Section 2 News from Fred:
“LIFE”
“It’s been said that LIFE is the greatest do-it-yourself project
you’ll ever undertake. Acquiring the tools and skills you need
will make you a better craftsman.”
In our busy world, each of us needs to go in so many directions
to “cover all the bases” in life. Our world includes: People
(family, friends, neighbors); Work (reports, computer
work, manual tasks, files, phone calls); Food (purchasing,
cooking, diet planning, healthy choices); Clothing (making
choices in purchasing, cleaning, storing); Shelter (taking care
of our homes both inside and out); Money (budgeting, paying
bills on time); Health (exercise, eating good foods, reducing
stress), and finally Fun (entertainment and just enjoying each
other). Whew! And we wonder why we’re tired at the end of
each day?!?
This is why the people who write Organizational Books are
doing so well. We all need HELP! While recently reading
one of these books, “Organizing Your Life, 4th Edition”
…no matter what area of our life we are dealing with, we
should be doing the following:
1. Gather general information. Get informed.
2. Collect information about your specific likes, dislikes,
strengths, and weaknesses. (No, you can’t do it all or have it
all. No one can, so be reasonable and choose wisely).
3. Identify goals. You need something to aspire to, even if
it’s only pictured in your mind. Being in control of your belongings
and time is the ultimate goal.
4. Set up a plan. How will you achieve this goal? Write it
down and revise as necessary.
5. Break up the plan into simple tasks. “A yard is hard, but
an inch is a cinch.”
6. Schedule tasks, and work toward your goals a little each
day. Beware of those who will want to break into your time/
schedule and steal this from you.
7. Develop ways to check progress and reward yourself for
achievements. (Actually, enjoying an organized life will be a
great reward in itself.)
8. Avoid discouragement, no matter What situations happen
or Who “brings it on.” There will be “bumps in the road”…
Maintain an attitude of I WILL SUCCEED!
Showing posts with label OCTOBER 1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OCTOBER 1. Show all posts
Thursday, January 14, 2010
FUTEK VISIT.
FUTEK VISIT.
If you need your climate changed, just wait until I visit the area.
On September 8, 2007, I arrived in Appleton/Neenah, WI for a week’s visit. It was a beautiful Saturday and the weather was pleasant. I enjoyed a coolness that I had been missing in California with our tremendous summer heat. I was wearing short sleeves and enjoying this cooler version. As the week-days progressed, it got cooler, then cold, and then much colder. By Saturday, September 15, 2007, when I left Appleton / Neenah, WI for California, the temperature was in low 30’s and there was frost.
If in any area of the country you need your climate changed, just send me an invitation.
My visit to Futek was fantastic. It was wonderful to see the office and the factory busy, with everyone working hard to get the orders produced, shipped, and meeting deadlines. I would like to thank all of you at Futek for your hard work and dedication.
The Phone System at Futek was there from the day we started the operation in Neenah, WI. It had met its day and was causing problems. Also, having no voice mail was a challenge for everyone. Negotiations with our dedicated California telephone vendor allowed us to obtain a Toshiba system that was affordable. It is state of the art and will be installed in the coming weeks. I would like to thank Chuck, Heidi, and the entire crew at Futek who made my visit to Futek so pleasant and successful. Also, it was great to have lunch with Maurie and Kathy (our AFE Today Editor).
I wish you all a pleasant climate.
If you need your climate changed, just wait until I visit the area.
On September 8, 2007, I arrived in Appleton/Neenah, WI for a week’s visit. It was a beautiful Saturday and the weather was pleasant. I enjoyed a coolness that I had been missing in California with our tremendous summer heat. I was wearing short sleeves and enjoying this cooler version. As the week-days progressed, it got cooler, then cold, and then much colder. By Saturday, September 15, 2007, when I left Appleton / Neenah, WI for California, the temperature was in low 30’s and there was frost.
If in any area of the country you need your climate changed, just send me an invitation.
My visit to Futek was fantastic. It was wonderful to see the office and the factory busy, with everyone working hard to get the orders produced, shipped, and meeting deadlines. I would like to thank all of you at Futek for your hard work and dedication.
