#and they were all selling for at least 3x the amount I paid

[dogboyheaven]

Stopped into a record shop today and found a copy of Stop Making Sense which is awesome on its own BUT I noticed my copy has a promo sticker in the top corner??

Vinylheads is this rare. Did I get an extremely valuable copy of Stop Making Sense.

[jeannereames]

Hello, Dr. Reames! I love your work (and am very excited to read your novels very soon!). I am thinking of doing a phd (not history or classics, but maybe sort of related to Alexander) but I'm scared that I'm not going to have the motivation to go through with the whole thing... Do you ever lose motivation and get discouraged when researching/writing and how do you deal with it? I know that this is completely unrelated to Alexander/ancient history so feel free to ignore it☺

Hi, there! This reply is going to be in 3 parts. First, about my own motivation…

I think everybody (even Alexander!) has periods of feeling discouraged. It’s part of being human. This is especially true when something you put days, weeks, or sometimes *years* of effort into doesn’t work out, or isn’t well-received, or comes back with “revise and resubmit.” Ha.

So, real life recent example:  About a year and a half ago, I finished an article that took me (literally) 5 years to research and write, because it combined research into two different areas, only one of which is my research area. It took a huge amount of reading, and I’d even presented it at a couple of conferences, where I received good feedback. It was supposed to be published in conference proceedings, but that fell through (not my part of it, the entire publication didn’t happen because the editor quit). So I had to shop it around to journals. It went out to three readers, and all three returned it with “Revise (substantially) and resubmit,” + large *additional* bibliography (mostly not in English) in the area not my field. Two of the readers thought my chief point was valid, but needed more support. (The third just flat disagreed with me, but it’s academia; that happens.) But that was after it had been presented 3xs already, and revised after each.

OTOH, I was pretty discouraged. But OTOH, the suggestions and reading lists were helpful. These are blind reviews, so it wasn’t personal. And the entire point of peer review is to help a book or article improve. Lord knows, nobody wants to put out something that will get you laughed at. But after all the time I’d already spent on it, it was still really discouraging as I’d thought it in pretty good shape.

Almost everybody in academia is going to have an article or three turned down, or a book refused, etc. And after a while, it can be really hard to keep trying. And it’s not just in academia.

Do you know how long it took me to sell Dancing with the Lion? 15 years! I got my first serious query from an agent in 1996. (The first words of the novel were written in December of 1988–that’s how old it is.) That agent eventually decided it wasn’t for her. I’ve had a couple others since…same thing. I’ve sent out probably around 500 queries to agents or publishers. In fact, I’d put the book AWAY and started a completely different trilogy (which I’m in the middle of now), because I figured it would only sell later.

Then I happened to read comments about Madeline Miller’s A Song for Achilles written by an English professor and new acquisitions editor at Riptide. She liked it, but there were a couple of things she really didn’t like. And they were the very ways (I thought) my novel was different. So I emailed her. She asked for sample chapters, then the whole thing, and finally, Riptide offered me a contract. They’re not a major press, they’re a Romance publisher primarily, but they were willing to take a chance on my coming-of-age historical, so I grabbed the opportunity. Now the book is out (well, the first half is), and it’s getting pretty decent reviews.

So persistence can pay off.

That said, if someone else had told me that story 10 years ago, I’d have snorted and said (in my mind), “Maybe it did for you. Maybe I’m just a bad writer and I’ll never succeed.” I’d also just been through a divorce and was having trouble selling my house in the housing bust, etc., etc. So a lot of things in my life were pear-shaped at the time, and that can make it really hard to keep trudging.

The “Dark Night of the Soul” is a real thing, and we all go through it.

The only way I get through it, myself, is to remember things in the past that went well, times I succeeded. Plus, I’m just a really stubborn SOB. Ha.

But discouragement is normal, and there will be points in everybody’s life where not just one or two things are going wrong, but it seems as if EVERYthing is going wrong and you’re just a total failure. You have to believe it’ll get better.

Now, part #2, about motivation to complete a degree. It’s a bit like the AA motto: one day at a time. Or really, one semester at a time. One hurdle at a time. When I first got to Penn State, the long, long road ahead made me freak out a little, but Gene Borza (my advisor) told me to take it in bites. And to remember that other people had made it through; I could, as well.

Also, don’t let yourself get thrown by “Imposter’s Syndrome.” This is the feeling that you don’t belong somewhere: in grad school, in a PhD program, in a department (or really, ANY arena). You’re not as good as the others. Minorities, women, and first-generation college students are those most likely to suffer imposter’s syndrome, but it can hit others too, such as the children of academics (I’ll never measure up to mom/dad), etc.

Last, part #3, and this may seem an odd coda to all the above rah-rah cheerleading. But as a (now former) graduate program chair, I would be terribly remiss if I didn’t put out a warning.

Not only is the field of humanities in trouble right now, in the US and Canada, and elsewhere, too, but the entire university system is changing. This latter is especially true in the US, but I hear rumblings from other places. Partly, this owes to the rise of online education. But even more, it’s what I call the “Wal-martization” of the university, where tenure-track lines are being replaced by a bunch of part-time instructors who have to teach 6 classes just to make enough to EAT. “Adjunct” professors, even those with PhDs, are paid a pittance. It’s absolutely immoral and ridiculous.

Universities are turning into profit more than education, with a degree seen as “job training” instead of learning to think critically and exploring Big Questions, which are increasingly viewed as a waste of time. Administration levels are increasingly bloated with deans, assistant deans, supervisory boards, etc. They’re (mostly) not teaching, but their paycheques are high. Tenured faculty positions are being eliminated. Colleges and unis realized that they could turn over a lot of (especially intro and survey) courses to part-time instructors for a *fraction* of what they paid tenured and tenure-track faculty, but still reap high tuition.

When I was finishing up in the ‘90s, I was teaching as an adjunct while writing my dissertation, then for a bit after, as was expected for “teaching experience” before being hired. The phenomenon of the “Visiting Assistant Professor” (or VAP) was *starting* to gain traction, but was still usually just a year or two until these people would find a tenure-track position (VAP is not tenure-track). But now, I know people who’ve been VAPping for YEARS. And some just give up. Also, adjuncting like what I was doing has gone from “teaching experience for a real job” into “the only lane for employment” for a lot of PhD (and some MA) graduates. Especially women PhDs get caught in that trap.

These are the realities of where we are right  now.

And THE MOST USELESS DEGREE ON THE PLANET is a PhD in the humanities. I say that as one who holds it. With a few exceptions, a humanities PhD prepares you for pretty much one job: being a professor. And those jobs are winking out of existence with frightening speed. This is a change that has accelerated over the last 10 years, and especially over the last 5. We’re turning out PhDs with no available positions. Museum studies, Classics, archaeology, philosophy are in even worse shape. SOME history PhDs are more popular. This year, H-Net has a bunch of Latin American positions open, for instance.

An MA in history (or related) is still useful. There are certain jobs that like them, ranging from state jobs like the Park Service to the FBI and CIA.

But a PhD? Think loooooong and hard before investing that time and money. This is not a matter of *you* not being able to do the work to get one. It’s a matter of the university system as we’ve known it crumbling away under our very feet. I have no idea what the American university will look like in 10 years. And once you have a PhD, it educates you out of most other jobs.

So that’s the unfortunate bad news. And I’d be a very irresponsible advisor if I didn’t tell you the truth. IME, people who really want a PhD will ignore me and go after it anyway. But at least you’ll go in with your eyes open.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT VALUE

To reproduce the quality of the insiders. Investors will try to prevent others from having time to decide by giving you an exploding offer, meaning one that's only valid for a few days. We learned this lesson a long time. But I'm letting you in on the secret early. I feel a bit dishonest recommending that route. And not only in intellectual matters. But it isn't working. By similar comparisons you can make enormous gains playing around in problem-space.

I'm going to call the situation I described in the first paragraph sounds like the sort of poking around that leads to new ideas you have on the fly. Deals are dynamic; unless you're negotiating with someone unusually honest, there's not a single point where you don't need money take some to grow faster, or new investors will emerge who do. But just two companies, Dropbox and Airbnb, account for about three quarters of it. Here. Civil liberties recently. And of course Euclid. But in fact you shouldn't. The terms will be whatever they turn out to be i/o-bound. You're short of money, don't spend it. But do we have to do what they did? You can't trust your intuitions. Of course, if you love life, don't waste time, because time is what life is made of.

If you're raising an angel round, the size of a motorcycle when you wanted to park it. They're already stuck with a seller's market, because of the huge amounts they raised at the end of the world that mean people don't rule, and that you'll get back to work. That's why people proposing deals seem so positive: they want you to sell them more of your company, but startups especially, because startups have the least time to spare for bureaucratic hassles. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. My mother, who has the same model, diligently spent a day reading the user's manual to learn how to operate hers. Then the interface will tend to be outliers. That will increasingly be the route to worldly success. Raising $20,000 in capital to incorporate.1 Instead of working on things the eminent have made prestigious, work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you'll take.2 Several founders said what surprised them most was the general spirit of benevolence: One of the most conspicuous trends in the last ten years the Internet has made audiences a lot more hardware startups.

On the whole, grad school is that you should study whatever you were most interested in. Stuff is an extremely illiquid asset. Another area in which you could easily surpass Silicon Valley is in America, at least. If I had to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy. Just continue running your company as if this deal didn't exist. The good news is, simple repetition solves the problem, but skeptical about the value of the work done by small groups. Since the IPO market was practically dead when it passed, few saw what bad effects it would have to be disciplined about assigning probabilities. I think they are often mistaken to feel sorry for themselves. Those are the only things worth having. There is hope for any language that gives hackers what they want till the last moment. I accumulated all this useless stuff, but that you can do anything if you really try. That problem is irreducible; it should be hard.3

So it is with hacking: the more ideas you'll have. So any difference between what people want and what you expect of yourself, and perhaps whether you want to work that the smell of dinner cooking. But as one VC told me after a startup he funded would only take about half a million unique visitors a month. There are few Jews left in Germany and most Jews I know would not want to move there. Not intelligence—determination. Is there a general rule, you can figure out some hack that will at least conceal the problem. A surprising number of people who do great things. If your numbers grow significantly between two investor meetings, investors will be hot to close, and if we raise a couple million, we can see clearly what a bottleneck Sarbanes-Oxley. Hacking is something you do with a gleeful laugh.4 This idea was strongest at Harvard, where there is nothing to buy, after all? Several founders mentioned specifically how much more interesting a democratic news site can be than mass-produced sitcoms.

Because how much you like chocolate cake. That sounds hipper than Lisp. You don't need to look in the manual much.5 Make a good car? Instead of working at a low angle of attack, build up speed, and we're willing to do something in an ugly way to get fast code is to have a plan to spend a specific amount. It's hard to design good libraries. And that's what the malaise one feels in high school, I now actively avoid stuff. Assuming your product doesn't experience the explosive growth that very few products do, everything from development to dealmaking especially dealmaking seems to take 2-3x longer than I always imagine.6 The best we can hope for is that when we interview a group and find ourselves thinking: they must be smarter than they seem. If this would be the norm. Suppress one, and you get paid a fairly predictable salary for working fairly hard.

Notes

The speed at which point it suddenly stops. I'm also an investor pushes you hard to make people richer. Which feels a lot of the next time you raise them.

I think all of us in the narrowest sense. This essay was written before Firefox.

The root of the aircraft is. That's not a programmer would find it more natural to expand into casinos than software, we could just multiply 101 by 50 to 6,000 per month. I remember are famous flops like the increase in trade you always feel you should make what they mean. They're still deciding, which is where the acquirer wants the business much harder.

The variation in wealth, and configure domain names etc. If you invest in syndicates. That may require asking, because they will fund you one day be able to formalize a small proportion of spam to nonspam was consistently very high, they won't tell you all the money right now. Icio.

On the other team. Imagine the reaction might be able to resist this urge.

Trevor Blackwell points out that this had since been exceeded by actors buying their startups. Enterprise software. 'Math for engineers' sucks, and the ordering system and image generator and the hundreds of thousands of small and then a block later we met Aydin Senkut.

[saikaigigi]

I had a very short update on my Facebook, but since there's NOTHING to do today at work (or for the rest of the week, for that matter), I figured I'd do an entry here. The weather hasn't really continued warming up that much. I'm still cold in the office and we still have the heater on (or the "stove" as they call it...). Warm coffee is a necessity to stay awake and keep warm. The coffee here isn't that great but I think I've gotten used to it and it isn't the worst thing anymore. The coffee at Pearson was still WAY WORSE. That stuff was poison. And yet, I still drank it...every day. We've been quite busy these days. I got to lead classes on my own for about 2 weeks. The end of the year was kind of "anything goes" in my first year classes. So I did a St. Patrick's Day presentation and a few activities that prompted the students to speak on their own - which was honestly the only time they could, since my JTE for that class isn't very creative and just went through the main dialogue of the chapter over and over until the class fell asleep (seriously, one day I stopped him and said - they're too sleepy to continue. Let's do a short activity to get them awake. We then played Simon Says for 2 minutes.) Anyway, my classes went amazing. We studied 2 songs together, described photos, did word jumbles and drew emotions. And all the students were engaged. My JTE was amazed. I was just like, well it makes sense. They are also all relaxed because they know that grading is over. Really, at this point of the year it's like anything goes. Now the students are on Spring break. I still have to come into work even though there aren't classes. It's whatever, I guess. At least I get paid to sit here and think about literally anything I want and type things like this. Last week, the transfer announcements were made. A few of the teachers I liked are moving to different schools. This happens once a year. The teachers who have only been here for a short time weren't really at risk of transfer, but those who were here for anywhere between 2 to 5 years got picked to move. I never really thought about how hard it would be to transfer because at home, there is such a clear line between work and home life. At 5 you leave and forget about work until the next day. And maybe you don't spend so much time with co-workers. Here, the teachers are assigned for a few years to a school who houses them in teacher housing, and the only people they know are the other teachers and the students. Those people become their life. Their friends. Some of these teachers already live apart from their spouses and children. Sometimes the transfers move them FURTHER away from them. I think it can be really hard to deal with. So I understand why there were so many tears at the goodbye ceremony. While I think it's good for the overall educational system to have an even division of teachers and experience, this is really hard on people. But they're used to it. It's just the way it is. And it will probably be this way for a very long time. Meanwhile in the States, you get teachers who have been there for 30 years who have lost passion because they aren't respected by students and they're just getting worn down. They don't like their co-workers or their students and have a hard time controlling their classrooms sometimes. At this point, I don't know whether or not the Japanese educational system is better or not. In ways, I think it is. But in other ways, everyone just works too freaking hard here! Like, after 5 PM GO HOME AND RELAX! Some of my teachers don't go home until 9PM every day. Like, why? They don't get paid overtime to be there, either! Huh, this became a ramble about education in Japan. Somehow. Recently, Philip and I have been getting out more. Last weekend we made it out to Arita with our friend who is in the Navy and stationed nearby. I have never seen so many pottery shops. It was insane. I definitely want to go back there and explore. We also visited a nice shrine and had a good talk with the priests there and they explained how to buy the fortunes (which had an English translation! They must get a lot of tourists). We talked a lot about how we came to Japan and the charms they were selling. The entrance to the temple was up a set of stairs with a train track at the top, then after you cross the train track you can enter the temple. I found it kind of strange. At the top, it just looks like there are train tracks and then an edge you could fall off of. Philip's cousin came to visit this week. He's a college student studying in Tokyo. He's super full of energy so this week is gonna be fun. We certainly had fun yesterday after we picked him up. We spent all afternoon in Sasebo looking around. I found a flute I had never heard of and decided to buy it. It was sort of an impulse buy, but it wasn't that expensive (until I decided to buy a book to learn with, then things got pricey...the book was more than the flute!). I discovered that I got like a learner's flute, and that these flutes come in bamboo. I really want a bamboo one!!! The flute is a shinobue and it's used in festivals. Also, it turns out that it's the mystery flute from Vampire Princess Miyu that I always loved!!! I may have downloaded that soundtrack when I got home...hehe We found a koto concert in the middle of the shopping strip, and the guy who runs the souvenir shop where I got all my souvenirs for family recognized our Navy friend and we got to clarify where his shop was so we could take another peek. We were met by his son on the corner where we needed to turn (he called him!!), and we were shown inside. We were able to ask questions and explore the shop. I asked about the flutes because I noticed they had more than before. Turns out that they now had the flute I had just bought at the other shop, but the real versions. The shop keeper let me try the flutes (which really surprised me!!!) and I discovered that the one I got was SUPER high pitched like a piccolo. I thought "Great, my neighbor will be so happy..." But actually, I'm thinking of practicing at the beach around the corner from my house. Anyway, I discovered that i LOVE the sound of the flute that has one less finger hole. It's such a nice sound that I can enjoy more by myself without killing anyone's eardrums. He offered to sell one to me for half price. I just could not believe that. Really. What?! I was ready to buy it right then and there! But he said I can take some time to get used to the instrument first. What a nice guy! Not like other sellers who are just like "BUY IT NOW". I truly felt cared for as a customer. They also gave us free plants! I was like Okay! Plants are cool! I'm actually terrible with plants. Philip got me an orchid on our first Valentine's Day and it just died. I got a small flower that was placed in a stone at the culture festival here back in November and I haven't watered it once. I think it might still be alive somehow, though. So...we'll see how long these guys last under my care! They also gave Philip a little squirrel because he asked how much it was and they just said "Please take it!" I think maybe no one was buying it lol. He gave it to me as a present. Oh, and the week before hand I got a deal on some Sailor Moon merchandise at this second hand store in Sasebo called Y.Y....something. Y.Y.Boueki I think? The guy there collects a lot of things, including American things, especially Star Wars. He even has autographed things on display. He let me take a picture with a rare Sailor Moon statue he had. I did make it to GU for the Sailor Moon collaboration, but things sold out VERY fast there and I couldn't choose exactly what I wanted beforehand. But I did get a good amount of things! 3 shirts and a Luna purse! I also decided to snag some pants because I needed some. I now own white pants and they frighten me (I'm going to stain them, I just know it...). also, I'm the biggest size there. That's just unreal. And actually, these pants are slipping a little now that I'm moving around a lot >.> But, I'm just saying, the range of body types here must not be large because if I'm the biggest size, I feel sorry for anyone bigger than me trying to shop for pants. Really. That must suck. I was going to wrap this up but I just remembered the enkai on Friday night that we had. We had a big going away dinner party for the leaving teachers. I had to eat fish and I'm starting not to look forward to the food at these gatherings because I have to force myself to eat a lot of things I don't like. I ate some sort of clam thing, I don't even know what it was. But it came in like a conk shell. Is that even what it's called? God, not growing up near the ocean has never been so apparent as it is now that I'm living by one. I don't know a lot of things about ocean life. Anyway, so each leaving teacher gave a speech and then other teachers would stand up and give a speech back. And it was nuts. They all did a Japanese cheer that I had never heard of. It was actually quite educational. And then the gym teacher who was basically the guy who kept order in this place with the kids, is leaving. So the other gym teacher gave the speech to him. But, not before stripping off his top first. Oh, boy. And then he stood there giving his speech topless and crying. And it was sort of charming to see two men who were such good friends have such a heart to heart moment. Even though one of them had stripped beforehand. XD We went to an after party at a VERY SMALL BAR near my apartment. It was so fun! There was karaoke and it was the most fun I've had with co-workers here. Everyone was singing and cheering and just being totally silly. It was really cool. I'm kind of disappointed that my base school is switching to my other high school now. I'll be there 3x a week. So I'm not as affected by the transfers as the other teachers, but I still feel kind of sad? I don't know the teachers at the other school as well, or the students. It's a bigger school. They're awesome, though. Full of energy and the students are generally pretty smart. Plus, there's a rock band club...so there's that. I think it'll be okay. WOW THIS WAS LONG BYE

[zbealer]

January 2017

On January 1st my friend Alvaro and I checked out of our AirBnB, grabbed lunch, then hopped on the bus back to Guatemala City. It is pretty common for bus drivers to charge up to 3x the normal fare on holidays. I always thought this was something normal and legal that they could do, but as we entered Guatemala City a policeman got on the bus and asked all of us how much we had paid because apparently bus drivers aren’t allowed to raise prices. In our case he hadn’t raised it much, but the police made him pay us all back the excess that he had charged us. Late that night we met up with Alvaro’s Peruvian friend, Yessi, to get dinner. 


