I believe that we are all looking for the one person who makes us feel wonderful about ourselves, which is done specifically by seeing us for who we are and loving us for it.
Now...! The big, big lesson in this is that... your job, my lady, is to give him BACK that same amount of adoration/respect/LOVE - it's not just the women who need this to 'make their year!'
Can you do it, will your ego (self esteem) allow it? If not, it is time to get loving yourself in a serious way - loving= kindness, acceptance, positive self talk, etc. I believe that if my exwife and I would have done this for ourselves, and each other we would have still been married - and as happy as larks!
- I wrote this on groups.msn.com/divorcecaresupport
Thursday, March 29, 2007
How do we get over someone?
stage of abandonment (Shattering, Withdrawal, Internalizing, Rage, and Lifting), when your body/mind anxiously “searches for the lost object. ” During this stage (which overlaps with the others and can be quite protracted), you feel heartsick. You’re as strung out as a junky, except that instead of craving Heroin, you’re craving a love-fix. You’re constantly obsessing about your lost love, and it’s so painful and persistent, that you’d do anything to make it stop, only you can’t – the obsession is involuntary and creates real torment.
The good news though, as the writer above mentions, is that this phase passes.
In the meantime though it feels like you’re in permanent hell. People feel ashamed of how awful they feel and how persistent the obsession is – how powerful their abandoner has become in their lives. This shame only makes the withdrawal phase more agonizing, causing us to blame ourselves for being weak. We even wonder if “maybe this is why he left me in the first place!”
When we’re in withdrawal, especially at the beginning, we tend to fall into a game of “lost and found”. We anxiously wait for and “stalk” our lost love maybe we don’t actually follow him or her around (unless we’ve really lost it), but we may drive by his house at night to see if he’s home, check our voice mail 50 times a day, break down and call him, or otherwise try to track his activities. We wonder about his every thought, feeling, and intention. We feel powerless and helpless.
Eventually we stop tracking him or her, but we still don’t feel at peace. We’ve entered a morose period of just feeling lousy. We’re still not free.
(MY OPINION: frikking SAD but true... from self experience) but with every step we LEARN !! That we can't have a relationship alone, it takes TWO, and we only can control ourselves, not the "other" person that chose to abandon us and leave us heartbroken.
"How do we get over someone?
1) We need to validate the fact that abandonment creates an emotional crisis. Just as someone who has received a powerful blow to the stomach, we need to treat ourselves as having incurred a painful wound that requires all of our best self-care. We have broken our emotional ribs. Physician heal thyself. We need to take exquisite care of ourselves.
2) This begins when we stop shaming ourselves -- stop questioning our own strength. This love-sickness befalls the most independent people out there. It is not an indication of any shortcomings within ourselves, but just lets us know that we are human -- and that we are reacting to a very painful situation. If the tables were turned, our lover would be going through the very same thing." --Susan Anderson
3) Use this as an opportunity to gain emotional self-reliance. Nobody is going to care about us the way we can care about ourselves (and by now we’ve worn most of our friends out with our obsession, so we’re pretty much on our own). See this painful wound as an opportunity to become self-loving and self-caring. Yes, we learn how to love ourselves from this. The exercises in my book help you actually accomplish this thing called self-love during a time of emotional crisis.
4) Take your abandoner off of the pedestal. Ironically, the more they hurt us, the more we idolize them. The very fact that they caused us so much pain makes us want them more. This paradox is universal, and it taxes the empathy of our friends who say “How could you pine away for someone who treated you so badly?” Yes, it’s a paradox, but they would be doing the same thing if it happened to them. Now is the time to systematically de-elevate your abandoner. You can do this by writing about him or her in your journal with an eye for seeing him as ordinary, human, mortal, flawed (like the rest of us), “not the only one,” not right for you, etc.
5) Re-invest the energy inside of the pain (all of that withdrawal “searching for the lost object” energy) into new activities. Yes, NOW...you don’t feel like it, but you must do it. You must add new things into your life, make new connections with people, take a self-improvement course, sign up at the gym, ask for a raise, undertake a new daily regimen like daily journaling, or move to a better apartment, etc.
6) Don’t confuse self-love with self-indulgence. The emotional hunger you feel is real, but you must keep it from turning you into an alcoholic, love-aholic, or drama-aholic. You must keep it from ruining your diet, your credit rating, and your future relationships. In caring for yourself, do things that have substantial reward.
7) Start looking for new connections – but vow not to clamp on to any one person (yet). You’re looking for distractions – people to think about and to test your alter egos on, not someone to make a permanent connection to. That will come later.
8) The most important thing to keep in mind is that these efforts involve resolve – hard work and determination will win the race.
The good news though, as the writer above mentions, is that this phase passes.
In the meantime though it feels like you’re in permanent hell. People feel ashamed of how awful they feel and how persistent the obsession is – how powerful their abandoner has become in their lives. This shame only makes the withdrawal phase more agonizing, causing us to blame ourselves for being weak. We even wonder if “maybe this is why he left me in the first place!”
When we’re in withdrawal, especially at the beginning, we tend to fall into a game of “lost and found”. We anxiously wait for and “stalk” our lost love maybe we don’t actually follow him or her around (unless we’ve really lost it), but we may drive by his house at night to see if he’s home, check our voice mail 50 times a day, break down and call him, or otherwise try to track his activities. We wonder about his every thought, feeling, and intention. We feel powerless and helpless.
Eventually we stop tracking him or her, but we still don’t feel at peace. We’ve entered a morose period of just feeling lousy. We’re still not free.
(MY OPINION: frikking SAD but true... from self experience) but with every step we LEARN !! That we can't have a relationship alone, it takes TWO, and we only can control ourselves, not the "other" person that chose to abandon us and leave us heartbroken.
"How do we get over someone?
