Financial Samurai

Slicing Through Money's Mysteries

How To Make Six Figures A Year At Almost Any Age

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How to make six figures at any age

If you want to make six figures, know that you can if you want to. Nothing in this world is stopping you with the right money mindset to get rich.

I believe $250,000 is the ideal six figure income for an individual for maximum happiness. $350,000 is the ideal household income for a couple. At these income levels, you’re earning a healthy six figures to buy a lot of what you want. But you’re not earning a super-high six figure income that takes a lot of work and gets taxed like crazy.

I’ve been making six figures since my second year in investment banking in 2000. Earning a six figure income helped me achieve financial independence at age 34 in 2012. Today, my passive investment income generates roughly $300,000 a year to take care of my wife and two children.

If you want to learn how to earn a six figure income at almost any age, you’ve come to the right place! I earned six-figures at work and now earn six-figures online.



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Why I Won’t Pay Off My Mortgage Until I Retire

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Back in 2011, I decided I wouldn’t pay off my mortgage until I retired. I was still working in banking and had a strong amount of cash flow. I thought I was going to work for at least another five years. Then, in 2012, I retired by negotiating a severance package that provided for six years of living expenses.

What transpired was interesting. I ended up paying off one condo mortgage in 2015 and selling my primary residence in 2017, which ultimately paid off its $815,000 mortgage as well.

Today, my family and I live in a home we bought in early 2019 with cash. We are full-time parents and part-time writers. It feels great not to have a mortgage in retirement.

Let me share my reasoning from 2011 on why I didn’t want to pay off my mortgage until I retired. Back then, I was a 33-year-old Executive Director who was focused on career growth. However, I was also starting to burn out.



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Twelve Non-Recourse States Let You Walk Away From Your Mortgage

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Twelve Non-Recourse Stats That Allow You To Walk Away From Your Mortgage

Refinancing now is a wonderful idea as mortgage rates are back to all-time lows. However, if you are struggling to pay your mortgage you may be considering walking away. If you do, there are non-recourse states where you can walk away from your mortgage without the bank coming after your other assets.

Let’s say you are so underwater on your mortgage that you feel it doesn’t make sense to continue paying anymore because you don’t think value will ever recover.

This happened a lot during the financial crisis in 2008 – 2009. Homeowners just gave up because banks were so stubborn in allowing underwater homeowners to refinance. As a result, many homeowners just stopped paying altogether.

Have you ever wondered why there have been so many foreclosures in states such as California, Arizona, and Nevada? I’ll tell you. They are non-recourse states.

The 12 Non-Recourse States

The following are the 12 non-recourse states where you can walk away from your mortgage and not have the lenders come after your other assets. Of course, each state will have some different methods of trying to recoup bad debt.

  • Alaska
  • Arizona
  • California
  • Connecticut
  • Idaho
  • Minnesota
  • North Carolina
  • North Dakota
  • Oregon
  • Texas
  • Utah
  • Washington

If you so happen to own property in one of these states, and have substantial assets elsewhere, you can legally hand over the keys to the bank and exonerate yourself from the mortgage with no penalty against your other assets!



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Is It Better To Rent To Males Or Females?

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Nobody quite understands the challenges of being a landlord until they’ve been one. Finding ideal tenants is top priority, and it’s not always easy. I’ve been for over 13 years now and have some crazy stories. In your search for tenants, you may be wondering whether it’s better to rent to males or females.

First of all, don’t rush the tenant screening process regardless of a tenant’s gender. It can be easy getting tenants in, but it can be near impossible getting them out.

Time To Find An Ideal Tenant Again

One night back in 2010, I remember getting t a written notice in the mail informing me that my tenant of 2.5 years was moving back East. I wondered, how could he leave paradise to move back home to the sweltering heat of New Jersey? 

I’ll never know. Anyway,  I was really sad to see him go because he was as close to the ideal tenant as possible.

Ned always paid on time. He was quiet, didn’t have raging parties, and never bothered me to come fix anything. OK, so there were a couple times he needed an extra week or two to pay rent, but in the end he always delivered.

