Making Friends with Your Financial Fears Part One

As we plan for retirement, we have many decisions to make and sometimes fear of becoming poor (again) makes us afraid to make tough decisions. The following article can help, Part one for today and part two will be published tomorrow. The article was written byh a wealth coach and makes sense to me, I hope it helps you as well

Making Friends with Your Financial Fears  By Mark Ford, wealth coach, The Palm Beach Letter Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The fear of losing something you value is completely natural. And it is also healthy as long as the fear is not too great. But when fear is great – and I sensed that for this person it was – it can be destructive. Unbridled fear produces two negative responses: immobility and rashness.

When you fear too much, you won't take the positive actions you suspect you should. When opportunities are presented, you'll shun them for fear of the potential dangers and downsides.

Tim Mittelstaedt, a research analyst at The Palm Beach Letter, sent me the following note after he read the first draft of this essay:

I've wanted to buy rental real estate since high school more than 13 years ago, but fear has prevented me from doing it all of these years. And at times I've wanted to start a business, too, but fear got in the way. Do you have ideas on how I can overcome my fears? 

Tim isn't alone. Years ago, when gold was trading at around $500 per ounce, fear was the reason why so many of my friends and colleagues were afraid to invest in gold, despite my urging them to do so. It is the reason that many of my Palm Beach Letter readers are ignoring my advice to buy real estate now.

It's important to remember that the major media are almost always wrong about investing. When prices skyrocket, they write stories about people making money. When prices drop, they write stories about people losing money. Most readers have a hard time disbelieving the major media. They wonder, "How could all of these pundits on TV be wrong?" So they stay on the sidelines, waiting for positive confirmation from their favorite newspaper or television channel. But that never comes until it is too late.

Some investors who don't trust the major media are fearful, too. They are persuaded by what they read in the alternative press about government debt and worldwide economic collapse. So they put all their money into gold or bury it in their backyards. And when gold soars, they are afraid to cash in and invest in the stock market. The end result is just as bad for them as for those who foolishly trust the mainstream media.

I see how fear impoverishes people in the world of business all the time. Smart, hard-working people who want desperately to quit the nine-to-five routine and start their own businesses fail to do so because they can't get the threat of failure out of their minds. I spent 10 years writing books and essays on entrepreneurship and taught hundreds of thousands of people the secrets to business success. But only one in 10 was actually successful. When I met them at conferences and got to know them, the reason was obvious: They were simply scared.

If you fear losing money too greatly, you will never implement the knowledge you gain. You may invest money in investment education – thousands and thousands of dollars over time – but you won't put the ideas you learn into action. Instead, you will do only the few things you are comfortable with. As a result, you will make no progress toward your wealth-building goals.

So that's what I want to talk about today: How to make friends with your fear of losing money.

This is how I did it.

I was 26 years old. I was halfway through a two-year Peace Corps stint as a teacher of English at the University of Chad. (Chad is in Africa.) My new wife and I were living in a three-room, plaster-coated mud house. We had no kitchen, and the bathroom was a latrine.

But we had a porch that overlooked a garden of Eden frequented by a family of monkeys and a dog that barked at them insanely when they hung over the roof, begging for food. We also had neighbors who became lifelong friends. On weekends, we had parties at which African friends and Peace Corps volunteers would drink copious amounts of Gala beer and dance madly until the sun rose

Who is that guy?

If you've ever worked for a boss who reacts before getting the facts and thinking things through, you will love this!

Arcelor-Mittal Steel, feeling it was time for a shakeup, hired a new CEO. The new boss was determined to rid the company of all slackers.

On a tour of the facilities, the CEO noticed a guy leaning against a wall. The room was full of workers and he wanted to let them know that he meant business. He asked the guy, "How much money do you make a week?"

A little surprised, the young man looked at him and said, "I make $400 a week. Why?"

