As you may have noticed, I have been tinkering around with the look and organization of this blog recently as I thought it was time to give it a little update as I have been using the same format for over two years now. I feel the current direction will make it easier for people to read and locate information. I couldn’t really think of an ideal photo at the moment for the banner, so I just threw in a picture of the Vancouver area. I’ll also probably create a top posts link on the most popular blog posts which seem to have been read the most. Just bare with me if you see any quirks as I am modifying and implementing new things as we speak.

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I recently just read about this phone scam that has been going around here where people are pretending to be technicians of your local phone company who are doing a routine test. They are basically tricking callers into pressing “90#” during the call which grants the scammer access to do things like calling long distance with your phone line. Business customers are obviously very vulnerable if its staff members are not aware of this. Here is an official news release from Telus about the matter:

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Simple steps will head-off telephone scam

Business customers need to protect themselves as decades-old scam resurfaces

TELUS is reminding its customers to take some simple steps to protect themselves from an old phone scam that has resurged in recent weeks. A number of residential and business customers have reported receiving calls from someone posing as a TELUS technician and asking them to dial 90# to give them access to an outside line for repair work.

TELUS technicians would never make such calls the callers are scam artists.

This is just one variant of the scam. In other cases the caller will tell you that you have won a prize and must dial 9 to claim it. Other variants will see the con artist asking to be transferred to local 9011.

Residential customers are not at risk from any variant of this scam and should simply hang up their phone. However, business customers with a commercial switchboard requiring employees to dial 9 to gain an outside line are at risk. Should a scam artist convince an employee to dial 9, 90# or 9011 the scam artist may gain access to an outside line and call overseas at the businesses’ expense.

To protect themselves, businesses should:

-Implement a policy that no-one will transfer an unknown caller to an outside line. Encourage switchboard operators to challenge any suspicious calls.

-Put a policy in place that if a caller requests an outside line the switchboard operator advise them of the no-transfer policy and ask for their name and phone number, offering to call them back to ensure their legitimacy before transferring the call. Scammers will usually hang up.

-Program their switches to block all overseas calls if the operation does not require them.

The con artists can be very convincing, often threatening to report a switchboard operator for not transferring them or claiming they are a personal friend of a company executive and will get the employee fired.

In some cases when these con artists realize they have called a residential line and the recipient has not hung up, they will attempt to switch to a different scam and advise the homeowner that they have won a prize and try to convince them to hand over credit card numbers or other information. If someone you don’t know asks for personal or financial information over the phone they may be trying to scam you hang up.
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So, apparently the TV show Deal or no Deal is coming to Canada as I have been seeing more advertisements for it here. The applications are now closed for people wanting to be contestants, but they are now apparently going on a talent search to find models for the show and the application process will begin on around December 11. I guess there are probably a lot of hopefuls out there who would want to do that. Just for fun, I played the online version of the game that was on the site which was suppose to give potential game applicants a taste of being on the show and I guess I must be a pretty lucky person as I actually got the million. Here is a screenshot:

I’ve actually never met or know anyone personally in real life that has been on a game show let alone win big at it. It must be one of the more fun ways to make money.

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I was just reading this article on Yahoo’s news site that talked about how it is complex in trying to determine exactly how money creates happiness for people. The article is located here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061126/ap_on_bi_ge/be_happy_money .

I personally think articles like these are a bit over the top as it seems like people are simply trying to over analyze details that should be fairly straight forward. Here are some excerpts from the article:
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“They noted that in one study, people with household incomes of $90,000 or more were only slightly more likely to call themselves “very happy” overall than were people from households making $50,000 to $89,999. The rates were 43 percent versus 42 percent, respectively. (Members of the high-income group were almost twice as likely to call themselves “very happy” as people from households with incomes below $20,000.)”

“There is still another twist to the money-happiness story. Even though people who make $150,000 are considerably happier than those who make $40,000, it’s not clear why, says psychologist Richard E. Lucas of Michigan State University.

Does money make you happier? Or does being happier in the first place allow you to earn more money later, maybe by way of greater creativity or energy? Or does some other factor produce both money and happiness? There’s evidence for all three interpretations, Lucas says.”
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My personal answer would be that it’s not so much the money in general that could make a person happy, but rather with the way the economy works having a lot of money allows more options for one to create an ideal environment that would make them happy as they would in a sense have less worries and more freedom to do what they want. I would say it comes down to lifestyle. For example, in the article they mentioned how there was a small gap between people making $90,000 a year versus people making $50,000 to $89,999 a year who would consider themselves as very happy. The article kind of made it sound like it was a very complex thing to answer.

