Archive for March, 2008
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A year and a half ago I was shopping for my first car ever. I never needed one until then because I live in New York City and parking is impossible and public transportation is faster and more convenient than driving. For the few times I needed to drive somewhere, I would rent a car. When my second child was on her way, I decided that the convenience of having a car finally outweighed the inconvenience of having one in the city.
Since it was my first time buying a car, I fell for so many of the car salesmen tricks such as the bait and switch the crossing out the price so it looks like I was saving a lot of money, the rare find in the middle of the used car lot, the works. It wasn’t that I really fell for them, it was more that I was just experiencing it for the first time.
One of the tricks that they play is by telling you that you will get a certain rate for financing and your monthly payments will be x dollars if you choose this car. When you are all excited, they give you the keys, tell you to sit in “your” new car and congratulate you on the purchase. They then get you to sign the contract and give a deposit. Once this is done, the salesman’s job is pretty much over. He hands you over to the financing department to finalize everything and then “you can drive off the lot in your new car”.
The financing department likes to make you wait a long time so that when you finally see them, you are tired and just want to get it over with and drive home. They made me wait for 4 hours until the dealership was closing up and then called me in and said “I know we’re both tired and want to go home to our families so let’s just get this over with”. They handed me a whole bunch of forms to sign and then I can drive home. I asked what my monthly payments would be and they tried pushing it off and telling me not to worry because I had good credit. I demanded to see my monthly payments and I said that I wouldn’t sign anything until I did. They then gave me this crazy high number that I couldn’t believe. They were giving me 12.9% financing when I was promised 4.3%. The person I was dealing told me “I don’t know who told you that but this is what it is”.
I already gave my $500 deposit, I wasted hours of my time and I was really tired. I decided to cut my losses and tell the guy to jump in a lake. As I walked out of the office and then the dealership, the finance guy, the salesman and the manager chased after me begging me not to leave. They started lowering the financing as we were walking, they even dropped the price of the car $1000. I got on the subway home completely frustrated and upset since I wasted so much time but more because I expected to be driving home that night.
Unfortunately, many people in that position just give up and say to themselves “I already invested the time and deposit, I should just go through with it”. I cut my losses and it was the best thing I could have done. I can never get the time wasted back but I learned a lot of lessons from that day that are as precious as the time spent. The dealership finally gave me back my deposit after weeks of calling my credit card company, the dealership, the Better Business Bureau and other complaint centers.
2 weeks later I bought the newer version of the car I was looking at fully loaded for less than I would have paid at the first place with the financing. I bought that car because it was in the showroom at the end of the month in a color that was not so popular and I got a really good deal on it.
In life there are many times when you invest in something, be it a business, investment, a big purchase or gambling, and you just need to cut your loss because if you don’t, you will end up losing more. Unfortunately, the natural reaction is to hold on and pray or hope for the best which doesn’t usually end well.
Lucky people set limits before they have to cut their losses. When they gamble, they decide the amount of money they will win or lose before they leave so that they don’t keep trying to make more and lose it all or make the money back that they lost. When buying stocks, lucky people set up stops so that if the stock goes the wrong way, their loss will be a minimum. Don’t think that just because you already invested something that you have to hold on. Lucky people cut their losses and move onto bigger and better things.
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March 27 2008 | Advice and Increase Luck | 1 Comment »
Second opinions are more than just for doctors or auto mechanics. You can ask a second opinion from any company or organization in almost any situation. When calling an airline, cable or phone company or any other company, many times you are treated based on the mood the representative that you are talking to is in. If you feel that you are not getting the service you expect, ask to speak to a different representative. If that doesn’t work, you can always hang up and call right back. The chances of you getting the same person are usually pretty slim.
Here are two stories that happened to me recently where a second opinion helped me out:
Glasses Shopping – I was shopping for a new pair of prescription glasses when I was in Atlanta a few months ago when I found a pair that I was interested in. I gave in my prescription and asked for the price. They told me that it would be $219 with the lenses. When I went to pay, I asked if there were any specials going on that I could take advantage of. The sales woman pulled out a sheet of paper with dozens of sales on it and we went through the whole list to see if I qualified for any of them. I don’t remember what the sale was that I qualified for but I do remember that I paid $139 for my glasses in the end.