The Phone System at Futek was there from the day we started the operation in Neenah, WI. It had met its day and was causing problems. Also, having no voice mail was a challenge for everyone. Negotiations with our dedicated California telephone vendor allowed us to obtain a Toshiba system that was affordable. It is state of the art and will be installed in the coming weeks. I would like to thank Chuck, Heidi, and the entire crew at Futek who made my visit to Futek so pleasant and successful. Also, it was great to have lunch with Maurie and Kathy (our AFE Today Editor).
I wish you all a pleasant climate.
CASH FOR TRASH
CASH FOR TRASH
Listening to the news these days is all about the bail-out of the rich boys heading up our financial institutions who thought they were smart. It finally took this mess to show how dumb and greedy they really were. Having a Harvard Business School Degree is no guarantee for smartness. In this case, their degrees only taught them how to come up with the next perfect scheme to get rich quick with no regard to the people they were hurting on main street, while assuming that they would be able to bail themselves out at our expense if and when things went bad. And as they expected, our Government is now buying the “toxic acid” of Wall Street. There is an English saying, “Rich is what gets the gravy and poor is what gets the pain”.
There are 3 segments of our society that will get hurt in our “main street.”
1) People without job: The ones who will lose the most are the ones who do not have a job. This was also the case during the big depression. So the first important thing to do is keep our jobs and be employed in order to be able to ride this out.
2) Since money has dried up for banks to loan out, there will be no business loans. Start up loans and technology loans will also be unavailable, which will hurt or destroy innovative ideas that need financing to bring their bright ideas to the market. We will not see many great ideas that could improve our lives and assist us for advancement, because they will not be funded. This will hurt those companies who are working hard to bring ideas to the market.
3) The third losers are all of us (the public) who have to pay for this mess which will take five to ten years to clean up. To do so we will see higher taxes and a lower value of our dollars due to the government printing money to pay for this.
These are the 3 bad things I readily observe.
Through all of this, I was trying to find a silver lining that would help us all, the general public. Since none of us can send our personal or business debts to the Government to clear our accounts, there must be some benefit, and there is.
First, you have to be employed to benefit from this. Because of this current situation, the only sector that will give us Big Bang for our dollars is the Retail Market. In the coming months you will see more sales, bigger discounts, and price cutting to get us to buy. If you are employed and have a paycheck, this is the best time to go shopping wisely and buy what you really need, all at bargain prices.
Again, buy WISELY and take advantage of the lower advertised, retail prices you will see in the coming months. Look in the newspaper for bargains. You will be wondering how anyone can sell at these prices. The retailers need to turn their goods into cash, since the banks are not loaning to them either. This will be to everyone’s advantage to turn Trash to Cash.
Listening to the news these days is all about the bail-out of the rich boys heading up our financial institutions who thought they were smart. It finally took this mess to show how dumb and greedy they really were. Having a Harvard Business School Degree is no guarantee for smartness. In this case, their degrees only taught them how to come up with the next perfect scheme to get rich quick with no regard to the people they were hurting on main street, while assuming that they would be able to bail themselves out at our expense if and when things went bad. And as they expected, our Government is now buying the “toxic acid” of Wall Street. There is an English saying, “Rich is what gets the gravy and poor is what gets the pain”.
There are 3 segments of our society that will get hurt in our “main street.”
1) People without job: The ones who will lose the most are the ones who do not have a job. This was also the case during the big depression. So the first important thing to do is keep our jobs and be employed in order to be able to ride this out.
2) Since money has dried up for banks to loan out, there will be no business loans. Start up loans and technology loans will also be unavailable, which will hurt or destroy innovative ideas that need financing to bring their bright ideas to the market. We will not see many great ideas that could improve our lives and assist us for advancement, because they will not be funded. This will hurt those companies who are working hard to bring ideas to the market.
3) The third losers are all of us (the public) who have to pay for this mess which will take five to ten years to clean up. To do so we will see higher taxes and a lower value of our dollars due to the government printing money to pay for this.
These are the 3 bad things I readily observe.