Usually people who make more money tend to spend it on more expensive and luxuries things and once you add everything up they are really on the same boat as someone who is similar that makes less. I kind of dived into this a bit on my spending what you have post awhile back. For example, let’s say we are going to get a haircut. The $90,000 person might spend like $45 a haircut for a specific hair stylist and the $50,000 person may spend say $25 a haircut that suits him just as well. In this case, it doesn’t really matter how much the person made as they both got something that gave them equal satisfaction according to their preference and it kind of worked out the same in terms of their income to spending habit ratio. On the other hand, there could be a guy that makes only $25,000 a year who likes to shave his head bald which aside from purchasing a shaver costs him nothing which makes him feel even better over all than the two people above. To me, it just seems like it doesn’t have to be as complicated as the article makes it out to be.

Once again, I personally think it is about obtaining a certain lifestyle that makes a person happy and obviously everyone’s definition of that is different. I personally just see money as a resource that can help you to achieve that lifestyle and having a lot of money by itself doesn’t give you happiness.

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When I first decided to read Why We Want You To Be Rich, as mentioned it was more out of curiosity and wanting to try something new as I don’t normally read books about getting rich as in my opinion it’s all about taking action and reading a hundred books about making money won’t necessarily be the answer to one’s financial woes. Since a lot of people asked me about these types of things I figured why not? It was an interesting experience too having to blog about each chapter right after reading it. I guess the bottom line in reading a book like this that everyone is wondering is whether or not one can really learn how to become rich by reading the book.

My initial thoughts before reading the book was that it was going to basically contain information on the various things that Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump have done to become wealthy and the types of opportunities that you can take advantage of today. In a more skeptical view, I was also prepared to read a book that contained a lot of indirect advertisements for both of their company and services.

Very early into the book, it became apparent that the direction of the book wasn’t intended to tell people what to do to become rich, but rather why you would want to be financially independent without the aid of say money from the government. There were many interesting stories and perspectives in regards to the issues around us and for myself I found a lot of the perspectives on what they feel makes a person successful to be true.

While reading through the book, it was kind of disappointing that it felt like the entire book was basically written by Robert Kiyosaki with Donald Trump basically agreeing with his points and then throwing in his own comments. While I never read Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad books, it also felt like a lot of the details in this book were modified information taken from that book as he would frequently cross reference to it. Honestly too, a lot of the main points of the book such as the importance of financial literacy seems like it could have been done with maybe only ten chapters as it consistently seemed like points were simply being reiterated.

For the most part, I didn’t really learn anything new in terms of what to do and how you should think when it comes to business and money. The ironic thing is because of that it made me enjoy the book more than I normally would have compared to if I was someone who was struggling to get by financially. The reason for this is that a lot of the points they say hits close to home for me as it’s true in terms of the type of mentality and commitment one needs to have in order to be successful. It’s kind of like saying if you were involved in a relationship with someone that turned out to be a complete mismatch, watching a show about something similar will probably be more entertaining for you as you can personally relate to what’s happening and being said.

I would say the book is definitely not so much about what to do in regards to specific advice and direction to make things happen for yourself, but rather it is more like a motivational book that tries to convince you on why it is better for you to take control of your own life. I personally see this book with three different perspectives depending on one’s experience and personality:

1) Established Entrepreneur – This book is a reminder on the basic principles and foundation on what needs to be done to be successful. You have probably experienced most of what is said in the book and so the information is simply re-worded and re-told based around someone else’s experience in what is most likely a different industry than what you are in. At the same time, it can be interesting and entertaining to read about how other’s think when it comes to business and the economy.

2) Person Wanting To Find Specific Ways To Get Rich – There is a lot of content but very little substance on actual ways to get you started in becoming financially independent. There is a constant barrage of advertisements about Robert Kiyosaki’s business and in the end it seems like the only thing you can do is read more books about the subject matter. After continuously reading reiterated points on why it is bad to be poor and how successful the two authors are, you will probably leave with a negative view of the book and will probably conclude to something along the lines of the only reason they wrote the book was ultimately to make themselves richer.

3) A Complete Newbie – Reading the book will probably open your mind on a lot of topics such as learning how to leverage your time and money. The book feels like a decent starter in terms of warming up your way of thinking to help prepare you in learning more on how to be successful in business and financial management. While the advice in the book can sound very cliché, nonetheless it holds true in regards to what successful people do.

Overall, I found the book to be entertaining while being able to learn different ways of interpreting similar beliefs when it comes to business and finance. In some ways, the fact that I didn’t really learn anything new made me feel a little cheated as I know that I don’t know everything there is to know about business and money. I always like to learn new things and it would have been great to walk out with at least one new point that I could incorporate into my lifestyle. I did have fun blogging about it though and I’m still kind of amazed that I was actually able to do it everyday until I finished it despite having a lot of other things to do as well. The funny thing too was that I actually blogged about a lot of the points addressed in the book which makes me wonder if I should find someone to write a book with too to hopefully help inspire people. That would be fun I think. But, that will be for another time maybe.

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