Before I graduated from high school, my English teacher had each of us write a letter to ourselves describing where we would be five years in the future . With a bright future in front of us it was easy to fill up the page with our dreams of finishing college, getting a great job, and, for some, starting a family. However, when I received that letter in the mail five years later I realized I had strayed very far off of the path I had set for myself. Not that I am not happy with my life, I am, but I realized that without those goals in front of me it easy to let time and life carry them away. Without goals and something to work towards, it is easy to stay where we are and just let time slip away. So I would ask you, what goals do you have for yourself?
Sit down and write out where you see yourself five years from now. Do you want to start a new career? Perhaps you see yourself in management? Do you still want to be living in the same location? Or even the same state? Once you have it all written down, it’s time to make it happen. Break your five-year plan down into one year plans , and if you are super detailed, monthly plans. Determine what you have to do over the next five years to get you where you want to go. Think about whether you have all the leadership skills to get you to the next level at work and, if not, what you can do to enhance. If you want to be a leader and eventually work in management, find out if your company offers a management training program that can help you sharpen your skills.
Don’t think that just because you write down your goals you have to stick to them. Pull them out every once in awhile and reevaluate them. As you change, so will your goals. Goals are a good way to feel like you’ve accomplished something and keep you moving steadily into the future.
The debate between renting and buying has been going on for as long as people could rent or buy property. Even though they have both been around for a long time, our view of them has changed somewhat. Whether you are considering residential or commercial property, there are many advantages, and disadvantages, to both. With the slumping housing market, many are second guessing the decision to buy and are instead turning to rentals.
Transglobe Property Management is just one company that provides rental properties for both residential and commercial use. By renting you have the option of relocating your business, or family, if the area turns out to be not quite what you were expecting. Renting also frees you from the burden of a mortgage. Instead of being trapped into 30 years of payments, you instead have a year or two depending on the terms of your lease. For many renting frees them from some of the responsibility. If something breaks, the landlord comes to fix it. If they change their mind on the property, they can move when the lease is up. If you are new to an area Transglobe property management can help you get to know different areas until you find the one that is right for you. The disadvantages to renting are that you will never own the property. And there are often limitations on what you can do to the building like painting. Buying gives you the flexibility to do whatever you want to your space. With that comes the responsibility to fix things like the water heater or air conditioner if it breaks. If you decide later that you do not like the area or the property, it is too late. You are stuck with it.
As with any big decision it is important to weigh the pros and cons thoroughly before making your decision. The choice that you make will affect the future more than you probably realize.
Money laundering , frankly speaking, is an age-old process to disguise the illegal origin or criminal nature of money. Such as money gotten from smuggling, arms sales, organized crime, trafficking in humans, prostitution rings, drug trafficking, embezzlement, bribery, insider trading and all technical fraud. These ill-gotten gains are moved, hopefully, untraceable by investing them in legitimate businesses, bank deposits or securities. But, mostly, the reason for laundering is tax evasion, like the VAT carousel scheme in the EU, which moved goods among businesses in other jurisdictions and capitalized on the various VAT rates. Tax fraud laundering schemes has cost the US over 10 to 20 billion dollars every single year. Both criminal and tax aversions in money laundering work well in obscuring the source.
Banking systems are an important part for money laundering to take place. Huge amounts of cash are spread out in numerous accounts, like financial off-shore centers , tax havens and free economic zones, then converted to money orders or bonds. Sometimes they are even placed in charities and trusts, then transferred to other locations, like a fake payment for ‘goods and services’ against bogus or inflated invoices issued by holding companies owned by accountants, lawyers on behalf of the unnamed beneficiaries. These transferred funds are then re-assembled and shipped back to the point of origin with a clean identity. Hence, laundered money. The laundered funds will be invested in legitimate businesses. Very simple really and very effective. There is no paper trail or way too much paper trail and the accounts are liquid making it virtually impossible to trace.
The problem laundered money is due to the very nature of being non-productive and idle . But, the injection of laundered money into any economy transforms them into a productive source of working capital, but this is bad, because it corrupts banks, government officials, it contaminated legal sectors of the economy, pushes out legitimate and foreign capital, deflates and un-stabilizes the control of money and enhances a cross-the-border capital movement, which increases the volatility of the exchange rate. There is a multilateral, coordinated effort to require and to exchange information, uniform laws and enhance extra-territorial legal powers to counter the international dimensions of money laundering. Due to the domestic political and economical concerns, may countries have signed up in an effort to combat this insidious practice.
