Author: Manny Kagan

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 38^th 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.

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.

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 4^th, 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 50^th 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.

Make It A Happy New Year

I got into the mortgage business in September of 1983. Prior to this, my work experience was in engineering and management, and I had no idea what it takes to sell a product or services. It is probably a perpetual question – how does one learn to sell? Is it a gift or a skill? Since prior to the mortgage business I had ten other occupations, so I decided that I could learn selling as well. My learning tools were How-to books and motivational tapes from the Nightingale-Conant audio programs. One of the teachers from those programs was Dr. Denis Waitley. He tells a story: he was travelling on a plane during the oil crisis of 1979. Sitting next to him was an older man, who, it seemed, had an unconventional point of view on many subjects. When they parted, instead of the traditional “Have a nice day!” the man said to Denis, “Make it a great day!” If you are reading this story on Friday, December 29th, there are still a few days left to prepare your New Year’s resolutions (did you check your list from last year?).

My overall theme of what I want to happen and to accomplish in the year 2018 can be summarized by paraphrasing the man on the plane.

To make it a happy and great year!

But how can I do that? We live in a world where so much depends on outside forces. The first step is to divide the task at hand into groups or categories. Years ago, I learned about the formula FORD from one of my business coaches. It stands for Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams. The next step is to make a list of items in each of the categories. And then – list them in priorities. Remember – the emphasis has to be on the tasks which will make you happy. Through the years of sales training, I was taught to set a yearly monetary goal, divide it into months, weeks and calculate how many transactions (in my case, loans) I have to close to achieve my goal. To reach these goals, I had to calculate how many calls I had to make for this to happen. This strategy can definitely work. But today I ask myself a different question. What result of my activity will make me and other people HAPPY? Instead of focusing on the amount of money I’d like to earn, my Occupational goal is to make thirty clients happy by them no longer having mortgage payments as a result of refinancing their existing loan into a reverse mortgage.

How To Bring Light Into Our Lives

Last week I finished my story with a quote from the Prophet Isaiah. Today I want to start with another one of his quotes.
“I the Lord have called unto you in righteousness, and have taken hold of your hand, and submitted you as people’s covenant, as a light into the nations.” (Isaiah 42:6)

In his 2017 UN speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted Isaiah stating that the State of Israel is “a light unto the nations, bringing salvation to the end of the earth.” But why should we care or believe the predictions of a prophet who lived in the years 740-681 BCE? Or pay attention to the words of the Israeli Prime Minister, who cannot seem to figure out how to bring the light onto the relationship between Israel and their Palestinian neighbors? And what does it have to do with our lives?

To try to answer those questions, I will go to the beginning. In the Torah, the light was the first act of the creation of our World. And God said, “Let there be light” and there was light. God saw that light was good, and he separated the light from darkness. God called the light “day” and the darkness he called “night.” (Genesis 1:3-5)

For us humans, perhaps it is difficult to fathom how just by saying something it can come to fruition. Since we are God’s creatures, can we do the same? I found an answer in a small book that I always carry with me called, “The Law of Success” by Paramahansa Yogananda.
“Mind is the creator of everything. You should therefore guide it to create only good. If you cling to a certain thought with dynamic will power, it finally assumes a tangible outward form.” Since “light was good”, by focusing on having it in our lives, our life is going to be good.

However light manifests in different forms. Which one should we focus on? For example, photography means, “drawing with the light”. Thus, after finding the correct combination between the light and the darkness, all that is left to the photographer is to press the shutter button. I’ve had to practice a lot to develop a sensitivity, vision, timing, and to be in the right place and time for my final images to be good. I believe that the same principle applies to any of our lives’ endeavors. There is another element to make our vision successful. After we find and capture the light, we have to share it with others. Perhaps this is why I am writing these stories and bringing you my images.