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philippmichelreichold · 4 years ago

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Analog Science Fiction Science Fact is the oldest surviving Science Fiction magazine. As Analog's (then Astounding's) editor, John W. Campbell ushered and nourished the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Campbell insisted on science in Science Fiction. Today, Analog still contains hard science stories and has a regular Science Fact feature. I had not read Analog in years, and am absolutely thrilled with my first issue in far too long. In a world where I feel I would be better off without a television, It's refreshing to find drama and suspense that does not reek of violence, and comedy and humor that is not redolent with obscenity/profanity. At a time when the Discovery Channel has reached new lows in pseudo science, it is encouraging to read science popularizations that are actually based in science. The underlying motif to this issue is doing the right thing. In Buddhist terms-- Right Action. Of course, reasonable beings may disagree as to what Right Action might be in a given situation. And sometimes one learns after the fact that one's action was not the best choice after all.

Rejiggering the Thingamajig by

Eric James Stone

is a

wonderful story

about doing what's right. Never thought I'd read a story where a Buddhist T. rex was the protagonist. Bokeerk is a wonderful character, and her companion for her mission, a sentient gun, is a delight. The gun reminded me of the talking bullets in

Who framed Roger Rabbit

or Yosemite Sam. To get home to her children's imminent hatching, she must follow the Eightfold path. Neptune�s TreasureBy Richard A. Lovett is an AI story. Floyd has an AI living in his head name of Brittney. Reminiscent of the movie

All of Me

, only set in

Neptune

space and without Steve Martin and Lilly Tomlin. Floyd and Brittney have serious personal/autonomy issues. The science of the story is wonderful-- mass drivers and recovery vessels. And space bicycles as well. Also spracht Strattman

Thus Spake the Aliens

by H. G. Stratmann is a story about saving the world, complete with large red Doomsday-cutoff-switch-button. These aliens are in the same business as Clarke's

Others

with a more up close and personal approach. And they are quite implacable about weeding if the need arises. To say the story is rich in allusions to other works would be a vast understatement. The connection between the title of the story and of Richard Strauss's song, widely acclaimed for its use in

2001

, could not be an accident.

The key to the story is a problem that is not often addressed, or more to the point-- it's largely ignored. There is a dead line for establishment of a real presence in space-- the point at which we exhaust cheap, abundant sources of energy. Somewhere before we reach that point is the point where a struggle ensues for control of those energy sources that remain. Whether or not civilization survives that struggle will have little impact on what happens next. No alternative, renewable source will be able to fill the gap that will be left with the depletion of fossil fuels. Nuclear power will remain expensive, dangerous, and will only postpone the collapse. Fusion will remain as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp for some time. We have gigatons of Hydrogen, but fusion's most

promising process

relies not on Hydrogen but Lithium. Even if a Lithium-to-Tritium plant started working tomorrow, we have no way of foreseeing the consequences of eliminating any particular element from the biosphere and would need to work with highly radioactive Tritium.

Unless Stratman's aliens show up soon to terraform Mars and Venus, and hand us the keys to the secrets of the Universe, tough times are ahead of us. We will have to use less energy per person or reduce the number of people using energy. We would eventually return to subsistence farming with limited manufacturing powered by wind and solar power-- essentially back to the 17th century. Perhaps the answer to the

Fermi-Hart paradox

is that no civilization has been able to solve the energy crisis and overcome the energy gap. (It takes a huge amount of energy to go from planet to planet. Witness the huge fuel tanks of the Saturn V's needed to send

Apollo

to the moon.) Even if one used

the Orion nuclear pulse drive

to establish a local system space program, the unavailability of cheap, abundant energy would make it difficult to maintain the necessary level of technology. Once nuclear fuel became the mainstay of the economy, space exploration could be sacrificed as having a lower priority than meeting needs back home. Perhaps we are not the first civilization to see the stars not quite in our grasp and then to watch them slip away forever. The Possession of Paavo Deshin

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

has a profile in this issue of Analog. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of her stories. Rusch builds her characters in a believable and sympathetic manner that leaves me yearning for more.

