The Whole World Stinks

Wise men and philosophers throughout the ages have disagreed on many things, but many are in unanimous agreement on one point: "We become what we think about." Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A man is what he thinks about all day long." The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius put it this way: "A man's life is what his thoughts make of it." In the Bible we find: "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he."

One Sunday afternoon, a cranky grandfather was visiting his family. As he lay down to take a nap, his grandson decided to have a little fun by putting Limburger cheese on Grandfather's mustache. Soon, grandpa awoke with a snort and charged out of the bedroom saying, "This room stinks." Through the house he went, finding every room smelling the same. Desperately he made his way outside only to find that "the whole world stinks!"

So it is when we fill our minds with negativism. Everything we experience and everybody we encounter will carry the scent we hold in our mind.

Time To Think

Henry Ford hired an efficiency expert to go through his plant. He said, "Find the nonproductive people. Tell me who they are, and I will fire them!"

The expert made the rounds with his clipboard in hand and finally returned to Henry Ford's office with his report. "I've found a problem with one of your administrators," he said. "Every time I walked by, he was sitting with his feet propped up on the desk. The man never does a thing. I definitely think you should consider getting rid of him!" When Henry Ford learned the name of the man the expert was referring to, Ford shook his head and said, "I can't fire him. I pay that man to do nothing but think - and that's what he's doing."

A Short Course in Human Relations

The six most important words: I admit that I was wrong.

The five most important words: You did a great job.

The four most important words: What do you think?

The three most important words: Could you please. . .

The two most important words: Thank you.

The most important word: We.

The least important word: I.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Noah's Ark

1. Don't miss the boat.
2. Don't forget that we're all in the same boat.
3. Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.
4. Stay fit. When you're 600 years old, someone might ask you to do something REALLY BIG.
5. Don't listen to critics, just get on with what has to be done.
6. Build your future on high ground.
7. For safety's sake, travel in pairs.
8. Two heads are better than one.
9. Speed isn't always an advantage; the snails were on board with the cheetahs.
10. When you're stressed, float awhile.
11. Remember that the ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic was built by professionals.
12. No matter the storm, when you're with God there's a rainbow waiting.
13. Remember that woodpeckers inside are a larger threat than the storm outside

Floating Ideas About

In 1879, the Proctor and Gamble company's best seller was candles. But Thomas Edison had just patented the electric light bulb. Within a short space of time, the market for candles had collapsed and the company were in trouble.

However, destiny turned their fortunes around. At their factory in Cincinatti, a forgetful employee had one day gone to lunch and forgotten to turn the candle-making machine off. When he
returned, he found a mass of frothing lather filled with air bubbles. Rather than discard the batch, he decided to turn it into soap. To his surprise, he found that the soap floated.

At that time, many people still bathed in the Ohio river. The idea of a soap that floated and never got lost appealed to them. Thus Ivory soap was born and became the mainstay of the Proctor
and Gamble company for many years to come.

Moral: Many innovations are the result of chance discovery and customer need.

Destroy Debt

1. Collect your bills.

Gather up all the records of your unpaid debts so you can take a good look at what you owe and decide where to start. Make sure you include your mortgage, car loan, student loans, credit cards, and any other debts you have, including personal debts. You should have current balances and rates, either online or on paper, but you can also find most of your debts on your credit report, which you can get free once a year from each of the three major credit reporting agencies – just head over to AnnualCreditReport.com.

2. Choose a target.

Now it’s time to choose a debt to destroy. There are two ways to go about this. Which works best for you will be determined by your personality and approach.

The first, which Stacy advocates in his book Life or Debt, is to prioritize the debts with the smallest balance, or fewest payments left to make. Why? Because you can pay them off faster and see the strides you’re making. Fewer due dates to track and fewer payments to send out leads to peace of mind, a sense of accomplishment, and the motivation to keep shrinking balances. If you’ve tried and failed to bail yourself out in the past, this method might provide the extra push you need.

The other approach is to focus on the debt with the highest interest rate, because that’s the one costing you the most money over the long-term. If you’re the kind of person to get worked up about getting worked over by interest charges, this may be a more motivational method – and it’s certainly the one that saves the most money. Plugging your numbers into this debt calculator can help you decide between the two methods: You can find out the difference in total cost by toggling between “balance order” and “interest order.”

3. Divide and destroy.

Regardless of the method you choose, the way to maximize your damage to debt is to snowball your payments.

In other words, you’ll devote every dime you can lay your hands on to your target debt until it’s dust, while making only minimum payments on the rest. When you polish off the first one, take those extra resources and old payments and apply that cash to the next debt down the chain; repeat this strategy with every debt you have. As you progress, debt payments from retired debts, along with whatever extra you can come up with, will snowball into more financial firepower to face the big ones.

Do this until you’ve paid off every debt you care to destroy. Then take those old debt payments and convert them into a money machine by investing them instead.

4. Find the money.

Note the paragraph above refers to devoting “every dime you can lay your hands on” to your target debt. This is a critical step. In Stacy’s book, he recommends you try to devote 10 percent of your gross income to debt destruction – not easy to do if you’re living paycheck to paycheck.

Finding the money to swell your debt payments is the hardest part of getting out of debt. But it’s critical. That’s why tracking your spending with a budget is so important: it allows you to analyze and plan your spending so you can find your “debt destroyer.” But it’s also important to find as much as you can without making sacrifices in your quality of life. You may not have to scrimp as much as you think – just do some research on our site and others and get creative. Here’s a list of our most popular saving posts that might give you ideas:

Source: Money Talks

Risk vs Return