Refund at American Airlines – I just had to cancel airline tickets for my family that we will not be using because the conference I was going to got cancelled. I called up American Airlines yesterday and asked them what I can do about it. The representative told me that she could cancel the tickets for me but would charge me $100 per ticket to cancel. I decided to wait a day to make sure that my conference was for sure not happening. When I called back today, I spoke to a different representative who cancelled my tickets but only charged me a fraction of the price to cancel my son’s ticket since he is a child.
Every once in a while you will find someone in a good mood who is willing to help you and go the extra mile for you. Sometimes employees have the authority to wave charges and will do that for you if they feel like it. When I buy something online, I look at a price comparison website such as www.pricegrabber.com, find the lowest price and then go to that store, sometime even call them, to see if I can get a better deal. It never hurts to ask for a second opinion or if there are any sales or promotions going on. If you don’t ask, you won’t get lucky.
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March 26 2008 | Advice | No Comments »
READ THIS:
To reach a greater audience and help more people all over the world get lucky, I am starting the first Blog Carnival on Luck and Getting Lucky. This carnival will be open for submissions from anyone who would like to write an article about luck. I hope to have this carnival on a regular basis, at least once a month to start and then possibly more often as the audience and demand grow.
The first edition will be about luck in general. It can include anything about getting lucky, how to increase your luck or how to think like a lucky person. Future editions will be narrowed down to more specific topics. I am open for suggestions.
For all of you who just scrolled down, here is the gist of it.
What: “Luck of the Draw”, a blog carnival all about luck.
Who: Anyone who wants to submit an article about luck.
Where: The carnival will be hosted right here on Get Lucky
When: The first edition will be published on April 24, 2008. Submissions are due on April 22, 2008 by midnight.
Why: I believe that the rest of the world deserves to get lucky and that this carnival can spread the luck to wider audiences.
How: Submit articles to http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_3877.html. If you are having trouble, email me.
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March 25 2008 | Contests | No Comments »
A big part of the American dream is to own a nice house to live in and raise your family. I remember learning in college how the United States made home ownership possible for the average American by building a circle of money changing hands from the Federal Reserve to banks to people back to banks and so on. It’s great that the country is able to do this and help people live the dream but people have to realize that as Spiderman always says (my son’s favorite hero), “with great power, comes great responsibility”. Citizens should take advantage of these possibilities but they should not get greedy.
As everyone who has been paying attention over the last few years knows, there have been a record amount of foreclosures around the United States in recent months. There are many reasons for this but one of the reasons that was so predictable was people maxing out everything they had to buy more than they could afford. Many people that were foreclosed out of their homes figured out that maximum amount of money that they could spend per month at their current situation and made that number fit into the purchase of their new home. They took out adjustable rate mortgages that they hoped would never go up, or interest only loans and tried not to think about the future or ever paying the principle.
Maxing yourself out is too risky because as we unfortunately have seen too much of, is rates changing, property prices dropping, people losing their incomes and the slight changes could put people out of their homes.
I am suggesting to always keep a cushion between what you can afford and what you spend. When looking for a house, figure out what you can afford in the worst case scenario with a high interest rate and the most expensive mortgage. Then look for a house in that price range and try and get the best terms possible. That way if times change, you will be able to afford the difference. Also, just as important is to always have money in your savings account for a rainy day. You never know when you will need it.
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March 24 2008 | Advice | No Comments »
When starting a business, most people think that they need to think of an idea that has never been done before and will blow the world out of the water. They think that unless you have something that has never been done before you will not be successful. I am telling you that this is not the case.
The world is a really big place and there is room for competition and more of what already exists. If you start a business from scratch based on an idea that has never been done before, you may be very successful but you also may fail miserably. Maybe the world is not ready for your idea and maybe they just don’t need it or understand it.
You will not find a McDonald’s franchise open up and go out of business. There are over 31,000 successful McDonald’s operated restaurants in the world and if you opened another in a decent location, you’ll have a successful business of your own as well. McDonald’s has a system that works and will continue to work at each new location. My only question is how they kept track of the 99 billion people served.