What I Look For In A Tenant As A 13-Year Landlord

I’ve learned a lot about the tenant vetting process over the years as a landlord. I currently own three rental properties in San Francisco, where I’ve lived for around two decades.

Here’s a list of attributes I look for in a tenant when I’m reviewing rental applications. Note, my initial screening does not pay attention to whether or not I should rent to males or females.

  • Great credit (680 or higher, and the higher the better).
  • Not a psycho killer or a clearly mentally unstable person. You know the ones with crazy eyes when you talk to them.
  • Has a stable source of income, which could include interest income if s/he has no job.
  • Good prior landlord references.
  • Has enough money in the bank to cover at least 18 months of rent if he/she lost their job.
  • Longer than 1 year duration at his or her job. Longer the better.
  • A pleasant demeanor, i.e. not an axe murderer or an asshole.

If a candidate possesses all of the above attributes, I’m more than likely to rent my apartment to them. 

It’s really not worth taking a risk on a poor tenant only to miss out on months of rental income due to non payment, or litigation! 

Now, the next question I have is whether it’s better to rent to males or females and whether it matters at all? Let’s discuss.

Who Makes Better Tenants: Males Or Females?

As a landlord, all you want are three main things.

  1. On time payment
  2. Zero complaints
  3. Minimum wear and tear

In other words, if I could rent to a robot who doesn’t have to move and always sends me a check electronically on time, that would be the best!

1) Dependability

Dependability is pretty much a wash between men and women. Men are just as flaky as women. And women are just as dependable as men. Usually.

Actually, if I exam all the females I know, they are all pretty damn dependable. Whereas some of the guys I know just tend to be complete flakazoids who are never on time. OK, women are favored here 60/40.

2) Complaints

Men tend to pride themselves on being able to unclog the toilet, change light bulbs, fix holes in walls, and paint. Women, typically not so much.

I’ve heard stories from other rental property owners where women will call their landlord to squash a spider. Come on now, a spider is like 1/1,000,000 the size of you! Men get the nod 70/30.

3) Wear And Tear

This is a tricky factor to determine whether it’s better to rent to males or females. Men tend to enjoy throwing parties with lots of loud music and fountains of alcohol. For example, keg parties, strip parties, bachelor parties, birthday parties, you name it! 

I rented my house to 5 guys once. It was a complete disaster. The neighbors constantly called me complaining about them throwing parties. They didn’t abide by the lease terms on noise, staying off the roof, etc. And man were they total slobs. They stained and scraped the floors and walls, bashed a hole in the wall, cracked my tile floor, etc.

Not only that, they bought used furniture on Craigslist that was infested with bed bugs and then tried to blame me for the infestation. When I finally got them all out, I said never again!

Women don’t throw ragers as often as men for some reason. Furthermore, it is the unmarried woman who tends to sleep over at the boyfriend’s house more often than vice versa. Hence, there typically is less wear and tear if you rent to a woman. And therefore women are 70/30 favorites when it comes to wear and tear.

Related: How To Deal With Bad Tenants

Conclusion

Bob the friendly dog walker..
Rent to Olivia Munn or…

Based on my three variables, there’s no perfect answer on if it’s better to rent to males or females. You may be having having trouble deciding which is the safer sex to rent to as well.

Women generally just seem so much more respectable and less violent.  How many serial killers do you know are women? In the movie “Pacific Heights,” Michael Keaton was a man and not a woman.

My gut tells me women are better, but the funny thing is my last tenant of 2.5 years was a man, and he was great! Ultimately, you’ve got to look at your prospective tenants individually, regardless of their gender.

Do a thorough background check. Call and review all their references. Verify their employment. Have multiple conversations with them. Make them get renters insurance. And go with your gut. If they are annoying you from the beginning, they will highly likely drive you even more crazy over time.

* Please note that it is illegal to discriminate against a potential tenant based on sex, race, or creed. However, it is legal to ask a question and wonder out loud.

Recommendations

Here are some additional recommendations to help you save money and improve your financial health.