One of my good friends, Steffi, works as a volunteer for a soccer team that is just starting by doing their graphic design and publicity work. One of the perks of her job is getting free tickets to the soccer games in the VIP section, and she invited me and another friend to one of the games. I’m not much for watching sports on television, but watching them live is something I do enjoy so I had a good time. 


 At the soccer game, with a (locally) famous player

The first weekend in January my friend Alvaro came to Xela so I could show him around since he had only visited once before for a short amount of time. Although I’ve lived here in Xela for 2 years there are still some parts I haven’t explored, so we decided to check them out together in addition to me showing him some of my favorite spots.

The following week I worked at the heath clinic in Xela as a translator for a group of medical students that came to do volunteer work. I had been to the clinic once before when I got a rabies shot, but I didn’t know all the services offered (gynecology, pediatrics, family planning, HIV testing/education, laboratory work, pharmacy, and vaccinations). Everything offered at the clinic is absolutely free for Guatemalans and foreigners that come to the clinic. While we were at the clinic I noticed a lot of people lining up for “medical cards,” which are required by almost any formal form of employment. In order to get a medical card one must give a fecal sample to prove to be free of any parasite, a blood sample to prove to be free of HIV, and a saliva sample to prove to be free of tuberculosis. I talked to one of the nurses, and she told me that often times some labs will “sell” results saying that the patient is free of one of the requirements without actually examining the sample – just another example of corruption in Guatemala. Apparently at the beginning of the year it is very common for people to start looking for jobs (as it is in the states for people to start gym memberships), which is why there were so many people lined up in the morning to get these cards. 


While at the clinic my eyes were opened to some harsh truths of Guatemala – sometimes the pharmacy doesn’t have a certain medicine a patient might need and the patient doesn’t have the money to buy it in a pharmacy, therefore they settle with something that the pharmacy has that will hopefully cure the illness. The pharmacy also doesn’t usually carry combination medicines therefore doctors have to prescribe three different medicines that do the same thing as one combination medicine. 
One problem that seems to be very prominent in Guatemala is diabetes. The Guatemalan diet consists of a lot of carbohydrates (rice, beans, tortillas, white sweet bread, plantains, and coffee is always sweetened), which gets converted into sugars. The medical students had a free “medical fair” in which they tested blood sugars, blood pressure, heart, lungs, and gave medical advice as needed. When checking blood sugars some people had it so high that the machine was unable to read it. 


In all there were three translators, but everyone was placed at a different location. I was stationed at the health clinic and all but two of the students knew basically nothing about the Spanish language so that meant I ran around all day translating doctor’s appointments and medical advice during the medical fair. At the health clinic there are medical students at the universities here that do their residencies so they had priority over the American students (obviously because they knew the language), but I tried my best to help translate what was going on and encouraging the American students to focus on learning about the Guatemalan health system as much as they could to observe the differences. In the end I think everyone left very satisfied, and it made me realize how much more I wanted to be a Spanish translator.




At the health clinic with some of the medical students

As soon as I was done on the last day I took the medical students to help them buy some souvenirs then met up with my best friend JJ. We grabbed a drink at a famous restaurant then went to my house to get ready for a going-away party I was invited to that night. 
I met a good friend of mine from Denmark, Mia, through the Spanish school where we both studied. She comes at least once a year to visit her friends here (and actually studied for a semester abroad in Xela). That night she invited me and some other friends to have dinner together at a new restaurant in town. I had a great time because we have a ton of friends in common, so there was never a dull moment. Afterwards we all decided to go out of a bit. 


My best Guatemalan friends and me

At Mia’s despedida (Mia is on the far left)

That following weekend my friend Alvaro decided to come back to Xela to visit again. This time the highlight of his stay was our trip to the Laguna Chicabal – a scared Mayan lagoon that sits on top of a volcano. One of my friends, Daniela, from Chile, decided to join us. We all met up at the central park in Xela at 8AM then went to the bus terminal. From the bus terminal to where we got off was about 40 minutes, and from there we walked 2 hours to the top of the volcano. The walk wasn’t long but it was definitely steep (and worth it!). We first went to the viewpoint of the lagoon then walked down the many stairs to the actual lagoon and ate the sandwiches we had packed that morning. Afterwards we started our hike back down but got lucky as a pickup offered us a free ride to the parking lot. We talked to the other people in the pickup, and I decided to ask someone if they were headed to Xela. When they told me they were I asked if they would be nice enough to give us a ride – to which they also replied favorably. In the end they saved us not only a bus fare, but quite a bit of time as well. 


Laguna de Chicabal

Alvaro, Daniela, and myself

After I dropped Alvaro off at the bus station to head back to Guatemala City I met up with my friend Martiza at her apartment. Her birthday is December 31, and I hadn’t properly celebrated with her so we decided to do it that night. The next day I helped her look for a new apartment because her lease was up soon and wanted to move out. 


The following week was my last week in Xela so there were quite a few things I needed to do before I left. I needed to take care of things with my cell phone, the bank, packing and cleaning up my room, and some other random things to take care of before I left. I also went to visit my Guatemalan “family.” My “mom” still has students that stay with her and when I went to visit it just so happened that a student born in China decided to cook traditional Chinese food for everyone. We stayed for quite some time at the house drinking, talking, and dancing. 


My Guatemalan Aunt Pati

On January 21 I had my despedida (going away party). I have quite a few friends and I could tell my roommates were a little worried about having a lot of people at the house so I decided to have it a bit earlier on the terrace we have that has a breath-taking view of Xela. I decided to have a little “cocktail bar,” where people could mix fresh fruit with their choice of liquor and mixer – which turned out to be a success. For me saying goodbye is always difficult, especially after forming deep relationships after having lived in Guatemala for two years. Tears and hugs were exchanged while promises were made to see each other again. 
On the 22nd I headed to my Guatemalan “family’s” house for a going-away lunch with them. Before lunch was served each member of the family shared a few words with me. It didn’t take long before tears started rolling down my face. I feel extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to live with them, and the bond we share is like the bond I have with my biological family. My favorite part was exchanging random memories we all had of each other from the times I lived with them six years ago. 


The cocktail bar buffet

A few party pics

On the 23rd I got on a shuttle bus from Quetzaltenango to San Cristóbal, Mexico. We left roughly at 9AM and got to the border around 1PM. In all there were many shuttles shuffling tourists around so we had to wait for everybody to go through the migration control before heading off to Mexico. At about 4PM we ran into a problem – citizens of a town had blocked off a road as a form of protest. It’s pretty common in Mexico to do that to get officials’ attention, and usually works. For us it meant we either had to wait until they decided to let some cars pass or grab our stuff and walk about half a mile to the other side of the blockade. I decided to walk with some other tourists to the other side and we paid for a bus on the other side to take us to San Cristóbal. That night I was pretty tired, so I just checked into my AirBnB, ate dinner, then went to bed. 


The blockade

The next day I literally spent the whole time walking around the city. San Cristóbal is very touristy because of the pretty colonial architecture and churches. I found a pretty neat museum called Na Bolom, which was an old catholic seminary that later became the house of a Danish archaeologist, Frans Blom, and his Swiss wife, Gertrude Duby. In the museum part they displayed the work they had done to preserve the culture and art of the indigenous people living in the Lacandona forest (located in the same region). I enjoyed my time there (most of all the Mexican food), but knew that after a day I had seen most of what I wanted to see within the city limits. That night I got on an overnight bus to take the 12 hours bus ride to Oaxaca. 


At the Na Bolom museum

San Cristóbal

I got to Oaxaca at 7AM on the 18th and immediately dropped off my bags at the bus station then walked around the city. I got breakfast in one of the largest plazas – two tamales and Mexican hot chocolate (one of the best breakfasts ever!). It was awesome to literally watch the city wake up as I wondered around the town. Around 1PM I met up with who I would be staying with the next two days – a woman named Maru, her husband, and a family friend that helped drive them around. 
Years ago my mom visited a winery in Kansas and became instant friends with the owner, a Mexican woman. When my mom heard I would be moving to Mexico she called her and it turns out her sister had a house in Oaxaca. I got everything worked out, and they hosted me for the two days I stayed there without having met me prior to my arrival. Although they were a bit older I really, really enjoyed my time with them – they were extremely nice people and wanted to show me as much as possible. As soon as we met up they took me to their house to drop off my stuff then we went to some Zapotec ruins at a place called Mitla. Mitla (or Michtlan) means “place of rest/dead” in the Zapotec language. The first evidence of human occupation was in 0-200AD, but it reached its highest point around 950-1521AD. After the Spanish arrived in the area a Catholic temple was built over one of the patios using destroyed prehispanic structures. Basically instead of destroying the ruins at Mitla the Spanish decided to build a Catholic church right next to it. Afterwards we grabbed a nieve (literally snow), which is famous in Oaxaca. The best way I can describe it is as a natural fruit sorbet (and delicious). We then headed to a town called Tule, which is famous for a tree that is over 2,000 years old. It was so large that I couldn’t get it all in a photo. One thing that was neat was that they have little kids that are “guides” that will point out all the animals that can be found in the bark of the tree (dolphins, lions, snakes to name a few). We then went to a market and ate tlayuda, which is basically a Mexican pizza (tortilla crust, refried beans, a type of cheese typical to the region, meat of your choice, avocado, and tomato). On the way back to Oaxaca we stopped at a “scenic view” of the city to watch the sunset. Oaxaca reminds me a lot of Arizona, a state with a beautiful landscape. We then went back to their house, watched a Spanish soap opera, and had chiles rellenos for dinner. 

In Oaxaca

Inside one of the tombs

Mitla Ruins

The Catholic Church next to the ruins at Mitla

The tlayuda

The 2,000+ year old tree in Tule

Sunset over Oaxaca


The next day their “chofer” took me to a place called Hirve el Agua (boil the water), which is famous for its petrified waterfalls. What causes them is the water that comes out of the earth (it looks like it’s boiling – hence the name) that has a very high mineral composition. Since it’s only a small amount of water that comes out of the earth it forms the petrified waterfalls as it falls down the cliff. When we got there the first thing I saw was absolutely amazing – nature’s infinity pool. The highly mineralized water first collects in a pool then runs over into the petrified waterfalls, which meant the “infinity pool” was at the top of the petrified waterfalls, in the middle of a jaw-dropping Mexican landscape. Despite the name, the water was actually a bit chilly. After I took a dip we walked to the bottom of the waterfalls then back up them again. I took another dip in the pool then we decided to head back to the house.

The petrified waterfall

At the bottom

Where the water comes out of the earth (in a “boiling” fashion)

Nature’s infinity pool

Lunch was waiting for us when we arrived – carne asada, rice, and a salad. Afterwards we hung out at the house for a while then we all decided to go for a car ride around the countryside. We stopped at a little roadside stand where a traditional chocolate drink called tascalate made from corn, chocolate, sugar, and cinnamon with natural cream that floats on the top. It’s also called agua de los dioses (water of the gods). They also had a sweet drink made from a type of pumpkin and a bread that they soak in vinegar and top with onion and chili for sale, but the tascalate was my favorite. We then headed back to the house to watch Mexican soap operas and have dinner. 


The tascalate

January 27th will be a day I will probably never forget – as I boarded the bus in Oaxaca, Mexico, I knew I was turning the last page in the Guatemalan chapter of my life story. Just like watching the season final of your favorite television series I anxiously sat in the bus thinking about my future – what I would experience, learn, how I would help others, and how I would continue growing as a person. 
Good feelings. 

[topicprinter]

