19,000 at General Motors Take Buyouts

Have you seen this yet? It's not getting any better! So much for a $600 tax rebate. Are we ready to try some different thinking?

Foreclosure Scams

Check this out! As if the middle and lower wage earning groups didn't have enough to worry about!

The Economy Is Running People Crazy!

Check this out!
Foreclosure takes toll on mental health!

Straving With A Smile

Whoever said that money cannot buy you happiness, was apparently rich,
for if they knew what it was like to strave, they'd shut their mouths and they wouldn't bitch!

It is a FACT that the human body needs food to survive, right? Without food, you will slowly, but surely die, correct? Here in the 21st century, even though McDonald's and various fast-food restaurants are practically giving away fat-patties and grease-sticks, you still need money to pay for them. In fact, I haven't found any supermarkets that are giving away free food! Have you? I don't enjoy being without food, it doesn't exactly make me jump for joy! So when you see the realtionship that money actually has on sustaining human life......how can it not buy at least some happiness? Basic happiness......I'm happy to be alive! I need to eat to live though, and so do you!

There are a great many entrepreneurs that you will learn about through this blog who came from some very tough times, and those experiences are what made them into what they are today. You have no choice but learn some very valuable lessons about money,.......when you don't have much of it! One of my favorite entrepreneurs and most inspiring examples of courage, motivation, and dedication to acheiving their dream is the star of the popular movie "The Pursuit of Happyness". No, I'm not talking about Will Smith ....lol.....although he also rose to greatness by using the power of his own God given talents.

I'm talking about the one and only, Christopher Gardner!
This is my mentor, and my role model. When things seem like they are at their worst for me (which is only about a step away right now), I always remember his story, and they tragedies that he was DETERMINED to overcome to reach his goals!!! I am determined to make it also. Through hell and high water, I'll get there someday!

A Millionaire In 4 MONTHS!!!

Like many people during this recession, I am struggling. I am sruggling bad! But i try my hardest to stay optimistic. I realized a few years ago that most people will never get rich working for someone else. Most will never actually get to enjoy life and actually live it. They'll never be able to have all of the things that they want. But I'm here to not only tell you that you can......but I'm going to SHOW you!!! Once I decided that I was sick and tired of working for other people, I began trying to figure out a way to make more money, and work for myself. The things i have learned in the past few years have astonished and amazed me!!

It started out as me looking for alternative means to make more money. I searched, I read, I scoured classified ads and looked everywhere for a possibility. Then i came across an article about a 21-year-old college student that became a millionaire in 4 months! Yes, you read that right,
4 MONTHS. This student is what inspired me to begin searching my most powerful tool for answers, my MIND!

This student's name is Alex Tew, here is the article that changed my life!

What's really crazy is that while posting this, I realized he tried for his second one.......but it was almost a complete failure. Oh well, he already made a million off of the first. The first thing most people ask themselves after reading that is: "DAMN, why didn't I think of that?"
After his success, these "Million-Dollar-Homepages" started popping up everywhere, competition is a way of life.......but it's always the first to do something that makes it huge! Please comment on this, tell me what you think!

McDonald's Hatches New Sandwiches

I believe I have finally found my purpose. I'm still not sure exactly how I'm going to get paid for it...but this is what I love to do. I enjoy educating people about the reality that we are living in. We can become whatever we want to become. Check out this website, rather that article, and tell me what you think. Most people will click through the pages and think of how good the food tastes, not me.......and with the proper education neither will you. On the bottom you'll see the pics detailing the history of McDonald's. Boring stuff? Not at all! What's interesting is not only how McDonald's came to be what it is......but the frame of mind the people, or ENTREPRENEURS, were in when they created it. Tell me what you think about J.R. Simplot. There is a very powerful message in what he did, and the frame of mind he was in when he did it! Wouldn't you like to become a billionaire??? Why not?

Finding Purpose

The motivation for answering the question is obviously strong as the answer will help us to find the meaning in our lives. The asking of questions about our environment, our experience, and ourselves is fundamental to human condition.

By definition, the conscious mind seeks to know. This is in short known as inquisitiveness. So once we have figured out what exactly it is that we want – to make more money, to not live paycheck-to-paycheck for the rest of our lives, to have more time to enjoy the things that make us happy – lets begin asking ourselves questions.