1) We need to validate the fact that abandonment creates an emotional crisis. Just as someone who has received a powerful blow to the stomach, we need to treat ourselves as having incurred a painful wound that requires all of our best self-care. We have broken our emotional ribs. Physician heal thyself. We need to take exquisite care of ourselves.
2) This begins when we stop shaming ourselves -- stop questioning our own strength. This love-sickness befalls the most independent people out there. It is not an indication of any shortcomings within ourselves, but just lets us know that we are human -- and that we are reacting to a very painful situation. If the tables were turned, our lover would be going through the very same thing." --Susan Anderson
3) Use this as an opportunity to gain emotional self-reliance. Nobody is going to care about us the way we can care about ourselves (and by now we’ve worn most of our friends out with our obsession, so we’re pretty much on our own). See this painful wound as an opportunity to become self-loving and self-caring. Yes, we learn how to love ourselves from this. The exercises in my book help you actually accomplish this thing called self-love during a time of emotional crisis.
4) Take your abandoner off of the pedestal. Ironically, the more they hurt us, the more we idolize them. The very fact that they caused us so much pain makes us want them more. This paradox is universal, and it taxes the empathy of our friends who say “How could you pine away for someone who treated you so badly?” Yes, it’s a paradox, but they would be doing the same thing if it happened to them. Now is the time to systematically de-elevate your abandoner. You can do this by writing about him or her in your journal with an eye for seeing him as ordinary, human, mortal, flawed (like the rest of us), “not the only one,” not right for you, etc.
5) Re-invest the energy inside of the pain (all of that withdrawal “searching for the lost object” energy) into new activities. Yes, NOW...you don’t feel like it, but you must do it. You must add new things into your life, make new connections with people, take a self-improvement course, sign up at the gym, ask for a raise, undertake a new daily regimen like daily journaling, or move to a better apartment, etc.
6) Don’t confuse self-love with self-indulgence. The emotional hunger you feel is real, but you must keep it from turning you into an alcoholic, love-aholic, or drama-aholic. You must keep it from ruining your diet, your credit rating, and your future relationships. In caring for yourself, do things that have substantial reward.
7) Start looking for new connections – but vow not to clamp on to any one person (yet). You’re looking for distractions – people to think about and to test your alter egos on, not someone to make a permanent connection to. That will come later.
8) The most important thing to keep in mind is that these efforts involve resolve – hard work and determination will win the race.
Friday, March 23, 2007
to Get rich think, chose a wealth type career, etc Ben Stein
To Get Rich, Just Follow the Instructions
by Ben Stein
Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007, 12:00AM
My little brain simply can't stop putting things into categories and seeking to find the patterns in life.
One of the many patterns I've noticed is that some people in the United States are much richer than others. We have a nation filled with opportunity: free education, easy investing, and cheap interest rates. And yet there's stunning financial inequality.
Disparity by the Numbers
According to my wonderful pal, Phil DeMuth, the top 1 percent of all wealth-holders in the U.S. own about 44 percent of the financial assets of the country, mostly in stocks and bonds. The top 10 percent own about 80 percent of the financial assets of the nation.
The top one-tenth of 1 percent of earners in the nation earn about as much as the bottom 40 percent. That is, about 130,000 high-income Americans earn as much as the bottom 120 million Americans combined.
To me, this is stunning -- almost frightening. But the real question it poses is, how did the ones at the top get there? Obviously, some do it through inheritance, and some have spectacular athletic or musical abilities. But what about the others? How did they get to the pinnacle of wealth?
Think First, Get Rich Later
I'll to offer some homely speculation. First, as the genius financial planner Ray Lucia would say, the first step is to have a plan to save. Without equilibrating assets and liabilities by accumulating lots of stocks, REITs, and cash, you won't get there
But I'm looking for something more basic here. How do you get the income to start saving meaningful sums?
Here's a clue: think. In 1996, when I started shooting "Win Ben Stein's Money," I was assigned a bodyguard named Yaniv. He was a former Israeli soldier, and as tough as old boots. We worked together happily for about 900 shows, and then we worked on "Star Search" together, after which we went our separate ways.
Occasionally, Yaniv would help me set up electronics equipment. He always did a great job because he read the instructions and then followed them.
Up the Ladder
Not long ago, I bought some new stereo equipment for my house and I called Yaniv to come over to install it. He showed up in an immense truck and told me what he'd been doing for the past few years.
He'd become a construction foreman on a jobsite building condos. He was so good at reading instructions that he became a contractor. He was so good at that, investors hired him to build still bigger buildings and paid him a good chunk of the profits.
Now he's building large developments and gets an even bigger share of the startlingly large profits. If a unit costs $300,000 to build, it's not unusual for it to sell for $600,000 to $800,000. Of course, you have to factor in the cost of the land, permits and legal issues, advertising, and the time value of money. But all in all, the profits are consistently immense.
Yaniv, a 32-year-old who still gets a thrill out of his Ford truck, is well on his way to being in the top 1 percent and, after that, the top one-tenth of 1 percent.
Outstanding in Your Field
How did he do it? He reads instructions. Yaniv reads building plans very carefully, then he reads permit applications carefully, and soon a building is done.
Beyond that, he reads life's instructions carefully, too. People make a lot of money building condos in Los Angeles even in an economic slowdown, so Yaniv entered a field that leads to making money.
If he'd continued on as a bodyguard he would've had fun, but he never would've gotten rich. And here his experience proves the great advice of Warren E. Buffett: It's better to be medium-good in a great field than great in a medium field. There are some fields where a lot of money can be made, and real estate development is one of them.
Law is another one, at private firms. Medicine -- if you're a surgeon -- is another, and finance is the highest-paid one. Starting a restaurant isn't a moneymaking field. Teaching and writing, except in the rarest of cases, aren't either. Acting is almost never highly paid, and police work never is highly paid.
