The Blogazine Wave

The new thing on the rise – blogazines.

Apart from dressing your writings in different clothes, it offers nothing new.

A search on Google shows 800.000 hits for “blogazine” from where I’m sitting.

Why?

How To Secure Financial Future?

A question like this one should be asked far more often than it is. When I talk with people about financial future, their answer is usualy “ehh, I’ve got a job and that’s allright with me”.

How typical.

Almost all of my iniciatives to start digging deeper on the question of securing financial future, they ended up pretty badly. At first I thought I was speaking Marsian but later I got it… Majority of people does not want to talk about their future and even less about financial part of it.

How come?

Money is, sadly, one thing that makes 99% of population to get up on the cold and rainy November morning, leaving their warm bed and go out on the cold to make some money. They do it every single morning. And yet, when subject turns to getting rid of this “I must do this because of money” nobody want’s to talk about it.

It seems like people have lost any hope for brighter future. I asked them what do they think about when they see rich people. Most of them are skeptic about the origins of rich people riches. In times, they’re right.

Lacking to talk about financial future is the same as denying to learn how to read, stating “I don’t need it”. Sure, you can live your life without knowing how to read, but learning to read opens so many doors to us. Learning how to read is considered basic knowledge and we all learn it in school.

Why is then learning how to secure out financial future not at least as essential as learning how to read? After all, we spend money on a daily basis for the greatest part of our lives. Why are we ignoring knowledge about it? Why aren’t we learning how to trat money so it works for us?

To me this seems like not being able to read. Even worse… In time of current recession, people have no idea what to do. So they are, quite naturally, afraid of recessions per se. That’s downright stupid if you ask me. But it’s so common… Why is that? The same reason as before: People don’t know how to handle their money.

Money being such an important thing in our lives, a smart person would learn all it could about it as soon as possible. Stocks, mutual funds, banks, loans, … These are the tools to work with money. How many people know how to use these tools?

Working with money can be learned. It’s just like with all other tools. It’s just like learning how to read or how to ride a bycicle. Sure, you will fail first few times, but then you’ll learn and became good at it.

People don’t mind spending time and money to learn new tools – just look at colleges. Years and thousands of dollars spent for what? Better education? Great, but what good is better education if you can’t get a job? Countless MBA’s and even P.h.D.’s are out on the streets looking for a job.

Would those people spend money and time on things that actually matter, they would be far better off then they are now. Would they learn how to deal with money, they would know how to secure their (and their family) financial future. But no, they spend it on meaningless titles…

What current recession is showing us is nothing but rotten core of our systems. People with high-paying jobs that were there just because someone invented it are now on the streets thinking about how to get another one of those jobs. To them it does not matter what they do, as long as their paychek is regular and fat.

Now, fastforward 30 years. Those same people are turning 70. They can’t work anymore and are relying on their pensions. Only they found out recession eat up all their savings. Now what. They can’t work and they lost all their savings. Tough one if you ask me. What to do? They can and are complaining, but that will not get them anywhere.

I don’t know for sure but I bet they’re thinking about how to make some money. At 70 that’s a hard goal to achieve. Even worse… Those people will live another 15-20 years. How will they survive? Not on their own, I’m sure. They will rely on their children and grandchildren to support them.

Only one problem with this model…

Their children and grandchildren got effected by recession too. They too are out of money and many are facing foreclosure. Beside that, since there’s no money in federal reserves, governments will likely rise prices of goods. So they end up paying more for things, have no steady income AND have to take care of their parents.

But for some people, reality is quite different…

They are making even more money then before and can’t wait for another recession to come (in case you did not notice, recessions come every 20-25 years). How come?

Simply because they know how to deal with money.

Learn how to secure your own financial future by taking things into your own hands. Here’s free guide on securing financial future:

How To Secure Your Financial Future

Update

It’s been a long time since I’ve last written here and it is for a good reasons. I’m getting married, I’m working harder then ever on my company and I’m learning new things at light’s speed.

