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Money Solutions
Month: January 2018
Why Celebrate A 71st Birthday
Why Celebrate A 71st Birthday
Celebrating a birthday is a very old tradition; it is even mentioned in the Torah. “And it was on the third day, Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants” (Genesis 40:20). But the age long question remains — why celebrate birthdays?
When I reached the age of seventy a year ago, I decided that this is going to be my new starting point for the next count of my life experiences. On January 13th I turned seventy-one, which was the first year to measure what I’ve accomplished and how many people benefited from my presence in this world. In my life I follow a saying by Hillel the Elder, who two thousand years ago famously proclaimed, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, who am I? And if not now, when?” I derive great pleasure in everything I do as a devoted husband, loving father, a great friend, a caring mortgage broker, and the provider of employment for our company’s hard working associates and employees.
In 2017, I personally helped 84 clients benefit from their mortgages. 4,443 readers received my weekly “Encounters” and “Money Solutions” and over 700 acquired my photo-story book “42 Encounters in San Francisco”. Judging by the reviews on Amazon, people enjoyed reading the book and praised my images. During the last year, I finished working on the sequel photo-book, “42 Encounters with Couples in San Francisco”, which will be available before the end of this year. On September 4th we adopted a labradoodle puppy who became the hero of my next book, “42 Encounters with Dog Lovers”, which is going to be available in March. I am currently working on a new book, “Retirement Solutions for Smart People. 5 Easy Ways to Enjoy Your Golden Age”. After helping a number of clients with their reverse mortgages, I realized that a lot of people are not ready to retire. I hope my book will help them in this process. To continue working on this book and to celebrate my birthday, we came to The Sea Ranch for a week. Thus this short vacation, which we enjoyed very much, will also benefit others. And since our dog Max enjoyed this place as well, we will probably come back here in a few months, so I can continue writing the next chapters of the book.
P.S. Since this story is about making myself and other people happy, I am sharing with you four images of happy people I encountered in The Sea Ranch.
Do Not Keep Me As A Secret!
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Cheers,
Money Solutions
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Why To Have Cash?
Why To Have Cash?
You may have heard the expression “Cash is King”. I thought this was an old saying from the pen of Benjamin Franklin or perhaps William Shakespeare. Turns out, according to Wikipedia, “The origin of ”cash is king” is not clear. It was used in 1988, after the global stock market crash in 1987.” The phrase was also widely used during the global financial crisis in the Fall of 2008. Companies that had cash, i.e. money that was not invested in any type of asset that lost its value, could survive and avoid foreclosure. This is also relevant to households, in terms of avoiding foreclosures. Actually, what prompted me to write about the subject, was an article which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on December 27, 2017 – “Cash Losing Cachet – More Places Don’t Take It” by Andy Newman. The story starts with an event connected with the opening of a new lunch spot called Dig Inn on Broadway and 38th Street in Midtown Manhattan, which only accepts credit cards or debit cards – no cash. This can be understandable for various reasons – convenience, speed, smaller wallets, easier to reconcile (i.e. to check the bill at the end of the month), or to see the charge right away on your mobile phone, purchases online, and the list can go on and on. Now let’s take a look at the other side of credit card usage. The increase of debts, mistakes in not paying bills on time, lowering credit scores, which automatically increases your interest rate on all your credit cards. According to the site creditcards.com, in a report published on December 27, 2017, “Consumers increasingly are relying on credit cards to make payments instead of cash or debit.” According to new research from the Federal Reserve, credit card usage climbed to 10.2 percent in 2016. In addition to this, “The national average APR climbed to 16.24 percent”, and “the number of cards with maximum APR above 25 percent has jumped”.
The only reason I am writing about such an important subject at the beginning of the year is to share with you a bitter but good medicine.
In my line of work, before I can figure out how to help my clients buy a new property, or lower their monthly payments, or to get cash out for remodeling or to pay college tuition, I need to run a credit report. And believe me, I’ve seen it all. Let’s say in January or February you will need a new mortgage for whatever reason. Meanwhile, in November-December you took vacation to the foreign lands or bought a lot of holiday presents, or appliances (since everything on sale). But now your credit scores are down and your minimum monthly credit card bills can prevent you from qualifying. Have you ever asked yourself how long it will take to pay off existing debts without incurring new ones? In our business and household, my wife is in charge of our money. We have survived many storms thanks to her frugality and care. She ensures that we always have cash in the bank. Years ago, I had a business coach who taught me how to save money. It always starts with knowing your monthly cash flow, how much cash we need to survive for the next six months. My next writing project is a book titled “Retirement Solution for Smart People”, where I will address how to save in more details.
P.S. I personally mostly use credit cards sparingly, to be sure that the balance can be paid off at the end of the month. I do carry some cash to pay for services like haircuts or shoe repair. But I always carry dollars to support some of people who only take cash, whom I encounter on the streets of San Francisco, some of whom you can see in these photos.
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Do Not Keep Me As A Secret!
Smile And Please SHARE It With A Friend!
