How To Keep Your Personal Information Private
You get privacy notices in the mail — tucked away inside statements from your bank, credit union, insurance company, stockbroker, mortgage lender, etc. — but chances are you don’t pay any attention to them. Well, you should. These institutions have a lot of information about you (your Social Security number,…
READ MOREBecome Wealthier by Investing Smarter
“Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.” – W.H. Auden Let’s assume you get the 10% raise (at least) that you resolved to get yesterday. And let’s say, just to keep the numbers round, that it amounts to $10,000. Here’s what you should do with it. 1.…
READ MOREResolution: Increase Your Income
Let’s start with some simple arithmetic. Joe Ordinary is 25 years old, makes $28,000 a year, and gets ordinary 3% to 4% yearly increases. Over a 40-year career, he makes approximately $2.3 million. Elwood ETR is not satisfied with ordinary. He follows the advice he gets here every morning and…
READ MOREHow Much Should a CEO Make?
“Greed’s worst point is its ingratitude.” – Seneca (Letters to Lucilius, first century) When I first read the statistic quoted above, I accepted it without thinking. Then my brother questioned it and I realized it was one of those trumped-up pieces of data meant to score a point. What is…
READ MOREHow to Hire and Keep the Best Employees
“I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.” – Larry Bossidy Which of the following actions will give you the greatest success in hiring employees “for life”? * finding out…
READ MOREThe Smartest Home Improvements for Your Investment Dollar
“The surroundings householders crave are glorified autobiographies ghost-written by willing architects and interior designers who, like their clients, want to show off.” – T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings (“Robsjohn-Gibbings Names the Biggest Bore,” Town and Country, January 1961) My wife has a mile-long list of home improvements she wants done … *…
READ MOREWhat Is the Biggest New Idea in Your Market?
“Who in Europe could have thought of the disappearing bed, a bed during the night, a handsome wardrobe during the day? Where else [than in the United States] could the rocking chair have been invented, in which a man could move and sit still at the same time?” –…
READ MORENobody Ever Ended a Meeting When He Was Doing the Talking
“What the customer demands is last year’s model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs, you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.” – Edna…
READ MOREThe Most Important Line of Copy in You Email Marketing
“A good advertising man is a first-class pragmatist. If he has any basic theorem at all, it is that most advertising is an intrusion upon the time and attention of people; a justifiable one but an intrusion nonetheless. The reader has bought the magazine for something other than the ads.…
READ MOREMake Your Performance Reviews Frank, Positive, and Specific
“It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar.” – Jerome K. Jerome (The Idler, February 1892) In “The Performance Appraisal Question and Answer Book,” Dick Grote recommends that companies change the nomenclature for describing “mid-level” performance ratings so…
READ MOREAn Easy Way to Make Your Child Very Wealthy
“With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too.” – Yiddish proverb Let’s say my friends could afford to put $20,000 into such a fund. And let’s further assume that the fund provided a net return of 8% — which is lower…
READ MOREThe Current Stock Market Rally
“I may just quit my job at the plant to become a full-time stock market guy.” – Homer Simpson When Richard Russell launched Richard Russell’s Dow Theory Letters in 1958, he said that what then looked like the beginning of a bear market was merely a bull market correction. “Stay…
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