Through all of this, I was trying to find a silver lining that would help us all, the general public. Since none of us can send our personal or business debts to the Government to clear our accounts, there must be some benefit, and there is.
First, you have to be employed to benefit from this. Because of this current situation, the only sector that will give us Big Bang for our dollars is the Retail Market. In the coming months you will see more sales, bigger discounts, and price cutting to get us to buy. If you are employed and have a paycheck, this is the best time to go shopping wisely and buy what you really need, all at bargain prices.
Again, buy WISELY and take advantage of the lower advertised, retail prices you will see in the coming months. Look in the newspaper for bargains. You will be wondering how anyone can sell at these prices. The retailers need to turn their goods into cash, since the banks are not loaning to them either. This will be to everyone’s advantage to turn Trash to Cash.
BANKS AND CREDIT CARDS
BANKS AND CREDIT CARDS.
There is not a day goes by that the newspapers, radio and television are bombarding us with news regarding banks and the trouble they are in. Then we hear that they made zillions of dollars in profit. What are we to believe? The TARP money was given to the banks to loan out to consumers to get the economy going. What they did was park the money with the Federal Reserve at a 2% interest rate and then took it back at a profit. Some of them paid it back to the government so they can be free of the rules, and now they are free to mess up the economy all over again.
The other day something caught my ear listening to the radio while driving to work. The news was that the banks are losing money on credit cards, so there will be another problem to look us in the face again. Then I remembered the mailings we have all been receiving from our banks/credit card companies that they have reduced our line of credit and increased our interest rates to almost 30%.
I would be glad to tell them why they are losing money and how to solve it. Let's create an imaginary credit card where we have a balance of $4,825.00 and our current rate is 12% with credit limit of $10,000.00. We have been making payments on time and have never been late. This balance would have a minimum payment requirement of the current month’s interest for $48.25. Now let’s assume we are to pay an additional $50.00 toward the principle so our payment would total $98.25. This is something that we have budgeted for and we could keep up with.
Then we get the love letter from our bank and they decrease our credit limit to $8,000.00 and increase our interest rate to 28%. Now we have less access to the cash that we all need in this NO-BANK/CREDIT WORLD and our payments are changed.
Now your monthly interest increases to $112.58 and that alone is more than what you have in your budget to pay for the monthly payment. You have been budgeting and paying $98.25 per month and now interest alone is $112.58 which is $14.33 more that what you have been paying for both interest and principle.
This is what happens: People take a look and recognize that at this rate all they are paying is less than amount of the current monthly interest charge. Since this credit card will never get paid off, they completely stop paying, and this account becomes a bad debt for the banks. Banks have not woken up yet to realize that instead of helping people in this economy and in turn helping the economy turn around, their institutions have created another stupid situation that is worse than the prime loan episode…and they are wondering why they are losing money on their credit card business. Duh! Wake up you smart Harvard Graduate Geniuses who are trying to find the next scheme to make money. It does not take a rocket scientist to see this, but these people in charge are so smart that they have gone blind to realty. I am surprised that none of them have thought of opening a new bank called Capone Bank. At least Al Capone did you in if you did not pay rather than torture you to death.
If they would reduce the interest rate rather than increase it, more people would pay their credit card payments, and this would place more money in the banks. They would have more money to lend rather than steal TARP money to make money on us. Now back to our imaginary credit card situation. If they reduce the interest rate to 7%, we would all pay less interest and our payment would be $25.14 interest and let’s say we pay the $50.00 we have been paying toward the principle. This would make our total payment $75.14. What happens is from original total payment of $98.25 to $75.14, we have an extra $23.11 to spend which we would put in the economy to get it back on its feet. I know $23.11 does not look like very much money, but if this multiplied by the millions of open credit card accounts, we’re talking real money on a monthly basis. Let’s look at the statistics listed below for 2008. There was total of 798.55 Billion Dollar credit card debt balance. If the 5% reduction in the interest rate is applied to this amount, we would have a savings of 39.93 Billion Dollars for the consumers, which would be spent in the economy and give it a good start to recovery.