LET'S DO THIS!I've been getting some questions recently from people that have reached out to me for advice and I wanted to pay it forward to the community. I've advised a ton of businesses from idea, to seed, to raising money and exiting.My focus is on business strategy, sales, and marketing. All around building repeatable processes and streamlining operations.This is what I advise my clients to do right now -General thoughts about B2B and B2CIf you're B2B you're looking at either ongoing services or software and in some cases a little of both.If you're B2C you should be looking at consumable products, things people buy multiple times, with high LTV (lifetime value) customers or a product with a subscription element. NO OTHER EXCEPTIONS HERE.If you're selling into either businesses or consumers today, it's all about perceived value, which means there is some wiggle room depending on who you're selling to, BUT the following really should be held as foundational:These are pretty much the only reasons people buy things for B2B:It saves them time (reduces friction or replaces a time consuming task)Makes/saves them money (creates revenue/ adds value that lets them win business)Adoption is simple for their workforce (is easy to incorporate into an existing workflow and anyone can use it/cost of switching in relearning)Adds transparency and allows for bigger insights (provides data)B2C additional one - provides them joy or enhances their lifeThat's it.The most high growth businesses usually knock out at least two of the above. Really high growth companies hit four or more.Uber is an example of hitting just about all of them:No need to call a cab company and hope they show up, know where they areSaves them money, no more guessing on price and subsidized ridesJust download an app on your existing phone and add your cc numberTells me where my ride is, how long until they come to me, and how much it will costGives me an easy way to get a ride when parking is tough or drinking is involved because of their reliabilityThis works for a lot of businesses though - and there are more than a few SaaS companies that I’m close with that have nailed the majority of them and are creeping up in clients and funding as a result in historically busy spaces.Overall management advice because it’s more important than people thinkManaging is tough, just because someone was a great employee doesn’t make them a great manager and just because someone is an executive doesn’t make them a great communicator.Respect that everyone has different ways of communicating.Two lessons I’ve learned from working with a ton of senior leadership.Internally, break down everything into little goals, constantly ask yourself "What's my goal?" when it relates to calls, emails, outreach, posting, hiring, meetings, etc.Make that shit your mantra then distill it down to the simplest form it can be.You should always strive for clear and concise communication throughout all interactions. If you disagree with a request or find it not in the best interest, agree anyway first, then raise questions about it. Remember, we’re all in this together and our goal as a company is to help everyone clearly articulate “What’s my goal?” at a micro level to encourage good communication.Record all your processes from day one - process is what sets apart winners and losers, always be looking to improve your processes because down the line you're going to be looking to automate these - having records of your approach and what worked and didn't will be invaluable while growing, scaling, or building systems to streamline your approach.There is a tool for everything, that doesn’t mean you should use every tool. Find what works for your team and what has the highest level of adoption, create good habits around using the tools that provide you the best organization.Pep talk done let’s get down to businessWhen you're starting out the only things that matter are:Business strategy, partnerships, product, and marketing strategy.IN THAT ORDERSome of you will argue a team should be included, but I’m of the belief that if you nail all the above correctly, the people you have running it don’t matter as much. It’s more a matter of consistency and process than the people are executing.Today most smart businesses follow the same path:Start with your revenue and monetization plan (are you targeting a sector that has money and can/will pay)Align yourself with others in your space (cheapest way to get traction/credibility)Work on road mapping your product to align with what complements your partnerships (cheapest distribution)Work on building a marketing strategy that can help expose and align your brand while strengthening its recognition with your partners (will this make us both look good)Build customer advocates along the way, tell their stories (lead with examples)The above if done correctly massively increases your chances of successLet’s go over them one by one. (this post only covers number 1 - let me know in the comments if you want me to write up 2 through 5)REVENUE AND MONETIZATION - Will they pay? Do they have money?The following three questions can help you quickly weed out your ideas:Is what you’re building something that people are used to paying for?Is the part of the business you’re looking at a cost center or a revenue generator?Is what you’re providing a race to the bottom or increasingly a data play?You're answers should be, YES, Revenue Generator, Data Play.This is your best shot at success. Even a reduction in costs isn't as sexy all the time. Just compare your support budget to your marketing budget and these things become clear.Story time relevant to number 2 above - cost center v revenue generatorWe were using a series of three tools to automate a series of tasks we all hated. The three tools cost us around $1500 a month, the tools that did all the automation that we added, less than $200. We had to use the other tool either way but for $200 we were able to automate 80% of our work. To us we would have paid 10x for those solutions. The gap was we didn’t have any other good options to accomplish what we needed.I thought about building out a system and a product to fit this space, knowing the amount of savings this provided, but I ran into a problem - People weren't used to paying that amount for what we could provide, the part of the business was viewed as a cost center, and the data play is something that hadn't been used in that way before. Great idea, needed, proven out, but not marketable.You always want to be part of revenue creation - people are willing to pay more just about every time.Even really good ideas sometimes aren’t worth pursuing if the market conditions can’t support them.If you hit all the above three then we can move on to the best steps for getting this up and running.The steps for validating an ideaMarket knowledgeCompetitor researchNicheEarmarked budgetMarket KnowledgeKnow the industry you're entering.Please, for the love of everything, only start a company if you have intimate domain experience. Put differently, if someone was looking for someone to present even at a local level around what you're building would you be able to speak articulately about it where people would respect your opinion because of past work you've done?If the answer is Yes, pat yourself on the back.If it is no, stop, don’t pass go, you’re stuck with two options -Recruit someone to work with you that has enough domain knowledge for the both of you, orGo get some experience in the field, then come back to your planFar too often I talk to people that have had massive success or are really really smart, but they are taking on a project or product that is outside of their sweet spot. This leads to utter and total chaos and really is a waste of time and money in the vast majority of cases.Those that don’t know, partner. We’ll get to more of this in the second step, I’ve seen this work with companies where some groups lacked complete domain expertise. These were 3x CEOs and founders with healthy exits. This is harder to do, but works if you're smart about it.So what happens when a founder doesn’t have domain level experience especially in the early going, problems with go to market and validation, sometimes a general lack of understanding of business principles and market conditions. The result 99.9% of the time is that without domain expertise, founders end up misjudging the market massively and fail to provide the appropriate value.They often find themselves playing catch up and not in a good way, this is something that is easy to avoid, but hard to admit to oneself.I’m a huge proponent of learning an industry on the fly, but I feel like the better decision when possible is to get paid by someone else while you’re learning.But what about getting advisors and consultants to help me bridge the gap?I’ve seen this one in person, I’ve been part of this one, people don’t listen all the time. In some of the companies I’ve done work for, I’ve laid out what steps they should take, and watched as they fought back based on calculations that lacked all possible basis of being remotely possible losing millions of dollars in the process. The lack of domain expertise kills you when it comes to decision making if you’re not open to listening. But as an advisor, your job isn’t to make decisions for the teams, it’s to provide guidance and engage in conversations to bring issues to light and help people focus on goals.I've literally called business results months in advance in single meetings with executives only to watch things play out exactly how I predicted - usually negatively.Competitor Research (this is just an overview - this is it's own post and a half)The basicsSelling to someone that is using an existing solution is easier than enticing someone on a new concept or idea - cheaper tooIf there's competitor there are easy ways to build entire spreadsheets of their client listLook for industries within those client lists to build case studies aroundRemember you're in the game of creating content - be a resource for your communityQualify potential customers by using their opinions in your content marketingUse existing platforms for distribution where possible (integrations anyone?)You have more competitors that you know when launching a product, even if you’re a market first, you’re going to quickly find that the barriers to entry are steep and if the market is big enough people will be able to out spend, out maneuver, and out shout you pretty quickly.This shouldn’t deter you, it just means you need to be smarter.Existing ProvidersKnow the entire landscape for the type of product that you are creating. Know all the sort of competitors, talk to people and see what they are using, ask questions on Reddit and in other forums, understand who people know in the market.Then go to G2 and capterra and every other place that people talk about those products, scrape all the reviews with pros and cons - on some websites the reviewers even have linkedin links - go to their profiles learn about the companies they work for, the roles they have etc.There is so much data out there, work smart from the start.This is literally a post in it’s own or a chapter of a book. (if you’re reading this and you want me to break this down I can in another form).Correlate what your competitors do well, what they lack, and everything else in between.If you look up CRM you’ll see more than 250 listed probably more than 300 now, not including all the new ones like airtable and others that have popped up recently that aren’t direct traditional CRMs but just as useful.That’s a lot of space junk to get through.But there’s an easy way to get through it.NICHE YOUR SHIT DOWNThe biggest problem that most companies have is being able to properly niche down to the most ideal customer profile first, then work to expand the market after the fact.Remember that perceived value comment from way above.So how do you find yourself in the best possible chance of creating something that you can do well with?Build something that people are paying for, generates revenue for the business, and includes a data play as icing on the cake that improves processes and decision making.This will never work in broad terms, you need to be specific.One of the most common missteps people have is saying, their product is for everyone or every business. This is a red flag, don’t do this. Focus on doing one thing better than everyone else, look for data that supports a 10x uptick. This is basically required if you want someone to give your product a try as moving things over from an existing system are annoying.Your product needs to be very narrow, when you think you’ve gone narrow, you need to go more narrow.Example:We’re a helpdesk product.v.We’re a helpdesk product for eCommerce companies.v.We’re a helpdesk product for eCommerce companies using Shopify.v.We’re a helpdesk product for eCommerce companies using Shopify and Shipstation.v.We’re a helpdesk product for eCommerce companies using Shopify and Shipstation that have less than 100 skus.v.We’re a helpdesk product for eCommerce companies using Shopify and Shipstation that have less than 100 skus and do less than $10 million in annual revenue.v.We’re a helpdesk product for eCommerce companies using Shopify and Shipstation that have less than 100 skus and do less than $10 million in annual revenue with support teams less than 5 people.v.We’re a helpdesk product for eCommerce companies using Shopify and Shipstation that have less than 100 skus and do less than $10 million in annual revenue with support teams less than 5 people who are looking to automate their processes.v.We’re a helpdesk product for eCommerce companies using Shopify and Shipstation that have less than 100 skus and do less than $10 million in annual revenue with support teams less than 5 people who are looking to automate their processes who are currently using Zendesk.Just keep going deeper.There are perks to going deeper -The deeper you go usually the less competition you have - the more specific and tailored the easier the sales pitch is because you spend time creating things to help with workflows that relate to how they are working. When you know these workflows it's easier to have meaningful conversations.I’ve harped on the idea of process the entire time. And I’m going to continue to do it. Build things to simplify processes and watch people sign up and pay you to solve their problems.The ideal solution is turnkey that works with all the workflows people have or simplifies them with the amount of tools out there find the ones that you want to be part of the process with and integrate deeply.Earmarked BudgetIs the budget expanding, will it be expanded if you can tie results back to your product?This is actually really important because it comes to the ability to grow an account once you are in the account. Some businesses are better than others.If you’re a support desk product like above, and you reduce the amount of work people need to do, you’re reducing seats, if you can’t add features and other elements to increase the revenue per account or the size of the support team you’ve actually tapped out. This is the argument behind being a revenue generation company rather than a cost center. When it comes to a cost center it’s a race to the bottom and kills expansion, it forces you to always be acquiring new customers to increase revenue.This should be plenty to digest as you're thinking of ideas to pursue.Let me know your thoughts in the comments, hope this helps people out.I've got to stop here, we hit question 1 of 5 and we've barely scratched the surface.

[mcjoelcain]

Things To Consider Before Selling Your Business (Baby)

One of my luckiest investment decisions was not selling anything during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. I just held on for dear life, continued to max out my 401(k) and squirreled away anything left into an online savings account or CD.

In 2012, I got lucky again by receiving zero offers for my SF primary residence. Facebook just went public, but nobody wanted to buy my home. As a result, I held on, paid down more of the mortgage, earned some rental income, and then finally sold it five years later for 68% more.

In 2015 and in 2018 I passed on selling Financial Samurai. To sell before realizing my goal of writing 3X a week for 10 years would have made me feel like a quitter. Then in August 2018, Google had a large algorithm update that has since boosted organic traffic by 50%. That was an unexpected upside surprise, especially since the site has been around since 2009.

It sure seems like the secret to creating wealth is to consistently save, invest, grow, hold and build for the long-term. Almost every significant wealth event in my life has taken at least five years to stew.

Things To Consider Before Selling Your Business

We know there are three main sources of wealth: 1) your job, 2) your investments, and 3) your business. Most people erroneously focus just on their job. Savvier people focus on one and two.

But to really build next level wealth it’s worth doing all three. Start a business, own as much of the equity as possible, grow the business, and reap all the rewards.

Being an employee is fine. It’s just that without equity, it’s really hard to get very wealthy. You’re essentially working to make someone else rich.

You don’t have to build a big business. A small one that provides joy and boosts your overall income by just 10% is fine too. Over time, you just never know how large your business might grow if you stick with it.

If you’ve started a successful business and are thinking about selling it, here are some questions and considerations to go through before letting go of your baby. I’ve shared my thoughts as well as I consider retiring for a second time.

1) An attractive valuation. You must consider the valuation multiple compared to the overall S&P 500 and companies in your space. You must also consider the payback period and your likelihood of lasting beyond the payback period if you don’t sell. The stronger your expected future earnings growth, the higher the valuation multiple you should demand.

Wise public companies buy promising private companies at lower valuations. If a public company is trading at 20X earnings, it should buy private companies trading at lower earnings multiples with higher growth rates all day long. If it does, each acquisition will automatically be earnings accretive.

My thoughts: I don’t want to sell Financial Samurai because I think valuations are too low for private media businesses. Let’s say I’m offered 6X operating profit. This pales in comparison to the average 22X multiple for the S&P 500.

After six years of simply maintaining operating profit, I will have covered the entire purchase price. But every year after six years would be pure gravy. The payback period when all is recouped is also the point of serious regret for many entrepreneurs who sell. 

Further, if I can actually grow operating profit instead of let it stay stagnant, it makes even more sense to hold on. 

For illustrative purposes, let’s say someone offers me $6 million based off 6X operating profit of $1 million. If I can grow operating profit by 20% a year, the operating profit will have grown to $2.49 million after five years. In other words, I would have ended up only selling my business for 2.4X operating profit, which would be like getting mugged in a dark alley! And if I ended up selling for 6X operating profit five years from now, I could get $14.94 million instead of just $6 million. 

The only way I’d ever sell is if someone offered me at least 12X operating profit due to consistent earnings growth and my ability to keep on going for at least five more years. You’ll have to make an assessment on what’s the right valuation for your business. 

2) Cash generator or money loser. You either have a business that is losing money, but hopefully growing at a fast pace or you have a cash generating business that is usually growing at a more steady pace. If you have a money-losing business that isn’t growing, then you need to sell ASAP.

A money-losing business is unsustainable over the long term unless the business can continuously raise money from outside investors to fund operations. Uber, is a great example of a fast grower that lost $1.8 billion in 2018. Yet, because they are able to raise ~$9 billion from its IPO, the company should be able to fund its operations for at least five more years given its losses are shrinking (lost $2.2 billion in 2017).

If you have a cash cow business, then selling in a low-interest rate environment as we have now is a much harder decision to make. The reason is because a much higher capital amount is needed to generate a specific amount of income.

Look at the chart below. It shows the different amounts of capital needed to generate $55,000 and $20,000 in annual income at different interest rates. By a significant margin, cash cows are much more valuable today than they would be if interest rates were higher.

My thoughts: The core costs to run Financial Samurai include server cost, e-mail software cost, random website maintenance cost, and my time. Depending on how I value my time, operating my website results in 70% – 98% operating profit margins. In comparison, Apple’s operating profit margin is roughly 28% and Microsoft’s operating profit margin is roughly 31%. 

Huge operating profit margins is one of the main reasons why everybody should start their own website. There is little downside if you fail, except for your time and maybe a little ego bruising.

It’s not like you have to come up with a million dollars to start a restaurant to pay rent, remodel a space, buy food, and hire staff. A website is just you and your own creativity. 

Given I believe interest rates will stay low for the rest of my lifetime, the value of owning a cash cow should also stay high for the rest of my lifetime. 

10-year bond yield has been coming down since the late 1980s

3) Your personal goals. Do you want to sell for a profit or build a legacy? If your desire for maximum profits is strong, then selling your business may make more sense if you get the right offer. If you desire to build a long-term business because it gives you purpose and joy, then selling your business makes less sense. Decide what your personal goals are for your business.

My thoughts: I didn’t start Financial Samurai to make money. I just needed an outlet to address my fears during the financial crisis. Instead of smoking or drinking heavily, I decided to write. I think you can tell that I enjoy writing, otherwise, I wouldn’t author practically all of Financial Samurai’s content. If I hated writing, I would hire a bunch of freelancers to write lots of product review posts to try and maximize my revenue. But so far, I haven’t.

My purpose for Financial Samurai is to have a creative outlet to share my thoughts on a weekly basis. It feels good to get thoughts on paper and hear different perspectives from the community. To be able to formulate an idea, put it in writing, and releasing it to the world is very gratifying. 

A new goal is to run Financial Samurai long enough to teach my boy about online media, communication, and entrepreneurship. As an overrepresented minority at top universities, I assume it will be tougher for him to get in. I assume he will also get discriminated against in the workplace due to an underrepresentation of minorities in leadership positions. Therefore, it’s nice to have an insurance policy to skip university and the matrix all together. 

He might have zero interest in learning about online media, but at least I can talk to him about the importance of creativity, consistency, and work ethic. A small business has many of the same departments as a large business e.g. finance, marketing, sales, production, etc. 

Finally, what a wonderful way to communicate with family and friends long after I’m gone. I remember replaying over and over an old voicemail recording of a middle school friend who shockingly passed away in a car accident. If I were to die today, at least my wife and toddler will have hundreds of recordings and thousands of articles to go through.

4) Your view of the future. Do you see your business growing or fading? Can you create different products or revenue streams due to the strength of your brand? What are some new technologies that might disrupt your existing business? Are you capable of adapting?

Businesses fade away all the time. The murkier the future, the more you should consider selling.

My thoughts: I’ve always believed that if you can build a brand, your business will do even better in the future. Think about how many different business lines Virgin is in. Richard Branson has built an incredible, edgy brand that has enabled him to get into music, transportation, hotels, and more.

Financial Samurai is a fierce brand in the personal finance space that digs deep into the numbers and provides no BS analysis and answers. Everything is written based on firsthand experience because money is too important to be left up to pontification.

By establishing a brand that goes against the status quo (e.g. engineer your layoff vs. quit), plenty of new products can be created to leverage the brand. With only one book, I’ve barely gotten started on the business aspect of things. Now that my brand is established, I truly believe the opportunities are endless.

I envision a future where the consumption of online media via mobile devices only continues to grow. I see opportunity for Financial Samurai to expand internationally, especially in Asia and Europe.

Written content will never go away. It is by far the fastest way to consume information. Audio and video will continue to grow, and these are mediums I can easily utilize.

5) Will the money change your life. You can’t fault someone for wanting lots of money. If the sale of your business can significantly change your life for the better, then selling is absolutely an attractive decision. If the financial windfall doesn’t do much for your life, then you will likely feel a great let down because doing something mainly for money tends to feel empty.

My thoughts: The money received from selling Financial Samurai won’t change our lives. The only thing I might do is buy a bigger house. But I’ve already done the analysis on a larger house before, and it doesn’t feel worth it. Instead of feeling joy, I feel my headaches of owning a larger property with a $55,000 annual property tax bill would only multiply.

With the windfall, I’d give more money to a foster youth organization I volunteer at. I’d pay for a luxurious cruise for my parents. If my parents wanted, I’d also pay for their home remodel while putting them up in a nice temporary housing condo in Honolulu.

Other than these things, there’s really nothing more I’d do with the money except investing it in passive income generating investments. When you are already free to do whatever you want, having more money doesn’t move the happiness needle much.

6) Will you regret not selling if the market turns south. Fantastic selling opportunities open up only so often. If you pass, can you live with your decision that you could have gotten so much more if you sold earlier? Do you have the patience to wait for another 10 years for the next fantastic selling opportunity?

For example, Yahoo was once once worth over $100 billion and eventually sold itself to Verizon for only $5 billion. The good times don’t last forever.

My thoughts: I’m sure I’ll regret not selling today if I could only get 95% less years later. Meanwhile, however, I will have gotten a priceless amount of joy building Financial Samurai. It’s cool to have a web property I can click on from anywhere in the world.

It’s the same type of pride and joy you get as a parent when you look at your kid and think proudly, I helped make that. If you truly love your kid, you would never sell him or her. The same goes with your business, sometimes to your detriment.

I also am pleased with the steady growth of the Financial Samurai Forum. It feels like a new website with different offerings I will help nurture. I’m sure it will grow into a tremendous destination if I can manage it well over the next five years.

7) Will the new buyer be a good steward. You don’t want to sell your business to anybody. Instead, you want to sell your business to someone who believes in your vision and carries out many of the things you’d like to do, but don’t have the ability or energy to do on your own.

Consider selling your business similar to giving away your daughter or son’s hand in marriage. You’re definitely not going to let your daughter or son marry a scumbag.

My thoughts: After several conversations, I finally warmed up to someone who I think could really grow Financial Samurai and improve the user experience. Like me, he is a father, but to three boys. He has a team of hundreds of writers and developers who could create a lot more value. Let’s see where this relationship takes us. I’m definitely going to take my time finding a proper suitor. 

Enjoy Your Business For As Long As Possible

The joy you get from creating something out of nothing far outweighs any joy you get from making a lot of money. Yes, there will be difficult times when you’ll just want to sell and quit. Do your best to keep on going.

I know of several people who sold their online businesses for the money and later became depressed because they didn’t have a purpose anymore. Many in the online media space tried to re-create the magic and failed. They became irrelevant.

Money really doesn’t bring much more happiness once you’re earning enough to have all your basic needs met. Some say that number is $75,000 a year, while others believe $300,000 a year is more likely in a HCOL area.

If you feel the end is near for your business, definitely try and sell. If someone gives you a crazy offer way outside average valuation multiples and you’re burned out, then accept their offer with open arms.

But if you continue to enjoy what you do and see growth potential, then keep on going. The legacy you leave will be wonderful. Just remember to always keep an open mind as there is a price for everything.

Not a day goes by where I’m not thankful for launching this site in 2009. It has given me more joy and purpose that I ever thought possible. Thank you!

Related posts:

How To Start A Profitable Website

Real Estate Versus Blogging: Which Is A Better Investment?

Bankers, Techies, And Doctors You’ll Never Get Rich Working For Someone Else

Readers, any entrepreneurs out there who have sold their business? How did you feel when you sold and how did you feel once you reached the payback period? What are some other considerations entrepreneurs should consider before selling? Graphic by kongsavage.com

The post Things To Consider Before Selling Your Business (Baby) appeared first on Financial Samurai.

from Money https://www.financialsamurai.com/things-to-consider-before-selling-your-business/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[michaeljtraylor]

Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush

I’ve happily moved away from almost all manufactured spend, but recently found myself with a somewhat pressing need to meet some hefty minimums.  I learned some good lessons here, that perhaps will help.  One thing I’ll suggest is that if you’re currently happy with doing giftcards/money orders or have some other gigs running, it might be harder to get onboard with what I’ve been up to, so put it in the someday/maybe file.

Need Requirements

Before Spend Requirements was need.  I needed 6 nights (2 nights then 4 nights) of hotels (nice ones, because I’m valuing vacation time very highly right now) and I also needed to finish a full $1K of spend on a recent AS card application (acquired with pure speculation in mind).