It is similar when starting a blog such as this one. When I decided to start this blog, I didn’t try and come up with all sorts of features on the site that have never been heard of. I looked at other blogs and tried to figure out what works for other people and what I can use for my own site. Recently I added a few new features that you can take advantage of. My favorite is the related articles that now appear at the bottom of each article I post. If people find an article or topic interesting, it allows them to read more about that topic. My site is fairly new so I don’t have stock piles of articles on each subject yet but I will get there.
New ideas are great and I encourage you to keep coming up with great ideas but what I am saying is that with some hard work, you can get lucky and be successful by following a formula that has already been proven to work.
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March 20 2008 | Advice and Start a Biz | No Comments »
Last week I was riding the Long Island Rail Road on the way to a meeting and I noticed a great ad for CareerBuilder.com. It said “Dreaming has a low ROI” (Return On Investment) . I thought this was genius since that is what most people do. Dreaming is great and is exceptionally easy to do but in the end it doesn’t get you anywhere. You may have a nice warm feeling inside for a few minutes but that is about all you can squeeze out of a dream.
To get the return on your investment from dreaming, you need to put your dream into action and go for it. In the case of CareerBuilder.com, they are telling you that you can dream all you want about a better job, salary, boss, location, but without taking the first step, which is creating a CareerBuilder.com account and uploading your resume, you will never realize any of your dreams.
This can go for anything in life. If you are dreaming of something better, whether it is starting a business, retiring young or even taking that dream vacation, you must create a plan and put it to work. To start a business, you can start by writing a business plan and figuring out if your business is feasible and if it will be profitable. Then you can start following your new blueprint. The better the plan, the easier it will be to get going.
To retire young, start figuring out what you need to retire such as how much money you will need to live off of and for approximately how many years. Then figure out how you can get to that point. Once again, you can create a plan which may include getting debt free, saving money and investing.
The same goes for that dream vacation or anything else your heart desires. Make a plan of how you are going to realize your goal and jump on it. If you don’t, your life is but a dream.
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March 18 2008 | Advice and Increase Luck | No Comments »
Being that it is St. Patrick’s day today, I decided to look into a little bit of the origins of the day. Since this blog is all about luck and getting lucky, I decided to focus on the well known phrase “the luck of the Irish”.
The most common picture that comes to mind when you think of St. Patrick’s Day and the Irish is a little green leprechaun with a four leaf clover that brings him luck. If you’ve been reading my blog, you will know that I don’t believe in lucky charms. I believe that people make their own luck and that it is possible for anyone to get lucky if they try.
St. Patrick used the three leaf clover also known as a shamrock to describe the trinity of the Christian belief. St. Patrick’s Flocks who were all descendants of Celts and Vikings were strong believers in the Druid religion of Magic and many gods. When they found a four leaf clover, they took it as a sign that the religions melted together and now they were just one. The Irish Soldiers who were fighting in the British army started wearing Shamrocks on their clothes as a magic protection against being killed in battle. This became known as “wearing the green”.
The Luck of the Irish
Very few of the Irish men who fought for the British Army were killed and they coined the phrase “the luck of the Irish”. Some people thought it was the Shamrock that brought them luck but if you think about it, there is a very good reason that these soldiers had a better success rate. They were all decedents of Celts and Vikings who were known as great fighters. These soldiers “Got Lucky” in War because they were good at what they were doing.
If you want you can believe in lucky charms and carry around your lucky four leaf clover but the point is that to get lucky, you have to be good at what you are doing. When several people compete for something, be it a job, a competition or anything else, it is usually the best person who wins. Getting lucky means working hard to be the best.
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March 17 2008 | Increase Luck | No Comments »
I love Dilbert Comics… Unfortunately, Tech Support like this is way too common.
This morning I got an email telling me that my office’s server for our email and website was at 90% capacity and that it will stop working when it reaches 100%. I didn’t think that the server would fill up in a day but just to be on the safe side and save my company from losing a lot of business, time and money, I jumped to clear up the server.
