Archive for October, 2011

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Reader Thoughts – Response to Sacrifices Made On the Road To Become A Millionaire

October 13th, 2011

Today at Money Reasons, I’m introducing a feature called “Reader Thoughts“.

Within this new feature, I’m going to post emails and other forms of communication that I received or gather that explains a personal take or actual personal experience on a topic that I consider worth taking a look at, to gain insight into their thoughts and experiences.

Today, I’m going to post an email I received from “S”:

Money Reasons writer – your post on wealth and sacrifices really hit it home for me today.  My response may offend some of your readers but those are my genuine feelings, you asked to hear stories.  I am not sure what you consider wealthy – but I have been in the top tax bracket for the last few years.

I was nearing this bracket as an employed professional but I entered this bracket as an entrepreneur involved in several ventures, many that turned in losses which I talk about on my blog.  Entrepreneurship involves lots of sacrifice in many aspects of ones life, social, relationships family/friends, personal interests and hobbies taking a back seat, etc. 

 

I persevered through all over the years, starting profitable businesses that pay tax. so not only do I contribute the max amount from a tax perspective, most of my businesses do the same.  I own a brick and mortar business in my community through which I have employed local citizens. the business is heavily involved in the community, often sponsoring soup kitchens, charity galas, and fund raising initiatives.

 

I also own several rental properties, all of which provide quality housing to residents in need, many of who would be considered sub prime by other lending institutions. to sum it up, the road to self created wealth involves way more than what one who hasn’t traveled the road may think. moreover, each journey is very different / unique. personally, only I know the amount of sacrifices I have made over the years. sure I am reaping huge dividends today, but I am also contributing to the larger society / community in parallel.

 

“S” provides a  story that epitomizes the exact point I was trying to make with my post called:  Sacrifices Made On the Road To Become A Millionaire.
“S” points out that he has made sacrifices on this path to becoming wealthy, the path to his success also includes taking risks and encountering some failures along the way.

The common perception of “S” is that he must be taking advantage of everybody, we learn from his email that the opposite is taking place, in that he provides housing for those that have poor credit, contributes to his community, does charity work, and most importantly hires employees, giving them a job and a way to earn a living!

 

Unlike the typical inaccurate representation of the rich where everybody thinks they are crooks or like Scrooge, people like “S” should be applauded and appreciated for the great ways they are benefiting the world!

 

Thanks “S”, for providing your personal story and hopefully bringing a better understanding of the sacrifices and hurdles that you’ve had to overcome on your road to success.

 

Big Kudos to “S” for writing such a great response,

 

MR

18 comments »

Posted in Wealth

Tags:

Attacking Jamie Dimon – Are the Protesters Looking Foolish?

October 12th, 2011

I have to wonder if the Protester are starting to look a bit foolish and uneducated?

The following excerpt was taken from “The Associated Press”:

At one point, protesters stopped in front of a building where they said Dimon, JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO, has an apartment.

“Where’s our bailout?” they screamed. “How do we end this deficit? End the war, tax the rich!”

JPMorgan was among the banks that received federal bailout funds, and has since paid them back.

Dimon got supportive words Monday from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said, “He’s brought more business to this city than maybe any other banker in (the) modern day. … To go and picket him, I don’t know what that achieves. Jamie Dimon’s an honorable person working very hard. He pays his taxes.”

I have real problems with this kind of action, especially when people attack the heroes of the “Great Recession”.

This is why I have problems with the protesters attacking someone like Jamie Dimon:

  • JPMorgan Chase was one of the few banks that didn’t need a bailout, and they took it so other “real problem” banks wouldn’t be singled out.  I know this because I followed the financial news from the beginning since I had some money invested back then, and I couldn’t figure out why JP Morgan participated.
  • JPMorgan paid back the bailout money and with interest to boot.  So the government made a decent amount of profit off of a bank that didn’t need the bailout anyway.
  • Even the Mayor agrees that Jamie Dimon brought more business in and caused more people to be employed than maybe any other banker in the modern day!  When the mayor then says “ To go and picket him, I don’t know what that achieves. Jamie Dimon’s an honorable person working very hard. He pays his taxes.” is significant because here he is risking alienating a group of potential voters.  But if it doesn’t make sense (attacking Jamie Dimon), then how can you support the action morally and ethically?