Refinance your mortgage

Check out Credible, my favorite mortgage marketplace where prequalified lenders compete for your business. You can get competitive, real quotes in under three minutes for free.

Mortgage rates are down to all-time lows! When banks compete, you win.

All-time low mortgage rates

Explore real estate crowdfunding

If you’re looking to buy property as an investment or reinvest your house sale proceeds, take a look at Fundrise. It’s one of the largest real estate crowdfunding platforms today.

They allow everyone to invest in mid-market commercial real estate deals across the country that were once only available to institutions or super high net worth individuals.

Fundrise is the pioneer of eREIT funds and they are creating an Opportunity Fund to take advantage of tax-efficient Opportunity Zones.

Thanks to technology, it’s now much easier to take advantage of lower valuation, higher net rental yield properties across America.

Fundrise Due Diligence Funnel
Less than 5% of the real estate deals shown gets through the Fundrise funnel

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Updated for 2020 and beyond.

The Top Schools In The Nation Are All Party Schools!

Updated: by 52 Comments

Let’s look at the top schools in the nation. Could it be that the top schools are all party schools? It looks like it!

The Top 20 Party Schools In The Nation, Ranked By The Princeton Review For 2021:

  1. University of Wisconsin-Madison
  2. West Virginia University
  3. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  4. Lehigh University
  5. Bucknell University
  6. University of Iowa
  7. University of Mississippi
  8. Syracuse University
  9. Tulane University
  10. Colgate University
  11. University of California―Santa Barbara
  12. University of Delaware
  13. University of Rhode Island
  14. Wake Forest University
  15. College of Charleston
  16. University of Maine
  17. University of Vermont
  18. University of Florida
  19. University of Colorado―Boulder
  20. Florida State University

What do Penn State, Texas A&M, University of Illinois, Purdue, and Arizona State University have in common?  They are considered the Top 5 best schools in the nation according to recruiters!  Wall Street Journal has this unique ranking system where they essentially ask corporate recruiters to rank their best schools.

I’ve seen a lot of college surveys before, and not once have I ever seen any of these schools in the Top 5, let alone in the top 10.  Let’s be honest, for the same cost, would you go to one of these schools over Harvard, Yale, Penn, MIT, Michigan, or Berkeley?  Most would say “probably not,” so what gives?

Let’s have a look at why recruiters are so excited about these schools.

* Size. The average student population of the top 5 schools is around 28,000.  This means that out of a class size of 7,000, there’s a higher chance of finding someone they like.

* Sports. The top 5 schools all have big time basketball and football programs.  Americans are obsessed with sports, which is why every single one of you should also play and at least follow sports.

* Public. All five schools are public schools.  We are in a period where it’s all about the middle class and not standing out.  Anything private, that costs more than the average annual income of an American isn’t going to fly.

* Competition. It’s much easier getting into these top 5 schools with an average acceptance rate of ~50% vs. 15% for the traditionally accepted top schools.  As a result, there’s a less “the world owes me” type attitude as students are more humble and eager to please their perspective employers.

* Representation. Being a recruiter isn’t exactly the hardest job in the world to land.  As a result, there is a high likelihood that most of the recruiters come from the very schools they have voted to the top!  We all want to take care of our own, and recruiters are no different.

CONCLUSION

Surveys are great because they can be manipulated to suit the surveyor’s beliefs.  Everybody looks out for their own, and the Wall Street Journal is no different.  Look into the management of the WSJ and I’m sure you’ll find one of them who is an alumni of their Top 5. The top schools in the nation really are party schools.

Penn State, Texas A&M, University of Illinois, Purdue, and Arizona State University are all fine schools.  They just aren’t the top schools the WSJ believes them to be, otherwise they’d have the most Rhodes Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, Nobel Laureates, endowments, and so forth. 

Frankly, the WSJ might as well rank colleges by their proximity to the Pacific Ocean!  Now that would be a great survey! Did you go to one of the top schools in the nation?

Recommendation To Build Wealth

After learning about the top schools in the nation, sign up for Personal Capital, the web’s #1 free wealth management tool to get a better handle on your finances. In addition to better money oversight, run your investments through their award-winning Investment Checkup tool to see exactly how much you are paying in fees. I was paying $1,700 a year in fees I had no idea I was paying.