I have been overloaded with work lately and I don’t have much time to sit around and figure out exactly what to do to clear up some space without deleting anything important, so I called my best friend, Technical Support. They walked me through it in a few minutes and now I know exactly how to deal with this problem in the future.
When I started working at my company, there was no one there that knew anything about computers, hosting or anything else technical so I took it upon myself to learn how to manage our websites and servers. It turned out that my office was using a company for hosting that was no longer in existence but had some sort of deal that they would still supply the minimum amount of service needed to keep their current clients who were to ignorant to switch, online.
When I found that out, I started calling different hosting companies to find the best deal for my company. I chose the company that we are using for 2 reasons, one, they cost a third of the price of what my company was paying at the time and two, because they were the most friendly and had the best technical support I was able to find.
They walked me through transferring all of our domains and information to their servers and pretty much taught me almost everything I needed to know to be my company’s admin. What they taught me became the foundation of my technical knowledge and led to me starting a few websites of my own.
When looking for a new technical service, I suggest always going for the company with the best technical support because if you ever have a problem, their help will be worth multiple times the savings you got for going with another provider.
The same goes for customer service. I like to use American Express credit cards because they have the best customer service I have ever seen for a credit card. When I call them up, they pick up within a ring or two. It takes about 30 minutes to get through to my MasterCard.
I am sure some companies are like this.
Good Customer and Technical Support will improve your Luckortunity by saving you more time than you can ever imagine.
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March 14 2008 | Advice | 4 Comments »
I have always been somewhat conscious of my weight. I remember when I was 80 lbs. and I would hold down on the counter while weighing myself to add on some weight and make me feel a little bigger. It wasn’t long after that when I hit 100 lbs. I gained a lot of weight that year. In high school and college I played regular competitive sports and always kept at my ideal weight. In high school while playing basketball I didn’t have to do much work since I was a teenager with a fast metabolism who played ball all day long. In college, I wrestled and had to keep my weight exactly at my weight class limit. When I graduated, the activity slowed down considerably and over the last few years, I have packed on close to 50 pounds. It seems like a lot but when I was wrestling, I was at 7% body fat which is way below normal for the average person.
I finally got fed up 2 weeks ago when I had trouble getting into my pants. I looked around for a diet, started it up and I am glad to say that I have already lost over 8 lbs. If you are interested in the diet, you can find it on Tim Ferris’s blog. For those of you who are interested, in college i wrestled in the 165 and 174 weight classes and since graduation, i have gone up as high as 220. When I started the diet, I was 216 and I am currently about 207.
I came to the realization that dieting can be easy. Here are some of the things I have learned that can make your diet easier for you:
- If you love to eat, pick a diet that allows you to eat a lot. I chose a diet that allows me to eat 4 large meals each day and even have some snacks in between if I am hungry. The diet I am on just leaves out the white carbs and has a few other restrictions. The best thing is that if I am craving carbs and really want to cheat, all I have to do is have an intensive workout for about 30 minutes or so.
- Use a Support System. The most important factor to you keeping to your diet is a support system. You can use a friend who is also dieting with you so that you can share your successes. Your family can also be a good choice to cheer you on. I have my wife who tells me she is proud of me for getting healthy and she prepares my meals for me. I could not do it without her. There is also a website Lose Win Situation that lets you get sponsors to pledge money to your favorite charity for your weight loss.
- Have a goal. Having a goal gives you a realistic idea of how much weight you want to lose and why you want to lose it. Everyone wants to be healthy but everyone also has their own reason to want it. I want to be able to play games and run around with my kids and last as long as they do.
- Don’t use a diet that is too strict for you. If you know that you will crave chocolate, cake, ice cream or any other treat, don’t choose a diet that will make you give them up forever. On my diet, I have one day a week where I can eat anything that I want including all of the above. Apparently, over eating junk food once a week helps weight loss on this diet.
- Do your research. There are so many diets out there. Some claim to help you lose 30 lbs. in a month and others tell you that you can’t lose more than 2 lbs. per week. Many diets will work and many will not. Before trying out a diet, do a little research and find out how it works and why it works. Find out about what it will cause to go on in your body. If it seems like it will work, it is not unhealthy and it seems like something you can do from beginning to end, try it out. If it works, great, if it doesn’t, don’t get discouraged and try a new diet.
