This book is packed with money saving tips and how you can fight for getting the money you deserve when you get ripped off. Most of the contents have been common sense for me. The following are the key takeaways for me.

Car buying tips:
– Don’t lease unless you can write off or swap lease (take over others’ lease).
– Avoid buying brand new. 2~3yr old cars are a better buy.
– Do you homework because buying a new car. Go below MSRP cost and haggle over the price of the car, not payment. Don’t finance from the dealer.
– Buying from Car Rental companies may not be a bad idea due to their good maintenance. This is contrary to my belief.
– Extended service contract may not be needed.
– Use carfax for buying used cars.

Car leasing:
– Negotiate on pricing of the car, not the lease payment.
– Could be very expensive after 2~3 years due to the fast depreciation of the car.
– Don’t lease unless you need/want to change cars every 3 years.
– Money factor is like interest rate.

Car rental tips:
– Rent from shops outside of the airports for better deals.
– Check the car, contract and the odometer before driving off the gate.
– Look out for insurance waiver. Most of the waivers are not needed.
– Ask for extras (like GPS) without paying for them.
– Fill up the gas tank before returning the car. Don’t buy the fuel option.

Car repairs:
– Use Angie’s list.
– Pre-qualify the mechanics before you need them.
– Seek a 2nd opinion for major repairs.
– Read the owner’s manual on what needs to be serviced and how often. You don’t need to replace brake pads every time.

Banking:
– Debit card may not be as economical as people think. Banks make money on overdraw fee. And debit cards lack the protection that credit card provides.
– Using PIN with debit cards saves the merchant 7x~8x of fee vs. not using PIN (off-line).
– Was surprised about the universal clause that triggers higher interest when the person miss a bill, not related to the credit card. That’s outrageous.
– Payday loan’s business model is like selling drug: you need to keep going back for more fixes.

Life Insurance:
– Update the beneficiaries.
– Good introduction on various types of insurance: Whole life (cash value invested in money market), Universal Life (cash value managed by fund manager), and Variable Life (cash value) managed by individuals in mutual fund).
– Various kinds of living trusts mentioned. Good to use living trusts to distribute your wealth without probate.
– Create a well.

Saving for college:
– Take advantage of 529 or even Roth IRA. Make sure the children don’t have too much saving to qualify for financial aid.

Credit card:
– Get a free credit report from each of the credit company every 4 months.

Health club:
– Don’t allow auto debit. Use credit card and get a good deal around January of every year.

Lots of other common senses in Real Estate, mortgage, hiring contractor, health club, IRA, bidding on eBay, giving to charity, and etc.

This is a good reference book. Highly recommended for young people who need a finance 101 lessons.
Perhaps, the only missing tip is to check your library for any books that you plan to buy. It’s free to borrow from the library than to buy a book. Conflict of interest, I guess.

OK. So there are many reasons to get off the payroll and start your own business, fulfilling your destiney, carrying out your mission: offshoring, pensions are going away, lack of job security, boring, repetitive jobs. Your calling must have the 3 elements:
1. Skills and abilities: have the skills and abilities to do the job.
2. Personality tendencies: matches your personality.
3. Values, dreams and passions.
Let your life speak like a Quaker and live life authentically.

“Who’s making your lunch?” speaks to taking responsibility, stop blaming others. 5step process:
1. Clarify your current situation
2. Seek the advice and opinion of other people.
3. Identify the alternatives.
4. Choose the best alternative.
5. Act: Don’t wait on perfect conditions for success to happen: just go ahead and do something. “Look for the seeds of opportunity, the rainbow instead of the storm. Keep your dreams alive – like the horse whisperer (Monte Roberts) and write your own check for your future (like Jim Carrey).

Don’t wait for the “Wizard”
Think outside of the box like the Indian woman who outsmarted the tricky moneylender. Most complex problems do have a solution, if only we attempt to think beyond the obvious choices and are willing to see things that others may not.