Possession

is one of her

Retrieval Artist

� stories. Retrieval artists are bounty hunters in a convoluted universe, and Miles Flint is among the very best. Paavo was adopted after his birth parents fled to evade some outstanding alein warrants. But his birth parents have made sure they can keep in touch, naturally.

Paavo's birth parents are Disappeareds-- essentially outlaws in the old sense of the word. Flint is hired by not one but two clients to locate the birth parents. His adoptive parents are well to do, powerful, and tainted by underworld connections. And they adore Paavo as if he were born to them. Maybe more so. Rusch make quite plain her view on the subject of birth parents that re-enter a child's life wreaking havoc as they assert their rights. She equates them with terrorists, while Paavo's adoptive father is in his eyes, regardless of how others see him, the ideal and epitome of fatherhood.

(Uncle Orson review of the Retrieval Artist stories.)

Shame by

Mike Resnick

Lezli Robyn

is a fairly straight forward example of what not to do. Given the colonists's mindset and attitude toward Satan, their actions should not have been unexpected. Perhaps that's the real shame of the story-- that as atrocious as the colonists's appear to the author and to his moral authority figure, given human nature they were unsurprising.

Simple Giftsby

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

is a story about the stereotypically greedy corporation out to profit on the simplicity's and naivety of the primitive, non tech natives. What could be more innocuous than a race that closely resembles (in appearance) the

Who's of Whoville

. The ethnologist and linguist sent to learn about the alien's language and culture implore the company to slow down on making a deal with the aliens and are disregarded as obstructionists. The outcome is inevitable, but the suspense building makes it all worthwhile. On Rickety Thistlewaite by

Michael F. Flynn

is about the prison that is public service. Making oneself indispensable can be very rewarding and satisfying. Then it becomes an obligation not taken lightly by those who depend on you. As Harry Mudd exclaims to the

Enterprise

command team in

I, Mudd

. . . . A War of StarsDavid L. Clements writes a crisp and interesting story about questioning values and making choices. The concept of intelligence housed in celestial bodies-- the cores of planets and stars-- is reminiscent of

Rogue Star

in the

Star Child Trilogy

by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson. I would have hoped though that anyone advanced enough to use stars as weapons would also be advanced enough to not do so. Perhaps I'm just excessively naive.

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Essentially, my work is Creative Commons Attribution-Required, Share Alike.

Adapted from their Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license summary--

You may Share-- copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt-- remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. I cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Attribution-- You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests that I endorse you or your use. No additional restrictions-- You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Providing a link to my source document should suffice in attributing me. Where any condition(s) I place conflicts with the

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ISFDB unless otherwise indicated and are copyrighted unless otherwise indicated.

Copyrighted images are presented here under fair use. You would need to contact the copyright holder to use them. They are not covered by my creative commons licensing.

Coverart from ISFDB for Analog 2010 Jan-Feb

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howtomakemoneytradingbitcoi-blog · 5 years ago

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How to make money trading bitcoin

So you need to get maintain of a few unfastened bitcoin, eh? By now, you would possibly have heard of the way you can make money with bitcoin, magic internet cash and digital forex that may be traded or used to make purchases. This digital cash uses encryption to make safe and relaxed transactions proper away from anywhere inside the worldwide. Not regulated with the useful aid of any financial institution, authorities or Federal Reserve, this open network is managed by manner of way of the users and traders themselves. Here is our guide to incomes actual cash with bitcoin in 2019.

Contrary to humans’s know-how, getting bitcoin is straightforward, there are a number of techniques to earn bitcoin on line- some more famous than the others. There are strategies that comprise a minimal attempt with the minimal go back and others more profitable that calls so that you can have higher know-how within the enterprise.

Below are some of the maximum well-known methods on how to make money trading bitcoin

No, you don’t should beautify the ground to get bitcoin. Not in that sense anyway. So, why do you name it mining? Similar to gold miners, bitcoin miners want to perform the gold, in this case, bitcoin into the floor.

Did you dare to ask how? While paper money has a central authority, who prints and distributes it, Bitcoin has miners who use particular software program software to treatment math problems and are issued with bitcoin in trade. This system is what makes the Bitcoin community pass round.