Making the Choice for Wealth
Please notice a pattern: the most interesting and psychologically rewarding work is rarely the best-paid. So choices must be made.
If your goal is to be in that top 1 percent of wealth-holders, you have to do what Yaniv did. Follow the instructions to where the money is, and to where it isn't.
There's nothing -- absolutely nothing -- about people who have money that's better than people who don't. But if you want it anyway, simply follow the instructions as to where to find it. It's not that complicated.
by Ben Stein
Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007, 12:00AM
My little brain simply can't stop putting things into categories and seeking to find the patterns in life.
One of the many patterns I've noticed is that some people in the United States are much richer than others. We have a nation filled with opportunity: free education, easy investing, and cheap interest rates. And yet there's stunning financial inequality.
Disparity by the Numbers
According to my wonderful pal, Phil DeMuth, the top 1 percent of all wealth-holders in the U.S. own about 44 percent of the financial assets of the country, mostly in stocks and bonds. The top 10 percent own about 80 percent of the financial assets of the nation.
The top one-tenth of 1 percent of earners in the nation earn about as much as the bottom 40 percent. That is, about 130,000 high-income Americans earn as much as the bottom 120 million Americans combined.
To me, this is stunning -- almost frightening. But the real question it poses is, how did the ones at the top get there? Obviously, some do it through inheritance, and some have spectacular athletic or musical abilities. But what about the others? How did they get to the pinnacle of wealth?
Think First, Get Rich Later
I'll to offer some homely speculation. First, as the genius financial planner Ray Lucia would say, the first step is to have a plan to save. Without equilibrating assets and liabilities by accumulating lots of stocks, REITs, and cash, you won't get there
But I'm looking for something more basic here. How do you get the income to start saving meaningful sums?
Here's a clue: think. In 1996, when I started shooting "Win Ben Stein's Money," I was assigned a bodyguard named Yaniv. He was a former Israeli soldier, and as tough as old boots. We worked together happily for about 900 shows, and then we worked on "Star Search" together, after which we went our separate ways.
Occasionally, Yaniv would help me set up electronics equipment. He always did a great job because he read the instructions and then followed them.
Up the Ladder
Not long ago, I bought some new stereo equipment for my house and I called Yaniv to come over to install it. He showed up in an immense truck and told me what he'd been doing for the past few years.
He'd become a construction foreman on a jobsite building condos. He was so good at reading instructions that he became a contractor. He was so good at that, investors hired him to build still bigger buildings and paid him a good chunk of the profits.
Now he's building large developments and gets an even bigger share of the startlingly large profits. If a unit costs $300,000 to build, it's not unusual for it to sell for $600,000 to $800,000. Of course, you have to factor in the cost of the land, permits and legal issues, advertising, and the time value of money. But all in all, the profits are consistently immense.
Yaniv, a 32-year-old who still gets a thrill out of his Ford truck, is well on his way to being in the top 1 percent and, after that, the top one-tenth of 1 percent.
Outstanding in Your Field
How did he do it? He reads instructions. Yaniv reads building plans very carefully, then he reads permit applications carefully, and soon a building is done.
Beyond that, he reads life's instructions carefully, too. People make a lot of money building condos in Los Angeles even in an economic slowdown, so Yaniv entered a field that leads to making money.
If he'd continued on as a bodyguard he would've had fun, but he never would've gotten rich. And here his experience proves the great advice of Warren E. Buffett: It's better to be medium-good in a great field than great in a medium field. There are some fields where a lot of money can be made, and real estate development is one of them.
Law is another one, at private firms. Medicine -- if you're a surgeon -- is another, and finance is the highest-paid one. Starting a restaurant isn't a moneymaking field. Teaching and writing, except in the rarest of cases, aren't either. Acting is almost never highly paid, and police work never is highly paid.
Making the Choice for Wealth
Please notice a pattern: the most interesting and psychologically rewarding work is rarely the best-paid. So choices must be made.
If your goal is to be in that top 1 percent of wealth-holders, you have to do what Yaniv did. Follow the instructions to where the money is, and to where it isn't.
There's nothing -- absolutely nothing -- about people who have money that's better than people who don't. But if you want it anyway, simply follow the instructions as to where to find it. It's not that complicated.
the real new orleans news story - the welfare state is the problem
An Objectivist Review
by Robert Tracinski | The Intellectual Activist
September 2, 2005
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
"'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
by Robert Tracinski | The Intellectual Activist
September 2, 2005
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
"'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
Since when is a cherry a drug? Tart Cherries, Cherry Juice concentrate
Since When Is a Cherry a Drug?
More than 2,000 years ago, Hippocrates, the "Father of Medicine," wrote, "Let food by thy medicine and medicine be thy food." This is wise advice, indeed. Just don't try to market food as medicine. The FDA might not approve. Recently, I read that more than 20 companies that produce and market products made from tart cherries and cherry juice concentrate were issued warning letters from the government agency.
Tart cherries contain numerous antioxidants and flavonoids that are known to promote health and have been shown to improve certain conditions, including arthritis pain. But according to the FDA, advertising the healing properties of tart cherries causes them to be considered a "drug." And any company that sells a "drug" must have an approved "New Drug Application" on file, proving that its drug is safe and effective.
Do you really think this is about "proving" that cherries are safe? Of course not. This is Big Brother running interference for Big Pharma. It is especially telling that the FDA singled out several offending claims where customers of these companies "stopped taking drugs for arthritis pain" after consuming tart cherries.
Hippocrates was right. Food is medicine. But today's medical profession barely works with diet, instead promoting the prescription of profitable chemicals to repair the damage done from decades of poor lifestyle choices. And the pharmaceutically compliant FDA ensures that foods (real medicine) cannot be advertised in any way that might compete with these profitable chemicals.