The CEO said, "Wait right here." He walked back to his office, came back in two minutes, and handed the guy $1,600 in cash and said,  "Here's four weeks' pay. Now GET OUT and don't come back."

Feeling pretty good about himself the CEO looked around the room and asked, "Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-ball did here?"

From across the room a voice said, "Pizza delivery guy from Domino's.

Remembrance Day or Veterans Day Thank you to our troops

I have nephews in the services and so today is always a special day. A day for paying service to the men and women who gave their lives to defend our way of life, a day to say thank you to the families who lost members who fought for our right to be free.

The following is written by Ann MacMillan, CBC News to give us a brief history of the day and why it is important to all of us.

A time to remind our youth that freedom is a hard fought victory and that democracy is fragile. Men and women died to protect our way of life, to honour them we need to continue to preserve and protect our liberties from those that would take away our fundamental rights. The best way to do this is to get involved in the political process, to get out and vote in the election and to stay informed about what your government does between the time you elect them and the time they come back asking for your support again.

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, Canadians are asked to pause in memory of the thousands of men and women who sacrificed their lives in military service.

Why the poppy?

The association between the poppy and war dates back to the Napoleonic wars, when a writer saw a field of poppies growing over the graves of fallen soldiers.

The poem was a great inspiration in adopting the poppy as the Flower of Remembrance in Canada, France, the U.S, Britain and Commonwealth countries.

The first poppies were distributed in Canada in 1921.

Today the volunteer donations from the distribution of millions of poppies is an important source of revenue for the Royal Canadian Legion that goes toward helping ex-servicemen and women buy food, and obtain shelter and medical attention.

At public gatherings in Ottawa and around the country, Canadians pay tribute with two minutes of silence to the country's fallen soldiers from the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Afghanistan conflict and peacekeeping missions.

Also known as Veterans Day in the U.S., Remembrance Day was first held throughout the Commonwealth in 1919. It marks the armistice to end the First World War, which came into effect at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, a year earlier.

It isn't a national holiday across Canada, but employees in federally regulated employees do get the day off. Several provinces and territories — including Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, and Yukon — do observe a statutory holiday.

Canada's military and the First World War

Two minutes before the armistice went into effect, at 10:58 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, Pte. George Lawrence Price was felled by a bullet. Price would become the final Commonwealth soldier — and the last of more than 66,000 Canadians — to be killed in the First World War

They died fighting at Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, Passchendaele and Ypres — battles remembered for atrocious conditions and Canadian valour. In Ypres, Canadian soldiers were exposed to German gas attacks, yet continued to fight, showing amazing tenacity and courage in the face of danger.

In many ways, the identity of the young country was forged on those bloody battlefields.

About 650,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders (the province then still a colony of Britain) had served during the war, beginning in 1914. The last Canadian veteran of the conflict — John Babcock — died in February 2010 at the age of 109.

After Babcock's passing, the federal government announced that it would hold a national commemorative ceremony on April 9 to honour all Canadians and Newfoundlanders who served during the First World War.

Second World War

Wreath laid by a nephew at his uncle's grave at Canadian Cemetery No. 2 at Vimy Ridge. Between the declaration of the Second World War in September 1939 and the conflict's end in 1945, Canadians fought in Dieppe, Normandy, the North Atlantic, Hong Kong, during the liberation of Italy, and in many other important air, sea and land campaigns.

In total, more than one million men and women from Canada and Newfoundland served in the army, air force and navy. More than 47,000 did not come home.

Canadian troops played a crucial role — and made a mighty sacrifice — in the 1944 D-Day invasion and the Battle of Normandy, a major turning point in the war's Atlantic campaign. More than 5,000 were killed in the land invasion in France.

The Canadian Army went on to play a significant part in the liberation of the Netherlands, which ended in 1945. The Dutch, having suffered through an extremely harsh winter, enthusiastically greeted the Canadians and forged a strong friendship between the two countries that lasts to this day.

