3. Since women tend to take time off to raise children or take care of parents (women take off roughly 11 years more from work than men), they save less than men do for retirement.
4. After earning lower salaries for fewer years, women's social security benefits are about half the amount dispensed to men.
5. Between 1996 and 1998, 90% of women had certificates of deposit (CDs) in their retirement savings accounts when a more aggressive investment vehicle would have been wiser.

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The Consequences Can Be Serious

Setting Financial Goals

2. If you don't know where you're going, you're probably never going to get there. That's why it's important to establish financial goals before you start to think about investing your money. Goal setting doesn't have to be complicated or time consuming. This section helps you identify and achieve both your short and long-term goals.

Puting Your Money to Work

3. Now that you've determined your cash flow and net worth and have a good idea of your financial goals, it's time to start saving. This section will show you how easy it is to save and reach your financial goals with only a few dollars a day. The power of compounding and tax-deferred growth can make your money grow faster than you think!

Is the recession really over? The NBER seems to think so.........

Total duration of the Great Recession: 18 months, eclipsing the previous postwar record of 16 months set in 1973-75, and again in 1981-82. Although, “economic activity is typically below normal in the early stages of an expansion,” navel gazers at the NBER reluctantly admit, “it sometimes remains so well into the expansion.” How did the ‘recovery’ such as it is come about? Let’s take a look at the nittys:

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JOB = J - Just O - Over B - Broke

What is holding people back from launching their own business takes us to the topic of security. We want to know it will be okay, we will be safe and taken care of so we cling onto the JOB (J=Just, O=Over, B=Broke) hoping it will provide our security needs. However, today this may be a false sense of security with companies that have been around forever shutting their doors, relocating to a new state or cutting back staff. We are offered no guarantees in today’s job market and in many instances we do not know if tomorrow holds the promise of a paycheck.

As Robert Kiyosaki stated in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, by continuing to work for corporate America all we do is provide wealth for the corporations, we are given no guarantee that our retirement is secure. Basically if we rely on corporate America to continue to be our source of income for our families all we will do is make them richer.

Let’s look further back in our history at the founding of America, were we founded by large corporations & foreign companies, NO! America was founded by entrepreneurs like you and I. According to Gerald Gunderson’s study entitled The Founding Entrepreneurs: America’s Prosperity, “While it is not difficult to understand that entrepreneurs have created many improvements in the course of American history, it can be surprising to learn that they actually "founded" the U.S. economy”. Perhaps America is going back to the day when the entrepreneur and small business generated the growth and profitability in our Nation.

As an entrepreneur you have the freedom and capability to make the changes necessary for growth eliminating the bureaucratic red tape encountered in the corporate setting. Your success or failure depends on you not a supervisor or company that is only looking out for themselves. You create your security because you will never fire or lay yourself off, you will fire yourself up and find new innovative ways to grow your dreams.

Time to stop propping up the housing market?

Like a sinister illness that has gone on a rampage in the human body and won't respond to the most aggressive treatments, the housing market has stubbornly continued its slide despite the variety of interventions the government has thrown at it. There have been tax credits aimed at getting buyers to buy, loan modifications focused on helping homeowners stay in their homes, and other creative programs with the hope that somehow, residential real estate would get off its death bed. At times, vital signs offered some positive glimmers of hope, but overall, the consensus is that the housing market is continuing its fatal prognosis.

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