But you know better, dear reader. It takes research to discover what is good for you and what could prove harmful, and it takes vigilance to avoid deceptive marketing (whether by food and supplement manufacturers or the drug companies). When in doubt, follow the advice of Hippocrates. Eat whole, natural foods and generally avoid chemical "solutions" for health issues.
More than 2,000 years ago, Hippocrates, the "Father of Medicine," wrote, "Let food by thy medicine and medicine be thy food." This is wise advice, indeed. Just don't try to market food as medicine. The FDA might not approve. Recently, I read that more than 20 companies that produce and market products made from tart cherries and cherry juice concentrate were issued warning letters from the government agency.
Tart cherries contain numerous antioxidants and flavonoids that are known to promote health and have been shown to improve certain conditions, including arthritis pain. But according to the FDA, advertising the healing properties of tart cherries causes them to be considered a "drug." And any company that sells a "drug" must have an approved "New Drug Application" on file, proving that its drug is safe and effective.
Do you really think this is about "proving" that cherries are safe? Of course not. This is Big Brother running interference for Big Pharma. It is especially telling that the FDA singled out several offending claims where customers of these companies "stopped taking drugs for arthritis pain" after consuming tart cherries.
Hippocrates was right. Food is medicine. But today's medical profession barely works with diet, instead promoting the prescription of profitable chemicals to repair the damage done from decades of poor lifestyle choices. And the pharmaceutically compliant FDA ensures that foods (real medicine) cannot be advertised in any way that might compete with these profitable chemicals.
But you know better, dear reader. It takes research to discover what is good for you and what could prove harmful, and it takes vigilance to avoid deceptive marketing (whether by food and supplement manufacturers or the drug companies). When in doubt, follow the advice of Hippocrates. Eat whole, natural foods and generally avoid chemical "solutions" for health issues.
joke on the secret from the onion , lol
The Secret
The Secret—the new self-help book and DVD that purports to channel ancient wisdom and claims that if you ask the universe for something, it will be delivered—has become a nationwide phenomenon. Here are some of the book's tips:
You deserve whatever you want no matter how awful you are
Try not to use any critical-thinking skills or logic when pondering concept of The Secret
Capitalizing on basic human feelings such as greed can bring you vast wealth
Eat a hearty breakfast every day
Please allow universe six to eight millennia to deliver
You can never be too tan
The Secret does not work if you are attempting to learn it from stolen, bootlegged, or borrowed products from Prime Time Productions
The Secret—the new self-help book and DVD that purports to channel ancient wisdom and claims that if you ask the universe for something, it will be delivered—has become a nationwide phenomenon. Here are some of the book's tips:
You deserve whatever you want no matter how awful you are
Try not to use any critical-thinking skills or logic when pondering concept of The Secret
Capitalizing on basic human feelings such as greed can bring you vast wealth
Eat a hearty breakfast every day
Please allow universe six to eight millennia to deliver
You can never be too tan
The Secret does not work if you are attempting to learn it from stolen, bootlegged, or borrowed products from Prime Time Productions
10 Reasons You Aren't Rich
Thursday March 22, 11:30 am ET
ByJeffrey Strain, Special to TheStreet.com
The reason why you aren't a millionaire (or on your way to becoming one) is really quite simple. You probably assume it's because you aren't earning enough money, but the truth is that for most people, whether or not you become a millionaire has very little to do with the amount of money you make. It's the way that you treat money in your daily life.
Here are 10 possible reasons you aren't a millionaire:
1. You Care What Your Neighbors Think: If you're competing against them and their material possessions, you're wasting your hard-earned money on toys to impress them instead of building your wealth.
2. You Aren't Patient: Until the era of credit cards, it was difficult to spend more than you had. That is not the case today. If you have credit card debt because you couldn't wait until you had enough money to purchase something in cash, you are making others wealthy while keeping yourself in debt.
3. You Have Bad Habits: Whether it's smoking, drinking, gambling or some other bad habit, the habit is using up a lot of money that could go toward building wealth. Most people don't realize that the cost of their bad habits extends far beyond the immediate cost. Take smoking, for example: It costs a lot more than the pack of cigarettes purchased. It also negatively affects your wealth in the form of higher insurance rates and decreased value of your home.
4. You Have No Goals: It's difficult to build wealth if you haven't taken the time to know what you want. If you haven't set wealth goals, you aren't likely to attain them. You need to do more than state, "I want to be a millionaire." You need to take the time to set saving and investing goals on a yearly basis and come up with a plan for how to achieve those goals.
5. You Haven't Prepared: Bad things happen to the best of people from time to time, and if you haven't prepared for such a thing to happen to you through insurance, any wealth that you might have built can be gone in an instant.
6. You Try to Make a Quick Buck: For the vast majority of us, wealth doesn't come instantly. You may believe that people winning the lottery are a dime a dozen, but the truth is you're far more likely to get struck by lightning than win the lottery. This desire to get rich quickly likely extends into the way you invest, with similar results.
7. You Rely on Others to Take Care of Your Money: You believe that others have more knowledge about money matters, and you rely exclusively on their judgment when deciding where you should invest your money. Unfortunately, most people want to make money themselves, and this is their primary objective when they tell you how to invest your money. Listen to other people's advice to get new ideas, but in the end you should know enough to make your own investing decisions.
8. You Invest in Things You Don't Understand: Your hear that Bob has made a lot of money doing it, and you want to get in on the gravy train. If Bob really did make money, he did so because he understood how the investment worked. Throwing in your money because someone else has made money without fully understanding how the investment works will keep you from being wealthy.
9. You're Financially Afraid: You are so scared of risk that you keep all your money in a savings account that is actually losing money when inflation is put into the equation, yet you refuse to move it to a place where higher rates of return are possible because you're afraid that you will lose money.
10. You Ignore Your Finances: You take the attitude that if you make enough, the finances will take care of themselves. If you currently have debt, it will somehow resolve itself in the future. Unfortunately, it takes planning to become wealthy. It doesn't magically happen to the vast majority of people.
