Baby boomers, please congratulate my husband - he’s officially retiring this day. Well, to be exact, he’s leaving the full-time job he’s been in since 1980, leaving behind many friends and a lot of very productive work.

But he’s not going to be sitting around the house - God forbid! He has some part-time opportunities and plenty of projects to do here at home, including finishing the new garage and some hobbies he’s been wanting to pursue. And he wants to spend more time with the grandkids. He’ll be 62 in October, so he’s not really retiring early. Or is he?

He’s uncommon because he is getting an actual PENSION. My retirement expert tells me over 70% of baby boomers will not have a pension to count on, so they will have to manage their 401K’s, IRA, etc.

Does all of this sound familiar? When are you thinking of giving up that full-time job? I’m ready to join him.

Tags: baby boomers, retirement, retirement planning

Share This

Share This

Share This

My final question for Customer Service Week: Do you talk with customers about your personal life?

In some professions, you’ve little opportunity to talk to customers about yourself. You’re busy doing the work or sending off the product. But in many professions, you interact with customers, and there is plenty of time to speak about yourself. But should you?

Two schools of thought on this one:

School A: You should remain focused on the business, on the customer, giving the ideal service possible.  Chatting about yourself not only reveals information that’s personal and not appropriate, it also distracts from your main purpose of business.

School B: Providing some personal information works to your advantage, because the customer sees you as a “Real Person” rather than a business person.  It feeds into the “know/like/trust” phenomenon:  When people get to know and like you, they trust you.  If you want to establish a long-term relationship with customers, you must give them information about you/your family/your hobbies, etc., so they get to know you, like you, and trust you.

OK, so what do you think?  Vote on my POLL.  Let me know.

Share This

Share This

Share This

This is an easy one for me.  My epiphany, my moment of realization, came from reading The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. 

The concept is simple:  Work ON your business as if you were going to duplicate it, not IN your business, just “doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it.” In other words, figure out the system that will make your business work, so you can rest and do what you do best.

I love this concept.  It makes intuitive sense to me and I love systems (I’m an organizer and planner by nature).  So starting out a business with a plan is simple for me.

My “day job” is teaching people how to begin their businesses, and I always tell them to read The E-Myth, so they can learn how to begin it right.  Some do, some don’t, but at least they get the general idea.

If you’re a baby boomer considering starting a business, this is the only book you’ll need.  Seriously.

Tags: baby boomers, business opportunities, Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited

Share This

Share This

Share This

Pimp Your Work

Happy Friday, readers! Here’s our discussion for the week:

Would you do your job even if you weren’t paid to do it? If not, are there any aspects of your job that you would do without pay?

So, readers: share your feelings about whether you’d do your work even without compensation. Leave a note at the comments section.

Image by Celine Roque from Blue Rabbit Media

Share This

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Estates

Another tremendously pricey property has gone on the market in the Hamptons. Braden Keil’s Gimme Shelter column in the NY Post reported on today’s estate, a 12-bedroom home that is almost 18,000 square feet. The property is owned by Juergen Friedrich, who ran the European division of Esprit sportswear and has spent a great deal of money updating the home, which was built in 1902 and designed by Grosvenor Atterbury. The country home sits on 9.11 acres that include old trees, flowering shrubs, evergreen perimeters, rose gardens. indoor pool, outdoor pool with pavilion, tennis court, paddle court, gymnasium, carriage home and a four-car garage. At almost 3,000 square feet, the master bedroom suite is larger than many homes. What might hurt it on the real estate market is that it is not on the water. But if you can live without that, it’s a pretty impressive property. It is listed at $67.5 million.

%Gallery-26266%

Continue reading Southampton Sprawl, Estate of the Day

Read

Share This

Share This

Grim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy - Boston Globe
CHICAGO - The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a say senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can’t afford to live anywhere

SNAPSHOT-Indian stocks, gold, bonds, rupee, money at 3.10 p.m. - Reuters India
The 30-share BSE index down 4.07 percent at 13,834.23 points and the 50-share NSE index down 4.02 percent at 4,142.25 points, tracking weak Asian markets as global oil prices stayed close to record levels hit in the previous session and as 13-year

Playstation 3 a $3.3 bln loser for Sony - Xinhua News Agency
BEIJING, June 27 (Xinhuanet) — Playstation 3 has been a roughly 3.3 billion U.S. dollar loss for Sony Corp. since its launch last year, according to the company’s fiscal 2008 annual report. That breaks down to 2.16 billion dollars in 2007, and a 1

Aussies lose $980m in scams and fraud - News.com.au
PERSONAL fraud costs Australians nearly $1 billion a year, according to figures released by the Australian Agency of Statistics (ABS). The survey found 806,000 people, or five per cent of the population, had been the victim of at least one type of

TPG, KKR Join Private Equity Push to Money Managers (Update1) - Bloomberg
June 27 (Bloomberg) — TPG Inc. and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. are among private equity firms capitalizing on the credit crunch to invest in money managers, a trend that might accelerate as more cash-strapped companies exit the business. American

Emergency funds allocated to get donation trucks to food banks - Seattle Times
As food banks around the state struggle with rising fuel costs and higher demand, Gov. Christine Gregoire announced Thursday she would immediately allocate $200,000 from her emergency fund to help the organizations pay for gasoline. Trucking food

Supermarkets to battle on prices - BBC News
Now Asda is selling 10 staple items such as bread and eggs for 50p over the weekend, and Tesco states it will cut the cost of 3,000 items on Monday. Analyst Henk Potts, of Barclays Wealth, told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Breakfast programme that the

Drug watchdog ’set for new money’ - BBC News
The chairman of the NHS drug watchdog has signalled his organisation is about to get a significant amount of government money to expand its work. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) rules on which treatments should be

Prosecutors held back on using Obama’s name - Chicago Sun-Times
Barack Obama’s name could have been invoked more at the corruption trial of his former fund-raiser Tony Rezko. But it appears prosecutors opted against bringing Obama into the mix during the two-month trial. Newly unsealed documents show that

China’s reserves hit $1.8 trillion - MSN MoneyCentral
BEIJING (AP) - China’s foreign reserves, already the world’s largest, rose to $1.8 trillion at the end of May but growth slowed, a government newspaper reported Friday. The reserves grew by $40.3 billion in Might, well below the April increase of $75

Share This

Share This