After you link all your accounts, use their Retirement Planning calculator that pulls your real data to give you as pure an estimation of your financial future as possible using Monte Carlo simulation algorithms. Definitely run your numbers to see how you’re doing. I’ve been using Personal Capital since 2012 and have seen my net worth skyrocket during this time thanks to better money management.

Refinance Your Student Loans

Refinance your student loans today. Check out Credible, a student loan marketplace that has qualified lenders competing for your business. Credible provides real rates for you to compare so you can lower your interest rate and save. Getting a quote is easy and free. Take advantage of our low interest rate environment today! The top schools in the nation tend to be very expensive.

Related posts:

Should I Go To Public Or Private University?

How To Get Into An Elite Preschool Or Private Grade School

Student Loans For College Are An Inevitability

Most People Make A Lot More Money Than You Think

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Hard work pays off. People make a lot more than you think

Most people make a lot more money than you think. When you see headlines from the media about people making poor financial decisions, this is just media schadenfreude.  The reality is, people not only make more money than you think, people are also wealthier than you think too.

The reason why there are so many negative articles out there is simply because there are a lot more people making a lot more money and doing much greater things than one realizes. If you can’t make it on your own, it’s easier to just try and bring others down. Don’t do that!

You know from a previous article that $75,000 is such a silly low range for what researchers and the media think is the ideal income level where happiness rises no more. It’s so silly because that is clearly not the case if you ask anybody who has ever made more.

Is it a coincidence that researchers and reporters make on average not much more than $75,000? Of course not and therefore it helps makes them feel better about their wages. It’s perfectly rational.



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View Your 401K Like Social Security And Write It Off

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Every month I contribute $1,500 to my 401K so that by the end of the year, the 401K is maxed out at $18,000 (the max increases to $18,500 for 2018). Unfortunately, $18,000 a year is a ridiculously low amount of money to save for retirement if you really do the math. After 10 years, you might have $250,000, and after 30 years you might have $800,000 to $1.2 million depending on the markets and your employer’s match.  Whatever the case may be, the 401K is simply not enough money to retire on, especially since you need to pay taxes upon distribution.

The government needs to get it together and raise the amount of 401K contribution for those in the later part of their lives. How is it that a 40 year old executive who makes $250,000 can only contribute the same amount in his 401K as a 23 year old kid out of school making $40,000?  It just doesn’t make sense. Instead, the government should allow pre-tax contributions to increase by $5,000 every 5 years so that by the time one has served 20 years in the work force for example, s/he can contribute $35,000+ a year to their 401Ks until retirement.

Let’s talk about the pencil geek IRA retirement plan for example. If you’re one of the fortunate who are allowed to contribute, you can only fund $5,000 a year!  Whoopdeedoo!  $5,000 X 30 years later, assuming you don’t lose it in the market yields $150,000-$300,000 maybe!  Great, just enough to buy me a Honda Accord sedan when I’m grey.  Get it together government and raise that $5,000 contribution amount higher with better tax incentives.  Furthermore, let hard working Americans who make over $120,000 the opportunity to contribute regularly, and not just through odd year loop holes.  Empower people to want to save for their future!

SAVE FOR THE FUTURE

401k by age savings potential guide

401k by age savings potential

I’ve thought about the 401k’s lack of retirement efficacy since the 90’s and I never thought there would be people out there who depend a large majority of their retirement on their 401Ks.  Whenever I hear about people saving 20% of their income, I think that is money in addition to their 401K and IRA contributions.  Apparently, I am in a minority who thinks this way.  Something has got to change.

It really hit home after reading several of CNN Money’s most delightful extreme saver profiles on everyday people and their finances.  CNN Money and other advisers showcased super savers who to my surprise include 401K and IRA contributions as part of their percentage savings calculations.  In other words, if you make $100,000 a year, save $4,000 a year in cash, and contribute $16,000 in your 401K, you are considered by financial advisers as saving 20% of your gross income.  Your $20,000 in “savings” is woefully light because in reality, you are only saving $4,000 a year.