Spend Requirements

I identified a great SPG property that was 10K per night ($380 cash price) that worked for the first two nights. $5K Spend

I identified a 5 star hilton for 50K per night, or a 4 star DoubleTree for 20K per night.  Haven’t decided on which one I will go for yet. $3K Spend.

That AS card.. $1K Spend

All in, $9K spend required, and I need it fast because I want the hotels locked in.. we’re talking first 1-2 weeks of card ownership to hit these.

The Strategy

I held both the SPG and AS card ($6k Spend) for a week or so before executing spend.  This allowed me to finish off spend on the other AS card I got (His/Hers) before focusing on the next ones.  I decided that I would use a recent (future at the time) cruise to meet min spend, unfortunately I didn’t identify and execute the Hilton points (100K Surpass offer) until a day or so before departure, so it didn’t come along for the ride.

As an aside, I try to work on a dual ‘Speculative Points’ like the AS ones, and ‘Target Points’ like the SPG ones wherever possible. This is a shift from where I was something in a lull and avoided all speculative applications.

Paying a Premium

After several years, and 11 free cruises, I’m starting to fall out of favor with NCL. The swine.  For the first time, they set me at a tier level that doesn’t include free casino advances.  I tried to quickly engineer that, and have them re-evaluate, but didn’t like the attitude of the person I was working with, and rather than ‘HUCA’ them I decided to just ignore the loss and grab a Margarita and hit the pool instead. That cruise the casino still gave me $200 of free money in addition to the cruise, so whatevs.

I put the SPG card as the credit card on file for the cruise (this one scoops up all expenses) and pulled out about $6K from the Casino at 3%.  I then visited the front desk of the cruise and asked to make a partial payment of $1K on the AS card.  All in, $180 to meet the spend, in exchange for straight cash.

I’d lie if I said it was instant.  The line in the cruise front desk is akin to walmart, albeit a little shorter, but the key difference being that I was able to sip on a Pina Colada while waiting in it.

First Lesson

Paying cash to meet spend, at $30 per $1,000 makes you appreciate that the amount of min spend required to trigger a bonus matters.  It was starkly obvious when dealing with the extremes of a $5K card and a $1K card. I do wonder if I would have noticed this difference if both cards were at $3K. Previously, when MSing it’s something I’ve never really cared about at the $0-$5K min spend levels, but it does make a difference in both cost and time.  For the MSer’s, many times you cannot buy either the GC or the MO at that level in a single transaction, but you ignore that you are doing multiple trips to make spend because it is ‘free’.

The fee for gaining 30,000 SPG (25+spend of 5) was $150.  This means that my hotel cost $75 per night, and I have 10k leftover. 10K SPG is a solid night ‘somewhere’ but I still value these as ‘orphaned points’ because I have no pressing need for them right now.

Luckily for me year 1 fee is waived, but frankly, if the card had $95 fee attached too, I would have still spent $245 for the bonus because it involved such a low level of friction to my daily routine. However, it reinforces that ‘travel is rarely free’ and instead pushes the notion of ‘deeply discounted’.  I think that the willing acceptance to pay $150 to gain the bonus, vs run around town with giftcards and money orders is a big step.

My takeaway from this is that I’m more than happy to pay $150 (or $245) for the two nights in the hotel that I wanted, even if I could have spent about $30 to do it for free, via several visits to Walmart…

Fancy enough for $75 a night, and I’m a loyal SPG Gold, don’t you know?

So my first lesson is that min spending even with a 3% surcharge is a good deal for me.  

The next step of that was the Altitude Reserve.. while I didn’t do it this trip (more out of laziness than anything) I’m also happy to ‘Invest’ in Altitude Reserve points, with some caveats….

An Altitude Reserve point is worth 1.5 cents, and earned at 3x on travel.  Therefore, even without chasing a bonus, paying $30 for $45 of hotel travel is a good deal to me.  It is an investment, because I would move asset class from cash, to funny money. I would hesitate to do this too far into the future speculatively due to the risk that the Altitude Reserve is not backed by Silver, like the USD, but I would move in a certain amount of points in order to cover my immediate 6-12 month travel.

Back from the Cruise

Two cards down, but $3K on the Hilton Surpass to go and a goal of 7 days to meet spend.  My first thought was Kiva.  I like using Kiva for lazy ‘MS’ it has no fee to fund, but it has two downsides: 

Risk of Loss (I lose money on Kiva, but it still has worked out less than 3% via luck and diversification.

Time to repay (lock up of float for 6 months or longer has a price, vs getting cash from Walmart which can actually work out as a free loan..)

My mind went then to the IRS.  I expect another refund this year, and we haven’t paid any tax yet so in theory I could give them a loan and get it back.  I generally don’t advise messing with the IRS though, and like Kiva, it has two downsides:

A fixed fee to fund via credits card (less risk of loss, more guarantee of loss)

Time to repay (3 months vs 6 months, but still a lockup period)

Then I started thinking ‘outside the box’…

Second Lesson

After a while, It can be very easy to forget about real spend.  Personally, for the last 2-3 years I’ve been doing min spend in 1 transaction in most cases, but since my time became limited, and options closed, things have changed. I rarely think about using a card for ‘real spend’ as I have a few that I use for this. With fewer options, I started looking around for real expenses that were close, and see if I could ‘Forward Shift’. I managed to apply about $1400 here via reimbursed business expenses. I generally avoid this also, because it is a PITA to track, but since the year is almost over, and I have good accounting software, I went for it.  

In addition, I was able to look forward to November/December and find items like our Car insurance payment, and was able to send in the funds a bit early.

In terms of a relatable example, Resellers have a great option here, because if you buy $1K of inventory on a personal card, you can reimburse it instantly, even if it takes 6 months or more to sell.  For me, it was mainly licenses and renewals for various professional organizations.

One thing that caught me was ‘Swap Spending’ or the destruction of priority. With this, I mean that when my goal is 100% fixated on meeting $3K spend naturally, without ‘wasting’ 3% on a transaction fee, or locking up money for the IRS, I would forget the opportunity of the transaction.

The Surpass was a bad example of this, because it offers some multipliers for Dining and Supermarkets, but I would typically use a OBC for Supermarkets (not MSing) for 5% and at least 2x to 3x points Dining card (TYP Premier, or other) those points further being uplifted by 25% or more at spend stage.

The lesson I picked up here was that by shifting natural/organic spend to the card of the day, slipping a $100 grocery bill onto the new card vs the 5% card came at a cost.  Often times that cost could be 3%, if you value the points (not the bonus) at 2%.  So it might be better to stick with the old 5% transaction, and pay 3% out of pocket to build the $3K minimum.

Interestingly, the Surpass could be a good argument for, or against this lesson. On the one hand, at 6x you could argue a full $3000 of Grocery spend being valued at 18,000 could be another night, or almost two, if you can find a property that fits.  Alternatively, you might find that 18,000 points are orphaned in your account for years, and have no value.

So what did I learn?

I’m fine paying 3% transactions fees. I’d pay more than 3% if I can profit.

I like profit.

I’m OK with fancy hotels.

Even if all MS dies, right now we’re looking at perhaps a 50% uplift from certain programs, which in some alternative universe, or dystopian future, is still epic. Especially if it involves less work than the glory days.

  (PS the USD dollar is fiat currency, it is backed by the US Government, which is supposed to be more stable than the Altitude Reserve, but who knows…)

(PPS I now get all my referrals, wherever possible, from fellow humans. For a while I tried to support a few blogs that I like, but I really think that there’s a nice touch in getting a personal referral, so thanks to Amol for the SPG and to Brandon for the Surpass)

The post Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush appeared first on Saverocity Travel.

* This article was originally published here

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://proshoppingservice.com/ramblings-from-my-latest-minimum-spend-rush/ from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.tumblr.com/post/183979236309

[garkomedia1]

Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush

I’ve happily moved away from almost all manufactured spend, but recently found myself with a somewhat pressing need to meet some hefty minimums.  I learned some good lessons here, that perhaps will help.  One thing I’ll suggest is that if you’re currently happy with doing giftcards/money orders or have some other gigs running, it might be harder to get onboard with what I’ve been up to, so put it in the someday/maybe file.

Need Requirements

Before Spend Requirements was need.  I needed 6 nights (2 nights then 4 nights) of hotels (nice ones, because I’m valuing vacation time very highly right now) and I also needed to finish a full $1K of spend on a recent AS card application (acquired with pure speculation in mind).

Spend Requirements

I identified a great SPG property that was 10K per night ($380 cash price) that worked for the first two nights. $5K Spend

I identified a 5 star hilton for 50K per night, or a 4 star DoubleTree for 20K per night.  Haven’t decided on which one I will go for yet. $3K Spend.

That AS card.. $1K Spend

All in, $9K spend required, and I need it fast because I want the hotels locked in.. we’re talking first 1-2 weeks of card ownership to hit these.

The Strategy

I held both the SPG and AS card ($6k Spend) for a week or so before executing spend.  This allowed me to finish off spend on the other AS card I got (His/Hers) before focusing on the next ones.  I decided that I would use a recent (future at the time) cruise to meet min spend, unfortunately I didn’t identify and execute the Hilton points (100K Surpass offer) until a day or so before departure, so it didn’t come along for the ride.

As an aside, I try to work on a dual ‘Speculative Points’ like the AS ones, and ‘Target Points’ like the SPG ones wherever possible. This is a shift from where I was something in a lull and avoided all speculative applications.

Paying a Premium

After several years, and 11 free cruises, I’m starting to fall out of favor with NCL. The swine.  For the first time, they set me at a tier level that doesn’t include free casino advances.  I tried to quickly engineer that, and have them re-evaluate, but didn’t like the attitude of the person I was working with, and rather than ‘HUCA’ them I decided to just ignore the loss and grab a Margarita and hit the pool instead. That cruise the casino still gave me $200 of free money in addition to the cruise, so whatevs.

I put the SPG card as the credit card on file for the cruise (this one scoops up all expenses) and pulled out about $6K from the Casino at 3%.  I then visited the front desk of the cruise and asked to make a partial payment of $1K on the AS card.  All in, $180 to meet the spend, in exchange for straight cash.

I’d lie if I said it was instant.  The line in the cruise front desk is akin to walmart, albeit a little shorter, but the key difference being that I was able to sip on a Pina Colada while waiting in it.

First Lesson

Paying cash to meet spend, at $30 per $1,000 makes you appreciate that the amount of min spend required to trigger a bonus matters.  It was starkly obvious when dealing with the extremes of a $5K card and a $1K card. I do wonder if I would have noticed this difference if both cards were at $3K. Previously, when MSing it’s something I’ve never really cared about at the $0-$5K min spend levels, but it does make a difference in both cost and time.  For the MSer’s, many times you cannot buy either the GC or the MO at that level in a single transaction, but you ignore that you are doing multiple trips to make spend because it is ‘free’.

The fee for gaining 30,000 SPG (25+spend of 5) was $150.  This means that my hotel cost $75 per night, and I have 10k leftover. 10K SPG is a solid night ‘somewhere’ but I still value these as ‘orphaned points’ because I have no pressing need for them right now.

Luckily for me year 1 fee is waived, but frankly, if the card had $95 fee attached too, I would have still spent $245 for the bonus because it involved such a low level of friction to my daily routine. However, it reinforces that ‘travel is rarely free’ and instead pushes the notion of ‘deeply discounted’.  I think that the willing acceptance to pay $150 to gain the bonus, vs run around town with giftcards and money orders is a big step.

My takeaway from this is that I’m more than happy to pay $150 (or $245) for the two nights in the hotel that I wanted, even if I could have spent about $30 to do it for free, via several visits to Walmart…

Fancy enough for $75 a night, and I’m a loyal SPG Gold, don’t you know?

So my first lesson is that min spending even with a 3% surcharge is a good deal for me.  

The next step of that was the Altitude Reserve.. while I didn’t do it this trip (more out of laziness than anything) I’m also happy to ‘Invest’ in Altitude Reserve points, with some caveats….

An Altitude Reserve point is worth 1.5 cents, and earned at 3x on travel.  Therefore, even without chasing a bonus, paying $30 for $45 of hotel travel is a good deal to me.  It is an investment, because I would move asset class from cash, to funny money. I would hesitate to do this too far into the future speculatively due to the risk that the Altitude Reserve is not backed by Silver, like the USD, but I would move in a certain amount of points in order to cover my immediate 6-12 month travel.

Back from the Cruise

Two cards down, but $3K on the Hilton Surpass to go and a goal of 7 days to meet spend.  My first thought was Kiva.  I like using Kiva for lazy ‘MS’ it has no fee to fund, but it has two downsides: 

Risk of Loss (I lose money on Kiva, but it still has worked out less than 3% via luck and diversification.

Time to repay (lock up of float for 6 months or longer has a price, vs getting cash from Walmart which can actually work out as a free loan..)

My mind went then to the IRS.  I expect another refund this year, and we haven’t paid any tax yet so in theory I could give them a loan and get it back.  I generally don’t advise messing with the IRS though, and like Kiva, it has two downsides:

A fixed fee to fund via credits card (less risk of loss, more guarantee of loss)

Time to repay (3 months vs 6 months, but still a lockup period)

Then I started thinking ‘outside the box’…

Second Lesson

After a while, It can be very easy to forget about real spend.  Personally, for the last 2-3 years I’ve been doing min spend in 1 transaction in most cases, but since my time became limited, and options closed, things have changed. I rarely think about using a card for ‘real spend’ as I have a few that I use for this. With fewer options, I started looking around for real expenses that were close, and see if I could ‘Forward Shift’. I managed to apply about $1400 here via reimbursed business expenses. I generally avoid this also, because it is a PITA to track, but since the year is almost over, and I have good accounting software, I went for it.  

In addition, I was able to look forward to November/December and find items like our Car insurance payment, and was able to send in the funds a bit early.

In terms of a relatable example, Resellers have a great option here, because if you buy $1K of inventory on a personal card, you can reimburse it instantly, even if it takes 6 months or more to sell.  For me, it was mainly licenses and renewals for various professional organizations.

One thing that caught me was ‘Swap Spending’ or the destruction of priority. With this, I mean that when my goal is 100% fixated on meeting $3K spend naturally, without ‘wasting’ 3% on a transaction fee, or locking up money for the IRS, I would forget the opportunity of the transaction.

The Surpass was a bad example of this, because it offers some multipliers for Dining and Supermarkets, but I would typically use a OBC for Supermarkets (not MSing) for 5% and at least 2x to 3x points Dining card (TYP Premier, or other) those points further being uplifted by 25% or more at spend stage.

The lesson I picked up here was that by shifting natural/organic spend to the card of the day, slipping a $100 grocery bill onto the new card vs the 5% card came at a cost.  Often times that cost could be 3%, if you value the points (not the bonus) at 2%.  So it might be better to stick with the old 5% transaction, and pay 3% out of pocket to build the $3K minimum.

Interestingly, the Surpass could be a good argument for, or against this lesson. On the one hand, at 6x you could argue a full $3000 of Grocery spend being valued at 18,000 could be another night, or almost two, if you can find a property that fits.  Alternatively, you might find that 18,000 points are orphaned in your account for years, and have no value.

So what did I learn?

I’m fine paying 3% transactions fees. I’d pay more than 3% if I can profit.

I like profit.

I’m OK with fancy hotels.

Even if all MS dies, right now we’re looking at perhaps a 50% uplift from certain programs, which in some alternative universe, or dystopian future, is still epic. Especially if it involves less work than the glory days.

    (PS the USD dollar is fiat currency, it is backed by the US Government, which is supposed to be more stable than the Altitude Reserve, but who knows…)

(PPS I now get all my referrals, wherever possible, from fellow humans. For a while I tried to support a few blogs that I like, but I really think that there’s a nice touch in getting a personal referral, so thanks to Amol for the SPG and to Brandon for the Surpass)

  The post Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush appeared first on Saverocity Travel.

* This article was originally published here

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://proshoppingservice.com/ramblings-from-my-latest-minimum-spend-rush/

[garkodigitalmedia]

Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush

I’ve happily moved away from almost all manufactured spend, but recently found myself with a somewhat pressing need to meet some hefty minimums.  I learned some good lessons here, that perhaps will help.  One thing I’ll suggest is that if you’re currently happy with doing giftcards/money orders or have some other gigs running, it might be harder to get onboard with what I’ve been up to, so put it in the someday/maybe file.

Need Requirements

Before Spend Requirements was need.  I needed 6 nights (2 nights then 4 nights) of hotels (nice ones, because I’m valuing vacation time very highly right now) and I also needed to finish a full $1K of spend on a recent AS card application (acquired with pure speculation in mind).

Spend Requirements

I identified a great SPG property that was 10K per night ($380 cash price) that worked for the first two nights. $5K Spend

I identified a 5 star hilton for 50K per night, or a 4 star DoubleTree for 20K per night.  Haven’t decided on which one I will go for yet. $3K Spend.

That AS card.. $1K Spend

All in, $9K spend required, and I need it fast because I want the hotels locked in.. we’re talking first 1-2 weeks of card ownership to hit these.

The Strategy

I held both the SPG and AS card ($6k Spend) for a week or so before executing spend.  This allowed me to finish off spend on the other AS card I got (His/Hers) before focusing on the next ones.  I decided that I would use a recent (future at the time) cruise to meet min spend, unfortunately I didn’t identify and execute the Hilton points (100K Surpass offer) until a day or so before departure, so it didn’t come along for the ride.

As an aside, I try to work on a dual ‘Speculative Points’ like the AS ones, and ‘Target Points’ like the SPG ones wherever possible. This is a shift from where I was something in a lull and avoided all speculative applications.

Paying a Premium

After several years, and 11 free cruises, I’m starting to fall out of favor with NCL. The swine.  For the first time, they set me at a tier level that doesn’t include free casino advances.  I tried to quickly engineer that, and have them re-evaluate, but didn’t like the attitude of the person I was working with, and rather than ‘HUCA’ them I decided to just ignore the loss and grab a Margarita and hit the pool instead. That cruise the casino still gave me $200 of free money in addition to the cruise, so whatevs.

I put the SPG card as the credit card on file for the cruise (this one scoops up all expenses) and pulled out about $6K from the Casino at 3%.  I then visited the front desk of the cruise and asked to make a partial payment of $1K on the AS card.  All in, $180 to meet the spend, in exchange for straight cash.

I’d lie if I said it was instant.  The line in the cruise front desk is akin to walmart, albeit a little shorter, but the key difference being that I was able to sip on a Pina Colada while waiting in it.

