all, we cry. To control your emotions, detach yourself from the outcome. Pretend you’re negotiating for someone else. It’s easier to be tough on someone else’s behalf.
The Third Rule of Negotiation: Give to Get
Find out what the other party wants, then figure out how to give it to them. Juliet Nierenberg, author of Women and the Art of Negotiation explains:
Looking at the transaction from the other party’s viewpoint gives you valuable information about when to compromise, when to hold your position, and when to walk away.
The Fourth Rule of Negotiation: Be Prepared
She who has the most information wins. Do your homework. Know more than your opposition, but don’t use the information to prove how smart you are: use it to make your case. Being prepared will also calm your nerves.
Being prepared doesn’t mean you should do all the talking.
The Fifth Rule of Negotiation: Stop Talking
State your case concisely. Provide the relevant facts to back up your argument. Then, shut up.
One of 2 things will happen. The other person will jump right in with a response, or the silence will deafen you. Either way, keep quiet until the other person asks you a direct question.
You can learn and eventually perfect negotiation. Just like driving a car or tying your shoes. Start by using the 5 rules in low-risk situations. Evaluate your performance and outcomes. As you practice, you’ll improve.
*The article quoting Babcock linked above even debunks that statistic: “That figure does not take differing professions and educational levels into account, but when those and other factors are controlled for, women who work full time and have never taken time off to have children earn about 11% less than men with equivalent education and experience.”
Look what happened in my backyard Wednesday night.
I really hate the cold…and the wind…and winter. It snowed down the street and we’re supposed to have our first freeze of the season tonight. Did I mention that I live in the desert?
Enough whining. Here’s what I’m reading this week:
DQYDJ.net writes smart, well-researched articles like this one about generational wealth:
Volatility at the top is the name of the game. Every generation produces new wealth and new means to catapult people into the top 1%.
In the Treasury’s study, only 42.4% of the lowest quintile of incomes they tracked in 1996 remained in the lowest quintile in 2005.
Nelson at Financial Uproar wrote this spot-on post about weddings:
(A) wedding is a giant waste of money. At their best, weddings are a largely meaningless ceremony which creates a false expectation of marriage being a magical union of heavenly bliss for a lifetime. At their worst you get bridezillas and people who get pissed off because their presents aren’t good enough.
Weakanomics.com dispels the myths about income equality in this fascinating article:
Since 1967 the total number of households in the US has grown 95%, while the population has only grown 56%. How can that happen? When a household splits in half, you get two households. Say mom and dad get divorced and each make $30k a year. You go from having one household that makes $60k to two that make $30k. How does this get reflected in the data? It skews the low income numbers down. In the lowest quintile household, on average there are zero income earners. In the top, of course there are two. If more households had two income earners, you’d see less of the widening gap. A single income household is economically less efficient. The rise of divorce and single parent households has contributed to the perceived increase in income inequality for sure, but this isn’t the only thing out there.
GetRichSlowly.com reviews the traits, behaviors and beliefs that differentiate the rich from everyone else. The idea that you’re more likely to be rich if you take responsibility for your life and make smart choices doesn’t go over well with most people. You must read the comments.
GiveMeBackMyFiveBucks.com explores the disconnect between what 25-29-year-olds think they should earn by age 30 and what they will. Spoiler alert: The twenty-something respondents overestimated their earning potential by a factor of 3:
To the youth of today: you can truly do great things with your life and with your career – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But you have to want it more than your peers, and you have to want it more than those who already have it. Be hungry. Work hard, don’t take anything for granted, and create opportunities for yourself.
Paula at AffordAnything.com explores the entrepreneur mindset (or lack thereof) among journalists and their ilk. She met a journalism professor, and walked away shaking her head:
He’s insecure — that’s why he wants job security so badly. He doesn’t believe in himself. He wants other people — smarter, richer, and probably better-looking people — to create a job and bestow it upon him.
You disempower yourself when you believe that someone else must create your job.
Over at ControlYourCash.com, we continue our popular “Retard” series by exploring the Occupy Wall Street mindset. These folks won’t be mistaken for entrepreneurs or millionaires anytime soon:
We found a website where Occupy Wall Street protestors have chosen to write their laments. There are hundreds of them, but once you’ve read a few you can create the rest from a template. Which would read something like “I willingly took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt without calculating the estimated payoff. This is rich people’s fault, for some reason. And I probably have a child. Feel sorry for me.”
The live Nativity at the Tuacahn Amphitheater in Ivins, Utah. No pictures of the pageant since I had my hands full trying to keep the Travel Cat™ from visiting the fawning girls in the row ahead of us. Here’s a brief post from 2004 with a picture of the empty amphitheater.
It’s way better to receive right?
How to Make Money with Real Estate Blog Carnival: December 1, 2011 Edition
Top Personal Finance Posts of the Week: Awkward Christmas Card Edition
Have you bought my book yet? It makes a great Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa gift. If you’re in Las Vegas, you can even get it autographed on Wednesday.
Not ready to commit to a 300-page read? Pick-up my latest eBook through Amazon Kindle*:
Which brings me to…
The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong With America
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch
Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World Of Geography Wonks
Ken Jennings
Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN
James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
Sue Grafton
Curl up under a warm blanket and read one of these tonight.
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