How Do You Want to Be Remembered - In 2 Words

In reading about the sudden passing of Tim Russert, who questioned the powerful and influential as moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” one thing in particular caught my eye.

Brian Williams called him “aggressively unfancy.”

Why do I love that?

It’s like the brand mantra, a company’s guiding statement, which Guy Kawasaki espouses. Only it can help you identify the kind of person you want to be.

I can imagine someone who is aggressively unfancy. Hal Riney, a multiple award winning ad man, seemed to often create aggressively unfancy (”folksy”) characters. Probably Ross Perot could be described the say way. And I’m guessing so too was Joan Kroc, philanthropic wife of McDonald’s founder.

Crafting Your Personal Mantra

To be honest I’m just making this up off the cuff, as a proposed experiment: An adverb plus an adjective seems like a format that will encompass your mantra. Two words may not be enough. But you get the idea:

• effortlessly delightful
• eternally caring
• purely good
• constantly living

Mine…something like: infectiously inspiring.

Do you have a mantra? What do you think and what is your process to find yours?

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Increase Your Return On Your Investments So You Can Work Less

You probably have a few goals on your life list to learn things. A new language? Guitar? Should one of your goals be to learn about investing?

A few years ago I got the religion that if I learned how to maximize return on the money in my savings accounts, I could retire earlier. Duh! I bought Suze Orman’s Nine Steps to Financial Freedom and took the pledge to empower myself to not only learn about and monitor my finances but shift my money as it made sense. Managing the money you’ve already saved should be just as important as doing the work at your job. Maybe more so.

Who This Post is For: All my friends and anyone else whose IRA or savings are underperforming in CDs, savings accounts, or mutual funds that are providing low returns. And it’s for all the people on SuperViva who want to improve their financial situations.

(Note that I am not a financial expert. I’m sharing my own thoughts and knowledge to give you a nudge.)

TAKE ACTION NOW:

FIRST: DO NOT BELIEVE THAT BECAUSE YOU’RE YOUNG IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOUR IRA IS GETTING A LOW RETURN! OK now that I got that out of my system.

Is Most of Your Money In One Institution?

If so then don’t hesitate to contact a representative to ask their advice on stable funds that give the best return. At times with all the choices it seems impossible to figure this out yourself. They’ll often know right off the bat!

Play With Online Financial Tools to Help You Optimize

Try Etrade’s Intelligent Cash Optimizer
It’s time I took a new look at Etrade. They have lots of tools to help you, beyond their Intelligent Cash Optimizer which helps you “maximize your uninvested cash by instantly calculating its earning potential.”

MSN MoneyCentral has a mutual fund quiz that might be a good place to start your financial education.

ING’s ShareBuilder offers a portfolio builder tool to help you figure out how to allocate your money.

Compare Top Rated Mutual Funds and Savings Accounts

Question your savings account or CD!

For example ING Direct has great rates. But I recently discovered a series of funds at Fidelity Investments that ensure you won’t get hit with the AMT tax. The tax equivalent yield on the Fidelity California AMT Tax-Free Money Market Fund
(FSPXX) is 4.9%. This fund has a stable $1 price. However it has a $25,000 minimum.

Fidelity Cash Reserves, which is a $1 fund you can add or withdraw from at any time, currently has a 4.28% 7-day yield, which is taxable.

Don’t let all this talk about these brokerage-oriented companies stop you from exploring good savings deals at traditional banks. Citibank has the “Ultimate Money Account” which has no minimum balance and is FDIC insured - currently returning 4.25%. Check their site for the fine print.

If you’re saving $25K, over a year’s time you’ll save a few more bucks by watching which fund is getting the higher return and moving it. There’s often no penalty for moving your money, but check with your bank.

Funds I’ve Done Well With*

While Mutual Funds fluctuate with the markets, if you’re saving a chunk of money for the long term it’s worth taking an hour to find funds that can pay off over time. Every bit counts.