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March 11 2008 | Dieting | No Comments »
Everyone has heard the saying, “a penny saved, is a penny earned”. I know I grew up hearing it. I always took it too literally and thought of it as just being pennies. I often thought to myself, who cares about a few pennies, they are all over the place and pretty much worthless. There has even been talk about getting rid of the penny altogether since it costs more to make a penny that it is actually worth.
Today I started reading the book “The Millionaire Next Door” and something clicked. It is pretty obvious now that I think about it but it is worth mentioning. The book is a research study on the typical millionaires in the United States. It talks about people that are actually wealthy in net worth and not in high wages and life style.
The point that really got me was that the average millionaire is frugal and his wife is even more frugal that he is. One story in the book has a person hand over $8 million worth of stock in a company he just took public to his wife and she thanked him and went back to cutting her coupons to save a few cents off of her weekly shopping.
One of the ways to be successful is to think big. Take the smallest concepts and think of them in the biggest terms possible. Instead of making a few hundred dollars on a rental apartment, you can think big and make thousands on an apartment building. When thinking of the saying “a penny saved is a penny earned”, think of it in as big terms as you possibly can and you will get rich. If you are always saving every penny, over time, you will get rich. It may not be tomorrow but one day it will happen.
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March 10 2008 | Advice and Books | No Comments »
A mission is a powerful goal with purpose and meaning behind it. I have spoken about the importance of making goals and writing them down. Now I will discuss the role of a mission or mission statement.
The mission statement is a beautiful thing since once it is created, it can make many of your decisions for you. Think of it as a complicated math equation where there are tons of unknowns or variables throughout but the one number that you do have is what it all equals. Your equation is _______ + _______ = Your Mission. It can be a lot more complicated than a simple addition equation but you get the point. If the elements don’t fit to equal your mission, then don’t do it.
Think of any successful business and you will see that they have a mission. Whether it is Jet Blue with the mission “to provide comfortable, friendly travel and low fares” or Nike who strives “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
When Jet Blue wants to add a service, all they have to do is ask themselves, “does this fit into our mission?” They will not add something that does not fit into their mission such as flights with high fares. They try and make everything as simple as possible so that people are always comfortable.
Nike was able to grow from making shoes to every type of sports equipment you can imagine because they are trying to inspire. If their mission was “to make quality shoes”, they would never have grown to what they are today. Just recently, they worked with Apple to come out with sports equipment that is compatible with the ipod.
The most important part of a business is the mission and the business should be built around it. Every employee of the business should know the mission and be able to make day to day decisions based on what fits into the mission statement.
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March 06 2008 | Increase Luck | No Comments »
Here is a cute business lesson I heard a while ago:
A crow was sitting atop a ladder, doing nothing all day long. A small rabbit saw the crow and asked him, “Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?”
The crow answered: “Sure. Why not?” So the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and did nothing. All of a sudden, a fox appeared and ate the rabbit.
Moral: If you want to sit around all day doing nothing, you must be sitting high up the ladder.
Every Manager loves having people working under them to pass off all of the boring work to. They say that the higher up you are, the less work you have to do. On some levels this is true but the gravy ride does not last forever. I am in a situation where I can see both sides of this situation. I am working directly under the CEO of my company and I get his leftovers but I also have teams working below me so I get to do my fair share of dumping.
My boss dumps anything involving computers or technology to me. This is very time consuming for me but it is also very educational. The more I work with computers, research and fix problems, the more skilled I become. I mentioned in an earlier post that taking on extra responsibilities at work opens up new luckortunity in future. Taking on all the technical aspects of my office is what ultimately started me out with this blog.
On the other hand, since all of this work is so time consuming, it prevents me from doing some work that I could otherwise be taking care of.
There are some smaller tasks that are boring and time consuming that I usually pass on to someone else in my office. Lately I realized that I was getting rusty at these tasks and when I did do them, I ended up taking much longer than I should have taken to complete them.
There is a trade off for everything and there are not enough hours in the day to do everything so here are my general rules on dumping:
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