With the stock market implosion of 2008, your 401K has proven itself to be totally unreliable.  Like Social Security, contribute to it like any good citizen should, but in no way depend on Social Security or your 401K to retire a comfortable life.  If we do nothing to fix Social Security, those under 40 should still get ~70% of regular benefits.  But, if you go through life expecting 0% benefits from SS, how wonderful will it be to just get 10%?  Write off the value to zero and don’t believe in the traditional way of calculating your net worth.

Related: The Average Net Worth For The Above Average Person

CONCLUSION

Depending on Social Security is depending on the government doing the right thing.  There’s no way that’s going to happen.  Depending on your 401K is depending on people choosing the right stocks consistently over the long run, which isn’t going to happen either.

The only person you can depend on is yourself to save.  This is why you must save that minimum 20% of your gross income every year on top of contributing to your 401K and IRA if you can.  An easy goal is to just save one of your two bi-weekly paychecks.  Stock market implosions are good because they serve to remind us how delusional we are in counting on government created retirement programs to keep us afloat in our later years.  Get with the program and save more, much more!

RECOMMENDATIONS TO BUILD WEALTH

Manage Your Finances In One Place: The best way to become financially independent and protect yourself is to get a handle on your finances by signing up with Personal Capital. They are a free online platform which aggregates all your financial accounts in one place so you can see where you can optimize. Before Personal Capital, I had to log into eight different systems to track 25+ difference accounts (brokerage, multiple banks, 401K, etc) to manage my finances. Now, I can just log into Personal Capital to see how my stock accounts are doing and how my net worth is progressing. I can also see how much I’m spending every month.

The best tool is their Portfolio Fee Analyzer which runs your investment portfolio through its software to see what you are paying. I found out I was paying $1,700 a year in portfolio fees I had no idea I was paying! They also recently launched the best Retirement Planning Calculator around, using your real data to run thousands of algorithms to see what your probability is for retirement success. Once you register, simply click the Advisor Tolls and Investing tab on the top right and then click Retirement Planner. There’s no better free tool online to help you track your net worth, minimize investment expenses, and manage your wealth. Why gamble with your future?

Retirement Planner Personal Capital

Personal Capital’s award-winning retirement planning calculator. Are you on track?

About the Author: Sam began investing his own money ever since he opened an online brokerage account online in 1995. Sam loved investing so much that he decided to make a career out of investing by spending the next 13 years after college working at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse Group. During this time, Sam received his MBA from UC Berkeley with a focus on finance and real estate. He also became Series 7 and Series 63 registered. In 2012, Sam was able to retire at the age of 34 largely due to his investments that now generate roughly $175,000 a year in passive income. He spends time playing tennis, hanging out with family, consulting for leading fintech companies, and writing online to help others achieve financial freedom.

Updated for 2018 and beyond.

Presidential Election Time: Policies To Win America’s Vote

Updated: by 31 Comments

Occupy The Government!

The latest presidential election was won by Joe Biden. Biden beat Trump’s re-election bid due to various issues. We should expect households making over $400,000 to pay a new tax rate of 39.7% eventually.

The presidential election is just days away! This is when candidates start hamming it up and telling us all the great things they will do for us to gain or retain power. My favorite policies are ones that redistribute money from those who’ve earned it to those who haven’t. That rocks!

Given politicians love power, I hereby declare my wish list of things if they promise to do, will buy my vote. Everybody needs to think about what type of goodies you want from the government as well. For those of you who have the privilege of paying federal income taxes, do not let your tax dollars go to waste! You will be thrown in jail if you do not pay your federal income taxes, so it’s important to demand concessions.

Obama and Mitt, if you’re still reading my site (I see those White House IP addresses hit on occasion), think long and hard about my list of demands. Mitt, you should be especially vigilant because my crystal ball says you are on track to lose big time. Obama is doing a much, much better job convincing the middle class he will provide us more benefits. You don’t want to waste all that time and donor’s money again now would you?