Why MUST I make more money? Asking yourself, “Why MUST you”, makes your brain dig a little deeper into your feelings about why you really need this. As opposed to the weak sounding, “Why SHOULD you, which is more likely to bring feelings of a mere want.
How CAN I make more money?
What IF I make more money?

THE JOURNEY TO SELF DISCOVERY - The 3 Questions

It all starts with a realization: you are reading this for a purpose. You want something. You need something. You want to become something, to have something, or to do something. Our brains our goal seeking mechanisms and if we ask it the right questions, we will find the right answers. What effective questions can you ask yourself that will lead you to the right thinking that in turn will lead you to the right decisions and the right actions, and lastly to your desired goal? Well, its actually 3 questions that are the most important, and the are like templates for any goal or outcome you want to achieve. The 3 questions are:
1) Why Must I?
2) How Can I?
And
3) What If I?

Asking these questions ultimately leads us to a choice. Do you continue to ask and investigate, or do you stop and never ask again? In order to investigate which course of action to take, we must first investigate WHY the choice faced. It’s the question that drives us. Does that sound familiar?

Unplug

First you must start by asking yourself a question. Later we will learn just how powerful these questions are, but for now lets begin to prepare ourselves for change. Ask yourself whether or not you want to continue trading away your time and energy working to make someone else rich? Is there another way? The founders and CEO’s of some of the worlds biggest multi-million dollar businesses asked themselves that question. What can you do? In order to successfully get off of this paycheck-to-paycheck treadmill and drop out of the rat race altogether, you’ll need a solid plan for how you will spend your time and way to earn dramatically more income, meanwhile spending much less. Set yourself a financial goal and create a long-range plan to reach it. How are millionaires really created and what does it mean to be one? There are only 5 major ways to become a millionaire without serving a life sentence either in the rat race, or in prison. Those 5 ways are:
1) Hit the lottery and become rich almost overnight
2) Inherit a huge, lump-sum of cash
3) Marry into it
4) Win a lawsuit
And
5) Start your own business

There are few accidental millionaires in the world. People who achieve financial independence, however they define it, make getting there a priority in their lives, according to Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, authors of the groundbreaking book, “The Millionaire Next Door.” You don’t need to live for the money, but you do need a clearly defined goal and a plan to achieve it. Self-made millionaires do tend to:
1) Pay down debt
2) Live within their means
3) Spend less than they earn
4) Save and invest regularly
And
5) Find ways to maximize their income

Take inspiration from the many who quietly gained wealth by saving regularly and investing wisely, whose homes and cars don’t scream “rich”. Everyday we hear or read about someone or some group of people striking it rich by just spending time in the basement of their homes and putting together ideas that they believe the world and it’s people will benefit from. Just imagine all that is out there to offered to those who really take the time out to do just a little bit of research. Anything is possible and we all have the required tools to build our own fortunes, we just have to learn how. It all starts with the decision to make a significant change in our lives. The majority of people that have gone on to successfully build multi-million dollar empires have all had something in common: the ability to focus their minds on a vision, a goal that they dedicate themselves to in the face of adversity and take all appropriate actions to achieve that goal. Whatever the human mind can conceive, and believe, it can achieve. Get comfortable and hold on tightly, we’re about to take a voyage of discovery into the most powerful tool that you and I possess as human beings: The Human Mind.

What is the "The Rat Race"?

“It’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet. I wish I had more time to spend with my kids. I wish I had an extra $500 a month. I need more fun in my life. I’m ready to do something for myself. I wish I could quit my job”.

Statements and phrases of this nature are becoming everyday language in conversations among middle-class and lower-wage earning workers. Articles and cover stories are appearing more frequently in various magazines and newspapers. Everyday we force ourselves to get up and go to our “J.O.B.”, and we remain miserable for the duration of the day. Customer service begins to suffer because the jobs are all being filled with unhappy workers that despise working the hours, commuting back and forth to work, never having time for their family and friends, and getting paid just enough to barely survive until the next paycheck. This paycheck-to-paycheck cycle leaves us tired and drained of all energy and motivation. Our health suffers because we cannot afford to miss a day of work due to feeling ill.

Millions of Americans say they feel overworked and stressed out. Many say they want to work fewer hours and find a better balance between responsibilities at home and work. The number of people who work more than 50 hours a week has steadily grown in recent decades, feeding the complaints about long hours. Large surveys have found that while as many as one in six couples would like to have both partners work part-time, only one in 50 couples obtains such an arrangement.

