13 Ways to Stop Stealing From Yourself

Are you a thief? If you are in debt and have no savings or retirement you are a thief and are stealing from yourself.  According to a new report by the Consumer Federation of America and the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, 38% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  One out of every 7 Americans has 10 credit cards.  According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, more Americans owe money on student loans than on credit cards. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) estimates that 30 million Americans have debt with collection agencies. 43% of Americans spend more than they earn.   According to a new University of Michigan report 1 out of 5 families owes more on credit cards, medical bills, student loans and other unsecured debt than they have in savings.

Many Americans have no emergency fund and little or no retirement savings. According to EBRI's 2012 Retirement Confidence Survey 60% of employees state that the value of their savings and investments is less than $25,000.  Due to the recession and its after-effects many Americans were unemployed for long periods of time and exhausted their savings and retirement accounts and racked up mounds of debt.

Each time you swipe your credit card interest is accruing on the credit card balance.  If you don’t pay the balance off at the end of the month your credit card balance will continue to grow.  Paying for an item with a credit card on average costs 110% more than the original cost of the item.  Owing credit card debt makes the credit card companies rich and makes you poor.

Many Americans are so focused on paying down debt they forget about saving money.  No matter how much debt you owe you should also contribute to a savings account. Invest in yourself by contributing to a savings account.  You should have enough in an emergency savings account that covers your total monthly expenses and bills for 9-12 months.  You should put yourself first and follow the “Pay Yourself First” principle by putting money aside towards a savings account even if it is $1 a week then pay everyone else.

If you are living paycheck to paycheck find a way to reduce your spending such as bring your lunch to work, skip the Starbucks and bring your own coffee from home, shop at discount grocery stores and discount stores such as Aldi’s, Save-a-Lot, Wal-Mart, Target, Bottom Dollar Food, Grocery Outlet and buy store brands, use coupons. You may prefer to buy meat, dairy products and fruits and vegetables at a local farmers market or a regular grocery store.

Buying items you cannot afford it simply stealing from yourself.  Buying a car that costs more than your annual salary, owning a home that is upside down, owing student loans with a balance of $50,000 or more is not practical and causes extreme financial hardship.  If you make sacrifices earlier in life and do research to find the best offer for a loan or credit card, contribute regularly to a savings account and educate yourself about interest rates, credit card and personal finance you will be in a better financial position.  You will have to make hard sacrifices to get yourself out of debt.  Here are 13 ways to stop stealing from your yourself.

1. Pay in full. Pay balance in full each month to avoid paying finance charges.
2. Pay bi-monthly. Pay half of the balance with 1^st paycheck of the month then pay the remaining balance with 2^nd paycheck of the month.
3. Pay weekly. Pay the minimum monthly payment the 1st week after you get the bill, and then each week pay as much as you can toward the monthly balance. Repeat this every month.
4. Pay extra. Pay as much as you can when you get the bill, and then pay more towards the bill when you get extra money.
5. Automate. Set up automatic payments from your checking account the day you receive your paycheck or the day after you receive your paycheck to pay down debt.
6. Use unexpected income. Use your income tax refund, economic stimulus check, bonus check or sell new or used items on eBay.
7. Negotiate. Negotiate for a lower interest rate, get fees waived or request a settlement to help reduce the balance owed to make it easier to pay down debt.
8. Create a budget.  Balance your checkbook and create a budget to identify what you owe, what you earn and what you spend to find areas where you can reduce spending. Pay no more than 35% of your total monthly income towards housing, pay no more than 15% towards transportation, pay no more than 10% towards debt excluding mortgage, pay 10% towards savings and pay no more than 25% towards remaining expenses to create a balanced budget.
9. Live Below Your Means.  Buy needs vs. wants; buy only the things you need, delay the things you want until you have the money to purchase the item.
10. Pay with cash. Use credit cards for emergencies only and purchase items with cash.
11. Purchases. Avoid making bad decisions such as buying rent-to-own furniture or buying a big screen television and other items that have no value.
12. Pay on time. Avoid paying late fees whenever possible. If you know you will pay a bill late contact the company to setup payment arrangements.
13. Keep balances low. Keep credit card balances at 20% or less of the credit limit.

By Harrine Freeman, Speaker, Financial Trainer

202-251-2503
One of Black Enterprises' TOP 12 FINANCIAL MINDS (2010)
Winner of the 2011 New York Book FestivalAuthor How to Get Out of Debt: Get an "A" Credit Rating for Free

http://www.hefreemanenterprises.com/

htpp://johntwills.com

Romney’s Bain

I am an uncompromising history fanatic and some call me an expert, but I prefer to say I am one who seeks the truth. While we live in an era when so much history is being made we should be excited for the time in which we live. Last week, for example, we witnessed the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the president’s signature legislation the health-care law the Good Ol’ Boys call Obamacare. This was the most profound piece of legislation since the “New Deal”.