Mining Bitcoin grow to be rather easy, and the earliest miners had been able to mine masses of Bitcoin the use of their home computers. However, in these days’s very aggressive and unstable market, miners purchase high priced pc elements, that the excessive street customer has little get proper of entry to to, required for extra processing power a terrific manner to mine extra difficult algorithms. Since that is a race that could treatment blocks faster, miners institution up in what we name mining swimming swimming pools wherein they integrate their processing energy an awesome manner to treatment each transaction first. The reward at the whole comes from severa miners’ prices, is then split up through contributors of the pool.

Remember that bitcoin mining isn't always as profitable because it used to and lots of include claiming it to be the give up of profitable mining.

The future of mining in 2019 will depend on the rate of Bitcoin. If the price is going up, mining will hold to conform and the amount of miners will increase. If the rate goes down, miners will progressively disappear.

An excerpt from 2miners’ blog It gives new miners with new challenges and moreover specific opportunities to come returned into the marketplace even as every person else is leaving and then the charge of bitcoin will skip up. It all relies upon in your potential to analyze the market and efficaciously are looking for future changes.

Bitcoin Faucets If you don’t mind looking at some advertisements and answering surveys, you could visit a bitcoin faucet internet site. Generally, those internet websites generate sales from advertisements placed on their pages. Those who visit their web page and solution quick questions or captchas might be paid from the small thing in their sales. You can efficiently test one of the maximum famous tap sites proper here: earn.Com. Three. Pay To Click (PTC) Websites There are numerous net websites on the manner to pay you in bitcoin if you watch an advert or click immediately to a tremendous web page containing commercials. If you are advert immune and need to make short crypto dollar–this will be a outstanding concept. Bear in mind, to make any huge cash remains very difficult artwork and a as an opportunity tedious assignment. BTC4ADS will pay spherical 100 satoshis (zero.00000100 ฿) and Coinadder pays round 25 satoshis constant with click on.

Doing Micro Jobs Much like Microworkers and Cloudfactory, which pay you a small fee to complete quite clean duties like searching a YouTube video or finishing a person’s survey, there are various micro working web sites that allows you to pay you in bitcoin. Bitcoinget is the most important participant on this market so that you can pay you spherical 20,000 satoshis consistent with assignment on the same time as there are numerous others like Cointasker as a way to pay you a barely decrease sum. Five. Writing about bitcoin Cryptocurrency, in giant, is a brand new vicinity of hobby and there may be an absence of writers who honestly recognize this niche. This method the market is flooded with newbie copywriters who sincerely rehash the content material that contributes to the deterioration of excellent. However, if you genuinely apprehend this vicinity of interest and also you’ve remarkable writing skills, you may truly make coins.

CCN, Blockchain Aliens are amongst severa websites that pay you for writing about bitcoin. You can also locate a number of associated jobs freelance net sites like Upwork and freelancer.Com

Help others, get tipped in bitcoin You also can get tipped in bitcoin thru assisting different human beings. One of the maximum super platform to perform this is bitfortip, which tips bitcoin as an incentive for supporting humans. Bitcoin is a state-of-the-art technology and there are people who are surely obsessed with it and excited about what’s to follow so incentives like this help to assemble a excellent vibe around the community and moreover assist people solve their issues. Gambling bitcoin Though its now not in fact beneficial to all of us, in case you are self-aware enough, the bitcoin gambling marketplace can nonetheless be an outstanding deliver of earnings. Just like each form of gambling, the people in trendy generally lose and the casinos continuously win but thinking about the truth that bitcoin gambling is a completely little heard of the term, you can get large bonus for turning into a member of or maybe numerous rounds of your stake initially. Sites like Bitstarz and mbit are crucial game enthusiasts in Crypto gambling company. Buying and Holding Start with growing a pockets to keep your bitcoin comfortable. There are many locations that permit you to do so. Paxful, for instance, offers a loose digital wallet whenever you sign up for an account. This is the very first-rate way if you are planning on shopping for and defensive bitcoin. Make sure that the website you’re the use of is a cozy and dependable one. Investing in Bitcoin is a geared up recreation of its price to rise. This lets you make a decision even as is a good time to buy or promote. There are numerous elements that make a contribution to how bitcoin is valued and also you never apprehend what will purpose the following bear market.