So the protesters are barking up the wrong tree with Jamie Dimon in particular.  If the dislike him so much perhaps he’ll go become the CEO of some foreign bank where he would be appreciated.  Since Jamie is one of the brightest and most honest individuals in banking, attacking those that are honest, good, hard working people seems kind of dumb to me, not to mention dangerous!  You see these type of people are the ones that think outside of the box, do you really want to make an enemy of them?

I was going to end my entire discussion about this matter with yesterday’s post called: Sacrifices Made On the Road To Become A Millionaire, but after reading about the one company (and man) that did the right thing during the housing debacle, it seems like it needed commented on.  After all, we know that the majority of the mass media isn’t going to point out this error and injustice being performed.

Think about it from Mr. Dimon’s perspective.  He pays his taxes, give to charity, did the right things during the “Great Recession“, and literally outside of his home there is a crowd of protesters single him out?!?  That makes about as much sense as protesting the NY firefighters because the twin towers went down from the plane explosions and fires.  The fire fighters didn’t cause the fire, they were just trying to help (again like JP Morgan taking a bailout even though they didn’t need to).

I just don’t understand how people can protest a person without knowing the facts.  Especially when the individual represent the best American has to offer and help fix the problem?…

How would you like it if people came to your house and protested because your house is green in color, or you have a motorcycle, or some other criteria that singles you out and makes you a target?  Would you feel like you are being discriminated against?  I know I would, and I would be very bitter about it to boot!

Another analogy would be to attack Peyton Manning because he makes so much money, even though you want to Colts to do well because you are a fan.  I think Colt fans have seen what it’s like without Manning playing this season, and it’s not pretty.  What these particular Americans and the White House won’t realize is the effects from a superstar CEO like Jamie Dimon not playing or going to play for another team (country)…  It wouldn’t be pretty either…

To me, the wise advice “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” comes into play.  In a day when globalization threatens the core middle class in America, these protesters focus their destructive energy on the people busting their butts doing positive things in American?  Instead shouldn’t they be focusing their energies on the governmental policies that have enabled the mass exodus of jobs (NAFTA) and other stupid “near-sighted” governmental policies that are real problems that should be addressed?

If you have a great base of knowledge on Jamie Dimon, please chime in.  Perhaps I’m wrong about him, tell me your thoughts and if you think he should be a target or if you are like me (and the mayor of the New York), think Mr. Dimon was more of a hero during the financial crisis…

Bests,

MR

Update:  I found this interesting excerpt on Wikepedia about Jamie Dimon where even President Obama compliments Jamie Dimon:

Following the acquisition of Washington Mutual by JPMorganChase, President Barack Obama had this to say about Dimon’s handling of the real-estate crash, credit crisis, and the banking collapse affecting corporations nationwide, including major financial institutions like Bank Of America, Citibank, and Wachovia:

“ You know, keep in mind, though there are a lot of banks that are actually pretty well managed, JPMorgan being a good example, Jamie Dimon, the CEO there, I don’t think should be punished for doing a pretty good job managing an enormous portfolio

Now how is that for ironic!

14 comments »

Posted in Problems

Tags:

Sacrifices Made On the Road To Become A Millionaire

October 11th, 2011

I hate the way President Obama (and other democratic presidents of the past) single out millionaires, especially when he says that the rich need to “pay their fair share, just like everybody else“.  Now as a financial blogger, I know that the statistics shows that over 40% of the population don’t pay taxes as is.  So perhaps President Obama want the rich to pay all the taxes?

 

But let’s peal back the layers on President Obama’s millionaire onion, shall we?

