A new study shows that many people go into debt because they disregard that the money is not really theirs.

January 22, 2020 | by Drew Calvert

In 2019, U.S. consumer debt reached an all-time high, surpassing levels last seen during the 2008 financial crisis. Such debt takes many forms, including mortgages and student loans. But credit card debt alone exceeded $870 billion, and most of that is the result of discretionary spending. Why are so many Americans needlessly putting themselves in the hole?

The answer might lie in the psychological profile of the debtor, according to Stephanie M. Tully, an assistant professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business. In a recent paper, Tully and her coauthors found that not all consumers feel the same way about available financing.

On one side of the continuum are those who perceive borrowed money to be entirely their own, and thus are more willing to spend it freely. On the other side are those who perceive such funds as decidedly not their own. This latter group is more likely to see the money as belonging to the bank, and thus more conservative about how they spend the money.

Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad; Poor Dad, likes to say that, “Assets feed me, liabilities [debt] eat me.”

If you have to borrow money, it means you can’t afford what you want to buy. Even though, by the way, that’s not true, right? It’s not true. I

You can and probably should definitely use debt to buy real estate when it makes sense. Or, you can use debt when it makes sense to buy a business. Be smart with money such that money doesn’t leave me. And debt is a way for money to leave you and enslave you.

References:

1. Drew Calvert, That Money You Borrowed? Remember Who Owns It, Stanford Graduate School of Business, January 22, 2020. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/money-you-borrowed-remember-who-owns-it

Meta Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has great advice for young people; he encourages you to focus more on building relationships than being ‘objective focused’ on such things as wealth, career or a big house

Recently, Zuckerberg said that his initial ability to launch Facebook back in 2004 wasn’t because he dropped out of college or abandoned any of his other interests. Rather, the Meta CEO said, it was due to the personal connections he made and relationships he formed while he was still in school.

Who you spend time with in college, Zuckerberg said, is “the most important decision” any student can make on campus. “You become the people you surround yourself with,” he explained. “I think probably people are too, in general, objective focused, and maybe not focused enough on the connections and the people who they’re basically building relationships [with].”

Zuckerberg said that he still tries to prioritize relationships over objectives today. That applies especially when hiring at Meta, he said: When evaluating a job candidate, he imagines what it would be like to work for that person, instead of being their boss.

“I will only hire someone to work for me if I could see myself working for them,” he said.

Zuckerberg believes that If you befriend or work with people who share your values on a human level, you’ll be more likely to smoothly achieve your personal or work goals together.

It’s all about finding personal compatibility, he said, not unlike “choosing friends or a partner.”

Source:  Brian S. Wesbury, Chief Economist and Robert Stein, Deputy Chief Economist

Date: 8/7/2023

What would you do if you won the Mega Millions?  It’s now up to a record $1.55 billion!  We would start a not-for-profit to educate people not to play the lottery.  Why? Your odds of winning are 1 in 302.6 million…you are 70 times more likely to die in a shark attack than win this lottery.

But it’s even worse than that because only 50% of the proceeds of ticket sales go into the prize pool.  Half of your “investment” is gone the second you buy a ticket.  The other half is gone when they do the drawing, unless lightning strikes, which is unfair to lightning because you are more likely to get hit by real lightning.  In other words, it’s a total waste of money.

But people still play, and dream.  We think about this because government sponsors this crazy lottery at the same time it shirks its own fiduciary responsibilities.  Things have become so bad that last week, Fitch (a bond rating firm) downgraded US Treasury debt from AAA to AA+.

Fitch said they downgraded the US because of massive deficits, “fiscal deterioration” and “erosion of governance.”  Obviously, this downgrade, like the one by Standard & Poor’s in 2011 created political heat.  We hope it creates action.

Following the June 2, 2023 vote to suspend the debt ceiling for two years, the Treasury borrowed $1.1 trillion in just two months, pushing total debt from $31.5 trillion to $32.6 trillion.