TOP 10 WISHES TO GET MY VOTE For The Presidential election

1) Guarantee 100% of Social Security benefits will be there for everybody under the age of 40 by reducing Social Security benefits for all current recipients except for my parents, friends, readers of Financial Samurai who’ve registered for my e-mail or RSS feed, and people I like in general. We must make hard choices on Social Security now! Spread the burden to all, and not just to folks working today who don’t believe they’ll receive Social Security when they retire.

2) Implement free health care for every single person in America and pass the cost on to the Axis of Evil! Goodness knows they can afford it, which is why I didn’t mention Europe. Oh crap, they are screwed, but so happy too! Health catastrophe is consistently one of the top reasons for personal bankruptcy. It is not fair that wealthy people get to jump the line to get rare transplants. We need equality in healthcare because so much of survival is hereditary, except for when we eat lots of donuts and don’t exercise.

3) Pass a law enforcing all Americans to buy at least $3,000 a year worth of products from Bay Area companies. One MacBook Pro 13″ for $1,699 gets you 57% of the way there!  Heck, one unlocked 16GB iPhone 5 costs $700 after tax and people are queueing up like crazy! We need more money pumping into the San Francisco area to kick start wages, increase property prices, and jack up rents. If you are sick of Apple products, then make some transactions on eBay or Paypal to generate some commissions. While you’re at it, ask yourself how can the economy be bad if millions of people can afford products they don’t need?

4) Force all corporates who’ve shown at least 25% year over year earnings growth for the past 3 years to increase hiring by 15%. There is more cash on corporate balance sheets than ever before. Furthermore, introduce tax incentives for small business owners to hire more people instead of penalizing them. The government will hunt the highest income earning people down for not paying 39.6% in Federal income tax, why not threaten to incarcerate the bosses of very profitable corporates for not spending their profits on hiring people now? Bust out the big stick!

5) Increase the amount of bailouts for homeowners to encourage more people to buy homes. We need to jump start the property market, so why not comfort on-the-fence buyers they can’t lose? Moral hazard be damned! Housing and employment are two peas in a pod. Force Fannie & Freddie to forgive more mortgage debt and force banks to reduce mortgage rates for all types of homeowners, not just primary home owners. Refinancing a mortgage takes forever nowadays. Meanwhile, so many underwater homeowners cannot refinance despite never missing a payment. Let’s make greedy banks share the wealth!

6) Raise the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge tolls from $6 dollars to $25 dollars to raise city revenue, reduce traffic, and reduce pollution. There’s a perfectly good public transportation system into the city which more commuters should use. To appease car manufacturers and dealers, create another bailout fund for car buyers to decrease the chance of default. Oh yeah, Detroit got that already, so they better not beat the SF Giants in the World Series, or that’s clearly government favoritism.

7) Slap a 1,000% tariff on cigarettes, thereby increasing a cost per pack to from $4 to $40-$90 per pack depending on brand. Surely this will win the presidential election. I love the baked smell of Lucky Strikes, but alas, if I have to pay $90 a pack, I’m not going to smoke them no more. I’ll go cut some grass in my back yard and smoke that instead for free, baby! Everybody knows smoking is bad for you. Let’s try and eradicate the last stubborn few who believe smoking doesn’t accelerate death. Oh yeah, might as well legalize marijuana since it’s all naturale. When I was in Amsterdam, the Coffee Shops banned tobacco and only allowed weed because of tobacco’s carcinogens. We could learn something from the happiest people on earth!

8) Make the 99 weeks of unemployment insurance permanent so that it helps people who know when they plan to retire to count on additional income for 99 weeks once they do retire! There is no way federal unemployment benefits will not be extended in 2013 if the government knows what’s good for them. In addition to the extension, let’s provide another level of unemployment insurance that goes up to 300 weeks for those who’ve worked in humanity-helping fields such as teaching, no-profit, and personal finance blogging. For all those who like to criticize and complain without providing any content, you get nothing, and like it.