First Lesson

Paying cash to meet spend, at $30 per $1,000 makes you appreciate that the amount of min spend required to trigger a bonus matters.  It was starkly obvious when dealing with the extremes of a $5K card and a $1K card. I do wonder if I would have noticed this difference if both cards were at $3K. Previously, when MSing it’s something I’ve never really cared about at the $0-$5K min spend levels, but it does make a difference in both cost and time.  For the MSer’s, many times you cannot buy either the GC or the MO at that level in a single transaction, but you ignore that you are doing multiple trips to make spend because it is ‘free’.

The fee for gaining 30,000 SPG (25+spend of 5) was $150.  This means that my hotel cost $75 per night, and I have 10k leftover. 10K SPG is a solid night ‘somewhere’ but I still value these as ‘orphaned points’ because I have no pressing need for them right now.

Luckily for me year 1 fee is waived, but frankly, if the card had $95 fee attached too, I would have still spent $245 for the bonus because it involved such a low level of friction to my daily routine. However, it reinforces that ‘travel is rarely free’ and instead pushes the notion of ‘deeply discounted’.  I think that the willing acceptance to pay $150 to gain the bonus, vs run around town with giftcards and money orders is a big step.

My takeaway from this is that I’m more than happy to pay $150 (or $245) for the two nights in the hotel that I wanted, even if I could have spent about $30 to do it for free, via several visits to Walmart…

Fancy enough for $75 a night, and I’m a loyal SPG Gold, don’t you know?

So my first lesson is that min spending even with a 3% surcharge is a good deal for me.  

The next step of that was the Altitude Reserve.. while I didn’t do it this trip (more out of laziness than anything) I’m also happy to ‘Invest’ in Altitude Reserve points, with some caveats….

An Altitude Reserve point is worth 1.5 cents, and earned at 3x on travel.  Therefore, even without chasing a bonus, paying $30 for $45 of hotel travel is a good deal to me.  It is an investment, because I would move asset class from cash, to funny money. I would hesitate to do this too far into the future speculatively due to the risk that the Altitude Reserve is not backed by Silver, like the USD, but I would move in a certain amount of points in order to cover my immediate 6-12 month travel.

Back from the Cruise

Two cards down, but $3K on the Hilton Surpass to go and a goal of 7 days to meet spend.  My first thought was Kiva.  I like using Kiva for lazy ‘MS’ it has no fee to fund, but it has two downsides: 

Risk of Loss (I lose money on Kiva, but it still has worked out less than 3% via luck and diversification.

Time to repay (lock up of float for 6 months or longer has a price, vs getting cash from Walmart which can actually work out as a free loan..)

My mind went then to the IRS.  I expect another refund this year, and we haven’t paid any tax yet so in theory I could give them a loan and get it back.  I generally don’t advise messing with the IRS though, and like Kiva, it has two downsides:

A fixed fee to fund via credits card (less risk of loss, more guarantee of loss)

Time to repay (3 months vs 6 months, but still a lockup period)

Then I started thinking ‘outside the box’…

Second Lesson

After a while, It can be very easy to forget about real spend.  Personally, for the last 2-3 years I’ve been doing min spend in 1 transaction in most cases, but since my time became limited, and options closed, things have changed. I rarely think about using a card for ‘real spend’ as I have a few that I use for this. With fewer options, I started looking around for real expenses that were close, and see if I could ‘Forward Shift’. I managed to apply about $1400 here via reimbursed business expenses. I generally avoid this also, because it is a PITA to track, but since the year is almost over, and I have good accounting software, I went for it.  

In addition, I was able to look forward to November/December and find items like our Car insurance payment, and was able to send in the funds a bit early.

In terms of a relatable example, Resellers have a great option here, because if you buy $1K of inventory on a personal card, you can reimburse it instantly, even if it takes 6 months or more to sell.  For me, it was mainly licenses and renewals for various professional organizations.

One thing that caught me was ‘Swap Spending’ or the destruction of priority. With this, I mean that when my goal is 100% fixated on meeting $3K spend naturally, without ‘wasting’ 3% on a transaction fee, or locking up money for the IRS, I would forget the opportunity of the transaction.

The Surpass was a bad example of this, because it offers some multipliers for Dining and Supermarkets, but I would typically use a OBC for Supermarkets (not MSing) for 5% and at least 2x to 3x points Dining card (TYP Premier, or other) those points further being uplifted by 25% or more at spend stage.

The lesson I picked up here was that by shifting natural/organic spend to the card of the day, slipping a $100 grocery bill onto the new card vs the 5% card came at a cost.  Often times that cost could be 3%, if you value the points (not the bonus) at 2%.  So it might be better to stick with the old 5% transaction, and pay 3% out of pocket to build the $3K minimum.

Interestingly, the Surpass could be a good argument for, or against this lesson. On the one hand, at 6x you could argue a full $3000 of Grocery spend being valued at 18,000 could be another night, or almost two, if you can find a property that fits.  Alternatively, you might find that 18,000 points are orphaned in your account for years, and have no value.

So what did I learn?

I’m fine paying 3% transactions fees. I’d pay more than 3% if I can profit.

I like profit.

I’m OK with fancy hotels.

Even if all MS dies, right now we’re looking at perhaps a 50% uplift from certain programs, which in some alternative universe, or dystopian future, is still epic. Especially if it involves less work than the glory days.

    (PS the USD dollar is fiat currency, it is backed by the US Government, which is supposed to be more stable than the Altitude Reserve, but who knows…)

(PPS I now get all my referrals, wherever possible, from fellow humans. For a while I tried to support a few blogs that I like, but I really think that there’s a nice touch in getting a personal referral, so thanks to Amol for the SPG and to Brandon for the Surpass)

  The post Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush appeared first on Saverocity Travel.

* This article was originally published here

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://proshoppingservice.com/ramblings-from-my-latest-minimum-spend-rush/

[nicholerestrada]

Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush

I’ve happily moved away from almost all manufactured spend, but recently found myself with a somewhat pressing need to meet some hefty minimums. ; I learned some good lessons here, that perhaps will help. ; One thing I’ll suggest is that if you’re currently happy with doing giftcards/money orders or have some other gigs running, it might be harder to get onboard with what I’ve been up to, so put it in the someday/maybe file.

Need Requirements

Before Spend Requirements was need. ; I needed 6 nights (2 nights then 4 nights) of hotels (nice ones, because I’m valuing vacation time very highly right now) and I also needed to finish a full $1K of spend on a recent AS card application (acquired with pure speculation in mind).

Spend Requirements

I identified a great SPG property that was 10K per night ($380 cash price) that worked for the first two nights. $5K Spend

I identified a 5 star hilton for 50K per night, or a 4 star DoubleTree for 20K per night. ; Haven’t decided on which one I will go for yet. $3K Spend.

That AS card.. $1K Spend

All in, $9K spend required, and I need it fast because I want the hotels locked in.. we’re talking first 1-2 weeks of card ownership to hit these.

The Strategy

I held both the SPG and AS card ($6k Spend) for a week or so before executing spend. ; This allowed me to finish off spend on the other AS card I got (His/Hers) before focusing on the next ones. ; I decided that I would use a recent (future at the time) cruise to meet min spend, unfortunately I didn’t identify and execute the Hilton points (100K Surpass offer) until a day or so before departure, so it didn’t come along for the ride.

As an aside, I try to work on a dual ‘Speculative Points’ like the AS ones, and ‘Target Points’ like the SPG ones wherever possible. This is a shift from where I was something in a lull and avoided all speculative applications.

Paying a Premium

After several years, and 11 free cruises, I’m starting to fall out of favor with NCL. The swine. ; For the first time, they set me at a tier level that doesn’t include free casino advances. ; I tried to quickly engineer that, and have them re-evaluate, but didn’t like the attitude of the person I was working with, and rather than ‘HUCA’ them I decided to just ignore the loss and grab a Margarita and hit the pool instead. That cruise the casino still gave me $200 of free money in addition to the cruise, so whatevs.

I put the SPG card as the credit card on file for the cruise (this one scoops up all expenses) and pulled out about $6K from the Casino at 3%. ; I then visited the front desk of the cruise and asked to make a partial payment of $1K on the AS card. ; All in, $180 to meet the spend, in exchange for straight cash.

I’d lie if I said it was instant. ; The line in the cruise front desk is akin to walmart, albeit a little shorter, but the key difference being that I was able to sip on a Pina Colada while waiting in it.

First Lesson

Paying cash to meet spend, at $30 per $1,000 makes you appreciate that the amount of min spend required to trigger a bonus matters. ; It was starkly obvious when dealing with the extremes of a $5K card and a $1K card. I do wonder if I would have noticed this difference if both cards were at $3K. Previously, when MSing it’s something I’ve never really cared about at the $0-$5K min spend levels, but it does make a difference in both cost and time. ; For the MSer’s, many times you cannot buy either the GC or the MO at that level in a single transaction, but you ignore that you are doing multiple trips to make spend because it is ‘free’.

The fee for gaining 30,000 SPG (25+spend of 5) was $150. ; This means that my hotel cost $75 per night, and I have 10k leftover. 10K SPG is a solid night ‘somewhere’ but I still value these as ‘orphaned points’ because I have no pressing need for them right now.

Luckily for me year 1 fee is waived, but frankly, if the card had $95 fee attached too, I would have still spent $245 for the bonus because it involved such a low level of friction to my daily routine. However, it reinforces that ‘travel is rarely free’ and instead pushes the notion of ‘deeply discounted’. ; I think that the willing acceptance to pay $150 to gain the bonus, vs run around town with giftcards and money orders is a big step.

My takeaway from this is that I’m more than happy to pay $150 (or $245) for the two nights in the hotel that I wanted, even if I could have spent about $30 to do it for free, via several visits to Walmart…

Fancy enough for $75 a night, and I’m a loyal SPG Gold, don’t you know?

So my first lesson is that min spending even with a 3% surcharge is a good deal for me. ; ;

The next step of that was the Altitude Reserve.. while I didn’t do it this trip (more out of laziness than anything) I’m also happy to ‘Invest’ in Altitude Reserve points, with some caveats….

An Altitude Reserve point is worth 1.5 cents, and earned at 3x on travel. ; Therefore, even without chasing a bonus, paying $30 for $45 of hotel travel is a good deal to me. ; It is an investment, because I would move asset class from cash, to funny money. I would hesitate to do this too far into the future speculatively due to the risk that the Altitude Reserve is not backed by Silver, like the USD, but I would move in a certain amount of points in order to cover my immediate 6-12 month travel.

Back from the Cruise

Two cards down, but $3K on the Hilton Surpass to go and a goal of 7 days to meet spend. ; My first thought was Kiva. ; I like using Kiva for lazy ‘MS’ it has no fee to fund, but it has two downsides: ;

Risk of Loss (I lose money on Kiva, but it still has worked out less than 3% via luck and diversification.

Time to repay (lock up of float for 6 months or longer has a price, vs getting cash from Walmart which can actually work out as a free loan..)

My mind went then to the IRS. ; I expect another refund this year, and we haven’t paid any tax yet so in theory I could give them a loan and get it back. ; I generally don’t advise messing with the IRS though, and like Kiva, it has two downsides:

A fixed fee to fund via credits card (less risk of loss, more guarantee of loss)

Time to repay (3 months vs 6 months, but still a lockup period)

Then I started thinking ‘outside the box’…

Second Lesson

After a while, It can be very easy to forget about real spend. ; Personally, for the last 2-3 years I’ve been doing min spend in 1 transaction in most cases, but since my time became limited, and options closed, things have changed. I rarely think about using a card for ‘real spend’ as I have a few that I use for this. With fewer options, I started looking around for real expenses that were close, and see if I could ‘Forward Shift’. I managed to apply about $1400 here via reimbursed business expenses. I generally avoid this also, because it is a PITA to track, but since the year is almost over, and I have good accounting software, I went for it. ; ;

In addition, I was able to look forward to November/December and find items like our Car insurance payment, and was able to send in the funds a bit early.

In terms of a relatable example, Resellers have a great option here, because if you buy $1K of inventory on a personal card, you can reimburse it instantly, even if it takes 6 months or more to sell. ; For me, it was mainly licenses and renewals for various professional organizations.

One thing that caught me was ‘Swap Spending’ or the destruction of priority. With this, I mean that when my goal is 100% fixated on meeting $3K spend naturally, without ‘wasting’ 3% on a transaction fee, or locking up money for the IRS, I would forget the opportunity of the transaction.

The Surpass was a bad example of this, because it offers some multipliers for Dining and Supermarkets, but I would typically use a OBC for Supermarkets (not MSing) for 5% and at least 2x to 3x points Dining card (TYP Premier, or other) those points further being uplifted by 25% or more at spend stage.

The lesson I picked up here was that by shifting natural/organic spend to the card of the day, slipping a $100 grocery bill onto the new card vs the 5% card came at a cost. ; Often times that cost could be 3%, if you value the points (not the bonus) at 2%. ; So it might be better to stick with the old 5% transaction, and pay 3% out of pocket to build the $3K minimum.

Interestingly, the Surpass could be a good argument for, or against this lesson. On the one hand, at 6x you could argue a full $3000 of Grocery spend being valued at 18,000 could be another night, or almost two, if you can find a property that fits. ; Alternatively, you might find that 18,000 points are orphaned in your account for years, and have no value.

So what did I learn?

I’m fine paying 3% transactions fees. I’d pay more than 3% if I can profit.

I like profit.

I’m OK with fancy hotels.

Even if all MS dies, right now we’re looking at perhaps a 50% uplift from certain programs, which in some alternative universe, or dystopian future, is still epic. Especially if it involves less work than the glory days.

;

;

(PS the USD dollar is fiat currency, it is backed by the US Government, which is supposed to be more stable than the Altitude Reserve, but who knows…)

(PPS I now get all my referrals, wherever possible, from fellow humans. For a while I tried to support a few blogs that I like, but I really think that there’s a nice touch in getting a personal referral, so thanks to Amol for the SPG and to Brandon for the Surpass)

;

The post Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush appeared first on Saverocity Travel.

* This article was originally published here

Source: https://proshoppingservice.com/ramblings-from-my-latest-minimum-spend-rush/

from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/ramblings-from-my-latest-minimum-spend-rush/

[ronaldmrashid]

How A Big Expensive House Can Ruin Your Life And Path To Financial Freedom

When the stock market takes a dump, I like to focus on happier things, like nice houses with beautifully remodeled bathrooms where you can actually go to the bathroom.

As a dad, I want my parents and in-laws to come visit more, which is why it’d be nice to have a ground floor level dedicated just for them. It would be more comfortable for all of us.

Given I write from home, I’d be nice to have a house large enough so that I can’t hear my boy squealing with joy or crying in frustration. Trying to create while hearing him is one of the toughest things to do. He makes me want to drop everything.

Finally, I have some FOMO that if I don’t buy a house in one of the best neighborhoods in San Francisco, I might never be able to get in. This is more ego talking than anything else. 

Found The Perfect House

I found the perfect house in Presidio Heights, one of the most prime neighborhoods in my city. It has four bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms, an awesome attic that would be used as a playroom, and a ground floor suite for parents or in-laws.

Here are some pictures:

In-law unity on ground floor with deck facing garden

ground floor deck to yard

Amazing remodeled attic for man cave, play room, or teenager room

Another angle of the attic with sky lights

Remodeled master bathroom with his and her sinks, but not hot tub

Family room off kitchen to keep an eye out on the kids

Deck off the kitchen for brunch is one of my favorites I had at my old house

Family room with deck

Pretty nice house right? It’s roughly 3,200 square feet, or 1,300 square feet larger than our existing three bedroom, two bathroom house. Not extravagant, but nice.

Here’s the problem. The asking price is……………. $4,395,000! Nooooooo. And it just got into contract for what will likely be $4.5M or higher.

Believe it or not, buying a single family home in Presidio Heights for under $5 million today is considered reasonable. But when I do the math on how much it would cost to own a $4.5 million home, it kind of hurts my stomach.

The Cost Of Owning A Regular $4.5 Million House

It’s important to always do the math before making any big purchase. Here’s the math to own this beautiful house with a $2 million downpayment just because I thought it might be nice to live in Presidio Heights instead of Golden Gate Heights. After all, saving 10 minutes of driving time to the tennis club sure would be nice 2-3X a week.

If I bought this house, my all-in monthly housing expense would more than triple to $18,605 while I would no longer be able to earn any potential income or returns from $2 million currently spread out across municipal bonds, stocks, and real estate crowdfunding in lower cost areas of the country.

The $2 million downpayment is guaranteed to earn $62,000 a year in state tax free income if it was invested entirely in a 10-year government bond. Hence, one could easily argue that the total annual cost of owning this house is not $223,254, but actually $223,254 + $62,000 = $285,254.

Although the mortgage would eventually go away, the 1.23% property tax rate is for life. I cannot get over how egregious it is to pay $55,350 a year in property tax forever. You can rent a nice two bedroom, two bathroom, lightly remodeled condo in a nice part of San Francisco for $4,613 a month. Further, the property tax amount will keep on going up by about 2% a year.

After 20 years of ownership, you will likely have paid roughly $1,200,000 in property taxes alone. That is just absurd.

To add insult to injury, due to the $10,000 SALT deduction cap, I can no longer deduct the entire property tax amount. The SALT deduction cap includes state income taxes as well. Therefore, I’d be losing out on at least another $10,000 in tax refunds, despite the rise in the standard deduction to $24,000 for married filers.

Never Getting Out Of The Rat Race

It’s clear to me that for me, buying this house or this type of house is not worth it. I would need to amass almost $8,000,000 in capital just to cover my housing costs if I wanted to stay unemployed. Even after paying off the mortgage, I would still need $2,500,000 in capital returning 4% to pay for the ongoing $5,938 in unavoidable costs of owning such a home.

I can only imagine the family who ends up buying this home will have to work for a very long time with a very high income to afford this type of lifestyle. We’re talking $500,000 – $1,000,000 a year in required income to be able to afford the house and everything else that comes with raising a family.

Nobody buys a house this size if they don’t have at least two kids. Further, each kid will probably also be going to private school at a cost of $35,000 – $50,000 each. If a downturn ever comes, these $500K+ jobs go away quickly.

Me wanting to buy this house feels exactly like how I felt buying my Lake Tahoe Property in 2007. The real estate market had just started to slow, and I thought I was getting a steal buying the 2/2 condo for $718,000 since the owners bought the property for $810,000 in 2006. I was earning the most amount of money I had ever made in my life at the time, and I erroneously extrapolated that earnings power forward for 10 years. Of course, the financial crisis hit, and my earnings power along with my property got cut by 40% – 50%.

