Issue #2050
- WEALTHY: Good ROIs… a better paying job… and bigger savings ( Michael Masterson)
- HEALTHY: Minimize the damage done by "unavoidable" carbs with this snack (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Oscar Wilde on America
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Is there hope for Western civilization? (Robert Ringer)
- How one leading small-business expert makes tough decisions
- It’s Fun to Know… about visiting the Grand Canyon
- Add "meme" to your vocabulary
Take a 5-Day “Summer Vacation” With Early to Rise
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Best part? You can pick your new business from an area of interest you know and/or love. We’ll get you up and running with everything you need: domain name, running website, search engine submissions… the works.
Most importantly, you’ll wind up with an online business designed to throw off profits for years to come. And once you’ve been through this program, you can copy the plan as often as you like. The only limit to how high you can go is your own imagination… and your motivation to succeed.
Will it take some time? Of course. We’re not interested in giving you hype about overnight millions. Will it take work? Certainly. Anything of value requires effort.
But if you spend five days of your summer vacation with us this July, you might not have to worry about vacations at all in the future… because you’ll be well on your way to having the freedom to do as you please, where you please, whenever you please.
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- Patrick Coffey
Dear Michael Masterson: 3 Questions, 3 Answers
Question: A 17-year-old reader of Seven Years to Seven Figures asks me, "How the hell is it this possible to get a 10 percent ROI [return on investment] without investing in real estate?"
Answer: First of all, read Automatic Wealth for Grads. I wrote that book for someone like you – someone who has plenty of time, not just seven years, to get rich. But the short answer to your question is this: the stock market. Long-term studies show that you can count on a return of about 10 percent from stocks.
Don’t be a cowboy, though. Invest in good companies that have a long history of earnings. Invest in them when they are under-priced. And use a stop-loss strategy to protect your downside. Or invest in a no-load mutual fund that tracks one of the major indexes. Over time, you’ll get your 10 percent. And if you start saving 15 percent of your income now, as Automatic Wealth for Grads recommends, you will be worth between $10 million and $100 million when you are my age. How does that sound?
Question: "Tim" writes to say that he has "a good paying job and also a business on the side," but is not able to save money and pay off his credit card. He wants to know how he can handle "this problem."
Answer: If you have two incomes, you must be making at least $60,000 a year. If you aren’t making that much or more, you need to get a better job and a better second income. Unless you are married with kids, 60 grand a year is enough to pay off your debts and save money … if you cut down drastically on your living expenses. Share an apartment. Get a cheaper car. Limit your fun money. And negotiate your debt down to something you can live with. Once that is paid down, don’t upgrade your lifestyle. Instead, save more.
Question: An AWAI copywriter-in-training is supporting himself with two low-paid "security jobs" that sometimes require him to work 60 to 80 hours in a week. He wants to know if he should take a better-paid job in law enforcement, even though his goal is to become a freelance copywriter.
Answer: Of course he should take the better paying job! But why stick to law enforcement if that’s not a field he’s interested in? He could probably make more money as a waiter or a bartender. If his goal is to become a freelance professional, the only thing that should matter to him is how much he will get paid and how many hours his job will demand from him. What he wants is a job that pays enough to take care of his expenses while he is maturing as a copywriter, but also leaves him plenty of time to study and to practice his new craft.
Think of it this way: As a freelance copywriter, he will eventually be making $50 to $200 an hour. That means his study time is very valuable. So he should get the most money he can for the time he is working … and forget about wearing badges.
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: Have a question for Michael Masterson? Write to him at AskMichael@ETRfeedback.com.]
Reader Feedback: "It is like finding gold in every issue."
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"Thank you ETR team for your excellent work."
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Kathmandu, Nepal
[Ed. Note: How has reading ETR helped you - maybe even changed your life? Send your comments to ReaderFeedback@gmail.com. Include your name and hometown ... and we may print your e-mail in a future issue.]
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
Oscar Wilde
The Infrastructure of Life, Part 2
By Robert Ringer
In part 1 of this article, I made the point that although we live in a rapidly changing world, the changes we witness are changes in form only. The real substance of our universe, and thus of life itself, is comprised of unchanging universal principles – and I suggested that the only way to retain your sanity in an increasingly insane world is to live your life in harmony with those principles.
Today, let’s take a look at what that means.
If you guide your actions in accordance with what you see and hear around you – particularly in the media – you’re likely to spend your life in a state of waking dreams. On the other hand, given that you have been blessed with a human brain, you have the capacity to make a conscious decision not to join your lemming neighbors as they obediently follow evil, ignorant, and/or confused politicians and "good cause" advocates over the Cuckoo Cliffs.
I recall that an acquaintance of mine in the early 80s who, after reading some of my dire prognoses for the future of Western civilization, said to me, "What’s the point in trying to make money or striving to achieve great things if there’s no hope for Western civilization?" The plethora of so-called doom-and-gloom books on the market at the time only added to his despair.
Nevertheless, the average person did not want to believe that the collapse of Western civilization was as imminent as many extremists were predicting. And they were right. Western civilization did not collapse. It simply faded away through a phenomenon known as "gradualism."
Which is why those who are still awaiting the collapse of Western civilization will have a very long wait – because they’ve already missed it! Western civilization, as we once knew it, no longer exists. It faded into the sunset of history as Americans were watching Monday Night Football, guzzling Bud Light, and stuffing themselves with Big Macs.
They simply ignored the whole event, because to comprehend it would have required accepting truth. And most people hate truth, especially when it threatens to interfere with their daily fixes of instant gratification.