I won’t forget Smalltalk, I’m only postponing it (…again some may say) to some later date. First things should come first.

Vegetarian diet experiment

This experiment happened in early October 2008. I wanted to see, how I will feel after 3 months of vegetarian food only. Absolutely no meat (not even the fish) and no animal based milk. Just fruits and vegetables. I’ve been eating meat all my life and I decided to try and endure 3 months without it. Also I totally banned all alcohol from my life, even candies which contains alcohol.

This was not just about not eating meat. I was putting myself to test. Will I be able to stick to my plan and not eat single bite of meat? Will I have enough willpower? Will I feel better or worse?

I’ve been reading about healthy diets and almost every single time vegetarian diet was mentioned. How much good you can do to your body and mind by not eating meat or anything else coming from animals. It was everywhere I looked, all around me, all the time. I realized I have to give it a try. How bad can it be?

First days

Next morning I told my girlfriend I was starting with vegetarian diet and of course she was thrilled about it. She sounded very supportive and even said she would join me. This was on 28th of October I think and the goal was to live on vegetarian diet until new year 2009.

Beginning was a bit hard on me, being used to eat meat and I was feeling lack of energy. Also my temper was on roller coaster ride. I would get angry one moment and totally relaxed next one. My sleep was shallow and getting up in the morning was really tough. I was easily late to work. I didn’t see much improvement in being on vegetarian diet. I felt worse then before I started the diet.

It gets better

This lasted for about 2 weeks. Then things started to turn around. I would feel better, I laughed more and I started to get more and more things done. All this without being so tired. Getting up in the morning was getting easier by the day and sometimes I woke up before alarm buzz went off. I had more and more energy and I started exercising almost on a daily basis.

In the third month of my vegetarian diet experiment things really started to change. I didn’t feel the need to eat meat at all, in fact I felt disgusted by the smell of it. I could easily feel the difference between animal milk and milk made from soy beans. Even in small portions, animal milk felt like drinking something rotten.

New year

After almost three months on strict vegetarian diet, I sat down and think about how I feel, what are the good things I found during this diet and what I am missing. Surprisingly, I didn’t miss meat at all. I could go on with vegetarian diet without feeling I am missing something. I felt really good.

Then I started thinking, if being 3 months on vege diet and feeling better then ever before, I should be feeling worse if I start eating as I was before the diet. This got me in an awkward position. I wanted to try and see if my thinking was right but didn’t want to break the good and healthy feeling I had. Also, I didn’t want to break this record of mine.

Due to Christmas and new year’s time and with lots-of-meat tradition we got here, I started eating meat again. Little pieces at time and observing myself very carefully. With time I started eating more and more meat and even drink cow’s milk. Results were obvious. I started to feel more depressed, gain some weight, felt tired and have lost most of my previously gained energy.

What did I learn from this experiment?

In just one month I am in the same situation I was before I started with the diet. It took me 3 months to get where I was feeling good, have lots of energy, exercising daily and being most productive in my life. It took me less then one month to get where I was before, maybe even further down due to emotional ups and downs.

I can say this was very educative time in my life and I learned a lot about human body and the way it works. I can’t say I’m sorry that I’ve done this as I am not. I experienced how it’s like to live on healthy diet and not to worry when someone mention mad cow’s disease. It was a great feeling knowing I’m not going to be affected by it.

From what I’ve felt trough the diet, what I’ve read about it and what I know about today food industry, I can peacefully say I’m starting with vegetarian food only again. It has brought me only good things and I want to experience more of it. I know it will be worth it as I’ve already tasted some of it.

Beers I’ve drank in Brussels

• Steendonk
• Maredsous Blonde
• Orval
• Hoegaarden
• Leffe
• Bush Beer (12%)
• Trappistes RocheFort
• Touffel
• Duvel
• Mort Subite

From all, Bush was the toughest one to handle.