Fire yourself!
Tap your creativity (Einstein’s dozing off with ball bearings in his hands). Ask yourself why would I hire myself? My core competency? How to translate to marketable skills? What companies/businesses would welcome those skills? Write down your ideas and act on them. Lots of brain teasers in this chapter.

Secure or imprisoned?
The first step in creating positive change is to identify what you want. “As soon as you get a clear picture of what you’re moving to, you will get a wave of confidence, boldness, and enthusiasm.” The five predictors of success: 1) Passion, 2) Determination, 3) Talent, 4) Self-discipline, 5) Faith. Two major principles to choose from when looking for revolutionary idea: 1) Find a need and fill it. 2) Find a problem and solve it. Process in developing a No More Mondays attitude: 1) Set a specific goal, 2) Start small and build your idea slowly, 3) Test every move, 4) Expand on the basis of your success, 5) Carefully select the right people to help you grow.

But you owe me
A return to the results-based economy from the time-based. 10-fishman’s story is about losing jobs vs. new opportunities. He talks about the importance of residual income vs. linear income in the “Revolutionary Insight” sidebar. 1) Recognize that time doesn’t always deserve compensation, 2) Discover that results are what create income, 3) Free yourself from a paycheck mentality, 4) Realize that not getting a paycheck may open the door to extraordinary income.

Finding work that fits:
Eaglepreneur (who wants to work on his/her own) vs. Entrepreneur. Self-employed vs. business owner (systems in place that would create income even if you are not there – making SWISS (Slaes While I Sleep Soundly) dollars.) Regonize the many options for choosing our own work model. See varied ways your areas of competency could be put to use. Explore bing an Eaglepreneur. Choose what your are going to rather just what you are leaving. Know that your passion will overcome your fears of inadequacy.

One Place Forever – Blessing or Curse?
Work as hard as ou want want everyone else do. View struggles as part of healthy birthing process for a new season in your life. Research, plan and organize around your idea. Be confident there are wildly successful ideas that match your unique talents and passions.

Throw out your TV (and your alarm clock too!)
Sew up your buttonholes now and then. Focus on our strengths – not your weaknesses. Become an idea magnet (1. Go to trade shows, 2. Ask your friends, 3. Check products being sold in foreign countries, 4. Pay attention to passing fads and trendy ideas, 5. as you travel, look, listen, and learn, 6. make sure you find something you believe in, something you would buy yourself, and would sell to your best friends, 7. share your ideas, 8. learn business skills through network marketing, 9. learn from running a successful mail-order or ebay business). Look inard to create your idea filter.

No money – no problem!
The process of getting wealth – not the money itself – is what has value. Money will only make you more of what you already are. Three reasons people never act o their dreams: 1) fear of failure, 2) lack of knowledge, 3) preceived lack of money. Move past fear and lack of knowledge – act on our idea. Be creative in seeing ways to start your business with very little capital. Be convinced that you can start with what you have. “Bootstrap” your way to growth. Keep accurate records from day one of every cost and transaction.

Living with passion, purpose, and profit
Genius seems to be more about the ability to see solutions that others don’t. The mark of genius is a willingness to explore all the alternatives, not just the most likely solution. Define what success means for you in all of these areas: social, financial, personal development, spiritual, physical, family and career.

Overall, this is a book with lots of ideas borrowed from “4-hour workweek” and “A Whole New Miond,” “Think and Grow Rich,” and “Poor Dad & Rich Dad,” plus others in the reading list. The author has done a lot of readings himself. It’s questionable if the ideas are simply copied from the others or the author has put them to test and stood by its authenticity. The book spent a great deal of chapters in convincing you to move away from just doing the mundane work and starting looking at alternatives and yet when it comes to finding the alternative, it safely encourages you to look inward to your own interest/strengths to find your true calling. Of course, everyone’s calling is different. It would be presumptious if the author offers a panacea to cure the Monday blues. At times, book reads like a psycho therapy session with lots of good stories and funny sidebars. I can’t say I gain a lot from this book.