Korea and Afghanistan

Since the end of the Second World War, Canadians have taken part in dozens of United Nations peacekeeping missions around the globe, from Cyprus and Haiti to Bosnia and Somalia. Troops have seen active combat as well.

In Korea, 26,791 Canadians served during a conflict that raged between 1950 and 1953. The battles of Hill 355 and Hill 187, among others, saw Canadians fighting in swamps and rice fields, through torrential rain and snow, in the air and at sea.

In 2003, Canada marked the 50th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice by unveiling the Monument to Canadian Fallen at Confederation Park in Ottawa. The words "We will never forget you brave sons of Canada" are inscribed at the base of the monument, which also contains the names of all Canadians who lost their lives in Korean War service or subsequent Korean peacekeeping service.

Canada has steadily increased its military involvement in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime fell in 2001.

By 2006, Canada had taken on a major role in the more dangerous southern part of the country as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The fighting grew fiercer, and the casualty count rose. By November 2010, 152 Canadian military personnel had died in the country. One Canadian diplomat, one journalist and two Canadian aid workers have also been killed.  

Vanishing white males--my age group is in decline--who knew?

According to the pundits in the US the election was lost by the Republicans because the older white male is a vanishing breed. For sake of full disclosure, I am a white older male. I don't like stereotyping, so when the pundits start talking about the breakdown of the election in the US by breaking the voters down by race, age, sex, etc, it made me sad. I am saddened because they appear to take the numbers and then broadly generalize about people, and that is wrong.

Statistical analysis makes sense in the aggregate, not on the micro level. If a group moves in a certain direction for a reason, it does not mean that I as an individual within the group move in the same direction for the same reasons and for the pundits to classify the movement of the group and then attribute the reasons at an individual level is applying fuzzy logic, but it does keep them employed.


White males governed the United States exclusively for a very long time, and the integration of other ethnicities into their power structure has been slow at best. Despite the presence of many non-whites in their country throughout history, there is some truth that early Americans largely perceived the United States to be a country by and for white people.

Abraham Lincoln was among many presidents who, at least for most of his life, firmly believed this. Until about the time he became president, he believed the final solution to our racial problem was to create a Negro colony somewhere and move American Negroes there. (The bravery of African American troops in the Civil War helped convince him otherwise.)

White (Caucasian) Americans remain in the majority, but by the time but if you follow the demographic trends out a century or so, Hispanics will likely form a new plurality of Americans, and white Americans will be just another sizeable minority. Like Afrikaners, White men are likely to exert a political and financial power that will seem inconsistent with our size

I am glad that the old white men of my age are declining in power. I think of an old saying that goes something like this for Canadians, :"When you are young you are a New Democrat, when you are middle aged you become a Liberal, and when you are old you become a Conservative". For others the saying might be paraphrased as" When you are young you are a progressive, and when you are middle aged you become a moderae, and when you are older you become a conservative" 

When I was young I was a progressive, and when I was middle aged I was a progressive and as I age I still am a progessive. Perhaps I have not grown up as much as some of my friends who have become more conservative in their views. I still believe that we can become a just and open society, that provides opportunities for all no matter what they are or what background they have.

I also believe that to do this individuals need help in understanding their own paradigms as well as help to overcome and to change those paradigms. My friends for the most part do not share this ideal and put more emphasis on the need for the individual to "pull themselves  up and become successful", just like my friends did.

My friends however, forget that they had help along the way in many ways, one of which was to be born as an early Baby Boomer.  As a result of being born at the head of a giant wave of humanity, we have been able to take advantage and move into jobs and leadership positions.

When I was younger I saw many injustices against people because of who they were, or what they believed, and did what I could to change societal views.  We need to continue to fight against injustice and if that means that my generation of men is sidelined so much the better for humanity.

I also believe that some of us as older white male have contributed enormously to success and our efforts  may predict future success.  But this will only happen if we stop feeling sorry for our loss of power and start working to the common good and the pundits stop downplaying our impact.