Life Done Right™

If you decide to work in the creative arts, then you have to be prepared to accept a life of regret and chagrin as you watch those with less originality earn a living by merely accepting the status quo and getting the average person to accept it as well. There is no glorious purse in [...]

A will is more than a desire to express your feelings…it’s a piece of paper that articulates the nature of your relationship to another human being in monetary terms. The value you place on that relationship is directly related to the size of the inheritance. Spare the love, darling, just make sure there’s enough cash [...]

Newsflash: “Analysts said the alarming write-downs at a handful of Wall Street firms could pale in comparison to the possible damage from shaky paper striking at the heart of assets held by insurance giants, mutual funds and big pension funds.”
If you thought only guys like casino owner Steve Wynn were allowed to gamble away fortunes [...]

It sounds good, doesn’t: the medical costs for seniors is increasing at a slower rate than for those poor suckers who are under 65. Gee, why is that? Our guess: The Bush administration has allowed the health care and insurance industry to shift the cost burden onto working stiffs who have no clue of how [...]

Ladies, pay attention. If you’re married to a wealthy millionaire, or with better luck, a billionaire, please, be sure to snoop around and find the old man’s will. It’s imperative that you know how much he loves (values) your relationship to him BEFORE he dies, because once you’re in the room listening to the executor [...]

Put a woman with long legs in a provocative dress and have her walk down the street…and watch the heads of males turn for a peek, despite walking with their wife or girlfriend. It’s male instinct at work. Mercator Insurance knows your pain, ladies. The message: “Ladies, you better rely on yourself for the future. [...]

Here’s the deal: when Baby Boomers started working for U.S. corporations, there was an agreement to fund retirement and health care benefits. As the years passed, the obligation to pay out these benefits continued to accrue. There was no doubt that one day these benefits would be paid out. There was no doubt about the [...]

Would you believe it took a study to finally confirm that most of the flakes running public corporations are overpaid. The magic of merging two companies to create an argument that you deserve excessive compensation because two companies are worth more together than separate makes about as much sense as a monkey shaking a tambourine [...]

Get ready to bend over and take it like a desperate polar bear floating on an iceberg from the heating oil companies this winter. Like clock work, analysts are predicting the cost of heating oil will rise as if there were no Congress to regulate the companies selling us the stuff. The markets, these days, [...]

Integrative Biology 131: General Human Anatomy. Fall 2005. Professor Marian Diamond. The functional anatomy of the human body as revealed by gross and microscopic examination.
Finally!! UC Berkeley is beginning to make class lectures available online for free! This is what education is really about. The cost of education today is more about bloated overhead and [...]

Generational warfare may seem like a parlor game merely played out in the minds of the old and young at neither one’s expense, but the recent revelation that those in their 30’s (one-third!) are so mired in debt that they are suffering from severe depression indicates that the Baby Boomer generation has totally screwed the [...]

One of the few pleasures of waking up early before heading off to work in the morning is the smell of a fresh-brewed pot of coffee. That first sip does wonders for energizing the body and mind into the realization that if you don’t get out of bed then there’s no paycheck at the end [...]

This whole business of CEOs raking in obscene amounts of money relative to the rest of the worker suits in the corporation sure makes getting up every morning a waste of time. The only way to make real money these days is to own the right to reproduce something or offer a proprietary service. Once [...]

For those of you who vote Republican because somehow you have bought the trickle down argument that Republican policies create more wealth, you might be interested to know that average incomes fell for most since Bush took office. You can go on believing the middle class is getting richer, but in reality it’s still the [...]

Lois Wyse was the marketing genius who coined the phrase, “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.” She also convinced Bed and Bath to change their name to Bed Bath and Beyond. Her philosophy: “The only people in the world who can change things are those who can sell ideas.” Simple ideas [...]

As the financial markets explode and implode, what’s a retiree on a fixed income supposed to do? Jump out of a plane without a parachute? How about packing up your beach gear and hitting the beach. Why worry when you can enjoy the sun and go for a nice dip when it gets too warm. [...]

Risk can be your best friend when an idea so consumes your soul that you can’t imagine living one more moment without gambling your life away to prove you are right…right as in my passion will soon be your passion…I just know it, I feel it, or as they sing in A Chorus Line, “gimme [...]

For those who like numbers, the Investment Company Institute has determined that “almost 40 percent of all household financial assets are retirement assets.” What’s that mean? Baby Boomers are saving more than doomsayers say they are. Now get back in your boat this Sunday and try catching that mythical monster in the lake with your [...]

“I don’t think there is anything in the entire securitization process that is at all focused on the borrower’s interest,” said Kirsten Keefe, executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending. “Everything they do is, ‘How are we going to make a profit, and how are we going to secure ourselves against risk?’ ”
Doesn’t that [...]

Falling in the love gets harder by the day. The world and its problems has a way of frustrating the act of two people finding enough time to feel comfortable accepting each other for who they are and then acting on that impulse by getting married. Getting older doesn’t make the process any easier, especially [...]