In towns and cities all over the country, many in the southwestern regions such as the Texas town of Denton, foreclosure has been on the mind of many people. However, even given the current state of the economy, during the month of July sales on existing homes rose just more that seven percent. The real estate market saw more first time buyers surging the market than it has in a very long time. This was the largest jump in the market for one month in ten years.
Even just a few months ago, home owners were resistant to even put their houses up for sale, as no one was purchasing real estate, however is seems that those times may be reversing. The data was recorded by the National Association of Realtors, who had gone through the records of many states. Not only was July’s jump in sales tremendous, July marked the fourth month in a row that the percentage has gone up. This report was given on the same day that the United States economy was declared by the Federal Reserve to be on the way to recovery.
At a conference in a few months ago in Wyoming, the Chairman stated, that although there are still some challenges to face, home prices are becoming more stable and perhaps even by the next term the United States will see evidence of that recovery. In some counties in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey that sales are still down, however, they are not as low as they once were. Analysts are stating that the government rebate program for first time buyers, eight thousand dollars, may be what is stimulating the market. At the same time interest rates are incredibly low and houses are priced at affordable prices. This upturn is fueled by those first time buyers, as they have no previous debt holding them back, they are able to take advantage of the current shifts in the market.
During an economic downturn, it would seem that food companies would be pretty safe from dropping sales. Everyone has to eat and put food on the table, even when money is a little tight. With more and more families paying closer attention to their budget, a lot of them are opting to eat at home instead of dining out. The increased interest in packaged products has helped increase sales for Kraft Foods, Inc. However, even with more people cooking and eating at home, the company still decided to raise their prices.
An article featured in USA Today reveals that prices for cheese are between six to thirty-three percent higher today than they were just one year ago. Kraft has also raised prices on crackers, salad dressings, frozen pizzas, and other products. These price increases are said to be contributing about seven percent of the company’s increase in revenue.
Thus far, the move has worked for Kraft. Consumers withstood the price increases and Kraft reported a profit increase today of over 4%. The company’s stock has shown positive results, as well. While the move may work well in countering the rising costs of production, it may not be good for consumers in the long term, who must adjust to rising costs of both fuel and food during unfavorable economic conditions.
I own a medium-sized company and I’ve been trying to expand for the past several months. I feel that our new business model is effective but once we started to hire more employees, I noticed that my go-to guys didn’t have the leadership skills needed to be supervisors. In fact, they needed a lot of management help.
I went online a read several articles on leadership skills development and directed my guys to read the same articles. I told them each to think of 3 things that they can change about themselves so each would become an effective leader.
After they individually told me what they were first going to change in their leadership style and how they think that will help their employees and the company as a whole. I observed each of them through the course of a month and I found that productivity increased with all of the new employees!
Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world, according to Forbes magazine’s rankings.
In fact, he’s not even in the top two anymore.
Warren Buffet, helped by a rising price of his Berkshire Hathaway shares, is atop the list at $62 billion. It’s the first time in 13 years that Gates didn’t top the magazine’s list.
At No. 2 is Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helú, with an estimated net worth of $60 billion.
Gates isn’t struggling at No. 3 with $58 billion, according to the magazine’s list, and is worth $2 billion more than last year. Paul Allen, who co-founded the Redmond computer giant (NASDAQ: MSFT) with Gates, is No. 41 on the list at $16 billion. And Microsoft’s current CEO, Steve Ballmer, is No. 43 on the list at $15 billion. Read more
The index of leading U.S. economic indicators fell in January for the fourth consecutive month as deterioration in the stock and housing markets signaled weakening growth.
The Conference Board’s gauge, which points to the direction of the economy over the next three to six months, declined 0.1 percent, after decreasing a revised 0.1 percent in December, the New York-based group said today. Last month’s drop in the index brings the decline for the last six months to 2 percent, which the Conference Board says can be one of the “reasonable criteria for a recession warning.” Read more