Why Not You? The Best Jobs On The Planet

I was talking to a friend about the Money Magazine article that rated the top 10 companies to work for.  He was kind of exasperated that he never had anything close to a single experience that some of the employees at these 10 firms have on a regular basis.  I’ve included the link to the online article below, but here’s a short list of some of what the “best” companies provide their employees:

·         Adoption benefits (time, money, and job security)

·         Telecommuting options to allow for oversees living in order to volunteer in impoverished areas

·         4-year college financial aid (loans & scholarships)

·         On-site childcare

·         Paid time off for volunteering and community involvement

·         Adventure trips

·         Self-designed/created jobs

If you read the article, notice how many employees comment about their employers supporting and encouraging the elusive work-life balance.  Notice how many employers promote life experiences and doing “what’s right”.  Notice how many employers freely heap on the personal responsibility and authority to every level in their company.  Notice that not a single employee commented on their level of pay.  Notice that not a single employee commented on their love of the actual product provided by their employer. 

Instead, each employee who raved about their employer felt appreciated and a personal connection with their peers and their management.  People want to work.  I’m convinced of that.  But we complain about our jobs when we feel no connection to the people that we work with/for and when the job doesn't feel like it is of our own design and intention. 

I’ve said before that I find it sad that most people will spend 40 years working in jobs that don’t give them a charge, just a paycheck.  40 years is a long time to not be happy about how you spend the majority of your day.  So you have three choices to make things better:

1.       Go search for a job at a place that excites you

2.       Create for yourself the exciting environment at the job you currently have

3.       Start your own business and run it how you want

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/pf/jobs/1101/gallery.best_companies_employees.fortune/index.html

Kiva.org Microloan Repayment Update - This Works!

Sol Y Estrellas Group
Grocery Store, Mexico

51% repaid

 

 

 

 

Rose Wanjiru Njuguna
General Store, Kenya

16% repaid

 

 

 

 

Magdalena Agsunod's Group
General Store, Philippines

79% repaid

 

 

 

 

Check out their stories on our earlier blog posts at:

http://wallfinancial.blogspot.com/2010/11/in-september-i-posted-on-powerful.html

 

http://wallfinancial.blogspot.com/2010/09/sharing-our-blessings-thru-finance.html

 

Effort, Postive Attitude, Indomitable Spirit

It can be a challenge to consistently maintain the amount of energy that’s necessary to live the way you want.  How many diets fall by the wayside?  Or plans to exercise?  Or plans to live within a budget?  Or putting more money into your 401(k)?  Or working at creating a better career? 

Great ideas and plans can be easy to start, but difficult to maintain.  If you think about all aspects of your life, you probably have many different goals for betterment and improvement.  Most want closer relationships, more financial happiness, a greater sense of importance, a stronger faith, more free time, etc.  The hard part is the work that it takes to get there and the motivation to keep working at it no matter what.

So try this: borrow or invent a mantra or philosophy for success that you believe in and write that down where you see it every day.  There are lots of them out there from which to choose if you can’t figure out a way to express your own.  Friends of mine at my martial arts school will recognize this one: 100% effort, positive attitude, indomitable spirit. 

Once you write it down somewhere where you see it all the time, it will remind you what it will take for you to direct your own success.  I promise you that this constant reminder will help you make better everyday/little decisions which will add up to the habits that build the life that you want.  If you do this and it doesn't work for you, send me a note and tell me - you'll be the first.

We all need encouragement and guidance and the best of both comes from within ourselves.  So commit yourself to what you believe, remind yourself of it, expect yourself to comply, and watch how much closer you get to living how you believe.

What's Next

I have no crystal ball, so take everything I say as simple musings about what is possible, but I think the foreseeable future will present us with the following conditions that will affect our financial decision making:

·         Information will be easy to get, true knowledge will not be.

·         Changes in policy (or even the anticipation of changes) will affect the business climate.

·         Market changes will be faster, steeper, and more subject to overreaction.

·         Asset performances may not follow longest-term historical norms.

·         Historically divergent asset classes will have moments of high correlation.

So I’m advocating financial consumers do the following:

·         Pursue market intelligence and insight, not just data.

·         Truly understand the benefit of micromanaging diversification.

·         Believe in the benefits of oversight, access, and due diligence.

·         Don’t simply “buy and forget”.

·         Maintain rigorous discipline.

Stand In The Sunshine For A Moment

I want to be sure I’m not demonstrating to you a Pollyanna attitude toward the current state of the economy, but I frequently get irritated with the short-term reporting by news sources and other blogs that thrive on doom and gloom.  So keeping in mind that I’m well aware of the challenges we still face, I want to share a few newsy tidbits I think we should enjoy reading:

* U.S. manufacturing continued to expand in December, as the

Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) Manufacturing Index

climbed to 57 for the month, its best reading since May.