9) Raise federal income taxes on those making more than $2 million a year to 70% and implement a 10% per annum added wealth tax for those with net worth of greater than $100 million. It’ll do nothing to close our budget deficit gap, but it will make the 99.9% of us who don’t make such income feel better about ourselves. Imagine all the self-esteem boost we’ll all have! We should never take for granted our ability to impose our religion, our marriage unions, and our tax increases on others. Shit is fucked up and bullshit, but you are the government!

10) Pass a law imprisoning politicians who don’t do what they say on the campaign trail. Lying is wrong. We must hold our leaders to a higher standard. How else do we plan to teach our children about ethics if little Susie can simply say, “Well, the President said this and did the opposite, so why can’t I?” Oh, and before any new taxes are imposed, how about politicians reform their own pensions first? Yeah, baby yeah!

The Presidential Election Is Going To Be Wild

Obama, Joe, Mitt, Paul, all I ask is that you do the following 10 things above. If you do, I promise to vote for you on Tuesday, November 6, and look the other way on other egregious policies. Shoot me a private e-mail if you wish. And to everyone who doesn’t live in California, I thank you in advance for bailing us out just in case we spend way more than we earn again. Go USA!

Related: AOC Net Worth: Much Higher Than You Think

The Net Worth Of Presidential Candidates

Stock Market Performance By Democratic Or Republican President

Readers, what are your top wishes for our candidates?

Regards,

Sam

How To Trick An Employer Into Hiring You

Updated: by 40 Comments

Getting a job is harder nowadays. Let’s see how to trick an employer to hire you. After all, the job market is ultra competitive! Let me share a story.

“Sam, I absolutely hate my company and hate my job.  I can’t wait for some sucker to give me a big package so I can blow this joint and retire early.” January 17, 2011.

These are the words of an acquaintance who hit the jackpot when an upstart company in his industry decided to give him a two-year guarantee for 50% more a year. 

In the employer’s mind, they think they are getting an experienced person with a great attitude and a long term commitment of building their business for 5+ years. 

In my acquaintance’s mind, he’s jumping ship because he sees the dollar signs and plans to retire as soon as his two-year contract is over.

Hire You With Strategy

After 5-10 years of experience in whatever field you are in, there will inevitably be competing firms who will want to hire you away if you are a good performer. 

If you are a super high performer you will always have opportunities thrown at you. Employers will hire you no problem. Your biggest problem is deciding when is the right time to leave for the bigger bucks.

The sad part about the scenario above is that I’ve known the hiring manager for over a decade and think he is a brilliant business builder. 

Yet, even a brilliant man like him can get hoodwinked by a miserable guy with different intentions. How does this happen? Here’s how.

The dark pieces of you can sometimes shimmer.

Nobody is completely melancholy.  We all have things we get excited and happy about.  Those specific thoughts are what you have to concentrate on to pass a lie detector test.

Interviews are the only way for an employer to directly ascertain how you are as a person.  This is when you need to throw away all your disdain, and less than desirable attributes and start performing. 

You are the lead actor in a play, and your goal is to make your audience love you.  Don’t underestimate the importance of “looking the part”.  They do play huge parts in making good impressions.

You must smile and say sweet words of kindness.  You must pretend your motivations are pure, and that you are there for the long term.  All your intentions seem real, because you are thinking about things that will potentially make you happy if you get this job – a lot of money, an early retirement, and sticking it to your old firm.

Important positions need to be carefully vetted because once someone enters your organization, it is brutally difficult to get them out thanks to employment protection laws. 

As a result, you will go through multiple interviews over many months to make sure you are the right candidate.  You need to keep your game face on and replicate your happy enthusiasm consistently over and over again.  You must not break. You must make them hire you.

Even Ghengis Khan has allies.

The next vital step is having superb references.  Even if you are the most evil person on earth, you will at least have a handful of people who will sing your praise. 

Identify those people and feed them to your perspective employer.  Give your references a heads up that you have done so and be extra kind to them for at least a month before the process.  Take them out for lunch and help out anyway you can.

Five references is generally enough.  A lot of employers stop at three, so if you give them more, you will look like a credible person.