However, the banks’ greed will not let them do this. You think the politician will do it? Their campaigns are financed by banks and they are in the bank pockets as well. It is time for the public to bring it up and ask questions. We need to ask why are they doing this, and let them know that we know what they are doing.
EXISTING TERMS
BALANCE INTEREST RATE MONTH INTEREST ADD PYMT. TOTAL PYT. CREDIT LIMIT
$4,825.00 12% $48.25 $50.00 $98.25 $10,000.00
NEW TERMS
$4,825.00 28% $112.58 $0.00 $112.58 $8,000.00
$4,825.00 7% $25.14 $50.00 $75.14 $8,000.00
CREDIT CARD ISSUER STATISTICS
Market share
Top 15 issuers of general purpose credit cards for 2008 based on outstanding balances:
1. Chase - $183.32 billion
2. Bank of America - $166.32 billion
3. Citi - $106.74 billion
4. American Express - $88.02 billion
5. Capital One - $60.08 billion
6. Discover - $49.69 billion
7. Wells Fargo - $36.36 billion
8. HSBC - $29.97 billion
9. US Bank - $18.53 billion
10. USAA - $17.48 billion
11. Barclays - $11 billion
12. Target - $8.65 billion
13. GE Money - $7.51 billion
14. Advanta - $5.02 billion
15. First National - $4.93 billion
(Source: Nilson Report, March 2009)
This morning I was reading the business section of my newspaper, and the main article was titled “Fixed Rate Cards Topple”. As though we didn’t have enough problems with the Credit Card companies being allowed to go rampant with our money, now it looks like we can kiss the fixed-rate credit cards goodbye! Bank of America and Chase stated they would be “switching some fixed-rate cards to variable rates to ‘manage costs’ in light of the sweeping new reforms to the credit card industry.” The interest rate will be tied to the rise and fall of the prime rate, and it will start in August for both banks. How is the consumer supposed to “manage” his money when his monthly payment will change on a monthly basis?
When the government told the credit card companies that there had to be limits on how much they could charge for interest, rules put in place for how many times a credit card could change it’s payment due date, etc, the credit card companies were given almost 2 years to “get ready” for these changes. How long is the notice that they are giving the card holders for this latest fiasco? Today’s paper is dated 7-20-09. August 1st is 11 days away. Card holders have no chance to pay off any existing charges on their cards in 11 days to avoid the higher interest rates, and the banks are well aware of this. Again, the consumer is the victim here, and there is no one to rescue them.
There is not a day goes by that the newspapers, radio and television are bombarding us with news regarding banks and the trouble they are in. Then we hear that they made zillions of dollars in profit. What are we to believe? The TARP money was given to the banks to loan out to consumers to get the economy going. What they did was park the money with the Federal Reserve at a 2% interest rate and then took it back at a profit. Some of them paid it back to the government so they can be free of the rules, and now they are free to mess up the economy all over again.
The other day something caught my ear listening to the radio while driving to work. The news was that the banks are losing money on credit cards, so there will be another problem to look us in the face again. Then I remembered the mailings we have all been receiving from our banks/credit card companies that they have reduced our line of credit and increased our interest rates to almost 30%.
I would be glad to tell them why they are losing money and how to solve it. Let's create an imaginary credit card where we have a balance of $4,825.00 and our current rate is 12% with credit limit of $10,000.00. We have been making payments on time and have never been late. This balance would have a minimum payment requirement of the current month’s interest for $48.25. Now let’s assume we are to pay an additional $50.00 toward the principle so our payment would total $98.25. This is something that we have budgeted for and we could keep up with.
Then we get the love letter from our bank and they decrease our credit limit to $8,000.00 and increase our interest rate to 28%. Now we have less access to the cash that we all need in this NO-BANK/CREDIT WORLD and our payments are changed.
Now your monthly interest increases to $112.58 and that alone is more than what you have in your budget to pay for the monthly payment. You have been budgeting and paying $98.25 per month and now interest alone is $112.58 which is $14.33 more that what you have been paying for both interest and principle.