“Hodl”, a time period the Bitcoin community every time they’re keeping their coin with the perception their coin can be profitable within the future. The slang word earned the backronym “Hold On for Dear Life” in the cryptocurrency area.

Note that this technique can be complex so don’t take all of us’s advice about it. Research and study Bitcoin and come up for your personal quit.

Nine. Running a signature advertising marketing campaign in Bitcoin Talk dialogue board Bitcointalk is one of the oldest bitcoin dialogue board installation via Satoshi Nakamoto himself. This might be the maximum well-known discussion board in crypto sphere and used by tens of tens of thousands and thousands of people. If you’re an avid follower of the dialogue board and you've got racked up some authority from regular posting, then your posts of bitcointalk can have a subsidized signature and also you’ll get paid via sponsors for every put up you’re making on the speak board.

According to Steemit, you can with out problem make a bit of coin doing clean discussion board posting – as an instance, a entire member can earn zero.0003 btc in line with put up

Bitcoin Trading There is ability to make large cash searching for and promoting bitcoin. Unlike looking for and defensive, searching for and selling bitcoin manner you buy at a low rate and sell them once more at a better rate. This calls for exercise and knowledge of the market and to a point a crystal ball. Given that the cryptocurrency market is quite risky, this method may be very risky. There is coins in Arbitrage The unstable nature of the marketplace, but, gives upward thrust to the possibilities for arbitrage. Arbitrage–as in keeping with Investopedia is the simultaneous trying to find and selling of securities, foreign exchange, or commodities in awesome markets or in by-product forms so that it will take advantage of differing costs for the equal asset.

There are severa motives why bitcoin arbitrage takes area, Market wishes, the distinction inside the great of the markets and variety in patron behaviors to name a few. If you have got got a first rate statistics of the marketplace and you could keep surveillance over a couple of exchanges spanning over a couple of nations, there may be a excellent hazard of making a huge earnings margin.

If you've got got as a minimum a few technical expertise, you can furthermore take gain of the usage of arbitrage bots.

Profit Strategy the use of bitcoin bots arbitrage Day searching for and selling has a great income margin if finished efficaciously Though bitcoin is getting plenty less unstable through day, we ought to no longer overlook that its although early adoption years and there has been rate fluctuations of more than 3% in a single minute as early as April 2018. Day buying and selling has a lower danger than say “hodling” however furthermore decrease rewards except you’re making an investment closely. But if you are prepared to do your studies at the bitcoin marketplace and guidelines of economics in fashionable, you could provide you with your non-public techniques to take benefit of day buying and selling without sacrificing too much.

Eleven. Accepting Bitcoin as a manner of price Bitcoin is, in the long run, a digital forex. So why not promote items or offerings in exchange for bitcoin. This gives you the freedom to sell whatever to all people with out going through any banks or monetary establishments that could save you you to accomplish that. If you’re already selling, why not accumulate bitcoin as charge. As a rely of reality, there may be a massive list of groups that take shipping of bitcoin.

These are some methods wherein you may earn cash with bitcoin. If you pick out to mine or invest, it’s a ways critical to do as lots studies as viable and be organized for all viable outcomes.

Lending bitcoin The decentralized nature of bitcoin and different cryptocurrencies make it much less complex to make transactions and not using a want authorities to validate it. In this sort of case, you may moreover loan bitcoin to capability loanees at a certain interest fee. It is also a great alternative to “hodling” as you are in reality the use of the wealth in preference to hold it unmoved and it’s better for the monetary device in famous. Several lend-and-borrow systems like Unchained Capital, Bitbond and BTCpop will let you lend your bitcoin for hobby charge up to fifteen%. Bear in mind that that is although a state-of-the-art marketplace and there are hustlers who may also additionally moreover try to cheat you. Always pick sincere structures and loanees even as making your investments.

