A Structured Lawsuit Settlement Seemed Like a Good Idea at One Time
November 30, 2007
You are receiving payments spread out over months, years, even a lifetime. It’s great when the money arrives but the payments are often too small or too spread out to really satisfy your needs. Careful research could yield more of your cash faster. There are some half dozen financial institutions with the knowledge and resources to effectively advance your future lawsuit payments.While the rewards are obvious, the risks are not so easily understood. Once you identify an annuity buyout funding source, consult your attorney for an explanation of the legal requirements.
Beware some of the following pitfalls when obtaining an advance on your future lawsuit payments.
It takes time.In most cases the industry-wide standard is several months. Some companies will tell you they can get your deal processed in weeks. Unfortunately, courts do not operate that quickly. Most people want a set time frame and need the money right away.
You have to go to court.Most states have passed a Model Act that requires annuitants to obtain a court order prior to reassigning their payments. A federal law levies stiff tax penalties on any advance obtained without a court order. (Unless you are the “owner” of the annuity)
When A Customer Only Sends Half Of Their Payment
November 29, 2007
When A Customer Only Sends Half Of Their Payment
by: Vera Raposo
When a customer only sends you half of their payment do I mean they’re sending you half of the total payment? No, I mean something different. Half of a payment is the full payment itself, and the other half is the Item Number of the auction.
When you’re selling on eBay the Item Number is just as important as the actual payment itself, sometimes even more. When you receive the payment you need to be able to locate the item that this person is sending the payment for. If you don’t have the item number, you’ll be looking a long time, especially if you have hundreds of items posted.
So when you’re sending out your Winning Bidder Notification, make sure that you make it very clear that the person sends the Item Number with payment. I even go as far as to tell them, just to send the payment and write the item number down on the check.
It’s not really needed for them to send all the printouts of the auction with their payment. I guess it’s ok to send the paperwork but what happens if the money order is separated from that paperwork?
Leadership Power Stress: (Part 1) Sources
November 28, 2007
Leadership Power Stress: (Part 1) Sources
by: Patsi Krakoff
“Power stress is part of the experience that results from the exercise of influence and sense of responsibility felt in leadership positions.” - (Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, Resonant Leadership, Harvard Business School Press, 2005)
Leadership requires the exercise of influence or power. It requires having an impact on others to make things happen. It involves responsibility for the organization. Leaders are under continual scrutiny and evaluation. All these things increase the feels of pressure and stress.
For people who head organizations, choices are rarely simple and clear. Communications and decision making are incredibly complex. Worse, leaders are often called upon to get results and lead people over whom they have little authority.
There is no doubt that it is lonely at the top. Affiliation with others is known to relieve stress, yet leaders are selected for their high need for power and achievement. Under pressure, a leader will work harder rather than reach out to others.
Furthermore, the higher one is in position, the less authentic the feedback. Leaders are prone to CEO disease, where the feedback going upwards is distorted or diluted.
Company Politics And Six Sigma
November 27, 2007
Company Politics And Six Sigma
by: Peter Peterka
No grouping of human beings is without some amount of politics. Managing deployment of Six Sigma in your organization will unavoidably run into some personal issues and conflict. However, with deft handling of the personal and political issues that come up, along with patience and perseverance, your Six Sigma deployment will not get derailed.
Political factors that can affect a Six Sigma project include personal resistance to change, inflexible company policies, and incompatibility with existing organizational methods and goals. Not surprisingly, all of these factors also affect business processes of any kind. They are not unique to Six Sigma. This is one of Six Sigma’s strengths: realistically acknowledging the way politics work in an organization. Six Sigma is not just number crunching. It understands the importance of and encourages the involvement of people throughout and at all levels of the organization working together toward a common goal. Six Sigma encourages planning, communication, and openness about processes, procedures, and information.
Leadership Power Stress: (Part 2) Three Keys to Renewal
November 26, 2007
Leadership Power Stress: (Part 2) Three Keys to Renewal
by: Patsi Krakoff
“Power stress is part of the experience that results from the exercise of influence and sense of responsibility felt in leadership positions.” - (Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, Resonant Leadership, Harvard Business School Press, 2005)
Leadership requires the exercise of influence or power. It involves responsibility for the organization, and it requires the sacrifice of personal needs for those of company. Leaders are under continual scrutiny and evaluation. All these things increase the pressure and leads to power stress.
Without awareness of power stress, and what is needed to renew oneself, leaders are vulnerable to burnout and dissonance with the people they lead.