  1. From the monumental book called “The Millionaire Next Door“, we all learned that 80% of those that are rich did not become so because of inheritance.  So that means that the majority of those that are rich come from the good old middle class group.  Both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are prime examples!  Both were from what I would consider the Upper Middle Class, but definitely still part of the middle class.
  2. Those that succeeded in becoming millionaires (the road is full of those that have tried and failed), still sacrificed both time and experiences to get where they are today.  The millionaires that I know of put in the typical 70 to 80 hours a week working on their business, for years and years!  Forgoing all the fun stuff that the rest of us middle class folks enjoy.  And now that they are older and even have less opportunities to enjoy life like only the young can do, we are going to suck their hard earned, long hour worked, money from them?  Like a parasite or a leech?  It just doesn’t seem very fair does it.
  3. These same millionaires enable the middle class folk like you and I to earn a living and raise our families.  We (the middle class) do so while going on nice vacations and enjoying life in ways that the majority of the rest of the world can only dream of.  The millionaires are the sharp end of the stick and without them, we are just beating again the wall going nowhere instead of breaking through it.
  4. They buy our city fireworks, give money to charity, help with special project (like stadiums), and benefit their communities in other ways, and the country in general.  The millionaires are movers and shakers, they are catalyst that make the world a much better place.
  5. Being a millionaire, or blazing the trail to be a future millionaire isn’t a thing that should be frowned upon!  We should all be encouraged to become millionaires.
  6. Millionaires create corporations which in turn pay taxes.  So already the business pays taxes, then the businesses pay out the wages to it’s millionaire owners/creators  who also pay taxes on the money that has already been taxes at the corporate level (this is called double taxation).

In conclusion, I think it’s wrong to attack the doers of society!  Those that stuck their necks out, took the risk and were luck enough to succeed.  Such millionaires hired the middle classes along the way, dragging the middle class into a more prosperous state while growing their business (many of which pay taxes in addition to the millionaire).

The long hours that millionaires work means that they miss out on a lot of family activities.  This means that they miss soccer games and other activities that their kids may do because of the hours they put into their business.  This may be the ultimate sacrifice made by entrepreneurs trying to become rich…

In conclusion, I think politicians and naive protesters tend to just look only at the checkbook balance of millionaires and they don’t take into consideration the sacrifices and hard work that those millionaires had to pay to get rich.

What is your opinion?

MR

 

P.S.  If you are wealth please email me your story.  Not only would I love to read about your experiences, I would also like to know about the positive ways you impact your community and benefit society as a whole.  If your story is noteworthy, I’ll post it on my site.  Of course, I’ll keep it anonymous…

33 comments »

Posted in Millionaire

Tags:

Continuous Growth Lesson Learned From My Son’s Soccer Tournament

October 10th, 2011

This year my son’s soccer team made it to the season soccer tournaments again.  It was a tough year for his team, and they ended the season right in the middle, with an equal number of wins and losses.  In the tournament, his team as the lowest seed, and that meant that they had to play the 1st seed (the best) team.  Now normally, you would think that such a low seeded team wouldn’t have a chance, especially since they are playing the top team first, but surprisingly they do.

The reasons we are optimistic is because they won their last three out of four games, really improving at the end of this season.  So while my son’s team is still the underdogs, they are very strong underdogs (both figuratively and physically in strength).  Okay, the game is starting…

Results of the First Game

It was like a dream come true, the score was 1 – 0, with my son’s team losing.  Then with less than thirty seconds, my son taps the ball in when there was a scramble for the ball in the opponent’s goal.  All his teammates were screaming and high-fiving him!  It was one of those moments in life that he will never forget (or at least I won’t).

Results of the final game for the Championship

In a grueling match, the final game for the championship was lost, barely. The final score was 1 – 0, this just shows how evenly each of the top four teams really were.  In the final two minutes, through a combination of skill (or luck), one of the best players on the other team hooked a high kick into the upper left corner of the goal post.  It was a beautiful kick and perfectly executed.  We were all sad, but that’s the way games go, sometimes miracle kicks like that land and win the game.  Personally, I was happy for the other team because they gave it their all and did a great job.  Yeah, I wish my son’s team won, but his team seemed happy being finalists (besides, they have already won a championship in the past).

