Protect Yourself
- WEALTHY: A gift the kids will really appreciate … some day
- HEALTHY: Trans-fat free in NYC (Dr. Al Sears)
- WISE: Abraham Lincoln on living with the threat of disaster
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- A risk you probably can’t afford to take (Robert Ringer)
- What Rosa Parks and Cory Booker have in common (Michael Masterson)
- Add "undulate" to your vocabulary
One Simple Step To Make 2007 Your Wealthiest Year Yet
More than any other activity you can do, investing in your ability to achieve your personal dreams is the greatest gift you can give yourself this year.
As 2006 comes to a close, ETR has compiled its best products and put them into a blowout YEAR END SALE. These are our lowest prices ever, guaranteed, so there’s no better time for you to begin working on your goals for 2007.
Whether you want to start your own profitable business, invest in real estate or simply become more productive and proficient at the things you’re already doing – there are programs to help you get there faster.
Take a moment to give yourself a distinct advantage this year.
Justin Ford
Million-Dollar Gift Ideas for Your Kids
By Andrew M. Gordon
Sure, you can get your kids the new Wii … the latest Cranium board game … or an iPod Shuffle. But why not give a gift they’ll appreciate for decades?
I’m talking about investing in a Roth IRA for any child who earns up to $4,000 a year. You can invest as much as they earn. And because this investment vehicle is tax-free (for them, not for you), their earnings will compound over time without Uncle Sam getting his hands on the money … even when it’s finally withdrawn.
Not only will you be giving your children a head start on planning for retirement, you’ll also be teaching them a valuable lesson about saving. And since it never hurts to spell things out, give them a card along with your IRA contribution to let them know exactly what that lesson is. In your best handwriting, write: IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO SAVE!
This is a holiday message worth spreading to all the young-uns.
If you’re a parent or a grandparent, you could contribute to a 529 Plan for any child under 18. This plan - which is the perfect way to help pay an aspiring scientist’s or president’s way through college - has advantages like tax-deferred growth on earnings and tax-free withdrawals. Some states even allow deductions for contributions. [Ed. Note: Keep reading ETR for a more in-depth article by Michael Masterson on the 529 Plan.]
For the ultimate in planning for your kids’ financial future, pick up a copy of Justin Ford’s Seeds of Wealth program, which teaches you and your kids (and your kids’ kids) valuable savings strategies as well as techniques for building wealth.
And if you’ve got a high-schooler or college kid, Michael Masterson’s best-seller (and Amazon.com’s #9 Best Finance and Investing Book of 2006) Automatic Wealth for Grads…And Anyone Else Just Starting Out makes a great stocking stuffer.
[Ed. Note: Andrew Gordon, ETR’s financial expert, is the editor of our new investment service, Income. Each month, he uncovers specific stocks that promise safety (first and foremost), along with much higher-than-average profit potential.]
"We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read."
Abraham Lincoln
Protect Yourself
By Robert Ringer
Today, I’m going to give you a Christmas present that I believe you will cherish the rest of your life. Provided, of course, you make use of it. My present comes in the form of advice - but not just any old advice.
Allow me to explain.
It’s always amazed me that most people live their lives on the assumption that worst-case scenarios haven’t yet been invented. But people in New Orleans (Katrina), Florida (nonstop hurricanes), and New York (9/11) can tell you with certainty that they have. Disasters really do occur!
Even so, Murphy’s Law did not come into existence on the basis of an occasional natural disaster. Houses burn down every day, people die without their loved ones knowing where important documents are located, and viruses regularly wipe out computers. We live in a complex world where the loss of valuable documents and other items can change a person’s life - overnight and forever - for the worst.
Many documents are like a spare tire: You may not need them often, but when you do, you need them badly and you need them fast. That being the case, my Christmas gift to you is to urge you to protect both your important hard-copy and digital files.
It’s hard for me to fathom that less than 25 percent of computer users back up their computers on a weekly basis. I have tens of thousands of documents, folders, graphics, e-mails, e-mail addresses, macros, AutoTexts, AutoCorrects, templates, spreadsheets, and other files stored in digital form. I don’t know about you, but I can ill afford to risk losing them.
That’s why I bought an insurance policy against such a loss - for only $130. And, believe it or not, it was a one-time payment. That policy goes by the name of "external hard drive." On a couple of occasions when my computer died, all I had to do was disconnect my external drive and plug it (via its USB cord) into another computer.
Note that I said external hard drive. If you try to back up to a second hard drive that is internal - a very risky setup that many people have - it’s like sawing the branch off a tree while you’re sitting on the end of it. If your computer is stolen or wiped out in a fire or flood, you still lose everything that’s on the internal backup hard drive.