The disappearance of Western civilization was easy to ignore, because it was brought about by a quiet revolution. It was, in fact, a moral revolution. And it was the success of that moral revolution that was the real cause of the demise of Western civilization.
Having said this, I should point out that there are at least five factors that allow politicians and their sign-pumping cheerleaders to carry on long after it becomes obvious that their actions have led to devastating consequences. Three of those factors have always existed: government guns, government printing presses, and ignorance of the masses.
The fourth and fifth, however, are relatively new on the stage of human history: modern technology and a virtually unlimited borrowing capacity. So long as a guy can spend more than his already artificially inflated income can buy, he is able to live in a nice house, drive a new car, and surround himself with electronic gadgets that are the equivalent of Aldous Huxley’s "soma" in his classic novel Brave New World.
Technology is the politician’s ace in the hole, because, as the late and liberal Bennett Cerf, one-time president of Random House Inc., once purportedly said to Nathaniel Branden, "You have to throw the masses a piece of red meat once in a while or they’ll kill you." (Let’s call that a paraphrase, because I don’t have quick access to the book – Judgment Day: My Years With Ayn Rand - from whence came the quote. But I am confident that my words are pretty close to what Cerf purportedly said.)
To be sure, the masses do want red meat. Marie Antoinette suggested cake, and discovered that her joke wasn’t appreciated. A lack of red meat also prompted the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. And the masses aren’t averse to rising up against anyone or anything else that threatens to keep them from their red meat.
Today’s red meat comes in the form of electronic toys. Keep the toys coming, keep the borrowing channels open, and who knows how long the inevitable can be postponed?
My advice is that you neither try to predict the future nor allow the madness of the crowd to discourage you. Instead, relentlessly focus on the infrastructure of life – the universal principles – and take actions accordingly. I believe this is an important key to finding freedom and happiness in an unfree world, because universal principles will never desert you.
Old Charlie Dickens was right on target back in 1859 when he said, in the very first (and very long) sentence of A Tale of Two Cities:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
In other words, it was pretty much like any other time.
And the same can be said of today. Crises come and go, but at only one time in history is the world going to come to an end – and you won’t be around to remember it anyway.
Which is why a rational approach to life is to focus on those things over which you have the most control – and rely on the infrastructure of life to work its magic. To the extent you do so, you will have a much better chance of leading a prosperous, meaningful, fulfilling life – in both good times and bad.
[Ed. Note: Take a gigantic step toward achieving all your personal and professional goals - faster than you ever imagined - with Robert Ringer's best-selling personal-development program. And sign up for his Voice of Sanity e-letter here.]
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One Food You Should Always Pack When Traveling
By Craig Ballantyne
When you are traveling, despite your best intentions, it isn’t easy to eat "right." However, there is one portable, healthy snack you can count on. It not only fits into any bag without spoiling or getting crushed, it is readily available, even in airports and gas stations.
I’m talking about raw almonds.
Almonds lower cholesterol, help with weight loss, give you fiber, protein, and monounsaturated fats, and fill you up. Plus, recent research from St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto showed that almonds minimize the negative effects of a processed carbohydrate meal – something you are bound to eat when you are on the road.
In this study, men and women ate 50 grams of white bread, along with one, two, or three ounces of almonds. (A one-ounce serving is about 22 almonds.) Adding the almonds to the white bread prevented the rapid spike in blood sugar caused by eating white bread alone. Essentially, adding almonds to the white bread produced a low-glycemic meal. And, as you know from reading ETR, low-glycemic foods don’t affect your blood sugar levels the way high-glycemic foods do.
So stock up on almonds and make them your snack of choice – especially when you’re traveling and concerned about damage being done to your health by the restaurant food you’re eating.
[Ed. Note: Craig Ballantyne is an expert consultant for Men's Health magazine. If you're looking to burn fat, build muscle, and quickly step into the body you have always wanted with just three workouts each week, check out Craig's fat-loss system, Turbulence Training for Fat Loss.]
Worth Quoting: George Cloutier on Making Tough Decisions
"Tough decisions usually involve confrontations, and most people don’t like those. But my mother used to tell me to eat my vegetables first, and that’s what I tell clients.
"We all have things we don’t want to do or we shy away from: Increase prices on our biggest clients, fire an employee who’s not doing the job. It’s easy to delay or procrastinate, but it’s much better to make a checklist of those tough things, do them, and then move on.
"Time is money, and procrastinating wastes your money. Every day you let that situation continue or keep that ineffective employee on the payroll, it’s costing you money."
(Source: BusinessWeek.com)
It’s Fun to Know: About Visiting the Grand Canyon
Since March, tourists have been able to see the Grand Canyon in an entirely new way thanks to some creative engineering. A glass-bottomed, curved walkway extends 75 feet over the rim, 4,000 feet above the canyon floor. The impoverished Hualapai tribe at the canyon’s western edge allowed a private developer to build the attraction, hoping to bring in tourist revenue.
(Source: Associated Press)
Learn how to "Hotwire” the Internet for fast and furious profits…
These days, it seems like everyone’s getting bogged down with all the technical jargon and being intimidated by the internet… and rightly so, because doing things the way all the ‘experts’ say is a real headache!
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Discover that much needed extra bit of breathing space and peace of mind an extra grand or two here and there can give you today. Read about it here…
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Meme
A "meme" (MEEM) – from the Greek for "memory" – is a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation).
Example (as used by Seth Godin in his blog): "Is [the desire to have more] some sort of character flaw? A defective meme in the system of mankind?"
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007
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