In reality, it is probably not just one of the above bad habits that has kept you from becoming a millionaire, but a combination of a few of them. Take a hard look at the list, and do some reflecting. If you want to be a millionaire, it's well within your power, but you'll have to face the issues that are currently keeping you from creating that wealth before you will have a chance to call yourself one.
ByJeffrey Strain, Special to TheStreet.com
The reason why you aren't a millionaire (or on your way to becoming one) is really quite simple. You probably assume it's because you aren't earning enough money, but the truth is that for most people, whether or not you become a millionaire has very little to do with the amount of money you make. It's the way that you treat money in your daily life.
Here are 10 possible reasons you aren't a millionaire:
1. You Care What Your Neighbors Think: If you're competing against them and their material possessions, you're wasting your hard-earned money on toys to impress them instead of building your wealth.
2. You Aren't Patient: Until the era of credit cards, it was difficult to spend more than you had. That is not the case today. If you have credit card debt because you couldn't wait until you had enough money to purchase something in cash, you are making others wealthy while keeping yourself in debt.
3. You Have Bad Habits: Whether it's smoking, drinking, gambling or some other bad habit, the habit is using up a lot of money that could go toward building wealth. Most people don't realize that the cost of their bad habits extends far beyond the immediate cost. Take smoking, for example: It costs a lot more than the pack of cigarettes purchased. It also negatively affects your wealth in the form of higher insurance rates and decreased value of your home.
4. You Have No Goals: It's difficult to build wealth if you haven't taken the time to know what you want. If you haven't set wealth goals, you aren't likely to attain them. You need to do more than state, "I want to be a millionaire." You need to take the time to set saving and investing goals on a yearly basis and come up with a plan for how to achieve those goals.
5. You Haven't Prepared: Bad things happen to the best of people from time to time, and if you haven't prepared for such a thing to happen to you through insurance, any wealth that you might have built can be gone in an instant.
6. You Try to Make a Quick Buck: For the vast majority of us, wealth doesn't come instantly. You may believe that people winning the lottery are a dime a dozen, but the truth is you're far more likely to get struck by lightning than win the lottery. This desire to get rich quickly likely extends into the way you invest, with similar results.
7. You Rely on Others to Take Care of Your Money: You believe that others have more knowledge about money matters, and you rely exclusively on their judgment when deciding where you should invest your money. Unfortunately, most people want to make money themselves, and this is their primary objective when they tell you how to invest your money. Listen to other people's advice to get new ideas, but in the end you should know enough to make your own investing decisions.
8. You Invest in Things You Don't Understand: Your hear that Bob has made a lot of money doing it, and you want to get in on the gravy train. If Bob really did make money, he did so because he understood how the investment worked. Throwing in your money because someone else has made money without fully understanding how the investment works will keep you from being wealthy.
9. You're Financially Afraid: You are so scared of risk that you keep all your money in a savings account that is actually losing money when inflation is put into the equation, yet you refuse to move it to a place where higher rates of return are possible because you're afraid that you will lose money.
10. You Ignore Your Finances: You take the attitude that if you make enough, the finances will take care of themselves. If you currently have debt, it will somehow resolve itself in the future. Unfortunately, it takes planning to become wealthy. It doesn't magically happen to the vast majority of people.
In reality, it is probably not just one of the above bad habits that has kept you from becoming a millionaire, but a combination of a few of them. Take a hard look at the list, and do some reflecting. If you want to be a millionaire, it's well within your power, but you'll have to face the issues that are currently keeping you from creating that wealth before you will have a chance to call yourself one.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Most men are pretty simple - he needs from a woman
The man is saying "Love me with your eyes and your body - be crazy about me." That's it really.
This meets the needs of most men..... a Dr. Laura quote
This meets the needs of most men..... a Dr. Laura quote
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
an irish wish
~Irish Wish~
May God give you . . .
For a every storm, a rainbow
For every tear a smile.
For every care a promise,
And a blessing in each trial~
May God give you . . .
For a every storm, a rainbow
For every tear a smile.
For every care a promise,
And a blessing in each trial~
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Las vegas Business Model now money off 200 lost/person and $300 for room
For many, the Stardust represented the most accessible place to stay in a city that gives VIP treatment to the biggest gamblers. But the concept of discounting rates to keep people coming is rapidly fading from the Las Vegas Strip as many casinos nowadays make more revenue from hotel rooms, clubs, shows and cuisine than from gambling.
"There was this implicit idea that invisible high rollers came in and funded everything, so that Mr. and Mrs. America could have a steak for $2 and see Frank Sinatra for the price of a drink," said David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
"Now you can build a 7,000-room hotel and charge $300 a night for rooms," he said. "With slots being so big, it is all the people losing $200 per trip that are driving the growth."
"There was this implicit idea that invisible high rollers came in and funded everything, so that Mr. and Mrs. America could have a steak for $2 and see Frank Sinatra for the price of a drink," said David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
"Now you can build a 7,000-room hotel and charge $300 a night for rooms," he said. "With slots being so big, it is all the people losing $200 per trip that are driving the growth."
Monday, March 12, 2007
basics of self respect in divorce, etc
So How Do You Show Respect For Yourself?
You show respect for yourself when:
• You keep your dignity and composure and don’t beg, plead, or cry hysterically if your partner expresses the desire to leave the marriage.
• You have the confidence and belief that you can make it on your own,even though you don’t want to lose your marriage.
• You truly know that if your spouse leaves, it will be her loss, that you have a lot to offer as a partner.
• You make a commitment that you will create a satisfying life for yourself whether you are married or not.
• You set boundaries about what behavior from your spouse is unacceptable.
• You take action to protect yourself and your children from a spouse’s harmful behavior.
• You can actually do what you say you’re going to do without caving in or letting your spouse sweet talk you into giving in.