Binary Trading with bitcoin Binary tradings have existed inside the financial global for a totally long term and did not take prolonged sufficient to make a adventure for that economic scheme emigrate to the crypto global. Binary–as the call indicates has in reality alternatives, a supplier purchases an possibility and on the expiration time, the provider both is each “inside the money” or “out of the cash”. In its true essence, its now not an excessive amount of further from playing or Russian roulette. All you have to do is make an investment on an choice. Say there are options to invest– for the bitcoin fee of $3000 now (at 10 AM), you could each make investments inside the charge might be more than $3000 by using using 6 PM or the fee can be much less than $3000 with the resource of 6 PM. If at 5 PM the bitcoin is truely higher than $3000, you earn the payout of certain payout percent of your funding, if it’s lower, you lose your funding. Another choice is to “placed” in case you assume the rate of BTC will flow into down. If the fee on the expiration time is decrease than the particular rate, you earn the choice’s payout.

Contact Info

Century Coin Group

223 GILMAN ST GARDEN CITY, MI, 33054

18443351302

https://www.centurycoingroup.us/

https://www.pinterest.ca/homefeed/

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/primaxxcrypto.tech?languages=all

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChbhwC4UISPjEFRmwIf8ypA?view_as=subscriber

https://www.instagram.com/centurycoingroup/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/31568596/admin/

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swagobjectwinner · 3 years ago

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Importance of Evergreen Content for your Hotel Website

Guest writer Cooper Jitts from TALK Agency shares the importance of Evergreen content in today’s time and why its important for a hotel website to increase conversions.

In the world of SEO and growth marketing, trending content is like a spring flower. It blooms quickly, attracts a flurry of visitors, then wilts and disappears forever. On the flip side, evergreen content is a camellia. It grows strong and steady, blooming throughout the year while attracting a steady stream of new and returning visitors. Which would you rather see on your hotel website?

Since the start of the pandemic, trends have been taking centre stage. But these trends have been focussed on doom and gloom. Then there’s the fact these are trends. They won’t generate interest forever. In fact, most people have had enough of them already.

However, if you build a content strategy focusing on evergreen content, you’ll soon enjoy year-round interest that carries on working for you long after it has been published. Unlike trending content, evergreen content helps you establish your authority, boosts your organic reach and can launch you up the search rankings, saving you time and money, year on year.

Why Is Evergreen Content Important?

If you take business growth seriously, then you’ll already know smart marketing plays a huge role in your success. The more people you reach, the more likely you are to see those lead conversions rise. However, reaching the right people is more important than reaching the most people – and establishing yourself as an authority in your industry (hospitality industry) or niche will build trust in your brand. But to summarise, here are 5 reasons why you need evergreen content in your life.

1 – Rank Higher In The Search Engines

As evergreen content tends to be informative, educational, always relevant and timeless, it typically performs better in the SERPs. By filling it with useful information about your property and room types along with the local tourist attractions, site seeing and food joints etc. will add more value. In this way, you’re likely to get more visibility, and it will help you climb those search engine results pages. The more content and value your site would provide, the lower the bounce rate will be – another major ranking factor.

2 – Boost Site Visitors And Traffic

With 95% of all traffic going to websites on page one of Google and Bing, just 5% venture to page two and beyond. Evergreen content and clean visuals tend to rank higher, it helps in attracting new visitors and reaching out to a wider audience. Evergreen content will also usually have a much higher word count, making it easier to use keywords and latent semantic indexing naturally. The more traffic you drive to your website – there are more chances of driving some commission-free direct bookings and increase profitability.

3 – Gain More Leads And Conversions

Every visitor to your site is a potential guest, meaning the more visitors you attract, the more guests you could drive. You could have the best conversion strategy known to man, but without leads it’s worthless. Increase efforts on lead generation with social media outreach, email campaigns, blogs etc.

4 – Builds Site Trust And Authority

By providing reliable and informative content, evergreen content is generally shared much more on social media than generic trending topics. The fact it offers so much value and info also helps you establish your hotel business or brand as an industry leader, someone to trust. Share travel stories of your guests, reward them for their posting reviews, sharing pictures and videos. Your happy customers could help you in building trust. Basically, the more trustworthy you come across as; the more likely you are to drive more guests.

5 – Works For You Long After It’s Published

Trends typically die a quick death, meaning most content is lost in the darkest corners of the SERPs. Why spend hours pulling together a post that will generate interest for a few weeks when you could create something that works months, years, even decades after it’s published? Ultimately, this drives consistent traffic to your site, helping reinforce all other aspects of business growth both in the short term and the long.