* The ISM’s Non-Manufacturing Index climbed to 57.1 in December,

led by robust economic activity in the services sector.

* Following a 0.7% decrease in October, U.S. factory orders

surprisingly registered a 0.7% gain in November, according to the

U.S. Department of Commerce.

* According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the economy added

103,000 jobs in December, while the unemployment rate reached

its lowest level since May 2009, falling to 9.4%.

* The U.S. Department of Commerce reported that construction spending

posted its third consecutive monthly gain (0.4%) in November.

* The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) index increased 2.3%

last week. Refinancing applications were also up, rising 3.9%.

* U.S. Department of Labor figures showed that the labor market

continues to improve, as applications for jobless benefits declined

to their lowest level since July 2008.

None of these should necessarily affect any of your financial behaviors, but sometimes you just need to hear some good news.  I think these qualify.

Fearing Regret Is My Motivator

Is the picture in your mind of how you’d like to be living different from how you’re actually going through life?  If so, stop what you’re doing and change things.  A lot is at stake.

Nobody wants to say years from now that their life didn’t turn out as they’d wanted or expected.  I absolutely cringe when I hear people say things like, “retirement isn’t what I’d thought it would be”, or “I did all of that for this?”.  Regret is the worst feeling in the world because there’s nothing you can do about it.

But what you can do is take specific actions to avoid and thwart having future regrets.  Action taken today is the preventative medication against a future outbreak of regret.  Skeptical?  Try this:

1.       Pick something that you want to see yourself doing (travelling, writing a song, skydiving)

2.       Do it

3.       Pick something else (learning a foreign language, building a table, sitting on a beach)

4.       Do it

5.       Repeat steps 1-4

I’m not being cheeky, it’s serious and it’s actually very hard.  We have a tendency in this country to believe that our life is supposed to follow a path of thinking that today is supposed to suck so that tomorrow will be better, especially when it comes to our careers and financial planning.  I don’t buy it.

I have the benefit of being able to observe many people in different stages of career success, financial health, and happiness.  Those who seem to be at the highest levels in all of those areas are those that deny the “traditional” path of slogging through work and then praying for a good retirement and instead seek a balance between responsibility and life experience.  I see it so I believe it, and I wonder why it’s not a more popular way to live.

GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out

Garbage In, Garbage Out.  I feel that way about 95% of the financial plans I see people bring to me for review.  I don’t mean that 95% of the plans are garbage, I mean that 95% of what is contained in the financial plan is garbage.  I say this because when I ask clients about the plan someone wrote for them and as we review it together it is clear that either

a)      They don’t understand the substance of what is written

b)      They don’t know why all those charts and graphs are there

c)       Most critically, they never use any of it to help make financial decisions

Sometimes I think that financial plans are written and printed to try and make the advisor look good.  If the plan is 100 pages long and looks very complicated and is full of numbers and charts then that helps reinforce the message that the advisor is smarter than you and that you should listen to whatever they tell you. 

Barf.  Look again at your financial plan.  Go through it and mark every page that helps you make a financial decision.  If you found more than 5% of the pages helpful to you, then you’re better than most.  If not, demand that your plan be written simply and succinctly enough so that you can actually use it.  If you feel you need your advisor to show you all of their homework and research before you trust their recommendations, maybe you need a new advisor.

KIVA Loan Update: Sharing Blessings Thru Finance

We have made three microloans through www.kiva.org and here’s evidence of how credit-worthy even the poorest of the poor are.  Read the prior blog posts http://wallfinancial.blogspot.com/2010/11/in-september-i-posted-on-powerful.html and http://wallfinancial.blogspot.com/2010/09/sharing-our-blessings-thru-finance.html .

·         Magdalena Agsunod's Group in Philippines (Activity: General Store) Total Repaid So Far: 58.40% of your loan

·         Rose Wanjiru Njuguna in Kenya (Activity: General Store) Total Repaid So Far: 8.32% of your loan

·         Sol Y Estrellas Group in Mexico (Activity: Grocery Store) Total Repaid So Far: 21.32% of your loan

Sometimes a hand up is more helpful than a hand out. You too can give someone a job where opportunities are virtually non-existent for as little as $25 at www.kiva.org.

Plan To Be A Nevertiree

According to a Wells Fargo study:

The average savings of 50-somethings is only $29,000, which comes out to an income of $190 a month over 20 years assuming a 5% rate of return.  According to the survey, only 33% of Americans have a detailed written retirement plan and 37% don't know how much they will need in retirement or how long they will be able to live on what they have saved.  The survey found that 72% of Americans now expect to work through retirement, with 39% saying they will work because they have to and 33% saying they will do it because they want to.