• You value your needs and take good care of yourself physically,emotionally, and spiritually.
• You talk gently to yourself and refuse to “beat yourself up” verbally.
• You are willing to take responsibility for your part in the marriage relationship.
• You are open to learning and growing from your life experiences.
• You stay positive even when going through a challenging time.
• You truly understand that being in love doesn’t mean that you accept disrespect, neglect, abuse, or indifference from your partner.
• You are always aware that in any situation, you have choices and options.
• You refuse to take on the role of victim.
• You know where the door is and can remove yourself from a situation that’s not good for you.
You show respect for yourself when:
• You keep your dignity and composure and don’t beg, plead, or cry hysterically if your partner expresses the desire to leave the marriage.
• You have the confidence and belief that you can make it on your own,even though you don’t want to lose your marriage.
• You truly know that if your spouse leaves, it will be her loss, that you have a lot to offer as a partner.
• You make a commitment that you will create a satisfying life for yourself whether you are married or not.
• You set boundaries about what behavior from your spouse is unacceptable.
• You take action to protect yourself and your children from a spouse’s harmful behavior.
• You can actually do what you say you’re going to do without caving in or letting your spouse sweet talk you into giving in.
• You value your needs and take good care of yourself physically,emotionally, and spiritually.
• You talk gently to yourself and refuse to “beat yourself up” verbally.
• You are willing to take responsibility for your part in the marriage relationship.
• You are open to learning and growing from your life experiences.
• You stay positive even when going through a challenging time.
• You truly understand that being in love doesn’t mean that you accept disrespect, neglect, abuse, or indifference from your partner.
• You are always aware that in any situation, you have choices and options.
• You refuse to take on the role of victim.
• You know where the door is and can remove yourself from a situation that’s not good for you.
you need about 230,000 for each 1000/month retirment income - focus on income not assets...
You Are Being Tricked Into Saving Too Much for Retirement
by Paul B. Farrell
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Start living for today, stop wasting all those management fees
Yes, you're saving too much for retirement. But isn't that counterintuitive in today's uncertain world, where more is never enough? No, because there's some powerful new research to prove it.
Yeah, I know, you're going to insist on telling me why you really need a million bucks invested at 6% to generate $60,000 annual cash flow in retirement. But I already know why: Because that's what all those fancy online financial calculators tell you, right? Oh, wake up, a sixth grader could calculate that number without breaking a sweat.
And Charles Schwab has an even simpler version: In "You're Fifty -- Now What?" he offered this formula: "It's pretty easy to get a ballpark idea of how much you'll need. To get a rough estimate, you can use what I call my guideline of 230K, which says for every $1,000 you'll need each month, you should have at least $230,000 invested when you stop working."
More from MarketWatch:
• Wall Street spins you toward risks so it reaps rewards
• A blast of cold reality should relieve hedge-fund fever
• Join the new 'Irrational Millionaires Club'
Get it? You'd need five times $230,000 or $1.15 million to retire on $60,000 annually. And that's real bad news folks, because the average American has a net worth less than $50,000, exclusive of home equity.
Warning, you're being hypnotized: Wall Street insiders, bankers, brokers, advisers and their buddies want you to pile up assets. Why? Not for your own good, but because the more securities you own, the more money they make in fees! Get it?
This ingenious game caught fire in the mid-1990s when Wall Street began a historic revolution:
• First: business model. The 1995-96 SEC's Tully Commission articulated an industrywide strategic shift from cyclical commission income to a more stable fee-based business model. Shortly afterwards Goldman-Sachs released its famous report on financial industry mergers and consolidations. Tully was also Merrill's CEO. In 1998 I interviewed one of Merrill's top lieutenants who said the company's business plan called for a doubling of assets under management within five years.
• Second: ethics and image. Simultaneously, Wall Street was under pressure to clean up its act. Studies revealed "brokers" had the ethics of used-car-salesmen. So Wall Street's gave "brokers" new name tags, as "advisers" managing assets.
As a result, Main Street is now in a no-win situation. Jack Bogle's famous "Iron Law of the Markets" puts this assets-based monster in context with his new "Little Book of Common Sense Investing:" "Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after the substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser's game."
Bogle has had a consistent solution to the "Iron Law" dilemma for three decades: "The simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation's publicly held businesses at very low cost. The classic index fund that owns this market portfolio is the only investment that guarantees you with your fair share of stock market returns." We've put this strategy into action with our lazy indexed portfolios.
Unfortunately, Wall Street understands the "Iron Law" better than Bogle! Wall Street knows it cannot charge big management fees off low-cost index funds. So Wall Street is relentlessly hypnotizing investors into believing that actively managed funds beat the indexes even though about 80% fail to do so, largely because their average expense ratios are 10 to 15 times the fees charged by index funds.
New research challenges online calculators
In other words, Wall Street and friends have a substantial unstated self-interest in encouraging you to invest more than you need for retirement. I've been making this argument for years and finally it's being documented in research by economists who also aren't buying into Wall Street's hype.
The leader of this counterintuitive challenge is Larry Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor and co-author of "The Coming Generational Storm," an analysis of dire solutions necessary to cover future unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits. His co-author is financial columnist Scott Burns of the Dallas Morning News. Kotlikoff's research says investors should focus on income while working to figure out retirement needs.
Saving too much? You bet. A New York Times review of Kotlikoff's numbers "showed that Fidelity's online calculators typically set the target of assets needed to cover spending in retirement 36.4% too high. Vanguard's was 53.1% too high. A calculator offered by TIAA-CREF, one of the largest managers of retirement savings, was 78%" higher than the calculations generated by Kotlikoff's ESPlanner.
As expected, they were quite defensive about this challenge. The Times says: "The financial-planning industry prefers to characterize itself as cautious. William Ebsworth, chief investment officer of Fidelity Investments' Strategic Advisers division, which runs retirement programs, said, 'We take a very conservative approach,' preferring to err on the side of having money left over at death rather than risk running out before then."