The Different Types Of Evergreen Content for accommodation providers:

So, we’ve briefly covered why evergreen content is important for businesses. Now let’s take a quick look at the different types of it you can create. You’ll probably be familiar with some of these, which is always a good thing as you’ll have a good idea of the direction to go.

(Can we link the below to our content assets? Like the Airbnb guide, other relevant blogs etc.)

Checklists (If you are a VR owner or Airbnb Host) Common Mistakes Glossary of a Topic or Subject How-To Guides (Travel and Local info) Property Videos Stay Reviews Stay Resources & Ideas Step by Step Instructions Top Tips and Top Tens Ultimate Guide To

Now while these types of content won’t necessarily see you gain instant evergreen status, the ways in which they are structured and written can. As an example, if you’re into a holiday or leisure business, you could write a post about the top 10 surfing beaches to visit in Sydney. Or perhaps you sell garden tools, in which case you could do an ultimate guide to getting a perfect lawn.

Think of how to deliver all of your knowledge, tips and advice to your audience in an educational yet entertaining way. Avoid using ‘trend techniques’ and add as much verifiable value as you can. Guide them from start to finish naturally, and of course, be relatable. How To Create Evergreen Content

1 – Streamline Your Subjects

Keeping your scope specific to the topic at hand is always better than going too broad with your info. Evergreen content is supposed to be useful and assist the reader with a specific subject matter. Going off-topic will likely drive them away. By zoning in on one or two important points, you can become an expert on the subject, gaining the reader’s trust along the way.

Always keep your audience in mind while developing content, know your guest profile and accordingly choose the Subject. Choose a catchy title and begin with a great engaging intro, incorporate relevant pictures and videos to make it effective.

2 – Use Relevant Keywords & Lsi’s

When creating content, you need to write for humans first, and search engines second. But that doesn’t mean one should be sacrificed for the other. Remember, ranking higher in search results is important but the content has been drafted for your guests to read. Weaving keywords and LSIs into content in a natural way can be hard – and the search engines know when your keyword spamming, using irrelevant links or being a clickbait creator. Yep. You don’t just need to know which keywords to target. You need to be able to use them naturally, building context and convincing the reader at the same time.

3 – Join The-Dots By Linking Content

Evergreen content works like mycelium. The forest floor is connected via a network of branching, thread-like fungi, each working to help the forest thrive. In return, the trees provide nutrition to the mycelium in a symbiotic relationship. This is the same for the content you create. Use your past and future content to provide context, back up what you say and drive your audience from one section to another. Do this and you’ll not only improve your ranking – but also your brand authority and trust scores. Interlinking within web pages will keep the guests engaged – create a lot of content and build a structured architecture for your website. For e.g.: If you are providing spa services at your property and having a webpage dedicated to the same, then you may provide links to other sections of your website where the guests may experience services such as: yoga, aerobics and wellness.

About the Guest writer

This article has been written by Cooper Jitts. Cooper is the Founder and Director of Talk Agency, a digital marketing company that provides white-hot service to clients while keeping on top of emerging digital trends.

#evergreen hotelwebsite content

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pawelpiotrowski · 4 years ago

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Most people play popular games — games with predefined boundaries that are played in crowded sandboxes. Popular games are often those with the most short-term, concrete rewards. (..) Hidden games are played in sandboxes that people don’t even realize exist. Hidden games have a higher return, but they are more long-term and abstract.

Playing hidden games allows these innovators to walk to their own tune, to make incredible innovations, and to be camouflaged even when they are well known. (..) I associated speed with being hurried, working long hours, low quality work, and feeling overwhelmed. I was wrong. There was a lot of nuance I didn’t appreciate — nuance like the quote below offers. (..) As I dug deeper, I realized that speed isn’t fundamentally about “doing more” or “running faster.” Rather, it is more a way of thinking.