US Eastern European (EUROX), which has had a 10 year 22.28% return.

Fidelity Canada Fund - $2500 minimum to invest.

Fidelity Capital Appreciation Fund (FDCAX) - also $2500 minimum

From this link you can search for Morningstar Highly Rated Funds based on your investment goals.

You can also browse funds, and sort the columns based on number of stars. Click the fund name to see the return for different periods.

Even if financial things give you hives, it’s worth reading the blurb about the mutual fund’s objectives. Why I’ve even been known to read about the fund manager!

Move Your Money When It Makes Sense

Many financial institutions also let you transfer money between other institutions with no fee.

For example on ING Direct you can set up accounts for online transfer, which is effortless once it’s set up. It’s very likely the bank you primarily bank with also lets you do this.

Also, did you know you can open a Brokerage IRA account? You can trade stocks but will only end up paying tax when you cash out your IRA. If you hone your stock picking stills, playing the stock market as part of an IRA from which you don’t plan to cash out for many years may be less risky than using funds from your savings.

Now Read More About Investing

• If you’re a woman and feel uncomfortable managing your money, check out this Marketwatch article “Four reasons women aren’t investing like they should and 4 tips to fix it.”
• The Motley Fool’s Savings Center offers informative articles.
• Mint’s Three Principles of Personal Finance, a great tutorial on ways to maximize your money.
• And finally, the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commissions has a website that can orient you impartially to the concept of mutual funds and investing.
• Peruse Suze Orman’s smart accessible articles about finance and investing.
• If you plan to play the stock market, Jim Cramer’s view is that you should only hold a few individual stocks. You should spend an hour per week researching each company for which you have stock. If you can’t do that, you have too many stocks.
• money management“>Money management books on Amazon

More links to investment advice sites.

*Well if they can say “past performance is no guarantee of future results” then I can too! Take any advice you read here at your own risk.

Got financial tips? Please share them!

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Do Vision Board Collages Really Work?

My friends reluctantly accepted my invitation to a party where we were to make collages, by cutting up magazines, of what we wanted this year.

Over and over I heard: “What should I put on my collage? I can’t think of anything.”

Once we sat down with plates of food and relaxing beverages, their fears drifted away. Here’s a photo of one collage, made by a stay at home mother with 2 kids.

And now just a week later she’s thinking of business ideas and planning 2 trips. “This is going to be my year of travel!” she’s gleefully exclaimed several times. Maybe it was all the glue.

I’m Too Cool to Collage

OK so maybe you’re not into goal setting. Maybe you’re not into parties. Maybe the idea of making a collage seems girlish or childish. It is. Who cares. Make one even if you don’t consider yourself girlish or childish. What have you got to lose? Here’s an article about throwing a collaging party. Please get in touch once stuff you’d put on your collage starts happening. (It will!!!!!)

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Free Online Classes from MIT for Artists, Writers, Teachers Etc

Did you know that MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) offers classes beyond the rocket scientist-computer-multimedia variety but also for artists, elementary school educators, colorists, aspiring urban planners, wheelchair designers, business people, rock climbers, and even chefs?

Better yet, many of these are free to download for your learning pleasure (the perfect thing to do if you are at home sick in bed). After you add the goal to take MIT classes that interest you to your life list, hop on over to the MIT OpenCourseware site to peruse the index.

I plan to study urban planning, queuing theory, organizing for innovation, kitchen chemistry, entrepreneurship, and who knows what else.

And did you expect MIT to have a SuperViva-esque class called Composing Your Life: Exploration of Self through Visual Arts and Writing?

The class includes topics such as:

* Personal and Family History
* How We Portray Ourselves to the World
* Concepts of Race and Gender
* How Others See Us
* Analysis of the World Around Us
* How History Impacts Who We Are
* The Values by which We Lead Our Lives
* How We would Like to Lead Our Lives in the Future

Tell everyone you know about this amazing resource that enriches people worldwide. Thanks MIT!

What do you plan to learn?

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