Right now, Financial Samurai is firing on all cylinders. I haven’t seen a down year since I started the site in 2009. But it’s very possible that Financial Samurai and all my investments could take a beating next year. October’s stock market rout could be a harbinger for slower growth ahead.

If I leveraged up to buy this Presidio Heights home and a recession comes, we would lose our lifestyle because one or both of us would have to go back to work in a hurry. All the levity we’ve felt having a reasonably low housing expense would go out the window. The house would start to own us instead of the other way around.

I hope the buyers of this home are prepared for all types of scenarios. Their new house has likely trapped them into a lifetime of continuous work.

Low Housing Cost Is The Key To Financial Freedom

When we moved to our current house in 2014, we effectively lowered our housing cost by 40%. I originally looked at the move as just a change in scenery. We were bored with living in our old neighborhood after almost 10 years, but we weren’t ready to relocate to Hawaii.

Buying an ocean view property was the next best thing, and prices felt like good value at the time. After selling our old house in 2017, we crystallized the value of my investment made in 2005, and that’s when I really felt the benefits of living frugally.

At a 3.5% rate of return, the proceeds from our house sale can 100% cover our existing housing costs. Which means I’m certain my wife and I will never have to go back to work again so long as we REMAIN in our current house.

I highly recommend you keep your annual total housing expense to less than 20% of your annual gross income. Over time, you should be able to get your housing expense down to 10% of gross income thanks to largely fixed ownership costs and growing income. Once you do, you will feel a tremendous amount of freedom, which is priceless.

Go ahead and fantasize about living in a nicer, more expensive property from time to time. After all, visiting open houses is free. Maybe even spend a pretty penny renting a nice place for vacation once a year to get it out of your system.

Then come back to earth after you do the math and understand how much you’ll need to sacrifice in order to own such a property. Once you do, I’m sure you’ll appreciate more of what you have already.

My cozy home is currently being battle tested with my parents in town. Four adults and a toddler is quite a crowd. But my house is holding up like a champ. No matter how big or how small our house, we tend to get used to the size. Therefore, I’ll be shelving my dream property plans for now until the next stock market correction hits.

See:

Housing Expense Guidelines For Financial Freedom

Why $5 Million Is Barely Enough To Retire Early With A Family In A HCOL Area

Don’t Let Ego Make You Buy A Large House Than You Need

Readers, do you occasionally have dreams of owning a larger, more expensive house? If so, what does the math look like? Do you think high housing costs is a significant detriment to financial freedom? Why do people buy so much more house than they need? 

The post How A Big Expensive House Can Ruin Your Life And Path To Financial Freedom appeared first on Financial Samurai.

from https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-a-big-expensive-house-can-ruin-your-life-and-path-to-financial-independence/

[ncmagroup]

by GARY VAYNERCHUK

  For me, I’m only interested in one thing. The thing that binds us all together. No matter who you are or what your profession is – whether you’re an entrepreneur or in sales or a designer or a developer – no matter what you do, your job is to tell a story.

That is never going to change. The way you build your business and the way you make a real impact is by great storytelling.

This is REALLY important.

We all need to reverse engineer what’s actually happening in our world to win. My whole career has been predicated on reverse engineering – Understanding what I think is going to happen in the next 24-36 months and then figuring out how to work backward from there to map out the path to capitalize on it.

My biggest problem right now, in general, is that I feel that the far majority of people in business organizations and media companies all across the board are storytelling in 2017 like it’s 2007. It’s all I think about.

HOW TO TELL A STORY ON SOCIAL MEDIA

I spend an enormous amount of my time trying to figure out how to storytelling in micro-moments because it’s apparent that we’re living in an ADD culture – where everybody is short on the only commodity that matters in this life – our TIME.

The notion of storytelling hasn’t changed but the mediums through which we tell the stories to have. With the advent of social and ever-evolving consumer attention, you now have to tell a story in new and interesting ways, be it 6 seconds or 60.

I’m obsessed with the idea of finding ways to tell a story that grab your attention the moment you take out your phone and scroll through various social platforms. That’s the game we’re playing. That’s what you have to focus your energy on.

We don’t sit on the couch with a remote in our hands, bound by the TV Guide schedule, with only a few channels to choose from. Whether you like it or not, we live in a world where there are obnoxious amounts of information getting thrown at us and unlimited amounts of outlets to consume that information which is entirely accessible on our own time. We live in a completely on-demand culture and as consumers and marketers, we need to recognize that.

The media landscape has completely changed.  We live in a world where people only watch TV when they want to and can consume entire seasons of their favorite shows in one night.

And that’s just entertainment consumption. What about our communication?

How many people reading this article are upset when somebody calls them?

The mediums have changed. We would much rather have you send a text or a tweet or a Snap to communicate because we can get to it on our own time. It’s the new model of storytelling and whether we like it or not, it’s not going anywhere. It reminds me of a recent article that explains this transition. Or the fact that Facebook and WhatsApp process more than 60BN messages a day. Over 3X that of even standard SMS!

And so, to tell a great story, the number one thing you have to do is evoke a reaction. The end.

GREAT STORYTELLING ON INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK, SNAPCHAT, AND YOUTUBE

In a world where there’s an enormous amount of social content, if you don’t make someone stop what they are doing and create a response, you are going to lose. Whether that’s an action or an emotion, the true test of storytelling is how you feel or what you do after you consume it.

A few months ago I bought flowers for the entire NYC VaynerMedia office. It wasn’t a holiday and therefore it was entirely unexpected so it evoked a feeling of surprise and delight. People were pleased and the reaction was a mix of happiness, positivity and a boosted morale. If that day was Valentine’s Day it might have been a little bit more expected and the story would have been more cliche and therefore wouldn’t evoke as much of a response. It’s all about the setup, the punchline, and hacking people’s expectations.

In a sea of a million stories, a great one is going to make you react.

When I sit here and evaluate the differences between blockbuster Hollywood and social media, I think about context. The actual story can be quite similar but you have to consider the room you’re telling it in.

If you’re telling a story from a park bench to three old guys playing chess you’re going to present it a little differently than you would be sharing that same story in an auditorium at Radio City Music Hall. It all depends on the room you’re in and the context with which it lives.

Do people want fireworks and embellishments and fancy set design because they have paid $190 a ticket and dressed up and went to Broadway or are they willing to accept the 60-second story on social media in between checking emails or walking to lunch?

HOLLYWOOD VS SOCIAL MEDIA

In Hollywood, you’re making a two-hour movie that’s going to be played on a big screen in a theater. And that’s the room of context. In social, you’re making something that is good enough for someone to stop scrolling through their feed and watch on their phone. You have to consider the environment in which your content will be consumed and how should that impact your creative approach?

If you look at the current Hollywood landscape, you will see that there are countless movies spending hundreds of millions of dollars that don’t make a return. Of course, there are major winners like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings but most movies just don’t do that well.

Unless you are Steven Spielberg, you better think twice. Spending $300M if you make back $900M dollars is a good idea.

It’s just that spending $180 million dollars to make back 40 is a bad idea. Which is why for most of us, who aren’t J.J. Abrams and George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg who don’t have those budgets, are better off thinking about how we can start small and build up.

I think we should be smart about how much we spend and build from there. It’s just practicality, but the value is different.

If you can create a blockbuster movie and captivate the audience for three hours (or 30 years in the case of Star Wars) then you have absolutely won! It’s one pillar piece of content that has created a brand and incentivized generations who are going to spend $16.00 per ticket for every new movie and buy ancillary t-shirts, mugs and hats because they have bought into the story and associated IP.

But you can also convert or delight or surprise or impress or educate on a much smaller scale. It can be a 30 second moment, not a 3-hour movie.

The next thing to consider is intent.  At VaynerMedia, our motto is “we sell shit” and of course we care about art and creativity but we also have a bottom line objective. Too many people push too far in one or the other direction. They create great art, but they don’t have a lot of respect for business or it’s only a right a hook and there’s no thought behind the creative or the brand value.

At the end of the day, it’s all trying to do the same thing, which is to make something happen. Whether to fall in love with a brand or sell a product,  service or feature, the creative has to have intent (which doesn’t have to be financial and can be as simple as to entertain, inform, surprise or delight)

Basically, concerning context,  it’s bigger bets, bigger wins, and bigger risks, bigger losses.

My personal strategy is predicated on practicality.

MIX PASSION WITH PRACTICALITY

I am always trying, testing making and doing… I put out enormous amounts of content at scale because I’m playing in a field where I actually can. It’s not any better or worse.. It’s different. With Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and Medium, it doesn’t cost me a lot to put out great content. Some things will work and others won’t. Not every piece of creative needs a business objective. Obviously, if you make “Where’s the Beef” or “Just Do It” or “MasterCard Priceless” It’s game-changing. The problem is, 99% don’t, and they waste real money on things that don’t convert and my big thing is about doing what you can to get to where you want to be.

10 years ago, it wasn’t even an option. Producing the amount of content I do, and distributing it at the same scale would have cost me tens of millions of dollars a year. Now it’s practically free. Of course, I have a team to help which involves salary, but the technology, tools, and platforms have democratized the access to create. The internet is the middleman and you now have more opportunity than ever to tell your story in a way that makes sense and can resonate with people around the world.

You have to remember… I started with zero followers too! But now I’m in a position to make bigger bets. Instead of DailyVee I can go out and plan and produce and edit a $200,000 documentary. I could do that now. But I couldn’t do it before. I’m actually telling the same story, but with different tools and evolving rooms. My advice is to build up, build up, build up.

It’s why I preach that you have to mix passion with practicality.

The biggest hack to my success around content is the idea of “Document. Don’t Create.” I obviously do both, but the only reason I’m able to “produce” so much content is because I’m documenting not creating. I’ve built an enormous infrastructure around me to record my life and chop it up into 41 pieces of content each day in order to help me tell more stories across the internet.

My latest project The Airplane Project, and one of my most powerful to date was recorded on my iPhone during a 9-hour flight with no WiFi where I literally documented myself working through my most important concepts in real time. I cut those videos into 12 rants and released it as my version of a mixtape. Even my team wanted to debate me about putting out a more polished product.

It’s definitely true that if you want to be seen or heard on social media, you have to put out valuable content on a regular basis. You should be posting Instagram stories, photos, Snaps, tweets, and statuses at least 6-7 times a day.

Now you’re probably thinking: “Whoa, that’s a lot. How do I create 6-7 meaningful things a day?”

And here’s the trick.

DOCUMENT. DON’T CREATE. 

If you adopt that philosophy, it will allow you to overcome your fears of putting yourself out there. Just tell the world what’s going on. Describe your journey, outline your vision, and describe your thoughts, ideas, actions, wins, losses, anxieties, and ambitions online.

Just start talking about the things that are most important to you. Because in the end, the creative (or how “beautiful” someone thinks your content is) is going to be largely subjective. What’s not subjective is the fact that you put out more content and have more chances to be heard.

Social networks and mobile devices have created a gateway drug to consumer awareness. They have commoditized communication and storytelling.

That’s really how I see it. You have to understand that Instagram and Snapchat, and Twitter and Facebook are the new CBS, NBC, and Showtime. Except now you can reach hundreds of millions or billions of people every day.

I look at Medium, and WordPress, and Podcasts and Twitter like I look at the books on your shelf. It’s the modern platform for telling a great story.

So stop being so romantic and figure out the way the world actually works.

When time is the asset, how do I story tell on social media and give you something that you can consume very easily and very quickly?

When I think about the creatives that I work with for the media agency I run, we’ve gone from 20 to 800+ people in the last 8 years. Obviously, we are doing something right.

I truly believe for the last 70 years we’ve lived through an era that can be best categorized as “movies and docs.” Heavy thinking, a lot of prep work and a lot of time spent planning the shot, the script, the lighting and everything else.

And don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with that, there is still a place for blockbuster content and I love a great movie. It’s just one way of telling a story and the only thing I’m preaching is that you just have to be aware of how consumption has changed. People watch movies every day on their phone. It’s called Instagram stories and YouTube!

I just don’t think movies are the only way now. Banner ads and billboards and 2 million dollar commercials aren’t the only things we can do now, and so we have this other avenue where we have to start respecting the nuances of the new platforms.

I have 800+ people who spend their entire days’ lives thinking about how to actually market and story tell, where our eyeballs and ears actually are because they’re not in the places where a lot of companies and entrepreneurs and businesses think.

And listen, I’m not here to pick on outdoor media, print, radio, or television because it’s just too easy. I can pick on digital too. Even the way digital works has completely changed.

Think about Google AdWords, starting to decline. Email Marketing. Down. Banner ads and Youtube Pre-rolls. Down.

I built my first business, my wine business on email marketing. How many people today would use email marketing as their #1 strategy? Things have changed! It’s impossible to repeat the 89% open rate I had in 1996 with a 400,000 person email list.

It’s because marketers ruin everything. As a proud marketer, it’s what we do. When something new comes out, we try to figure it out. Go look back at 1995 to 2000 clicks through on banner ads, 10%, 20%, 30%. Now, if you get point.01, you’re a hero.

Attention changes. Tools change. The mediums in which we storytell continue to change.

THE NUANCES OF EACH SOCIAL NETWORK

The reason why Facebook has won is because you never unsubscribed. You’re still following people on Facebook that dated your best friend four years ago, which is what we do, we don’t want to unsubscribe. It’s an important medium. It has a tremendous amount of attention.

Everybody looks at social networks as distribution. You’re doing something somewhere else and then you’re using the tweet to drive towards it.

You’re using the Facebook status update to drive towards it. We default into thinking that social networks are distribution because we treat it like email to really win in the world that we’re all about to embark into, we need to start respecting the nuances of these platforms.

And when I say “social networks” I’m just using that as a general term to describe any websites where people actually spend time and interact with each other’s content.

Social media is the layer on top of the internet. These are the new mediums and they are the portals for which you need to create.

When you start looking at the data, you realize that posting the same thing across every channel doesn’t work.

You post the same exact thing at the same exact time on two different networks that incentivize different behaviors and you will lose.

So when you think about Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter, understand that they are very, very different.

When you are on Facebook, that’s an all-encompassing awareness around your social graph. When you’re on Pinterest your psychology is intent to buy or aspiration to buy. You need to be storytelling differently on those platforms. You have to be giving them different visuals that are mapped to the psychology, not to the number of users that are there… But to reverse engineer why they are there!

If you don’t have a strong understanding of why a user is on Pinterest vs. Snapchat then you are going to lose.

You really have to start focusing on this because when you start looking at it, the one thing that is really deteriorating in our world is the amount of time we have. Everybody’s pounding at this one asset. It’s the one asset that none of us are going to get more of, and the battle of supply and demand for our attention is completely out of control.

I’ve stopped being excited about outdoor media because I was looking around and I saw everyone on their phones.

Yet my clients are spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to tell stories on billboards.

We’re living through a major culture shift and the only thing anybody reading this should care about is where the attention actually is.

We have to get out of this stupid thought of awareness and we have to start getting to emotional attention. Are we actually bringing them value? Do we actually talk to them about what they want in the spheres in which they actually are? It’s not about advertising, It’s about bringing value to the sphere.

You don’t need a business objective for every piece of creative, because we live in a world now where it’s not just about campaigns where you only have two or three minutes to spend all of your money. We live in a world where we’re doing it every day, all day, from every angle.

We have the creative freedom to actually act human and bring a little value, be funny, bring value, bring value, respond, engage, bring value, make it human and make it newsworthy 🙂

A funny thing happens when you give a truckload of value upfront, you guilt people into buying shit. You evoke a reaction and you develop a relationship.

The thing you have to remember is these are all social networks. Any content and story can work. It can be serious, sentimental, funny, sad, educational, nostalgic.. All of it works!

You don’t have to be funny or witty on Twitter, you can be whatever you want. It’s a human platform, and the problem is most people don’t want to be self-deprecating or have empathy or be kind and it’s a mistake when it comes to true storytelling.

If we do not figure out the art and the science of how to actually storytelling on these platforms then we will lose.

No company has had an eternal monopoly on attention and I promise you things will change. You just have to accept that change and be open to storytelling on the mediums of the moment.

When you are telling your story, realize how stupid it is to use the same picture on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Understand there’s a real science in this, a real storytelling battle going on right now in these platforms and understanding that you as an individual act differently when you go into a boardroom and to a business meeting than you would when you go out with your girls to Las Vegas for the weekend than when you would when you go out with your boyfriend.

It’s the context that’s key. You’re still the same person but the room changes the way you story tell.

Never forget that truth.

  Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com

  HOW TO TELL A STORY ON SOCIAL MEDIA by GARY VAYNERCHUK For me, I’m only interested in one thing. The thing that binds us all together.

[samuelfields]

Things To Consider Before Selling Your Business (Baby)

One of my luckiest investment decisions was not selling anything during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. I just held on for dear life, continued to max out my 401(k) and squirreled away anything left into an online savings account or CD.

In 2012, I got lucky again by receiving zero offers for my SF primary residence. Facebook just went public, but nobody wanted to buy my home. As a result, I held on, paid down more of the mortgage, earned some rental income, and then finally sold it five years later for 68% more.

In 2015 and in 2018 I passed on selling Financial Samurai. To sell before realizing my goal of writing 3X a week for 10 years would have made me feel like a quitter. Then in August 2018, Google had a large algorithm update that has since boosted organic traffic by 50%. That was an unexpected upside surprise, especially since the site has been around since 2009.

It sure seems like the secret to creating wealth is to consistently save, invest, grow, hold and build for the long-term. Almost every significant wealth event in my life has taken at least five years to stew.

Things To Consider Before Selling Your Business

We know there are three main sources of wealth: 1) your job, 2) your investments, and 3) your business. Most people erroneously focus just on their job. Savvier people focus on one and two.

But to really build next level wealth it’s worth doing all three. Start a business, own as much of the equity as possible, grow the business, and reap all the rewards.

Being an employee is fine. It’s just that without equity, it’s really hard to get very wealthy. You’re essentially working to make someone else rich.

You don’t have to build a big business. A small one that provides joy and boosts your overall income by just 10% is fine too. Over time, you just never know how large your business might grow if you stick with it.

If you’ve started a successful business and are thinking about selling it, here are some questions and considerations to go through before letting go of your baby. I’ve shared my thoughts as well as I consider retiring for a second time.