The Leadership Paradox
Daniel Goleman, authority on emotional intelligence in organizations, calls this the leadership paradox: “For leaders, the first task in management has nothing to do with leading others; step one poses the challenge of knowing and managing oneself.”
This includes:
- Connecting with the deep values that guide us
- Imbuing our actions with meaning
- Aligning our emotions with our goals
- Keeping ourselves motivated
- Keeping ourselves focused and on task
401(k) Plans
November 26, 2007
I’ve been in and interested in the stock market so long (one year shy of forty years) I can remember when the mutual fund pages in my home town paper were just one page! Now it looks like there are more mutual funds then there are stocks listed on the New York stock exchange.
I wonder how many billions of investor dollars are supporting these funds. How many investor dollars are supporting all the brokerage firms? How many times has 401(k) monies been given to a ‘financial expert’ to manage after retirement, then three years later the $400,000 is down to $200.000 (Yet, the financial expert is still driving around in a new Lexus).
I could tell you stories from the people I know, who have retired and aren’t so happy with these experts, but I bet you know some stories of your own.
7 Big Reasons To Invest In Pre-Foreclosures
November 25, 2007
7 Big Reasons To Invest In Pre-Foreclosures
by: Ben Innes-Ker
Looking for an “in” to real estate investing?
Working a nine to five job swapping time for money can be incredibly dispiriting. After the futility of it all hits home, it’s all you can do to limit the number of home business opportunities you investigate to twenty per week.
One of the more compelling home business opportunities is real estate investing. Real estate investing is the perennial wealth builder, and the transition from working a job to achieving wealth through real estate investing is becoming increasingly well documented.
You’ve probably thought about investing in real state yourself but you’ve not gone for it because you thought you needed tens of thousands in savings for a down payment, and perfect credit along with strong banking relationships.
Well, you can get all that together if you want. It doesn’t hurt to have those resources. But it’s not necessary to have a huge pile of cash and perfect credit to buy a house cheap and resell it for a profit.
3 Components Needed for Beating the Market
November 24, 2007
Time to look back
2004 is over, now we are in 2005. This is time to seriously look at performance of your personal investment, such as mutual fund, or individual stocks holdings, etc. Does your fund beat index last year? Does it beat index over past many years? How are you doing with your own stock investment comparing to SP&500 index?
If the answer is “great”, well congratulations. You have your own way of beating market and making big money already.
If the answer is “not so great”, or “failed to beat index”. You have got a problem. You need to look deeper into the investment strategy you used or your fund used. You can not pretend that there is no problem when in fact there IS a problem. I know there are just so many people out there that can not face this. Let’s face it, Almost everyone, include myself have ego that we JUST do not want to admit failure or mistake or any hint of it. Here comes the 1st Component below.
Component # 1 - ego, gut, perseverance
Value investing or investing in general is all about psychology, ego, attitude, and gut.
Internet Marketing - What Comes First?
November 23, 2007
Internet Marketing - What Comes First?
by: Patsi Krakoff
Someone asked me recently, if I were to expand an existing professional services business onto the internet, what marketing steps would I take first: set up a web site, a shopping cart, a newsletter, or a blog?
This is a very good question. Five years ago most Internet marketing specialists would have all responded in chorus, “A website, of course!” Then they would recommend their services to create an elaborate website with lots of bells and whistles.
I had an interesting email this week from a reader who asked me about website design fees. This is not my area of expertise. But this reader is a very smart guy. Why? Because he knows from my ezines, blogs and web site that I’ve been online for a few years and making a decent living from it.
He’s a rabbi who has many years experience counseling people. He now has made a wise decision to start offering coaching services to people, and wants to leverage the internet to find clients, sell ebooks and other programs.
The First Step - Ask Questions
Mortgage Lead Generation
November 22, 2007
Mortgage Lead Generation
by: Jay Conners
If you are a loan officer or a mortgage broker looking for a good lead source, one of the first things you will want to do when considering a mortgage lead company is find out how they go about generating their leads.
How a mortgage lead company generates their leads is very important because it has a lot to do with the quality of the leads you will be receiving.
If a lead company is buying their leads from another source, than what they are doing is recycling leads. And who knows how many times that third party company has sold the leads to other companies.
Your chances of closing a loan on a lead that has gone through the hands of fifteen other loan officers before it reached your desk are slim to none. So steer clear of recycled leads.
Some lead companies have one data base with thousands of leads that they continue to sell over and over again. They will sell them cheap, but most times you are required to buy in bulk. These leads are usually six months to a year old and sometimes more. This is also known as recycling. An even better way to describe this is “selling junk.”