Sugar-coated donuts are unhealthy, but everybody still loves them.

You’ll undoubtedly have some weaknesses which are less than desirable with your prospective employer.  No matter, because you are smiling and demonstrating your fantastic fake enthusiasm about the hiring company.  You have implanted sugar coated donuts into the hiring manager’s head that you will be the perfect candidate for the job.

The interview process is exactly the time where you can over-promise on what you can do.  You make them salivate like Pavlov’s dog.  The more you promise them, the more they will want to pay you. 

Forget the sugar shaker, you bring out the industrial powder sugar machine that rains goodness 10 donuts at a time.  You know that once you are in, it’s too late.  You’ve got them by the balls because everything is in writing to hire you.

The more you think about waterfalls in a crowded place, the more you will need to pee.

People can’t help but follow the herd.  As soon as your prospective employer gets a whiff that someone else might be interested in hiring you, your stock will rocket to the top. 

You need to create that anxiety to hire you even if it might not be entirely true.  It’s easy to say have been approached by a competing firm, but nothing has transpired yet. 

Once your prospective employer hears that, they’ll start thinking about Niagara Falls baby!

Related post: How To Get A Job You Do NOT Deserve 

Also, check out, How To Get Revenge From An Employer Who Fired You! Ah, gotta love this pieces.

Underperformers Survive

You must master your own presence. Like an actor in a big Hollywood movie, you are able to turn on the charm once the cameras start rolling.  If you can do that, you will forever be employed because you’ll always be able to jump around. 

By the time your employer realizes they’ve made a mistake, it won’t matter because you’ve got that fat contract, or you’re already moving on to your next employer!

And when you want to leave your partner, make sure you negotiate a severance so you can leave with money in your pocket like I did. I ended up negotiated a severance in 2012 that paid for 6 YEARS of living expenses! It was the best gift ever as I sought to do something new.

Learn how to negotiate your severance by reading my book, How To Engineer Your Layoff: Make A Small Fortune By Saying Goodbye. The book is recently expanded to over 200 pages with new resources, strategies, and additional case studies thanks to tremendous reader feedback. Get your employer to give you a severance and learn how to get a new employer to hire you soon after.

Track Your Wealth For Free

Once you get an employer to hire you, optimize you finances. I recommend signing up for Personal Capital’s free financial tools so you can track your net worth, analyze your investment portfolios for excessive fees, and run your financials through their fantastic Retirement Planning Calculator.

Those who are on top of their finances build much greater wealth longer term than those who don’t. I’ve used Personal Capital since 2012. It’s the best free financial app out there to manage your money.

Planning for retirement after they hire you
Link up your accounts and see whether you’re on track to retirement in great shape or in poverty

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead: Good Or Bad?

Updated: by 34 Comments

Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, I hope the tens of thousands of Muslims who died at his hands and the families of the 3,000 people lost in the Twin Towers find closure. After 10 long years of searching, we finally got the bastard who was hiding just 90 miles away from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Bye-bye Osama Bin Laden

It is now a certainty that President Obama will be re-elected to his second term in 2012 after taking credit for the killing. We will have more big government spending and higher taxes. That’s not so bad given the economy continues to recover and people are finding jobs again.

The main question you should think about is whether the killing of Osama Bin Laden by US special forces is a good thing, or a bad thing in the long run? Osama Bin Laden has been the leader of the Al-Qaeda Terrorist Network for over two decades.

But, how much power has he had over the past 10 years given his need for secrecy? Undoubtedly hundreds of new Osamas are looking to take a higher leadership role and avenge is death. Expect retaliation.

Here’s To Peace

Unfortunately, the killing of Osama Bin Laden brings about a new wave of terror. We’ve closed one chapter, but many more chapters of terror are about to be written. Let’s be vigilant and aware. Here’s to peace, one less evil on Earth, and a thank you to our armed forces.

Readers, what are your thoughts on the killing of Bin Laden? Do you feel safer as an American traveling the world now? Will there be retaliation and a never ending cycle of hatred and suffering? How do we know if Osama is really dead?

Further Reading

Regards,

Sam