While their reaction is understandable, it's a diversion: They fail to deal with their own conflict of interest and motives in overstating assets needed in retirement.
So let's repeat it again: You are unnecessarily investing too much of your hard-earned money into too many assets for retirement. As a result, you're sacrificing too much of the present, under the highly questionable and misleading assumptions about piling up excessive savings for an uncertain future.
In planning, forget assets, focus on income
Conversely, Burns tells me that "most people are actually better off than they think because they've never lived at the 70% to 85% of preretirement income living standard that conventional financial planning espouses. And the reason is simple: if you have a family, having children is a long-term suppressant on your adult standard of living."
The fallacy with Wall Street's logic is also simple: They focus on assets, the exact same strategy Goldman-Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wall Street's insiders have been focusing on since the mid-1990s. Why? Because it's making billions. Between 1995 and 2005 this strategy has roughly tripled assets under management for Wall Street and mutual fund firms, according to the Bogle Research Institute, with annual revenues also tripling to over $350 billion by 2005, while returns to Main Street investors have actually declined in the past decade.
So please, forget assets. Here's another example to prove our point: Suppose you retire from government or corporate life, with a pension generating $60,000 annually, with no assets! Ergo, those silly asset-based calculators are misleading. I encourage you to go back and review our earlier, detailed example of the elements included in an income-based formula.
Focus on income: Pensions, Social Security, IRAs, and a new career, business or some part-time work. And remember, savvy families also quietly build wealth in home equity. Pay off the mortgage, live debt-free. Downsize. Maybe cut costs moving to a cheaper region. Go for a reverse mortgage. Be creative. Add up these pieces of income and you'll see how to reach whatever you need to live comfortably in retirement.
by Paul B. Farrell
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Start living for today, stop wasting all those management fees
Yes, you're saving too much for retirement. But isn't that counterintuitive in today's uncertain world, where more is never enough? No, because there's some powerful new research to prove it.
Yeah, I know, you're going to insist on telling me why you really need a million bucks invested at 6% to generate $60,000 annual cash flow in retirement. But I already know why: Because that's what all those fancy online financial calculators tell you, right? Oh, wake up, a sixth grader could calculate that number without breaking a sweat.
And Charles Schwab has an even simpler version: In "You're Fifty -- Now What?" he offered this formula: "It's pretty easy to get a ballpark idea of how much you'll need. To get a rough estimate, you can use what I call my guideline of 230K, which says for every $1,000 you'll need each month, you should have at least $230,000 invested when you stop working."
More from MarketWatch:
• Wall Street spins you toward risks so it reaps rewards
• A blast of cold reality should relieve hedge-fund fever
• Join the new 'Irrational Millionaires Club'
Get it? You'd need five times $230,000 or $1.15 million to retire on $60,000 annually. And that's real bad news folks, because the average American has a net worth less than $50,000, exclusive of home equity.
Warning, you're being hypnotized: Wall Street insiders, bankers, brokers, advisers and their buddies want you to pile up assets. Why? Not for your own good, but because the more securities you own, the more money they make in fees! Get it?
This ingenious game caught fire in the mid-1990s when Wall Street began a historic revolution:
• First: business model. The 1995-96 SEC's Tully Commission articulated an industrywide strategic shift from cyclical commission income to a more stable fee-based business model. Shortly afterwards Goldman-Sachs released its famous report on financial industry mergers and consolidations. Tully was also Merrill's CEO. In 1998 I interviewed one of Merrill's top lieutenants who said the company's business plan called for a doubling of assets under management within five years.
• Second: ethics and image. Simultaneously, Wall Street was under pressure to clean up its act. Studies revealed "brokers" had the ethics of used-car-salesmen. So Wall Street's gave "brokers" new name tags, as "advisers" managing assets.
As a result, Main Street is now in a no-win situation. Jack Bogle's famous "Iron Law of the Markets" puts this assets-based monster in context with his new "Little Book of Common Sense Investing:" "Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after the substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser's game."
Bogle has had a consistent solution to the "Iron Law" dilemma for three decades: "The simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation's publicly held businesses at very low cost. The classic index fund that owns this market portfolio is the only investment that guarantees you with your fair share of stock market returns." We've put this strategy into action with our lazy indexed portfolios.
Unfortunately, Wall Street understands the "Iron Law" better than Bogle! Wall Street knows it cannot charge big management fees off low-cost index funds. So Wall Street is relentlessly hypnotizing investors into believing that actively managed funds beat the indexes even though about 80% fail to do so, largely because their average expense ratios are 10 to 15 times the fees charged by index funds.
New research challenges online calculators
In other words, Wall Street and friends have a substantial unstated self-interest in encouraging you to invest more than you need for retirement. I've been making this argument for years and finally it's being documented in research by economists who also aren't buying into Wall Street's hype.
The leader of this counterintuitive challenge is Larry Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor and co-author of "The Coming Generational Storm," an analysis of dire solutions necessary to cover future unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits. His co-author is financial columnist Scott Burns of the Dallas Morning News. Kotlikoff's research says investors should focus on income while working to figure out retirement needs.
Saving too much? You bet. A New York Times review of Kotlikoff's numbers "showed that Fidelity's online calculators typically set the target of assets needed to cover spending in retirement 36.4% too high. Vanguard's was 53.1% too high. A calculator offered by TIAA-CREF, one of the largest managers of retirement savings, was 78%" higher than the calculations generated by Kotlikoff's ESPlanner.
As expected, they were quite defensive about this challenge. The Times says: "The financial-planning industry prefers to characterize itself as cautious. William Ebsworth, chief investment officer of Fidelity Investments' Strategic Advisers division, which runs retirement programs, said, 'We take a very conservative approach,' preferring to err on the side of having money left over at death rather than risk running out before then."
