Sep 20

A written down budget is a must for those wanting to stay out of debt or pay down the debt they have. People that do not have a written budget may not be taking full advantage of their money.
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Sep 08

At some point, being a wheelwright was no longer a means to financial security (unless you live in an Amish community and then you probably would not be reading this). While for centuries wheelwrights provided important services such as creating the wheels for carriages and wagons as well as repairing these wheels, as the automobile became the prevailing technology for transportation, the need for wheelwrights diminished to close to nothing. One could imagine that wheelwrights struggled with this change, particularly those whose families had been the in the business for hundreds of years. How would they make money? The first defense in this situation is to badmouth the new technology and it is likely there were complaints about rubber automobile tires and dire predictions about how those tires would never last. Then, at some point, everyone adjusts and society finds a new equilibrium.
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Sep 03

The idea of the butterfly effect comes from the modeling of weather on early computer systems in the 1960s. In the process of doing just that, Edward Lorenz discovered that a minute change of a number in a system would ultimately have drastic effects on the outcomes. He had a model sequence which he attempted to replicate but the minor changes in numbers due to rounding began small and then diverged dramatically from the original sequence. In other words, a tiny change can have a big effect over time.
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Aug 20

Part of the motivation for gaining wealth is the idea that money is security. While it is true that money opens many doors in our culture, having a large amount of money does not in itself create security. In fact, it can create a great deal of insecurity because after it is accumulated, keeping it intact becomes a worry. The fear of poverty also increases with the accumulation of wealth.
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Aug 10

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, dominant jobs included farming and running small businesses such as print shops or various kinds of small-scale manufactory (blacksmith, wheelwright, etc.). With its influx of technology, initially in the form of steam power, as well as the development of large-scale manufacturing techniques, the world of work changed. Many people became involved in some aspect of the production and distribution of goods, from the mining of coal for the energy to produce goods, to the store that sells the goods. Yet large-scale manufacturing requires large scale financial investment, well beyond the reach of the average person.
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Aug 03

Among the other statistics collected on your use of credit by the agencies who gather this information, is “credit utilization.” If you have a $10,000 credit limit across all your credit cards and you have a balance of $4000 across the cards, then your debt is forty percent of your credit limit. That means that you are using forty percent of the amount of credit available to you. The higher percentage of debt to credit, the lower your score is.
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Jul 29

When they issue credit cards, the credit card companies are depending on you carrying a balance. Their profit comes from the fees paid by stores and services that allow you to use your card, annual charges, interest, and penalties. Because there is so much competition between the various companies, several of them offer special deals: low finance charges and even a percentage of money back on your purchases.
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Jul 23

One of the challenges of being self-employed is making sure that your health needs are covered. Medical expenses are on the rise and a simple visit to an emergency room can end up costing over a thousand dollars. If you are trying to get a business off the ground, a single health problem can set you back or even stop you from pursuing your goals.

Fortunately, there are several possibilities to explore.
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Jul 20

The housing market in the U.S. is still in trouble. Sales are down and foreclosures remain too high. Developments that five years ago were slated to make huge profits have been halted; the weeds are growing where landscaping was supposed to be. It has become more difficult to get a mortgage.
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Jul 16

Many adults get nervous when they consider taking college courses in order to improve their ability to get a good job. They haven’t been in school for awhile, perhaps they had some bad experiences in school, and they are not at all confident about their ability to learn college material.

Yet if you have been working a job or two at a steady rate and you are over twenty-five, you have some skills and abilities you did not have at the age of fifteen. These skills will help you to be successful in college classes.

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