Why has it borrowed so much?  Because tax revenue is falling rapidly at the same time spending is soaring.  During the first nine months of Fiscal Year 2023 (through June) revenue is down 11.0% versus the same period in FY2022, while spending is up 10.5%.  The deficit through June is $1.39 trillion, already above the 2022 full year deficit of $1.37 trillion.  With July, August and September still to come, we expect the deficit in FY2023 will be about $1.8 trillion.  It’d be much higher than $2 trillion, but it will be held down artificially because the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s illegal college loan relief plan.

Apparently, government has no desire to act responsibly.  During COVID, lockdowns – which we argued fiercely against – were forced on businesses and workers, and compensating them for the economic damage that ensued was necessary.  But what many don’t realize is that the money we borrowed from future generations and then used to pay workers was taxed.  The government artificially increased its revenue by taxing the very money it borrowed and handed out.  That’s why revenues are collapsing right now, the taxable handouts are over.

On the other side of the ledger, once government starts spending more, it rarely gives up the higher budgets.  Emergency spending becomes permanent spending.  It did so after the 2008/09 financial panic and it seems to be happening again today.  So, while the White House claimed victory in bringing the deficit down last year, this year it is moving in reverse.

The Federal Government is spending 25% of GDP, and never in history (no matter what tax rates existed) has the budget been balanced when spending is above 19.5% of GDP.  Why?  Because the bigger the government gets, the harder it is to grow, which reduces tax receipts.  With spending so high, budget deficits have become permanent.  And this will only get worse as entitlements for seniors (Social Security and Medicare) eat more and more of our GDP in the years ahead.

Which brings us to an important point.  Like playing the lottery, politicians know our fiscal path is unsustainable, but still spend.  And voters support them anyway.  Yes, you paid into entitlement programs, but your taxes were used to pay the prior generation of retirees.

Meanwhile, these programs distort our decisions.  Why carefully save resources for retirement when the government has promised to take care of us?  People spend more and save less; they take flyers on the lottery.  Economic growth is reduced from what it could be, and living standards grow more slowly.  It’s a vicious circle and the Fitch ratings cut is appropriate.

Both parties are responsible.  And to fix it, both parties need to be involved.  We can “Fitch” about “governance” all we want, but the politicians who use every tool they can to reduce spending are at least trying to fix things.  Someone may get lucky and win the lottery, but fixing our budget fiasco will take more than luck.  Nothing should be off the table.  It’s time to cut spending, before it’s too late

August 7 is National Purple Heart Day, honoring the men and women who have been wounded or killed while serving our country.

Approximately 1.8 million Purple Hearts have been awarded to combat-wounded veterans over the years, the Disabled Veterans National Foundation reports.

The Purple Heart medal is bestowed on those service members who were wounded or killed in service to their country. In short, they bled for America.

Please take some time to reflect on their sacrifice.

8 Deep Philosophy Quotes on Life & Mindset

1. pic.twitter.com/XkeK6JlsNf

— Best of Philosophy (@BotPhilosophyQ) June 9, 2023

A philosophy professor once stood up before his class with a large empty mayonnaise jar. He filled the jar to the top with large rocks and asked his students if the jar was full.

His students all agreed the jar was full.

He then added small pebbles to the jar, and gave the jar a bit of a shake so the pebbles could disperse themselves among the larger rocks. Then he asked again, “Is the jar full now?”

The students agreed that the jar was still full.

The professor then poured sand into the jar to fill up all the remaining empty space.

The students then agreed again that the jar was full.

The Metaphor:

In this story, the jar represents your life and the rocks, pebbles, and sand are the things that fill up your life.

The rocks represent the most important projects and things you have going on, such as spending time with your family and maintaining proper health. This means that if the pebbles and the sand were lost, the jar would still be full and your life would still have meaning.

The pebbles represent the things in your life that matter, but that you could live without.

The pebbles are certainly things that give your life meaning (such as your job, house, hobbies, and friendships), but they are not critical for you to have a meaningful life.

These things often come and go, and are not permanent or essential to your overall well-being.

Finally, the sand represents the remaining filler things in your life, and material possessions. This could be small things such as watching television, browsing through your favorite social media site, or running errands.

These things don’t mean much to your life as a whole, and are likely only done to waste time or get small tasks accomplished.

The Moral:

The metaphor here is that if you start with putting sand into the jar, you will not have room for rocks or pebbles.