Networking takes work. Be strategic and touches more people, leveraging “hub” and “invest” in the relationship by reciprocating and making “deposits” – not just be a “taker,” who calls on people for specific purpose only and disappear afterward.

What I have learned:
– Use elevator pitch to tell people what you do and keep people interested like “keeping the clients off the cover of major newspapers.”
– Make goals to contact people on a weekly and monthly basis. Number counts.
– Network all the time, not just when you need to job hunt.
– Use technology like PDA or computer. Prune your contact list on a monthly basis.

This audio book is fairly short ~ 70 mins and there are many “actor/actress” voices to keep the flow interesting – unlike most of the audio books, which are often narrated by the author or a narrator. The message is simple and yet to the point. Good listen.

The 21 ways are:
1. Set the table: Think on paper! One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all!
2. Plan every day in advance
3. Apply the 80/20 Rule to everything
4. Consider the consequences
5. Continually practice the powerful “ABCDE Method” or priority-setting technique that you can use every single day! The power of this technique lies in its simplicity. Start with a list of everything you have to do for the coming day. Think on paper by placing an “A, B, C, D, or E before each item on your list — before you begin the first task.
6. Focus on “key result areas”
7. Obey the law of forced efficiency
8. Prepare thoroughly before you begin
9. Do your homework
10. Leverage your special talents
11. Identify your key constraints
12. Take it one oil barrel at at time
13. Put the pressure on yourself
14. Maximize your personal powers
15. Motivate yourself into action
16. Practice creative procrastination
17. Do the most difficult task first
18. Slice and dice the task — how to “swiss cheese” and “salami slice” your big work tasks for a specific time period.
19. Create large chunks of time to concentrate on specific goals or projects
20. Develop a sense of urgency
21. Single handle every task (not multi-task)

This link is a very helpful summary.

The key messages from the author is to focus eating the biggest “frog” at a time with a solid plan and do it now. I like the simplicity of the method and I know it works. Nowadays, people often get distracted by all the emails, phone, instant messages and etc and fail to focus on the most important task. I probably listened to the audio book three times already. Most of the lessons are common sense. But the following areas stand out for me:
1. Tackle the most difficult task first. I often found it hard to do that but I think that’s the right thing to do. It’s hard to imagine myself eating a frog.
2. Creative procrastination is a great idea. The hard part is not to turn into a habitual procrastination.
3. Single tasking is right on the money. Nowadays, the quality of work in general has degraded due to the multiple distractions people face all the time.

This book makes sense and its lessons should be drilled into our brain. I’ll probably listen to it once every two months or so.

Mr. Skorman seems to be wired for entrepreneurship, a true hyperactive right brainer, who can see the big picture better than executing detailed work. Being good a picking retail location, he started the Empire Video stores during the peak of the video rental industry and made lots of money from it. He then hopped on the dot com fever and started the reel.com which was sold to Hollywood Video for $100M. After a brief hiatus, he started “HungryMind.com” to pay forward. When it failed, he took on starting “Elephant Pharmacy” in Berkeley, which he sunk nearly his entire retirement money.

The lessons he offered:
– For retailing, the location is very critical. Take your time picking the best location possible.
– Don’t underestimate the power of technology. The lack thereof caused lower profit at Empire due to its inability to collect late fee.
– Don’t over-spend on technology either, until you have a solid business plan.
– Always consider the profit the first bottom line. The 2nd bottom could be other aspiration like green but firs thing first. Without profit, the business cannot sustain.
– Good balance between life and work is important. Try out start up company first before starting up a business.
– Don’t be revolutionary and over-creative about a new business idea like “Elephant.” New ideas are good. Just need to know which ones are good. Something too new would take up too much time to start and the cash would run out.
– On decision making, let the ones with the best “resume” or expertise make the decision. Empower the right person to make the decisions.
– On hiring, have more than three people interview the candidate once and two people interview twice.
– The reason for Pharmacy to have a large section of the greeting card is to sell more gifts and other things along.
– The biggest profit center for pharmacies are the prescription, which occurs once a month and takes a long time change people’s existing behavior of buying from another.
– Have good mentors who have experience in the areas to guide you along the way.
– Some people are cut out for corporate world where business is less chaotic and well defined. A start up is chaotic.
– Surprisingly, playing poker serves as a good lesson for business, according to the author. Lots of techniques are used in business. Being a professional poker player for a couple of years after Empire Video, the author held an upper hand in business.