Do you think that the same survey taken 20 years ago would show 72% of Americans expecting to work through retirement?  I don’t.  So whether it’s empirical or intuitive, people are smart enough to realize that the retirement game has changed.  So if that’s true, do you want to be one of the 39% who think they’ll be forced to work, or one of the 33% who think they’ll want to work?  I know which group I want to be in and we can help you design a plan that incorporates an I’m-looking-forward-to-it retirement component.

Be more than just prepared, be in control.  Establish a plan that looks forward to retirement with realistic expectations and then you can live happy today knowing that you believe in the direction that you’re going.

Non-Profit of the Month: World Vision thru Sammamish Pres Church

Tackling the causes and effects of poverty and injustice is kind of a big job.  It ain’t going away overnight.  But sometimes small steps, when taken together with other people, can make a mind-blowing difference in the lives of people who otherwise might not have hope.

Mahlalini is a village in one of Africa’s smallest countries, Swaziland, where 60% of the population live on the equivalent of $1.25 per day, over 40% of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS, 1 out of every 5 children is an orphan, a 15-year old has only a 20% chance of reaching age 35, and 15,000 households are headed by orphaned children.

Enter World Vision

Swaziland is not unique in its need, as about 2/3 of the entire planet’s population eek out meager and difficult livings.  World Vision (www.worldvision.org) supports children from all over the world by matching donors and needy kids for monthly support of $35. 

Enter Sammamish Presbyterian Church (SPC)

Anyone can go to www.worldvision.org and begin a relationship with a child in need, which I encourage you to at least think about.  But SPC (www.spconline.org) decided to make an even more dramatic impact by collectively focusing on a specific community, Mahlalini.  In a partnership with World Vision over 140 families in Sammamish, WA have adopted children from the same community, have maintained written communication, have traveled to their village, and have continued to spread the word about how small change from us can make a huge change in the life of a child and their supportive neighbors.  It is a coordinated all-out blitz attack on poverty.

Our non-profit of the month for December is actually a monthly sponsorship of a child in Mahalini. We are excited to share with you whom we get to sponsor in Swaziland and will keep you updated just like we have with our microloans thru www.kiva.org .    Check out the video of the trip to Mahalini http://www.spconline.org/pages/Mission/ChildIsWaiting.html

Be Like Jerry Rice

The best way to achieve a strong level of personal net worth is to build it over a long period of time by paying attention to yearly successes.  If in a year you earn $100 (after tax), spend $75 of it, see your investments grow by $5, and don’t borrow any money, then you “make” $30 and your personal net worth will  jump up by that same amount.  Add-up 45 years of doing that and you’ll have accumulated something significant!

And the only way to do that is to recognize that long-term success comes from the aggregated results of paying attention to small-detail habits.  The most successful athletes are habit-focused, as are the best teachers, as are the best parents, as are the most financially secure families.   Jerry Rice was the best wide receiver in football not because he focused on being a good receiver, but because he focused on habits like how to plant his feet, how to move his hands, how to shift his hips.  His famous workout regimen focused exclusively on small skill drills that he repeated over and over and over until he became the best at his position.  There are lessons and good news in that!

If you are having a hard time figuring out how you are going to save enough for ________________(retirement, college, vacation, debt reduction), focus daily on the habits that will support that longer-term goal.  If you want to buy a house in 5 years, practice using only cash to make purchases instead of your credit card, practice removing money from your paycheck and putting it in savings, practice cutting back on things you buy but don’t really value.  Become the Jerry Rice of your finances by focusing and religiously practicing the financial habits that will then lead you to become financially successful.

The good news in this is that it is much easier to decide on a daily basis what to do with your money than it is to try and tackle a five-year plan all at once.  Figuring out how to come up with a down payment on a house is hard.  Figuring out that you should not buy the latte with your VISA card is not.  Most of us can start small and it is how most of the wonderful things in life are built – small details now, big results later.

I Am Thankful For These Things (And More)

The 26 years I’ve known and loved my wife | My two amazing daughters | My parents, sister, and my sister’s family | My in-laws and my nieces and nephews | My friends, many of whom are as close as family | My church | Being born in the U.S. | Having the freedom to own my own business and work as I believe | Being healthy | Having so much of everything that I take for granted how simple my survival is | Having the experiences of international travel | Access to education | Clean water | Men and women who volunteer for service and sacrifice in our armed forces | Music | The invention of football | Comedy| The luck and wisdom of our Founding Fathers | Sunshine | Washington, Montana, and all places naturally beautiful | The fact that most people would trade for my “problems” in a heartbeat | You reading my blog.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Does Too Much "Tomorrow" Hinder Happiness Today?