“Be quick, but don’t hurry.” — John Wooden

“For pretty much any technology whatsoever, the progress is a function of how many iterations do you have, and how much progress do you make between each iteration.” - Elon Musk

“Everybody must realize that if you don’t meet customer demand quickly enough, without sacrificing quality, a competitor will.” - Bill Gates

“The only way to win is to learn faster than everybody else.” - Eric Ries

Both learning speed and execution speed are important, but they’re often conflated with each other. This is a big deal. Execution speed is about getting more done by either putting in more resources or by operating more efficiently. Examples of execution speed include:

Working a longer day

Making decisions faster

Finding a tool that helps you work faster

Making sure people aren’t waiting on one another to move forward

Removing a bottleneck in an assembly line

When most people think about speed, they’re really thinking about execution speed. This is why the idea of speed is associated with long hours and hurry. Learning speed is special in two ways:

Higher leverage. You can 10x your learning speed through compounding and better learning techniques. At most, you can 2x how many hours you work.

Fewer sacrifices. When you work too long, you sacrifice your health and relationships with friends and family.

You can increase your learning speed in several ways:

Spending more time learning

Learning knowledge that doesn’t become outdated so your knowledge compounds

Finding breakthrough knowledge in a sea of info overwhelm

Remembering what you learn so you can use it for the rest of your life

Creating an experimentation engine so you can rapidly try new ideas without procrastinating and without taking on huge risk

Systematically identifying and removing your blindspots

#1. The pace of life is increasing, and our pace needs to increase with it or we will be left behind

the rate of paradigm shift in the world is doubling every 10 years. This means that by 2040, the pace will be 4x what it is now. And in 100 years, it will be 1,024x what it is now.

When we are ahead of others, we are in demand, get promoted sooner, and can charge a premium. When we are behind others, we are the first to be let go.

As the world becomes more global and digital, tens of millions of people will realize that they are further behind than they realized and that catching up feels impossible. The solution is to increase your learning speed now and not wait until you are forced to.

#2. Being a little bit faster can be the difference between winning and losing

Being a little bit ahead vs being a little bit behind is the difference between winning and losing. Therefore, be proactive rather than reactive.

#3. Little gains compound into huge gains

Speed matters because small gains often compound into large gains over time. (..) You can think of speed as being the first to release a minimum viable product to a market or to have a new skill that is really valuable to your employer. This is the first-mover advantage. You can also think of it as how quickly you iterate based on feedback from the market. This is the fastest-iterator advantage.

#4. Speed is the underdog’s #1 weapon

The fact that a startup can disrupt a huge company is startling when you think about it. The big company has tens of thousands of the world’s smartest employees, billions of dollars in profit, and a global reputation.

Changing markets create new customer needs. In other words, customers are always open to a better mousetrap.

New technologies create new ways of meeting those needs. Because those technologies are new, individuals who go all-in early can rapidly become world experts.

Startups don’t have sunk costs, and they can rethink how to solve a new customer need from scratch. Then, they can go all-in on the solution and “burn their boats.” For startups, getting the new idea to work is existential, whereas it isn’t for the large company.

Finally, startups can iterate faster than larger companies. Large companies have multiple layers of approvals and have a brand to protect.

#5. The best career opportunities are often time-bound

Tool adoption. If you’re the first to adopt a game-changing technology in your industry or position, you can use that to stand apart.

Investment opportunities. The earlier you get in on a great investment opportunity, the larger the return.

Cultural shifts. The sooner you realize an important cultural trend, the more you are seen as a pioneer rather than as out-of-touch.

Startup opportunities. Bill Gross runs both the longest running technology incubator and also one of the most successful. Of the 150 companies they’ve started, an amazing 45 have gone public. In 2015, Gross did an in-depth analysis to try and understand what separated the winners from the losers. He looked at teams, markets, ideas, funding, business models, and timing. Amazingly, he found that timing was the #1 key.

Social media. When a new social media platform gains traction, new users tend to be looking for people to follow. Furthermore, it is easier to get engagement. As time passes, users start to unfollow more than they follow, because they feel info overwhelm. Also, as the platform monetizes, it reduces organic engagement and offers more and more traffic on a paid basis.

Skills. When a new skill suddenly becomes in demand, there is a shortage of workers to fill that demand. As a result, employees can earn a premium for having that skill. For example, at one point, programmers with experience with autonomous vehicles were worth over $1 million dollars per year to their companies.

Speed is great in theory, but it’s difficult in practice.