1) An attractive valuation. You must consider the valuation multiple compared to the overall S&P 500 and companies in your space. You must also consider the payback period and your likelihood of lasting beyond the payback period if you don’t sell. The stronger your expected future earnings growth, the higher the valuation multiple you should demand.

Wise public companies buy promising private companies at lower valuations. If a public company is trading at 20X earnings, it should buy private companies trading at lower earnings multiples with higher growth rates all day long. If it does, each acquisition will automatically be earnings accretive.

My thoughts: I don’t want to sell Financial Samurai because I think valuations are too low for private media businesses. Let’s say I’m offered 6X operating profit. This pales in comparison to the average 22X multiple for the S&P 500.

After six years of simply maintaining operating profit, I will have covered the entire purchase price. But every year after six years would be pure gravy. The payback period when all is recouped is also the point of serious regret for many entrepreneurs who sell. 

Further, if I can actually grow operating profit instead of let it stay stagnant, it makes even more sense to hold on. 

For illustrative purposes, let’s say someone offers me $6 million based off 6X operating profit of $1 million. If I can grow operating profit by 20% a year, the operating profit will have grown to $2.49 million after five years. In other words, I would have ended up only selling my business for 2.4X operating profit, which would be like getting mugged in a dark alley! And if I ended up selling for 6X operating profit five years from now, I could get $14.94 million instead of just $6 million. 

The only way I’d ever sell is if someone offered me at least 12X operating profit due to consistent earnings growth and my ability to keep on going for at least five more years. You’ll have to make an assessment on what’s the right valuation for your business. 

2) Cash generator or money loser. You either have a business that is losing money, but hopefully growing at a fast pace or you have a cash generating business that is usually growing at a more steady pace. If you have a money-losing business that isn’t growing, then you need to sell ASAP.

A money-losing business is unsustainable over the long term unless the business can continuously raise money from outside investors to fund operations. Uber, is a great example of a fast grower that lost $1.8 billion in 2018. Yet, because they are able to raise ~$9 billion from its IPO, the company should be able to fund its operations for at least five more years given its losses are shrinking (lost $2.2 billion in 2017).

If you have a cash cow business, then selling in a low-interest rate environment as we have now is a much harder decision to make. The reason is because a much higher capital amount is needed to generate a specific amount of income.

Look at the chart below. It shows the different amounts of capital needed to generate $55,000 and $20,000 in annual income at different interest rates. By a significant margin, cash cows are much more valuable today than they would be if interest rates were higher.

My thoughts: The core costs to run Financial Samurai include server cost, e-mail software cost, random website maintenance cost, and my time. Depending on how I value my time, operating my website results in 70% – 98% operating profit margins. In comparison, Apple’s operating profit margin is roughly 28% and Microsoft’s operating profit margin is roughly 31%. 

Huge operating profit margins is one of the main reasons why everybody should start their own website. There is little downside if you fail, except for your time and maybe a little ego bruising.

It’s not like you have to come up with a million dollars to start a restaurant to pay rent, remodel a space, buy food, and hire staff. A website is just you and your own creativity. 

Given I believe interest rates will stay low for the rest of my lifetime, the value of owning a cash cow should also stay high for the rest of my lifetime. 

10-year bond yield has been coming down since the late 1980s

3) Your personal goals. Do you want to sell for a profit or build a legacy? If your desire for maximum profits is strong, then selling your business may make more sense if you get the right offer. If you desire to build a long-term business because it gives you purpose and joy, then selling your business makes less sense. Decide what your personal goals are for your business.

My thoughts: I didn’t start Financial Samurai to make money. I just needed an outlet to address my fears during the financial crisis. Instead of smoking or drinking heavily, I decided to write. I think you can tell that I enjoy writing, otherwise, I wouldn’t author practically all of Financial Samurai’s content. If I hated writing, I would hire a bunch of freelancers to write lots of product review posts to try and maximize my revenue. But so far, I haven’t.

My purpose for Financial Samurai is to have a creative outlet to share my thoughts on a weekly basis. It feels good to get thoughts on paper and hear different perspectives from the community. To be able to formulate an idea, put it in writing, and releasing it to the world is very gratifying. 

A new goal is to run Financial Samurai long enough to teach my boy about online media, communication, and entrepreneurship. As an overrepresented minority at top universities, I assume it will be tougher for him to get in. I assume he will also get discriminated against in the workplace due to an underrepresentation of minorities in leadership positions. Therefore, it’s nice to have an insurance policy to skip university and the matrix all together. 

He might have zero interest in learning about online media, but at least I can talk to him about the importance of creativity, consistency, and work ethic. A small business has many of the same departments as a large business e.g. finance, marketing, sales, production, etc. 

Finally, what a wonderful way to communicate with family and friends long after I’m gone. I remember replaying over and over an old voicemail recording of a middle school friend who shockingly passed away in a car accident. If I were to die today, at least my wife and toddler will have hundreds of recordings and thousands of articles to go through.

4) Your view of the future. Do you see your business growing or fading? Can you create different products or revenue streams due to the strength of your brand? What are some new technologies that might disrupt your existing business? Are you capable of adapting?

Businesses fade away all the time. The murkier the future, the more you should consider selling.

My thoughts: I’ve always believed that if you can build a brand, your business will do even better in the future. Think about how many different business lines Virgin is in. Richard Branson has built an incredible, edgy brand that has enabled him to get into music, transportation, hotels, and more.

Financial Samurai is a fierce brand in the personal finance space that digs deep into the numbers and provides no BS analysis and answers. Everything is written based on firsthand experience because money is too important to be left up to pontification.

By establishing a brand that goes against the status quo (e.g. engineer your layoff vs. quit), plenty of new products can be created to leverage the brand. With only one book, I’ve barely gotten started on the business aspect of things. Now that my brand is established, I truly believe the opportunities are endless.

I envision a future where the consumption of online media via mobile devices only continues to grow. I see opportunity for Financial Samurai to expand internationally, especially in Asia and Europe.

Written content will never go away. It is by far the fastest way to consume information. Audio and video will continue to grow, and these are mediums I can easily utilize.

5) Will the money change your life. You can’t fault someone for wanting lots of money. If the sale of your business can significantly change your life for the better, then selling is absolutely an attractive decision. If the financial windfall doesn’t do much for your life, then you will likely feel a great let down because doing something mainly for money tends to feel empty.

My thoughts: The money received from selling Financial Samurai won’t change our lives. The only thing I might do is buy a bigger house. But I’ve already done the analysis on a larger house before, and it doesn’t feel worth it. Instead of feeling joy, I feel my headaches of owning a larger property with a $55,000 annual property tax bill would only multiply.

With the windfall, I’d give more money to a foster youth organization I volunteer at. I’d pay for a luxurious cruise for my parents. If my parents wanted, I’d also pay for their home remodel while putting them up in a nice temporary housing condo in Honolulu.

Other than these things, there’s really nothing more I’d do with the money except investing it in passive income generating investments. When you are already free to do whatever you want, having more money doesn’t move the happiness needle much.

6) Will you regret not selling if the market turns south. Fantastic selling opportunities open up only so often. If you pass, can you live with your decision that you could have gotten so much more if you sold earlier? Do you have the patience to wait for another 10 years for the next fantastic selling opportunity?

For example, Yahoo was once once worth over $100 billion and eventually sold itself to Verizon for only $5 billion. The good times don’t last forever.

My thoughts: I’m sure I’ll regret not selling today if I could only get 95% less years later. Meanwhile, however, I will have gotten a priceless amount of joy building Financial Samurai. It’s cool to have a web property I can click on from anywhere in the world.

It’s the same type of pride and joy you get as a parent when you look at your kid and think proudly, I helped make that. If you truly love your kid, you would never sell him or her. The same goes with your business, sometimes to your detriment.

I also am pleased with the steady growth of the Financial Samurai Forum. It feels like a new website with different offerings I will help nurture. I’m sure it will grow into a tremendous destination if I can manage it well over the next five years.

7) Will the new buyer be a good steward. You don’t want to sell your business to anybody. Instead, you want to sell your business to someone who believes in your vision and carries out many of the things you’d like to do, but don’t have the ability or energy to do on your own.

Consider selling your business similar to giving away your daughter or son’s hand in marriage. You’re definitely not going to let your daughter or son marry a scumbag.

My thoughts: After several conversations, I finally warmed up to someone who I think could really grow Financial Samurai and improve the user experience. Like me, he is a father, but to three boys. He has a team of hundreds of writers and developers who could create a lot more value. Let’s see where this relationship takes us. I’m definitely going to take my time finding a proper suitor. 

Enjoy Your Business For As Long As Possible

The joy you get from creating something out of nothing far outweighs any joy you get from making a lot of money. Yes, there will be difficult times when you’ll just want to sell and quit. Do your best to keep on going.

I know of several people who sold their online businesses for the money and later became depressed because they didn’t have a purpose anymore. Many in the online media space tried to re-create the magic and failed. They became irrelevant.

Money really doesn’t bring much more happiness once you’re earning enough to have all your basic needs met. Some say that number is $75,000 a year, while others believe $300,000 a year is more likely in a HCOL area.

If you feel the end is near for your business, definitely try and sell. If someone gives you a crazy offer way outside average valuation multiples and you’re burned out, then accept their offer with open arms.

But if you continue to enjoy what you do and see growth potential, then keep on going. The legacy you leave will be wonderful. Just remember to always keep an open mind as there is a price for everything.

Not a day goes by where I’m not thankful for launching this site in 2009. It has given me more joy and purpose that I ever thought possible. Thank you!

Related posts:

How To Start A Profitable Website

Real Estate Versus Blogging: Which Is A Better Investment?

Bankers, Techies, And Doctors You’ll Never Get Rich Working For Someone Else

Readers, any entrepreneurs out there who have sold their business? How did you feel when you sold and how did you feel once you reached the payback period? What are some other considerations entrepreneurs should consider before selling? Graphic by kongsavage.com

The post Things To Consider Before Selling Your Business (Baby) appeared first on Financial Samurai.

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[blog-optimisticcoffeestuden-blog]

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im learning to drive soon and am buying a car to practise in with my friend who can drive for over 3 years. but im confused about insurance. will it cost me more? and will i have to upgrade it once i pass my test? i might only be on the provisional for a few months.

Why can't people buy health insurance over state lines?

Why can't the individual pick his policy out of state? Why can't this person and the family pick and chose the details of their plan? Not everyone wants a policy which the state mandates the use of chiropractors or psychiatrists. Zogby says: 72% of those polled (1,001 likely voters) supported allowing someone living in one state to purchase health insurance from another state, if the insurance is state-regulated and approved. (15% were opposed and 13% were not sure.) But... Current laws prohibit individuals from buying health insurance across state lines. Rather, they must buy what has been approved in their own state. What industry in America is insolated only to each state? So tell me, anyone that really knows the answer...why are we limited in our chose? Give me the rationale of any state legislator (you've heard)...they have to have some 'reason'. Then tell me what you think is the underlinging reason...thanks. I have my beliefs, but I would like to hear your arguement.""

Why is my landlord requires Hired & Non Owned Auto Liability Insurance?

I own a beauty salon, and not understand why my landlord required my insurance to have Hired & Non Owned Auto Liability Insurance coverage? I know this coverage would covered my car I rented for business used & my employee's liability when sometime (rarely) used for business purposes. What's is it in for the landlord?""

What would be the insurance rates for a 16 year old with aford maverick?

I have good grades no felonies pretty much no anything. How much would it be for a 1971 ford maverick

""What are some affordable health insurance options for those with preexisting conditions, here in Wisconsin?""

I have a friend who is 31 years old, and is unable to find health insurance due to the fact that she had a heart attack a few years ago. I'm sure that she is only one of thousands of people in the same situation..but there has got to be some way to get affordable health insurance for her, here in Wisconsin. Is there anyone out there who has been in this situation, and has lucked out in finding affordable health insurance? We have been looking, but as of right now...to no avail.""

""Which is the the cheapest liability car insurance company in Houston,tx?""

Which is the the cheapest liability car insurance company in Houston,tx?""

What reputable health insurance companies are out there?

My mom doesn't have health insurance and my job doesn't give insurance to family members. I would like to pay monthly to a health insurance company so my mom could get health check up when she needs it. Do you know any health insurance companies that can accept low monthly payments since I don't get paid that much?

Why is my car on Motor Insurance Database (MID) while I haven't bought insurance yet?

I've just bought a used car for my son, received the new log book; however, I haven't bought insurance yet, as I intend to keep the car off road at the moment. But when I checked my car on the Motor Insurance Database (MID), it recognized my car. Apparently it is ok to drive this car, although I haven't bought insurance for it. Do you think this is ok, or will I be stopped by the police driving this car?""

New Car with Hail Damage - Insurance?

I am looking at buying a new car that has minimal hail damage to the bonnet and roof. About 10 tic tac sized dents all up, extremely hard to see. They are discounting it heavily and I really like the car but when I rang up the insurance company today they said they will not insure it. Does anyone know any companies that will insure a BRAND NEW minimally HAIL DAMAGED CAR? (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)""

Do I need SR22 insurance after a DWI 1st offense if my license is not suspended in the state of Louisiana?

About a year ago, I received my first DWI. I plead guilty under Article 894, and then about 3-4 months later, I contacted the DMV here in Louisiana, and they stated my license has not been suspended, and never was. Now, I am trying to get insurance on my truck I just bought, and the insurance company is telling me i have to get SR22 insurance. I thought SR22 insurance was needed when either your license was suspended previously, or you were forced to get a hardship license? I have never had to do either, and I don't understand why they are requesting me to get the SR22 insurance. The rates are already high enough with the DWI on my record, and the SR22 will be adding a good bit more. Just curious if someone can explain this to me about Louisiana and insurance which is required of me. I do still have a valid Class A CDL, not suspended, and never had to get a hardship license.""

Auto Insurance Increase-Is this too much?

I backed into a tree that was in my blind spot 2 nights ago and got an estimate today of $2446.00 damage. My deductible is $250. My insurance agent quoted me a 75% increase in my monthly insurance cost. 75%!!!! This is ridiculous to me considering I have no other points on my insurance or any history. In the end after paying this increase over 3 years (plus deductible), it will cost me $2410. Shouldn't insurance save you money? Isn't there anything I can do (other than pay to fix my car out of pocket)?""

Motorcycle insurance cost for m1?

16, live in canada, suzuki gs550, cheapest insurance? p.s. heard statefarm lets you do it by month, how much would that cost?""

Which insurance is cheaper for 19 years old person?

is it state farm(the one i have now) or geico. or please tell me what is the cheapest insurance company?

audi a3 insurance rates

audi a3 insurance rates

Will getting a speeding ticket and losing my license affect my insurance rates?

I lost my license for 3 months and got an $800 fine unfairly (see below for details) for doing 80 in what was previously a 50 zone and because I'm on my Ps the fine was totally way high :L But anyway I paid the ticket right away but now I'm worried it'll affect my insurance rates? It's my only ticket ever and I have no idea if it even affects insurance rates but I'm really worried too worried to call and ask them because they might not know until I tell them D: I live in NSW Australia BTW if that helps you answer (read this question if you want more details on the incredible audacity of the sneaky police: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AookRsU6pku7l6KJOtSFGcTsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20121113121907AA9izHx)

Can you take a rental car when you do not have any personal vehicle or auto insurance?

I do not have any car insurance right now. I am planning to get a car rental for a month. Do I need to get some insurance for this? What happens if cop pulls me up will rental agreement be sufficient?

Can people really save 15% or more on their car insurance by switching to Gieco?

is Geico a expensive car insurance or do you really save a lot? I'm planing to switch to Geico but I need to know if it'll be cheaper. I mean what do you guys who have Geico feel and think about the insurance?

My daughters car insurance has more than doubled because she got 9 penalty points in the last year. she wants ?

me to get insurance on her car and then get her put on that insurance. if she gets more points while she is under my insurance would that affect the price of the insurance on my own cars or would only if she caused an accident make my insurance go up. i could get a years insurance on her car for less than the price of 1 monthly installment she would have to pay for her own insurance. what do you think. if she gets 3 more points she will be disqualified from driving . if that happened while she was on my insurance would that put my insurance prices up even though she would be off my insurance if she did get disqualified. what i have wrote might not make sense. i want to know if i do this for her and she gets disqualified while being on my insurance would that put my insurance prices up for all my cars or what or would it only effect my insurance if she causes an accident. while shes on my insurance. * 41 minutes ago * - 3 days left to answer. Additional Details 40 minutes ago we live in the UK. sorry this is very long i found it hard to write what i was really trying to ask. 33 minutes ago i know if she causes an accident while she is on my insurance ot would effect how much my insurance costs but if she was to get disqualified while she is on my insurance would that effect me inurances oin anyway. if she gets disqualified then she wont be on my insurance anymore. 14 minutes ago only 3 of her penalty points are for speeding. she told me the other 6 points are because there was a mix up with her insurance last time and she was uninured for 4 days and was caught by the police. she got 6 points for that in court a few months ago. she said she that she had phoned them and accepted the policy they sent her to renew it and thought it would continue automatically but she hadnt been to the office to sign for it so she got caught for that. she was only uninsured for 4 days because of her mistake that time. sorry if you already answerd this but i put it on US yahoo answers by a mistake and it didnt show up in UK yahoo answers so i needed answers from people who knows about car insurance in the UK

""If I buy a car off someone, how do I put insurance on it immediately?""

This would be my first car purchase and so I don't have an insurance agent. Would I need to look up a company, let them know I'm about to buy a car, then later call them back with the VIN?""

Whats the cheapest Car Insurance for a 23 year old male and reckless driving ticket?

titles says it all

How do we work with insurance companies in California?

We are a Southern California Drywall Company and would like to work with insurance companies. How do we get started?

What is the procedure to claim insurance for a stolen bike?

my brother's herohonda is stolen ? he has done it's insurance in orientalinsurance company. he has also reported to the police regarding this.the case was happened before 2 and 1/2 months . police could not found it. so kindly suggest the way to claim for a new bike to the insurance company.

What auto insurance companies offer auto insurance for driving for-hire vechicles (Car Service / Cab ) ?

I recently got my TLC (Taxi and Limo Commision License). I want to work driving car service/cab in Brooklyn NY, however I don't know what auto insurance companies offer insurance for driving car service/taxi/etc? I tried allstate and nationwide, they don't offer insurance. Does anyone know? Help! Thanks.""

Which car is cheaper to insure?

2003 mitsubitchi eclipse or 2005 ford taurus? the eclipse has a 4 cylinder and the taurus has a V6. Both Automatic. Eclipse is older but Taurus is probably safer. Eclipse is smaller. Tauruses have more problems than eclipse. Which would be cheaper on insurance overall?