While their reaction is understandable, it's a diversion: They fail to deal with their own conflict of interest and motives in overstating assets needed in retirement.
So let's repeat it again: You are unnecessarily investing too much of your hard-earned money into too many assets for retirement. As a result, you're sacrificing too much of the present, under the highly questionable and misleading assumptions about piling up excessive savings for an uncertain future.
In planning, forget assets, focus on income
Conversely, Burns tells me that "most people are actually better off than they think because they've never lived at the 70% to 85% of preretirement income living standard that conventional financial planning espouses. And the reason is simple: if you have a family, having children is a long-term suppressant on your adult standard of living."
The fallacy with Wall Street's logic is also simple: They focus on assets, the exact same strategy Goldman-Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wall Street's insiders have been focusing on since the mid-1990s. Why? Because it's making billions. Between 1995 and 2005 this strategy has roughly tripled assets under management for Wall Street and mutual fund firms, according to the Bogle Research Institute, with annual revenues also tripling to over $350 billion by 2005, while returns to Main Street investors have actually declined in the past decade.
So please, forget assets. Here's another example to prove our point: Suppose you retire from government or corporate life, with a pension generating $60,000 annually, with no assets! Ergo, those silly asset-based calculators are misleading. I encourage you to go back and review our earlier, detailed example of the elements included in an income-based formula.
Focus on income: Pensions, Social Security, IRAs, and a new career, business or some part-time work. And remember, savvy families also quietly build wealth in home equity. Pay off the mortgage, live debt-free. Downsize. Maybe cut costs moving to a cheaper region. Go for a reverse mortgage. Be creative. Add up these pieces of income and you'll see how to reach whatever you need to live comfortably in retirement.
the power in you - power balls, hold them - don't be manipulated
I'm not sure if you all realize this, but there is a power in your life and this power is the power that we have to either be happy or miserable. The power that we have to either let someone hurt us or to protect ourselves.
You know how you allow people to manipulate you, like when you say things that set you up to be hurt, when you ask questions that you already know the answer to. Its hard to describe. Its when you LET someone hurt you, consciously or unconsiously.
I've tried to hold onto this power, not give it to other people. I've let too many people take the power from me, I've let so many people hurt me or upset me.
I remember the first time that I consciously held onto the power. I was talking to my ex-husband on the phone, things were always painful and tense at this point, but this time I didn't leave anything open for me to be hurt, didn't give him the opportunity to say or do something that might upset me. When I hung up the phone, I felt so good, so strong and smart.
While I was talking to him, I visualized the power as a glowing little ping-pong ball that I was gripping tightly in my hand. The more I held onto it, the brighter it got. I could almost feel him trying to take it from me, by things he was saying or how he was acting. But I didn't react, didn't give in, kept my ping-pong ball in my hand the whole time.
I don't know if this might help anyone, but it has really helped me and many of my friends. Last night a friend she told me about an argument she had with her boyfriend, and she was so proud of herself that she held onto all her ping-pong balls!
We talked about how we actually throw them at people, giving the power to them, giving the the strength to destroy us. And how we actually recieve their power sometimes too. I realized how important it was to protect my power and not just throw it away and let myself be hurt and crushed. It is that power that protects our emotions, it is that power that keeps us sane in an insane time.
During that time when I first came to this realization of the existence of this power, I made a few ping-pong balls covered in glitter, and gave them to many of my friends. They all loved them and I still see them displayed in their houses. They represent the power that we must protect and I can't tell you how many people told me that when they realized this, they would hold their little sparkely ping-pong ball in their hands when they were in a bad situation, and try to consciously remember to protect themselves.
You know how you allow people to manipulate you, like when you say things that set you up to be hurt, when you ask questions that you already know the answer to. Its hard to describe. Its when you LET someone hurt you, consciously or unconsiously.
I've tried to hold onto this power, not give it to other people. I've let too many people take the power from me, I've let so many people hurt me or upset me.
I remember the first time that I consciously held onto the power. I was talking to my ex-husband on the phone, things were always painful and tense at this point, but this time I didn't leave anything open for me to be hurt, didn't give him the opportunity to say or do something that might upset me. When I hung up the phone, I felt so good, so strong and smart.
While I was talking to him, I visualized the power as a glowing little ping-pong ball that I was gripping tightly in my hand. The more I held onto it, the brighter it got. I could almost feel him trying to take it from me, by things he was saying or how he was acting. But I didn't react, didn't give in, kept my ping-pong ball in my hand the whole time.
I don't know if this might help anyone, but it has really helped me and many of my friends. Last night a friend she told me about an argument she had with her boyfriend, and she was so proud of herself that she held onto all her ping-pong balls!
We talked about how we actually throw them at people, giving the power to them, giving the the strength to destroy us. And how we actually recieve their power sometimes too. I realized how important it was to protect my power and not just throw it away and let myself be hurt and crushed. It is that power that protects our emotions, it is that power that keeps us sane in an insane time.
During that time when I first came to this realization of the existence of this power, I made a few ping-pong balls covered in glitter, and gave them to many of my friends. They all loved them and I still see them displayed in their houses. They represent the power that we must protect and I can't tell you how many people told me that when they realized this, they would hold their little sparkely ping-pong ball in their hands when they were in a bad situation, and try to consciously remember to protect themselves.
Monday, March 5, 2007
A fight is going on inside of me, between two wolves
An elder Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me...It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, pride and superiority. The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside of you and every other person too."
They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied..."The one I feed."
They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied..."The one I feed."
Sunday, March 4, 2007
you can only open your heart when you love your own life and take care of yourself!
Trust is not a passive thing. You trust with your intelligence and your strength, as well as with your vulnerability. You will be trusting again when you learn the essential paradox about love: You can only open your heart effectively when you are strong and insightful, when you love your own life and take care of yourself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)