So let's talk about Romney and his past. He started and built the venture capital and asset-management firm which was nothing more than a money-making machine. So what’s wrong with that? Well Bain Capital is a company that doesn’t and has never made anything; it invests. It spots trends, looks at promising companies tapping into those trends and then stakes its capital on improving a company, using Bain's sector and financial experts to, as they say, help company’s get over a capital shortage or help it expand.

The companies that Bain identified and invested in, and not in a small way, while Romney was at the helm, were Microsoft, Stream Global Services, ModusLink, and StatsChipPac. These companies are now among the biggest outsourcing companies in the world, with call centers, factories and facilities, mostly in Asia, but also across the globe, that support U.S. high-tech companies. The mission of these companies was to help big U.S. companies outsource and offshore. And let me add that this strategy was and is designed to support a low wage business model.

Even his own Republican cohorts like Newt Gingrich said: “The Bain model is to go in at a very low price, borrow an immense amount of money, pay Bain an immense amount of money and leave. I’ll let you decide if that’s really good capitalism. I think that’s exploitation.” Then slick Rick of Texas said: “There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business. I happen to think that that is indefensible.”

So if he can be eaten by his own, who by the way does not appear to think much of his thinking, raise the issue - then why can’t President Obama raise the issue? Frankly, the president should have done so during the debate on financial regulatory reform. I should say there’s nothing inherently wrong with private equity, which plays an important role in the economy. Let me add that there’s nothing wrong with wealth and those who risk their capital in private-equity ventures should be rewarded when those deals pay off.

Romney himself acknowledges that the free markets need rules and regulations in order to function and we know certain dealings are prohibited and should be criminal like insider trading. So it is reasonable to ask whether some highly leveraged buyout deals, of the kind that Bain and other private-equity firms often conduct, should fall into the same thumb-on-the-scale category as insider trading.

Suppose a company is failing and appears beyond rescue. Suppose a private-equity firm buys the company with borrowed money, burdens it with more debt, and then spends the next few years firing workers, selling assets, eliminating pension plans — all while collecting handsome “management fees.” If you can recall losses at the nation’s largest and supposedly best-run bank, JPMorgan Chase — at least $2 billion and perhaps much more.

This is what Rick Santorum said in March: “I heard Governor Romney here called me an economic lightweight because I wasn’t a Wall Street financier like he was. Do you really believe this country wants to elect a Wall Street financier as the president of the United States? Do you think that’s the kind of experience we need? Someone who’s going to take and look after, as he did, his friends on Wall Street and bail them out at the expense of Main Street America?”

If you read my thoughts and words you know I don’t think much of the GOP or their henchmen but I agree with Santorum in this instance where I have to ask the question is this the guy we want to be president. I will go further and say Romney’s personality traits remind me of the “Robber Barons” of old. I would suggest that this so-called “Job Creator” needs to go offshore where he and his buddy’s send jobs.

Would he do this to the American Treasury and the American people if he were to become president? I say, yes! And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

http://johntwills.com  

Black Wall Street

“The Rise and Fall”

I’m the author of the phenomenal novel “Just a Season” titled from the religious knowledge referring to a period of time characterized by a particular circumstance, suitable to an indefinite period of time associated with a divine phenomenon called life. During this passage through time I have come to realize that there are milestones, mountains, and valleys that we must encounter. This speaks loudly to the challenges of a proud people - African Americans.

“Black Wall Street” is the first in a series of articles intended to inspire, enlighten, empower, and share the history of a people at a time when the odds were against all odds. It was during a time called segregation, when Jim Crow ruled and separate but equal was the law of the land. Because of this de facto Apartheid like system African American were forced to live in communities dependent upon each other in order to survive and survive they did. Every town had such a place and during this series of articles I will visit those communities to sharing their rich histories.

In this, the first of the series, I will introduce you to the most infamous of them all - Tulsa Oklahoma’s “Black Wall Street”. The name was fittingly given to the most affluent all-black community in America. This community was the epitome of success proving that African Americans had a successful infrastructure known as the golden door of the Black community during the early 1900’s. Although, it was in an unusual location Black Wall Street was a prime example of the typical Black community in America that did business far beyond expectations.

Let me explain, the state of Oklahoma was set aside to be a Black and Indian state that included over 28 Black townships. Another point worth noting, nearly a third of the people who traveled in the terrifying "Trail of Tears" alongside the Indians from 1830 to 1842 were Black people. The citizens of Oklahoma chose a Black governor; there were PhD’s, Black attorneys, doctors and professionals from all walks of life contributing to the successful development of this community. One such luminous figure was Dr. Berry who also owned the bus system generating an average income of $500 a day in 1910. During this time physicians owned medical schools to empower and develop African Americans.