I heard a radio commercial this morning for a large mutual fund company who staff in-house representatives to help clients develop financial plans.  I won’t quote the tagline but it sounded very similar to virtually every other financial planning firm extolling their prowess at helping clients achieve future financial goals.  Basically, the ad focused on how great your future could be if you use their goal-focused planning. 

I do something similar for a living and I won’t knock the value of long-range planning or criticize peers for advertising long-range planning services.  But I’m going to pick on one element of my industry that I don’t like.  One of the easiest ways to do this job is to present a proposal for a 25-year investment plan, charge an annual asset-management fee, send quarterly newsletters, monitor progress on an annual basis, send more newsletters, and have absolutely no accountability for the quality of the plan until 25 years has gone by!  I have rubbed elbows with financial advisors who have made careers writing and managing long-term plans with no focus whatsoever on helping someone with their current financial situation, their current level of happiness, or their current pursuit of positive life experiences. 

A predictor of your future financial happiness is not how well your current investments are tracking against the plan someone wrote 10 years ago (where they probably assumed an annual investment return of 10% - look up one of your old financial plans to see what I mean!).  Instead, a better predictor of your future financial happiness is your happiness today and the financial habits you are creating today that specifically target how you want to live. 

There are too many people who get done with their 25-year investment plan only to say how surprised they are that things didn’t work out as they thought they would.  There are too many people who sacrificed their money, time, and emotional happiness for decades all for the belief that retirement was going to be awesome, only to die or get sick not long after quitting work.  There are too many people who find no added joy in retirement because they never made it a habit of pursuing joy before they retired.

The solution is not to stop long-range planning.  The solution is to be sure that you somehow tie your long-term goals to immediate behaviors and accomplishments which support a happier, more intentional way of living.  Like most things in life, if you are always planning and not currently pursuing and experiencing, you’re not likely to ever realize any of the things you want in the future.

Sharing (More) Blessings Thru Finance & Economy

In September I posted on the powerful impact we can have by making small loans (for as little as $25 through www.kiva.org ) to entrepreneurs around the planet (http://wallfinancial.blogspot.com/2010/09/sharing-our-blessings-thru-finance.html ).  Did you know that 2.1 billion people live on less than $2 per day?  If that was you, how would you help yourself fight your way out of poverty?  How would you start your own small business?  How would you buy seed to start a farm? 

Those of us with access to a working financial infrastructure can help those who don’t via microlending.  So on the same day as that blog post we helped lend money to a woman in the Philippines who ran a general store which generated about $115 worth of month income for her family.  Since that date, the woman in the Philippines to whom we loaned money has already repaid 41% of the money lent to her!  This is ahead of the debt repayment schedule she committed to through Kiva, by the way, and a lot faster than most of us could repay our business loans!

With the money repaid from Magdalena I reinvested it in two more loans to two different entrepreneurs: 

Rose Wanjiru Njuguna who lives in  Kenol-Muranga, Kenya

Rose is 50 years old and married to James Njuguna.  She and James have three children. She has been running her shop for 16 years with an income of Kshs 11,500 per month (that works out to about $4.80 of income per day). She has a good history with KADET and is applying for her third loan which she intends to use to buy stock of flour, bar soaps, and liquid detergent to sell. She hopes to buy a piece of land for the family.

This group is called “Sol y Estrellas” (Sun and Stars).  The group is located in Toluca, Estado de México, Mexico

Yolanda González is a member of this group. She is 40 years old and has a sixth grade education. Yolanda works as a merchant and has four children, two daughters and two sons. She has a grocery store that she started seven years ago. Yolanda is requesting a loan to restock her store with more merchandise. Her customers include neighbors and acquaintances from the same community since it is the only store in the area. She wants to use the funds to increase her sales. In addition, she hopes to help her children do well in school and continue their studies.

About Group Loans

In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a group of individuals bound by a group guarantee. Under this arrangement, each member of the group supports one another and is responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members if someone is delinquent or defaults.

"Nevertirees" Are A Growing & Powerful Demographic

In past blog postings I’ve commented on the appeal and the practical reality of never completely retiring in the traditional sense.  It is a growing trend and resources to help are flourishing. 

Marc Freedman, founder of a nonprofit called Civic Ventures, coined the phrase "encore careers" to describe these second (or even third) callings. Almost half (45%) of working adults ages 44 to 70 say they want to pursue an encore career in retirement, according to a study Civic Ventures conducted with the MetLife Foundation. Another 6% in the same age group, or 5.3 million people, are already doing so. Of those, most (70%) work in education, health care, and government agencies, and 60% put in 40 hours or more per week.

Whether you desire starting an encore career trying to fill a non-profit need that you care about, or of starting a business, or of taking on a part-time job at a company that excites you with what they do, check out this great website http://www.encore.org/ .  Their tagline is “Combine passion and purpose with a paycheck”.  Actually, a great credo for all of us!