Why this was Tournament was Special

The game was special because the previous superstars that were on my son’s team quit soccer or to a different organization.  Since the team depended on those two key players, we only won one game last season, and that was the very last game to boot.  It was disheartening after winning the championship the three seasons when the superstars were on the team.

So that fact that all the players have improved with the absense of any superstars on the team is a testament to how players all gain when the goal isn’t to pass the ball to one or two key players and then depending on them to do all of the scoring.  I have a feeling next year will be even more impressive than this year.

I think life is like this too.  If you have superstars dictating the show, you remain untested because you learn to depend on those particular superstars in life.  While this isn’t necessarily a horrible thing, it’s a bit bitter because you remain untested, not knowing how high you can fly.

What do you think?  Would you rather have a team with a few superstars and depend on them for everything, or would you rather keep continuously growing and improving your own game in life?

Personally, I want to keep reaching…

MR

 

16 comments »

Posted in Kids

Tags:

Money Reasons Weekly Review 20111009

October 9th, 2011

Weekly Summary

I’ve been learning more about web development and coding in particular.  Reading about coding is always slow going because reading it and writing it are definitely two different things.

I was able to get some me time in this week (sort of).  I overlapped the “me” time with blogging at a local coffee house (see Blogging At The Local Arabica Coffee House).  Unlike the original experience, the words just poured from my head into the blog.  Initially it was going to be the post I’m writing now, but it got too lengthy for the intro that I planned it to be, so I have it scheduled for tomorrow.

Surprisingly, I’m starting to shift gears and get more into the technology side of blogging.  I was going to wait until next year to change my site, but I find that I’m starting to think about doing it next month instead if not sooner.  We’ll see if I can resist the temptation for the rest of this month!

On to my list of PF Blogger Articles for the Week:

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff: Balancing My Checkbook – Too Loaded to Care? – While I don’t have a booming online business, I can relate to how once you have enough money for a buffer in your checkbook, checking it isn’t as imperative as it once was.  Congratulations Crystal!

101 Centavos: A Brief Look At Debtor’s Prison – Many years back, debtor’s prison were an acceptable way of dealing with deadbeat borrowers.

20s Finances: Steve Jobs Died: What Was Important To Him – Steve Jobs’ Passing causes many of us to reflect on what is most important. Do you live to work or work to live?

Money Reasons: Why I Got An American Express Blue Cash Card – American Express Blue Cash Rewards Card is on of the best credit cards out there, and I’m now making this my primary credit card. Here is why. (this is my favorite blogger, lol)

Everyday Tips & Thoughts: Tips For Maintaining A Good Credit Score – Maintaining a good credit score is not difficult. All you have to do is follow some basic tenets of personal finance.

Growing Money Smart: What is Personal Finance? – This is my definition and description of personal finance

Financial Samurai:  Confessions Of A Protester – This actually relieves me in knowing that not everybody believes in some of the stupid causes that they protest about.  I mean, come on “A Job is a Right, Capitalism doesn’t work”?  Of course it work, that’s why we are at the top of the heap and a superpower.  Geez…  It does make me a bit disappointed that the protesters in Sam’s article don’t have better things to do with their life though…

Okay, that’s enough!  On to the rest of the post:

Carnivals

Yakezie Carnival – October 9th, 2011 Edition

Til Next Time

Enjoy the incredible weather (it’s 80 degree in mid-October, how cool is that?  Apparently not very…)

MR

 

 

10 comments »

Posted in Weekly Review

pfblogs.org logo

Disclaimer: This site is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and the content herein should not be mistaken for professional financial advice. It is highly recommended that you seek advice from a professional for serious financial matters. This site and its author may be compensated for expressing personal opinions regarding featured products and services.