The area encompassed 36 square blocks, over 600 businesses with a population of 15,000 African Americans. There were pawn shops everywhere, brothels, jewelry stores, churches, restaurants and movie theaters. Their success was monumentally evident in that the entire state of Oklahoma had only two airports, yet six blacks owned their own planes. Just to show how wealthy many Black people were, there was a banker in a neighboring town who had a wife named California Taylor. Her father owned the largest cotton gin west of the Mississippi. When California shopped, she would take a cruise to Paris every three months to have her clothes made.

There was also a man named Mason in nearby Wagner County who had the largest potato farm in the west. When he harvested, he would fill 100 boxcars a day. Another Black man not far away was doing the same thing with a spinach farm. The typical family averaged five children or more, though the typical farm family would have 10 kids or more who made up the nucleus of the labor.

What was significant about Black Wall Street was they understood an important principle - they kept the money in the community. The dollars circulated 36 to 1000 times within the community, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the community. Something the African America community of today does not fully appreciate or practice because a dollar will leave the Black community today in 15 minutes. This community was so tight and wealthy because they traded dollars hand-to-hand because they were dependent upon one another as a result of the Jim Crow laws.

Another powerful image, and extremely significant, was education. The foundation of the community was to educate every child because they understood that education is the single most important ingredient necessary to neutralize those forces that breed poverty and despair. When students went to school they wore a suit and tie because of the morals and respect they were taught at a young age. In addition, nepotism contributed greatly to the success of this community as a way to help one another – a tactic that needs to be instilled in our culture today.

A postscript to Tulsa’s legacy is the world renowned R&B music group the GAP Band. The group of brothers Charlie, Ronnie & Robert Wilson chose the group’s name taken from the first letters of the main thoroughfare Greenwood Avenue that intersects with Archer and Pine Streets; from those letters you get G.A.P. Another legendary figure from Tulsa is their favorite son, basketball great and jazz musician the late Wayman Tisdale. These are just a few luminaries that Tulsa has produced, surely the most recognized today.

An unprecedented amount of global business was conducted from within the Black Wall Street community, which flourished from the early 1900 until 1921. Then the unthinkable happened and the community faced a valley or more accurately stated feel of a cliff. The Black Wall Street community suffered the largest massacre of non-military Americans in the history of this country. As you might well imagine, the lower-economic Europeans looked over and saw how prosperous the Black community had become and destroyed it. I don’t know the true reason, jealousy was mentioned, but racism was certainly at its core. Lead by the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in concert with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers.

The destruction began Tuesday evening, June 1, 1921, when "Black Wall Street," the most affluent all-black community in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of resentful whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering. A model community destroyed and a major Africa-American economic movement resoundingly defused. The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among them were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half-dozen private airplanes and even the bus system.

This historic event, you would think should be common knowledge – but not so. One would be hard-pressed to find any documentation concerning the incident, let alone an accurate accounting of it. Not in any reference or American history book documenting the worst incidents of violence ever visited upon people of African descent. This night of horror was unimaginable. Try if you will to imagine seeing 1,500 homes being burned and looted, while white families with their children standing around the borders of the community watching the massacre much in the same manner they would watch a lynching. It must have been beyond belief for the victims.

I wonder if you aware of this little known history fact, where the word "picnic" came from? It was typical to have a picnic on a Friday evening in Oklahoma. The word was short for "pick a nigger" to lynch. They would lynch a Black male and cut off body parts as souvenirs. This went on every weekend in many part of the country with thousands lynched in the first part of the last century. Unfortunately, that is where the word actually came from.

The riots weren't caused by anything Black or white. It was caused as a result of Black prosperity. A lot of white folks had come back from World War I and they were poor. When they looked over into the Black Wall Street community and saw that Black men who fought in the war came home as heroes also contributed to the destruction. It cost the Black community everything - justice and reconciliation are often incompatible goals because not a single dime of restitution was ever provided, to include no insurance claims have been awarded to a single victims.

As I began, there are milestones, mountains, and valleys which surely encompassed this community and its people. This is why it is so important to teach these lessons because those who neglect the lessons of the past are doomed to see it repeated. Life is not a race you run, it is a relay and it is your responsibility to pass the baton. Our youth, the next generation, must be prepared and know when they look at our communities today that they came from a people who built kingdoms.


Resource:
"A Black Holocaust in America."
Ron Wallace, Jay Jay Wilson