Some economists, sociologists, and psychologist say the paradox arises because of the changing nature of the workplace. In a growing number of professions, mainly those involving thinking and social skills, company managers and owners are finding it increasingly difficult to measure the day-to-day performance of employees. When making or manufacturing tangible products, it’s easy to measure employees’ performance based on the quality of the products. When work is intangible, and you have an indefinable product, there is a strong temptation to measure output in terms of hours worked. The focus on hours is responsible for this “rat race” at many companies, where most people want to work shorter hours, but no one is willing to step forward and ask for them, because the first person to make such a move will be branded as insufficiently committed to his or her job.

Though everyone would benefit if the race were called off, we’re all running just to stay in place, and no one can afford to lose their job by being the first to slow down. Employers are also paying the price due to this “arms race” of hours, not just in higher wages, but in the loss of talented people the race systematically filters out. Those that had a single flaw, they didn’t want to work the long hours.

Driving this rat race is our obsession with consumption and competition. We are constantly in competition with one another over who has the biggest house, the fastest and nicest cars, the flashiest jewelry, and we put ourselves in debt trying win. Researchers have asked people which they’d prefer: A world in which they made $50,000 but everyone else made half that; or one in which they made $100,000 and everyone else made twice that (prices staying the same in both worlds)? The majority of people preferred the first world. They would happily make less money, as long as everyone else made even less money. Therefore, as wages and available jobs continue to decrease, and the cost of housing, healthcare, and fixed expenses continue to rise, we “trap” ourselves in this situation forcing you, for instance, to work more hours to support a larger mortgage payment than you really needed. Thus losing the valuable time you could otherwise have spent enjoying a hobby or spending time with family and friends, leaving you less happy than you figured you would be with the big house.

But there is still a solution, there is always a solution. STOP. Pull out of the competition and look at it with a new pair of eyes. It’s time to unplug yourself. Do you feel as if your running a never ending rat-race and getting nowhere fast?

House poor

Having spent a lot of time crunching consumer spending numbers for her popular books, “The Fragile Middle Class” and “The Two-Income Trap”, bankruptcy law expert and Harvard University Professor Elizabeth Warren states that the basics such as food, clothing, and shelter now take up close to three-fourths of every families spending power (it was about 50 percent in 1973), leaving very little left over at the end of the month and leaving many families with no cushion in case of a job loss or health crisis. Even though household incomes have risen about 75 percent from 1970, most of that is the result of a second earner, generally a women, joining the work force, and that added income been almost insignificant due to rising fixed expenses such as child care and housing costs.

The average family pays at least twice as much for housing compared to its counterpart in the 1970’s, and in some competitive areas with good schools, housing cost have risen as much as 600 percent. Four in ten Americans don’t have even one months’ worth of savings for use in case of an emergency, according to a survey by HSBC Bank published in 2006. And with two incomes built into the family budget, the odds of a household getting hit by a layoff have doubled in the last generation.

This combination - high-housing debt, rising healthcare cost, lack of savings, and greater exposure to unemployment – leaves families in a very precarious financial position. The U.S. Census Bureau defines “House Poor” as spending more than 30 percent of income on housing expenses. In 1999, 26.7 percent of U.S. households were considered house poor. By 2006, the number had jumped to 34.5 percent. The number of households spending half their income on housing – an amount that for most would be fiscal suicide – also has dramatically increased, from 10 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2006. Identifying the source of the squeeze requires more than simply comparing overall inflation to overall wage growth.

Rising housing cost have quietly broken a social contract with consumers that promised that a “Good Job” with a good income would guarantee a good place to live. While that may have been true in the 1970’s, it is often not true today. Middle-class squeeze skeptics often point to rising credit card debt as evidence that consumers have themselves, and their spending habits to blame for any economic anxiety.

As the combination of intelligent, creative minds and advanced technology has given rise to a new world of possibilities, the majority of people are still stuck in the same mode of thinking that was effective 20 years ago. As the population continues to grow, middle-class and lower-income people will face increasing competition in the already limited and still shrinking “Good Jobs” that are still available. Why is this? How is it effecting you?

The Rich Are living longer

The gap in life expectancy between the rich and poor is widening, strangely resembling the growing income gap between rich and poor. Government researchers say the life expectancy for the nation as whole as increased, but affluent people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a widening gap.