There is a pattern that the smart ‘C’ students like the author tend to make it big in the “real” world, perhaps because they compensate their lack of academic achievement with a keen sense of how the “real” world work, coupled with high drive and help from others.

Although he isn’t exactly a multi-billionaire from his business, the author has made enough mistakes and learned enough lessons from his own experience to spare the readers from making them.

Just finished the long (16-CD equivalent) audio book on this book. At times, it was quite tedious as the research involves covering the accounts of many people’s through their letters and diaries. Some of details were not necessary and could have been edited out.

Andrew Jackson, the 7th US President on the twenty-dollar bill, had a very tragic life. His father died just after he was born and his mother died in his early age. Thus, he stayed in his relatives’ homes for most of his childhood and his young life. His brothers also died in their early age to illness and the revolution. This, I believe, made him so tough and treasure any close relationship he had with his niece (Emily Donaldson). Even his wife died around the time he got elected to the US president. The book did not go into much details how he educated himself to be a lawyer (probably not much those days) in his 20’s.

Jackson rose to be a general of the revolution and later became a political force. He enjoyed working the crowd and he especially loved this young country and what it stood for. He would fight for solidifying the union; it wasn’t as united as we have taken for granted nowadays. At the same time, he would fuel its growth by justifying the course of taking lands from the Indians and sooth the Southerners by not taking any action against slavery. He may seemed hypocritical to his critics by arguing for and supporting meritocracy against the aristocracy symbolized by the powerful bankers that gripped the nation at that time. His strong and skillful hand in taking away treasure deposit from the monopolistic Bank of the United Stated (private bank) and his strong stand against France which refused to pay its debt to US showed that he was willing to do the right thing (even going to war) despite the potential political fall out. And he forced and kept the state of South Carolina from breaking away from the union. At the end, he prevailed.

Early in his presidency, he had to deal with internal cabinet conflicts such as the rumors impropriety of Margaret Eaton (wife of his cabinet) and how other cabinet member (Emily) despised her and refused to socialize together. This may seem trite or soap-opera-ish in today’s society. Ultimately, Jackson’s true loyalty lied in the United States, even if he had to exile his young Emily Donaldson back her Tennessee home.

Jackson lived a long and illness-inflicted life but he stood strong and tough – like a lion – in front of his people and foes. You may not like how he reached his goal but he hardly compromised and always kept to his principles for the good of this nation including his vision of a much bigger ownership of the America continent. He’s like a tough CEO in a mid-size company that has passed the start-up and on its way to a big conglomerate. Though Jackson kept a double standard on liberty for all – except slaves, he treated his slaves fairly to the standard of the era. He deserves our respect and our gratitude for his contribution to this nation.

Old photos (I meant really old photos from the 1800’s) are really precious. This book has a large collection of the pictures from the Lincoln days, making it especially impressive. For Children. My daughter teased me I was reading a children book. Honestly, I got a lot from this book. I like the conciseness of the book.

Lincoln was a late boomer. Not very educated until much later in life. But he was helpful, of high integrity, and a born leader. The fact that he was selected as a presidential candidate by accident goes to tell you that luck has a lot with a person’s life and his answer to the call and challenge was what separated him from the others. This country was fortunate to have him as a president at the time of crisis, or this nation may never has been as great as it is.

The tragedies that surrounded Lincoln, including his depression and his being assassinated, made him as tough as he could be. Sometimes, adversities shape a person’s character more than he/she can possibly become on his/her own. And yet, he tried to maintain a sense of style and normalcy like reciting Shakespeare and watching plays.

Lincoln was fortunate to be born in that era where he shone and made a big difference in this great nation. And this nation own a great deals to him.