This holds true with the things you let into your life. If you spend all of your time on the small and insignificant things, you will run out of room for the things that are actually important.

In order to have a more effective and efficient life, pay attention to the “rocks,” because they are critical to your long-term well-being.

Source:  https://www.developgoodhabits.com/inspirational-stories/

Riches are visible; Wealth is invisible!

The biggest barrier to becoming wealthy for most people is living like you’re rich before you are. Why? Because all that unnecessary discretionary spending — to appear rich — crowds out the necessary saving and investing over the long-term that will enable you to be wealthy someday.

“To make money in stocks, you must have the vision to see them, the courage to buy them, and the patience to hold them.” ~ George Baker

The rarest of the three investing virtues is patience, according to Thomas Phelps.

Thomas Phelps was 70 years young when his book “100 to 1 in the Stock Market” was published. Phelps spent over 40 years in the investing world working as a private investor, a columnist, an analyst, and a financial advisor.

Mr. Phelps went back in history and found that from 1932 to 1971, there were over 350 stocks in which you could have turned $1 into more than $100. He said, “The reason that more people don’t make 10,000% on their money is that they don’t set their goals high enough!”

He  shared four things an investor should look for when investing their money in order to increase their wealth 100-fold.

1. Invest in smaller companies that can sustainably grow their earnings at a fast pace for a long time.

2. Invest in relatively unknown businesses. Phelps writes, “Popular growth stocks may keep on growing, but too often one has to pay for expected growth, too many years in advance.”

3. Invest in companies with a strong, progressive, research-minded management team

4. Buy companies that have a unique product that can do a job better, faster, or cheaper than their competitors or provide a new service with prospects of long-continued sales increases in the future.

This often leads investors to microcaps because they meet many of Phelps’ four requirements:

They are generally early-stage small businesses, relatively unknown, and their values are between $50 and $300 million.

One of Phelps’ biggest takeaways from his study was the importance of simply never selling.

To achieve 100X returns, you need to find companies that are compounding capital rapidly and hold them for a very long time.

This eliminates a big wealth killer: capital gains taxes.

Recognize this guy?

His name is Thomas Phelps, and he wrote a classic book in 1972 called 100 to 1 in the Stock Market.

His ideas inspired Chris Mayer to write 100 Baggers.

Here’s what YOU need to know about Phelps and his strategy to find 100 baggers: 🧵⬇️ pic.twitter.com/A8XK2LXfU5

— We Study Markets (@WSM_TIP) June 14, 2023

Sometime the thing that is holding you back is all in your mind.

Gary Keller, founder of Keller Williams Reality said the following:

It’s Graduation Season! Here is what I would I tell my 18 year old self. Parents, this goes for you too.

1. Breathe. No matter what happens. Just make sure you always breathe and know you’re ok.
2. Love. No matter what happens. Just lead with love and always know that you are loved.
3. People. No matter what happens. Just make time for the people who matter the most.
4. Charity. No matter what happens. Just be charitable and go find a charity and get involved.
5. Hit it. No matter what happens. Pick a target and go for it with everything you’ve got.
6. Never ever give up. No matter what happens. When you fall down simply get up and move.
7. Believe in yourself. No matter what happens. Always believe in yourself, believe you can do all things through Him who strengthens you, and always be grateful. 

Life is not about winning or accumulating wealth. It’s about your relationships, your health, your believing in yourself, your always being grateful, your fighting and never giving up.

https://twitter.com/valuestockgeek/status/1684154374317133826?s=46&t=mF_tsrQnjgviyl62GYfJjw

Success is not just about what you are achieving, but who you are becoming.

Are you spending your whole day pursuing things, or are you becoming something?

At the end of each day, take a moment to reflect on the moments that made you smile, the connections you made, the lessons you learnt, the positive impact you had on others.

It is in the small moments that you often find the greatest joys, it’s the little things that often make the biggest difference.

Each day, ask yourself if you lived authentically, if you were true to your values, and if you took steps towards your dreams, no matter how little.

As the night draws near, you may not have achieved all that you set out to do, but remember, the true measure of success lies in living a life that is aligned with your purpose and that brings you a deep sense of fulfillment.

It’s not enough to only get things done, always have the courage to ask yourself, “How am I living?”