One of the researchers, Gopal K. Singh, a demographer at The Department of Health and Human Services stated that: “The growing inequalities in life expectancy has mirrored trends in infant mortality and in death from heart disease and certain cancers.” Despite various efforts by the federal government, the gaps have been steadily increasing, and show no signs of stopping. Life expectancy is the number of years remaining for people who have attained a given age. Life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000” says Singh.

Though researchers have not agreed on an explanation for this widening gap, they have suggested many reasons. Due to our technological advances in medical science, doctors can now detect and treat many forms of cancer and heart disease. Unfortunately, it seems only the affluent and better-educated people are more likely to take advantage of these discoveries. Lower-income people are more likely to live in unsafe areas, to engage in risky or unsafe behavior and to eat unhealthy foods. It is cheaper and more time-efficient for the average american working a full-time job to eat at fast-food restaurants instead of taking their time, and eating a healthy meal during a one-hour lunch break. Smoking has declined more rapidly among people with greater education and income. Lower-income people are also less likely to have health insurance, so they are less likely to receive checkups, screenings, diagnostic tests, prescription drugs, and other types of care.

Are people living shorter lives due to their financial situation?
What's your opinion?

Emotional Impact of the Economic Squeeze

The middle-class and the lower end of the wage scale are feeling the “squeeze” of this economic shift the hardest. As housing and health-care cost steadily rise at alarming rates, stress, depression and poverty has significantly increased among Americas middle and low-income workers. Less educated workers who lack marketable job skills will continually struggle to “make ends meet” due to having the hardest time holding onto their jobs and the toughest time finding new employment. Factors such as advancements in technology, cheaper foreign labor, and increased cost of living has left many Americans feeling stressed-out, over-worked, depressed, and in a mind-state of hopelessness.

The emotional impact of losing a job can negatively affect your motivation and your ability to search for a new career, if you let it. As the possibility of a recession looms over our heads, so does the potential for more layoffs. Is it possible to recession-proof your career? When asked what workers can do to prevent job losses and/or layoffs, “Not Much” was the response from John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement consulting organization. “You want to try to protect your position in case of job loss.” He says this is the time to try to be in the office more often, you want to have a lot of “face time” at the company. Although earlier in the article he stated: “No matter how good you are, everybody’s at risk.” Essentially, everyone is now competing with each other to get absolutely nowhere. Marina Oppenheimer, a licensed psychotherapist in Miami, states: “ men have been socialized to think their job is tied to their self-esteem. For them, losing a job is like a sense of your identity. Unlike women who are tied up with their jobs, but their self-esteem seems a bit less dependent on doing well then men.” Also in the same article, Damien Birkel, Founder of Professionals in Transition, a support group for unemployed and underemployed in Winston-Salem, N.C., states that there are six stages of job loss grief:
1) Shock and Denial
2) Fear and Panic
3) Anger
4) Bargaining
5) Depression
6) Temporary Acceptance.

Of these stages Birkel says the third stage, Anger, can be the most crippling. “ When you’re angry, not only do you end up in depression, but you’ll turn it on yourself and it’ll show up everywhere you go.” That is a very valid point, your thinking does seem to attract like actions into your life, but fear is also one of the most damaging of all the stages. When you begin to worry about the mortgage payment, the car payment, and other bills with upcoming due dates, that worry turns into fear and panic. Anger results, then of course depression. These negative feelings have a seriously profound effect on the mind and body. Negative feelings lower self-esteem, disables motivation, and depresses you. There has also been startling research and subsequent articles that provide proof that the middle-class and lower-wage earners are more in jeopardy of health problems and are living shorter lives.

Changing Times

In 1979, when U.S. manufacturing jobs numbered 19.6 million, the annual inflation-adjusted median income for men was about $34,ooo. A “Good Job” was defined as one having health insurance, a pension plan, and earning’s of at least $17 per hour. According to John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR, the American economy has lost nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs since then, including 3.5 million of these “Good Jobs” lost between 2000 and 2006 alone. The share of high-school graduates with “Good Jobs” dropped from about one in five in 1979 to one in seven in 2005. In that same period of time however, those that didn’t complete high school and held “Good Jobs” dropped drastically from roughly one in seven to one in 25.

These are various sections from different articles that I have taken notes from. Articles such as these are showing more and ore frequently in newspapers, on tv, and online. What do you think about this shift? Do you think it effects you?