Car insurance qoute.....?

Anyone know of a website that will give me an average qoute on types of Cars/Pick-ups, Canadian website perfered.""

Where to find really cheap car insurance?

I want to buy a $200 car mainly to run it into my friend's $200 car (kind of like playing bumper cars with real cars). I need a really cheap insurance that will basically only allow this car to be legal. I don't plan on making any claims on it or using it for anything other than playing around on private property. Only want to make it road legal. Any suggestions? I am looking for something under 50$ per month

Health insurance.HELP?

I just found out I was pregnant and I am having to do my health insurance by myself now. I understand co-pays but does the insurance company bill you anything? I think I have already reached my deductible for the year but I'm not sure. Usually my father handles and explains all of my health insurance stuff but since he is very busy I am having to do it all myself.

""9 months owning phone with no insurance, but adding insurance now?

could I still get a replacement today after adding my insurance?

What is the cheapest individual health insurance plan in PA?

age 62, good health""

How much does it cost to add a teenager to a car insurance policy?

Teen in question has a 4.3ish GPA and is involved in many extracurriculars.

How expensive is it to live in California?

I live in a small town in Ohio. It's like lower middle class. I really want to go somewhere else with more people and more exciting with more places to shop and stuff. I hate Ohio and don't want to live here. I have a dream to be a fashion designer and start my own business and I want to go to California for a Fashion Design school. It was between New York and California but California seems more exciting and less crowded than NY. My parents don't think it'll ever happen. They always say it's too expensive and don't think my cousin will make it out there, who is going out there pretty much for like drug reasons. My brother went out there when he was younger with his friends, they drove there and he lived on the beach than came back. So, exactly how expensive is it in California? Food, clothing, gas, living, price differences? Is it really crowded like in Los Angeles and San Franciso or bigger cities where colleges are?""

What would be the most inexpensive insurance for me?

Im looking to buy a car. I don't know what kind yet because I don't want to get a car that's going to have me with really high insurance. I'm 19. I don't really know much about all this . Any and All advice would help . Thanks :)

Will my insurance go up if my boyfriend wrecks my car?

My boyfriend recently backed my car into a dumpster and left significant damage on the bumper. He insisted he would pay to get it fixed, but it looks like I'm going to have to make a claim. Do I make a claim on my insurance or does he make one on his? Also, is my insurance going to go up a significant amount?""

Need insurance help please?

I got into a car accident a few months ago (my fault). My insurance company denied my claim and didn't pay for the damages. Fast forward to today I get a letter saying that the insurance company of the guy who hit me are demanding that I pay them 6129 dollars. I don't have that kind of money im only 22 and I live with my parents. What will they do to me if I cant pay them? What can I do? (I live in california btw)

How much would a car insurance agent in alberta be expected to make?

How much would a car insurance agent in alberta be expected to make?

""How much a month will insurance be on a 2003 Nissan 350z with a 19 year old driver, (2 yrs exp)?""

How much a month will insurance be on a 2003 Nissan 350z with a 19 year old driver, (2 yrs exp)?""

Car insurance vs the law?

If I was driving at 100 mph in my car and a police officer caught me on radar and i started to pull over and then lost control and flipped and totaled the car would my insurance still cover it? I have the fullest of full coverage also, if I was still making payments and the car got impounded would the car be repossessed FROM the cops? thanks""

Car insurance question....?

Is it possible to see how much the isurance will be before I get the insurance??? I am 18, had my license since december 07 and never had a ticket or accidents... How much average is a teen insurance from a coupe to a minivan... I know its not in the high $800, but maybe $120+. I might get a mustang or something... plus is there an insurance gap between forigen and domestic cars???""

Will my car insurance rate increase if my car is stolen and never recovered?

I also have GAP insurance.

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audi a3 insurance rates

If I do not have car insurance...?

and i live with with my grandparents and they have car insurance but i dont, and i have my liscence, can i still drive their car with it not being illegal in the state of Massachusetts? Because i cant afford the insurance and if their car is insured i am told an officer cannot do anything about it, as long as the cars insured im fine, is this true? Thanks!""

""Does your car insurance go down when you turn 25? If so, how much...?""

Does your car insurance go down when you turn 25? If so, how much...?""

What is the normal rate for car insurance for drivers between 18 and 25?

Hello i am interested to know how much the average car insurance cost would be for young drivers between 18 and 25 years. can anyone help me please? thank you.

Car insurance for 20 year old?

hey im 20 year old just passed my driving licence and the insurance quote i get on a 1.0 corsa breeze is ridiculous. i live in a high crime part of london but the insurance company's want about 1500 pound a MONTH from me. anyone know what it should actually be n what i can do about it? i heard people pay max 300 pound a month at the age of 17.

""Car insurance for me is too expensive in the UK, can I buy it abroad?""

I'm 18 and recently passed my test. For a basic 1L car the cheapest insurance I can find is 3000. I've been looking for 3 weeks and it's the best quote I could find. I cannot afford this so would it be possible to buy insurance from another country in the EU, since i've heard insurance is cheaper over there? I know insurance for teens is very expensive, but that sum is a ridiculous amount to pay for a car worth half the insurance value. I realise it might sound like a stupid question but I have exhausted all my other options and this is the only thing left I could think of that would be a possibility. Any useful information would be helpful, thanks.""

Does anyone know of a health insurance company that pays the Medicare B premium?

I live in the formerly great state of California. A friend has her Medicare B insurance premiums paid by her insurance company. She was employed by a school system in California. Is there such a plan for non-school retirees? My current insurance says everyone must pay the Medicare B premium.

How much would this monthly payment approx be?

A new car that was a total cost of 16 thousand dollars. Monthly payment would be around 140. Plus full coverage insurance?

What is the average first year salary for a State Farm agent?

Are additional commissions paid? If so how are they structured.

Car Insurance?

I am in the process of my my own car. I have been sharing my dads old car with my sister. I am 21, I got my licesnce when I was 18, and I have not yet had it three years. My dad called the insurance company and they told him it would be over 2600 paid in full because I have not had my liscence for 3 years, and in January it will drop. is this true, or does he just not want me to get a car?""

I need a form for allstate car insurance good student discount?

I need a form for allstate car insurance good student discount?

Auto insurance troubles. ..?

My car insurance expired on 6/19 at 12am so that same day we went to our insurance broker and purchased a new full coverage policy at 2:30 pm. They took pictures of our minivan which was in great condition. By the time the transaction was completed the time on the receipt said 2:46 PM. At exactly 4pm we were in the center lane of a 3 lane one way street and the lady on our right decided to make an illegal left turn in front of us and didn't give us enough time to stop, so we crashed. She was of course at fault but is taking her sweet time to make a statement so it has been over a week and her insurance won't take liability until she gives her statement, and now our insurance is trying to say that we weren't covered until 4:40 pm. Can our insurance do that? And the funny thing is we don't even have the details in our policy because they were supposed to mail it to us.""

Is driving a motorcyle dangerous? and will it raise my insurance prices?

is a motorcycle more dangerous than a car what are the pros and cons. i am considering it for the good gas millage i am 18 yrs old (clean record) -- will it increase my insurance costs

Does failure to signal increase insurance rates in Oregon?

Does failure to signal increase insurance rates in Oregon?

For my car insurance I have full coverage. Have a $500 deductible to fix a broken window. Is that normal?

A rock hit my window while I was driving and i have a $500 deductible to fix it. I wanted to see was that really high or normal? I have full coverage. I just want to see how this insurance compares to others. $500 deductible just seemed a bit high. Thanks!

How much is the car insurance payment for a used 2002 honda civic lx?

i wanna know how much car insurance payment will it cost me per month at triple A insurance at bakersfield california.

Is it true the you can get car insurance thru Medicaid or Medicare?

I heard this is true but I don't know because my parents are disabled they are 51 and 56 they own a car but no insurance they need it to get to there doctor's appointment's and hospital visits. So is this true if anybody knows please help by giving info on this by giving a link or number. Or you can help by referring to a place that will help them out because they only live on the disability checks and food stamps. Thanks for helping

Who is the cheapest car insurance in USA ?

Ihave finicial problem right now ipay for six month liability $ 300 it us too much for me is there any body knows less than that price iget please let me know?

Is there a new law about not having car insurance?

i heard the law had just changed in California and my insurance just ran out in order to renew i need to drive to the bank and im not sure if i can with no insurance

A good hatchback car for 1000 with a cheap insurance for young people?

I've been looking at so many cars and I really don't think I've found one really worht the money I'm looking for a car that's not old All I have seen is a Rover Metro and Peugeot 205/306 and some others but some of these car are still too old I just really want some good advice, thanks :)""

Where can I find affordable health insurance for me and my family?

How can I find affordable heatlh insurance for me and my family? We are currently unemployed with no health insurance.

How much would my car insurance be?

I'm looking to buy another car. I would really like a BMW or a VW, years like 1996 to 2004. I'm thinking like a 3 series BMW or a passat or jetta. I know these are typically nicer cars thus insurance would be higher, though some people claim they're cheaper because they're more safe. Anyway, how high are we talking here? I don't need an exact number but a decent estimate would really help so I don't buy a nice car and find out I can't afford the insurance. I'm an 18 year old guy, I have NO tickets of any sort, no accidents, I commute about 20 miles to college, iv been licensed for over a year, I took drivers education. I'm under my own name not my parents so my insurance is astronomical cause I'm an 18 year old guy. Please help.""

Health insurance for 18 year olds?

im 17 turning 18 in may and im wanting to know what are some affordable or good health insurance for an 18 year old

What doctors or insurance that accepts MEDI-CAL CARE IN CALIFORNIA?

I LIVE IN SF IN THE BAY AREA, ANY DOCTORS OR INSURANCE THAT CAN TAKE THIS?""

Used Car insurance cost?

If i buy a 2010 ford escape used will insurance be any cheaper than if i buy it new, considering im 25 and have a clean driving record""

State Farm Renters Insurance: Explain Replacement Cost Coverage to me?

From what I understand, if a claim had to be filed, I would receive the current value of an item. For instance, I have a pair of $500 shoes. They are currently priced at $450, so the pay-out would be $450 and $500, correct?. Okay, so here are my two questions: 1) Would I be bound to REPLACE the lost item? Or would they give you the current cash value to buy whatever it is that you wanted to buy? 2) Are there no such policies that exists out there: a policy that would pay you what you INITIALLY paid for an item? So that one wouldn't lost out financially in the event that an item depreciates? If I'm wrong about any of the above, or if you think I need to be sure to clarify certain things with my agent, please let me know. Thanks.""

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audi a3 insurance rates

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ameriprise-insurance-quote-retrival-jose-flores/"

[saikaigigi]

I had a very short update on my Facebook, but since there's NOTHING to do today at work (or for the rest of the week, for that matter), I figured I'd do an entry here. The weather hasn't really continued warming up that much. I'm still cold in the office and we still have the heater on (or the "stove" as they call it...). Warm coffee is a necessity to stay awake and keep warm. The coffee here isn't that great but I think I've gotten used to it and it isn't the worst thing anymore. The coffee at Pearson was still WAY WORSE. That stuff was poison. And yet, I still drank it...every day. We've been quite busy these days. I got to lead classes on my own for about 2 weeks. The end of the year was kind of "anything goes" in my first year classes. So I did a St. Patrick's Day presentation and a few activities that prompted the students to speak on their own - which was honestly the only time they could, since my JTE for that class isn't very creative and just went through the main dialogue of the chapter over and over until the class fell asleep (seriously, one day I stopped him and said - they're too sleepy to continue. Let's do a short activity to get them awake. We then played Simon Says for 2 minutes.) Anyway, my classes went amazing. We studied 2 songs together, described photos, did word jumbles and drew emotions. And all the students were engaged. My JTE was amazed. I was just like, well it makes sense. They are also all relaxed because they know that grading is over. Really, at this point of the year it's like anything goes. Now the students are on Spring break. I still have to come into work even though there aren't classes. It's whatever, I guess. At least I get paid to sit here and think about literally anything I want and type things like this. Last week, the transfer announcements were made. A few of the teachers I liked are moving to different schools. This happens once a year. The teachers who have only been here for a short time weren't really at risk of transfer, but those who were here for anywhere between 2 to 5 years got picked to move. I never really thought about how hard it would be to transfer because at home, there is such a clear line between work and home life. At 5 you leave and forget about work until the next day. And maybe you don't spend so much time with co-workers. Here, the teachers are assigned for a few years to a school who houses them in teacher housing, and the only people they know are the other teachers and the students. Those people become their life. Their friends. Some of these teachers already live apart from their spouses and children. Sometimes the transfers move them FURTHER away from them. I think it can be really hard to deal with. So I understand why there were so many tears at the goodbye ceremony. While I think it's good for the overall educational system to have an even division of teachers and experience, this is really hard on people. But they're used to it. It's just the way it is. And it will probably be this way for a very long time. Meanwhile in the States, you get teachers who have been there for 30 years who have lost passion because they aren't respected by students and they're just getting worn down. They don't like their co-workers or their students and have a hard time controlling their classrooms sometimes. At this point, I don't know whether or not the Japanese educational system is better or not. In ways, I think it is. But in other ways, everyone just works too freaking hard here! Like, after 5 PM GO HOME AND RELAX! Some of my teachers don't go home until 9PM every day. Like, why? They don't get paid overtime to be there, either! Huh, this became a ramble about education in Japan. Somehow. Recently, Philip and I have been getting out more. Last weekend we made it out to Arita with our friend who is in the Navy and stationed nearby. I have never seen so many pottery shops. It was insane. I definitely want to go back there and explore. We also visited a nice shrine and had a good talk with the priests there and they explained how to buy the fortunes (which had an English translation! They must get a lot of tourists). We talked a lot about how we came to Japan and the charms they were selling. The entrance to the temple was up a set of stairs with a train track at the top, then after you cross the train track you can enter the temple. I found it kind of strange. At the top, it just looks like there are train tracks and then an edge you could fall off of. Philip's cousin came to visit this week. He's a college student studying in Tokyo. He's super full of energy so this week is gonna be fun. We certainly had fun yesterday after we picked him up. We spent all afternoon in Sasebo looking around. I found a flute I had never heard of and decided to buy it. It was sort of an impulse buy, but it wasn't that expensive (until I decided to buy a book to learn with, then things got pricey...the book was more than the flute!). I discovered that I got like a learner's flute, and that these flutes come in bamboo. I really want a bamboo one!!! The flute is a shinobue and it's used in festivals. Also, it turns out that it's the mystery flute from Vampire Princess Miyu that I always loved!!! I may have downloaded that soundtrack when I got home...hehe We found a koto concert in the middle of the shopping strip, and the guy who runs the souvenir shop where I got all my souvenirs for family recognized our Navy friend and we got to clarify where his shop was so we could take another peek. We were met by his son on the corner where we needed to turn (he called him!!), and we were shown inside. We were able to ask questions and explore the shop. I asked about the flutes because I noticed they had more than before. Turns out that they now had the flute I had just bought at the other shop, but the real versions. The shop keeper let me try the flutes (which really surprised me!!!) and I discovered that the one I got was SUPER high pitched like a piccolo. I thought "Great, my neighbor will be so happy..." But actually, I'm thinking of practicing at the beach around the corner from my house. Anyway, I discovered that i LOVE the sound of the flute that has one less finger hole. It's such a nice sound that I can enjoy more by myself without killing anyone's eardrums. He offered to sell one to me for half price. I just could not believe that. Really. What?! I was ready to buy it right then and there! But he said I can take some time to get used to the instrument first. What a nice guy! Not like other sellers who are just like "BUY IT NOW". I truly felt cared for as a customer. They also gave us free plants! I was like Okay! Plants are cool! I'm actually terrible with plants. Philip got me an orchid on our first Valentine's Day and it just died. I got a small flower that was placed in a stone at the culture festival here back in November and I haven't watered it once. I think it might still be alive somehow, though. So...we'll see how long these guys last under my care! They also gave Philip a little squirrel because he asked how much it was and they just said "Please take it!" I think maybe no one was buying it lol. He gave it to me as a present. Oh, and the week before hand I got a deal on some Sailor Moon merchandise at this second hand store in Sasebo called Y.Y....something. Y.Y.Boueki I think? The guy there collects a lot of things, including American things, especially Star Wars. He even has autographed things on display. He let me take a picture with a rare Sailor Moon statue he had. I did make it to GU for the Sailor Moon collaboration, but things sold out VERY fast there and I couldn't choose exactly what I wanted beforehand. But I did get a good amount of things! 3 shirts and a Luna purse! I also decided to snag some pants because I needed some. I now own white pants and they frighten me (I'm going to stain them, I just know it...). also, I'm the biggest size there. That's just unreal. And actually, these pants are slipping a little now that I'm moving around a lot >.> But, I'm just saying, the range of body types here must not be large because if I'm the biggest size, I feel sorry for anyone bigger than me trying to shop for pants. Really. That must suck. I was going to wrap this up but I just remembered the enkai on Friday night that we had. We had a big going away dinner party for the leaving teachers. I had to eat fish and I'm starting not to look forward to the food at these gatherings because I have to force myself to eat a lot of things I don't like. I ate some sort of clam thing, I don't even know what it was. But it came in like a conk shell. Is that even what it's called? God, not growing up near the ocean has never been so apparent as it is now that I'm living by one. I don't know a lot of things about ocean life. Anyway, so each leaving teacher gave a speech and then other teachers would stand up and give a speech back. And it was nuts. They all did a Japanese cheer that I had never heard of. It was actually quite educational. And then the gym teacher who was basically the guy who kept order in this place with the kids, is leaving. So the other gym teacher gave the speech to him. But, not before stripping off his top first. Oh, boy. And then he stood there giving his speech topless and crying. And it was sort of charming to see two men who were such good friends have such a heart to heart moment. Even though one of them had stripped beforehand. XD We went to an after party at a VERY SMALL BAR near my apartment. It was so fun! There was karaoke and it was the most fun I've had with co-workers here. Everyone was singing and cheering and just being totally silly. It was really cool. I'm kind of disappointed that my base school is switching to my other high school now. I'll be there 3x a week. So I'm not as affected by the transfers as the other teachers, but I still feel kind of sad? I don't know the teachers at the other school as well, or the students. It's a bigger school. They're awesome, though. Full of energy and the students are generally pretty smart. Plus, there's a rock band club...so there's that. I think it'll be okay. WOW THIS WAS LONG BYE