This is what happens: People take a look and recognize that at this rate all they are paying is less than amount of the current monthly interest charge. Since this credit card will never get paid off, they completely stop paying, and this account becomes a bad debt for the banks. Banks have not woken up yet to realize that instead of helping people in this economy and in turn helping the economy turn around, their institutions have created another stupid situation that is worse than the prime loan episode…and they are wondering why they are losing money on their credit card business. Duh! Wake up you smart Harvard Graduate Geniuses who are trying to find the next scheme to make money. It does not take a rocket scientist to see this, but these people in charge are so smart that they have gone blind to realty. I am surprised that none of them have thought of opening a new bank called Capone Bank. At least Al Capone did you in if you did not pay rather than torture you to death.
If they would reduce the interest rate rather than increase it, more people would pay their credit card payments, and this would place more money in the banks. They would have more money to lend rather than steal TARP money to make money on us. Now back to our imaginary credit card situation. If they reduce the interest rate to 7%, we would all pay less interest and our payment would be $25.14 interest and let’s say we pay the $50.00 we have been paying toward the principle. This would make our total payment $75.14. What happens is from original total payment of $98.25 to $75.14, we have an extra $23.11 to spend which we would put in the economy to get it back on its feet. I know $23.11 does not look like very much money, but if this multiplied by the millions of open credit card accounts, we’re talking real money on a monthly basis. Let’s look at the statistics listed below for 2008. There was total of 798.55 Billion Dollar credit card debt balance. If the 5% reduction in the interest rate is applied to this amount, we would have a savings of 39.93 Billion Dollars for the consumers, which would be spent in the economy and give it a good start to recovery.
However, the banks’ greed will not let them do this. You think the politician will do it? Their campaigns are financed by banks and they are in the bank pockets as well. It is time for the public to bring it up and ask questions. We need to ask why are they doing this, and let them know that we know what they are doing.
EXISTING TERMS
BALANCE INTEREST RATE MONTH INTEREST ADD PYMT. TOTAL PYT. CREDIT LIMIT
$4,825.00 12% $48.25 $50.00 $98.25 $10,000.00
NEW TERMS
$4,825.00 28% $112.58 $0.00 $112.58 $8,000.00
$4,825.00 7% $25.14 $50.00 $75.14 $8,000.00
CREDIT CARD ISSUER STATISTICS
Market share
Top 15 issuers of general purpose credit cards for 2008 based on outstanding balances:
1. Chase - $183.32 billion
2. Bank of America - $166.32 billion
3. Citi - $106.74 billion
4. American Express - $88.02 billion
5. Capital One - $60.08 billion
6. Discover - $49.69 billion
7. Wells Fargo - $36.36 billion
8. HSBC - $29.97 billion
9. US Bank - $18.53 billion
10. USAA - $17.48 billion
11. Barclays - $11 billion
12. Target - $8.65 billion
13. GE Money - $7.51 billion
14. Advanta - $5.02 billion
15. First National - $4.93 billion
(Source: Nilson Report, March 2009)
This morning I was reading the business section of my newspaper, and the main article was titled “Fixed Rate Cards Topple”. As though we didn’t have enough problems with the Credit Card companies being allowed to go rampant with our money, now it looks like we can kiss the fixed-rate credit cards goodbye! Bank of America and Chase stated they would be “switching some fixed-rate cards to variable rates to ‘manage costs’ in light of the sweeping new reforms to the credit card industry.” The interest rate will be tied to the rise and fall of the prime rate, and it will start in August for both banks. How is the consumer supposed to “manage” his money when his monthly payment will change on a monthly basis?
When the government told the credit card companies that there had to be limits on how much they could charge for interest, rules put in place for how many times a credit card could change it’s payment due date, etc, the credit card companies were given almost 2 years to “get ready” for these changes. How long is the notice that they are giving the card holders for this latest fiasco? Today’s paper is dated 7-20-09. August 1st is 11 days away. Card holders have no chance to pay off any existing charges on their cards in 11 days to avoid the higher interest rates, and the banks are well aware of this. Again, the consumer is the victim here, and there is no one to rescue them.
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