I should also point out that I’m not one of the 20+ percent of computer users who back up their hard drives once a week. No way. I back up my hard drive every day! Further, I have 14 separate backup folders on my external hard drive, and each night I assign a new date to the folder I’m using for that day. That way, I always have a complete backup for each of the last 14 days.
If you’re chuckling and thinking "anal retention," you either don’t know much about computers, don’t use a computer to any serious extent, or have never experienced a computer disaster. If it’s the latter, congratulations on your good fortune.
But, trust me, your good fortune won’t last. No one makes it through this computerized world of ours without experiencing a computer disaster. Whether you like it or not, it’s coming. It’s only a question of time … and whether you’ll be ready for it.
Serious computer users also would be wise to look into offsite backup options. This is not in lieu of an external hard drive but in addition to it. A couple of the better known offsite backup services are Pro Softnet Corp.’s IBackup and America Online’s Xdrive. They charge only $10 per month for five gigabytes of storage and $100 per month for 25 gigabytes.
No matter how overboard you go to protect your files, the costs involved are relatively small, especially when compared to the high cost of regret.
So, here’s hoping you accept, embrace, and utilize my Christmas gift this year. The last thing in the world I would ever want to say to you is "I told you so."
[Ed. Note:Get Robert Ringer’s unique perspectives and profound wisdom … and join the millions of entrepreneurs, business owners, salespeople, and individuals in all walks of life who have taken gigantic steps toward achieving their personal and professional goals … with three of the most powerful personal-development books of all time on CD.
And sign up today for a complimentary subscription to Robert’s thought-provoking e-letter, Voice of Sanity in an Insane World.]
Increase Your Nest Egg in 2007 With Monthly Smart Investing Tips
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Click on the link to start your subscription with the December issue.
New Yorkers Take a Step in a Healthy Direction
By Al Sears, MD
New York City’s Board of Health is the first city in the country to fix one of the FDA’s many blunders: its position on trans-fats. Ever since the FDA gave its stamp of approval, trans-fats have exploded the risk of heart disease worldwide.
New York’s ban on trans-fat won’t take full effect until July of 2008, but it’s a step in the right direction. After years of widespread use, numerous studies link trans-fats to heart attacks, strokes, and cancer - to name just a few of many problems. They have proven to increase your LDL (bad) cholesterol. What’s worse, they decrease your HDL (good) cholesterol. They also cause inflammation and rob your brain and heart of the real fats you need.
Many doctors recommended "low-fat" products containing trans-fats for years, thinking they were helping their patients. My friend and colleague, Dr. Walter Willett, Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, recently said:
"A lot of people had made their careers telling people to eat margarine [containing trans-fats] instead of butter. … When I was a physician in the 1980s, that’s what I was telling people to do and unfortunately we were often sending them to their graves prematurely."
And margarine isn’t the only culprit. In fast-food restaurants, you’ll find trans-fat in just about every menu item. A McDonald’s deluxe breakfast has a whopping 11 grams of trans-fat. A Kentucky Fried Chicken dinner has about seven grams. The average order of fries has six grams.
Whether you’re at home or in a restaurant, make sure you know what you’re eating. And get a balance of the good fats that matter - like omega-3s. You’ll find them in grass-fed beef, wild salmon, avocados, nuts, and cod liver oil.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears, a practicing physician and the author of The Doctor’s Heart Cure and 12 Secrets to Virility, is a leading authority on longevity, physical fitness, and heart health.]
Reader Feedback: "I came away from Bootcamp with a whole new arsenal of tools to make business happen."
"Although attending the ETR and AWAI Bootcamps in succession was exhausting, the content really was relevant and flowed beautifully from technical considerations to content development needs of any business - Internet or brick and mortar. I’m a pretty knowledgeable techie, yet I came away with a whole new arsenal of tools to make business happen. Thanks for all your hard work!"
Barbara Perkins
Mesquite, NV
Notes from Michael Masterson’s Blog: Publicity Events Come in All Sizes
"I got my undergrad degree from Stanford, but I got my Ph.D. in Newark, and some of my best professors were here in Brick Towers," Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker told a New York Times reporter recently. He was preparing to leave his "bachelor-pad" apartment in Brick Towers, one of Newark’s worst - and certainly its most notorious - low-income buildings.
[Ed. Note: Read the rest of this article on Michael Masterson’s blog].
- Michael Masterson
Do You Need To Start Out Small?
If you don’t have an Internet business yet, or if your company is smaller than $1 million then you need something different… something that lets you start off small.
One man I know turned $10 into over $500,000. How’s that for starting small!
Let me show you how to get a similar Internet income stream running for almost nothing.
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Undulate
To "undulate" (UN-juh-late) - from the Latin for "wave" - is to move with a sinuous motion.
Example (as used by Peter Marks in The New York Times): "The actors’ hands quiver and the poles undulate in the wind."
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2006