Cheers,
Money Solutions
Cheers,
It’s All About Birds
It’s All About Birds
Do you care to know how many types of birds there are in San Francisco? I did not care to know either, until I saw an article in the National Geographic with a photo of an eagle on the cover and a story by Jonathan Franzen titled, “Why Birds Matter”.
So I did some research, and learned on sfbaywildlife.com that there are 48 species of birds. In my curiosity, I checked how many birds I would recognize and whether I knew what type of bird they were. The list did not include the wild parrots in San Francisco, which became popular after the 2007 documentary. Now there are about 300 parrots separated into several flocks living in different parks throughout the city. When I made an inquiry of how many pigeons are there in San Francisco, I learned that there is no definite answer. Nevertheless, there was a very interesting thread on the subject on Yelp. One of the comments stated that: “The pigeon population to be 5 million…until the homeless people started eating them.” Actually these amounts are probably grossly overestimated. Turns out that every year the Golden Gate Audubon Society conducts a bird count. This year it took place in San Francisco on Wednesday, December 27, 2017 (there was another one in Oakland on December 17, 2017). We have to wait for the results, but we have information from the 2015 count. There were 128 observers who counted 184 species and 73,095 individual birds.
I was curious to find out if we have the American Symbol, bald eagles, in San Francisco. On April 5, 2017 U.S. News reported: “Endangered bald eagles are making a comeback in the San Francisco Bay Area… Fifty years ago, the bird seemed destined to become a memory, now nineteen nests have been tallied in eight Bay Area counties.” This can be exciting news for the seven million people living in the San Francisco Bay Area. But what if someone lives in Unalaska City in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska? In the National Geographic story I learned that “hundreds of bald eagles, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, or Dutch pigeons, come to scavenge and nest in the area, which is home to about 4,400 human residents. Birds accost people who wander too close during nesting season, sending victims to the medical clinic for scalp stiches.” If you read the article “Why Birds Matter”, you will find an incredible trivia about many birds out of the world’s 10,000 or so species that have evolved into a spectacular diversity of forms. Turns out that birds have been around 150 million years longer than humans and “One reason that wild birds matter – ought to matter — is that they are our last, best connection to a natural world that is otherwise receding.”
P.S. You do not have to travel far to see birds, just stop and notice them, as I did many times. For this story I’ve chosen four encounters with birds, which I thought might tell a story. Like two ducks swimming towards the sunset in Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park, a Seagull who caught his share during crab season, and birdwatchers in Downtown, San Francisco trying to capture an image of a hawk, whom I photographed not far from West Portal.
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Do Not Keep Me As A Secret!
Smile And Please SHARE It With A Friend!
Cheers,
Money Solutions
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How To Start The New Year
How To Start The New Year
Every start of a New Year brings anticipation of good things to come. It might be a misleading feeling, since it’s just another day on the calendar. Nevertheless, according to the Russian proverb, “Horosheye nachalo pol dela otkochalo”, which means, “A good start finishes half of the business.
For me one of these “businesses” is to print my latest book, “42 Encounters with Dog Lovers”. A few months ago, I introduced my readers to the new member of our family, Max our labradoodle puppy. We adopted him on September 4th, and on this date I started to journal about our daily experiences and the lessons I’ve learned from different how-to books about dog training. I already had most of the photos of people with dogs, which were images leftover from my first book “42 Encounters in San Francisco”, which has almost sold out of its first printing. To write about San Francisco was not easy, but what can I say about dogs? Since our last dog Angus, a welsh corgi, died almost fourteen years ago, we often discussed the idea of getting a new puppy. But how could we? Both of us work full time, and we like to travel. We are both seventy years young, and our energy is not the same as when we were sixty-nine. With taking all of this into account, on the date of our 50th wedding anniversary I informed my wife Elfa that I gave a deposit to a local breeder, and our puppy would be ready for adoption at the beginning of September, right after our return from a celebratory trip to Norway.
On Labor Day, we traveled to Monterey, and the idea to record the next forty-two days of our life with Max came to me at the spur of the moment, while we waited in the hotel to pick up Max. This idea to write a book about dog lovers, which I was thinking about for a while, started to take shape.
After 7 weeks, I completed my writing. By Christmas, the editing part was completed as well, and the images were sent to the graphic artist, and he will put everything together to get the book ready for printing. And then I will have a whole year to make 2500 (my first printing order) dog lovers happy. There are millions of people who own dogs and more millions who want to become dogs’ best friends. I am sure that reading “42 Encounters with Dog Lovers” will help them to accomplish that.
P.S. “42 Encounters with Dog Lovers” has only a few of Max’s images as a bonus; the rest are my encounters with people and dogs, many of which will bring a smile to your face and the feeling of love for your four-legged companion. The four images of Max you see here did not make it into the book.
P.P.S. You can start your “42 Encounters” collection by ordering “42 Encounters in San Francisco” now while the books are still available.
Enjoy and Share.
Do Not Keep Me As A Secret!
Smile And Please SHARE It With A Friend!
Cheers,
Money Solutions
Cheers,