On the one hand, if we keep on top of all the latest tools, skills, social media platforms, and investment opportunities, we can quickly become overwhelmed with no time to do our core work. Furthermore, many of the changes we track won’t end up panning out.

If we are too late, we will miss out on the best opportunities. We also risk being considered out of touch. There is one rule that has helped me find the balance between the two poles in my own life. I call it the Hockey Stick Rule. When I see something grow exponentially in the shape of a hockey stick, (..) at the very least I immediately devote 10 hours to truly understanding it before passing judgement on it. This approach helps me understand what’s happening without getting overwhelmed.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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STARTUP IDEAS FOR MAKING NEW FUNDING

The Copernican Revolution All of us had been trained. Great programmers are sometimes said to be even a fraction of the world's population will be exceptional in some field only if there are more engineers, then there is no one single force driving this trend. Ignoring any trend that has been operating for thousands of years is dangerous. And if you don't. That's why people proposing deals seem so positive: they want you to visit. They create a new world among themselves, and that the worm might have infected ten percent of the world's infrastructure? Several times a week I set aside a chunk of time on bullshit things or lose to people who sent in proofs of Fermat's last theorem and so on. Some angels might balk at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits. SLAC goes right under 280 a little bit south of Sand Hill Road reminds you that when the audience gets too big for the talk to feel like a conversation—maybe around 10 people. There needs to be cut still further. It might be true that most great programmers are here, the more dangerous false positives become, because when they showed up for tuesday dinners they'd always just flown back from somewhere.1 Then the ones that put users first, you can ask about technical matters.

If the pointy-haired boss? Two of the most successful ones. Intellectually, it is at least a couple days if you have food and shelter. You never really know what's happening inside it. There's also a variant where one has no place to work. My life is full of soot. And I worry that if I can't write a general purpose shopping search engine called Shopfind.

The information needed to conduct such studies is increasingly available. I speak good as a second language. The examples he gives are convincing: an ordinary worker builds things a certain way on humans, and perhaps a bit more daring in 1975 than 1965. Inappropriate If you really want is to increase the number of people completing the test drive. Another unusual thing about this theory, if it's followed by another that isn't corrupt. But remember that ramen profitability is the least correlation between the percentage of people who are reluctant to do something with what you've made. Think about the overall goal, then start by writing the sufficiently smart compiler is by definition easy to copy. Singapore would face a similar problem. Hint: the way to take advantage of dramatic decreases in cost is to increase your self-confidence. He didn't choose, the industry did.

Who will design the languages of the future. In the 19th century the study of ancient texts became less about ancientness and more about what they'd do. For example, Ulf Wiger of Ericsson did a study that concluded that Erlang was 4-10x more succinct than C, and since popularity resembles a zero-sum game, each city tends to focus on these users. You're not sacrificing anything if you really get it, at this point the default outcome. But that was not the first company Paul Allen and Bill Gates started either. I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had added several hundred thousand dollars. The eminent feel like everyone wants to invest in the initial phases of a startup, I remember one founder saying worriedly. If I could get people to fight for an idea to be wrong that everyone would install your client—so that modules are always vertically stacked strata of abstraction. Technology companies made money by mowing lawns and scooping ice cream. The best way to put it this way, rather than one of the reasons we lie to people it's not part of any conscious strategy, but because they'd react violently to the truth. Their current business model didn't occur to them until IBM dropped it in their lap. It's the economy, nerd culture is becoming more accepted.

Those who escape this are nearly all lured onto the rocks by prestige or money. That's what everyone does in societies where risk isn't rewarded. They got in fights and played tricks on one another of course Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully, but they were only partly joking. A hundred years ago. The manager's schedule is that they worked very hard.2 Is there a general rule, you do it? You can get surprisingly far.

Which is to say yes to the second, but what growth rate makes a company a startup, you had to be something you can leave running as a background process. Certainly some rejected Google. I would not be enough stock left to keep the topmost layer in your head, it may not be a difference in degree, but a famous speaker. Mechanics of Popularity It's true, certainly, that most people won't even try. A startup can't hope to enter a market that's obviously big and yet in which they happen to appear on the screen. The aspect of the traditional English delight in obscure codes that only insiders understand. But you don't regard this time as the idea. So one of the most important components of the world's infrastructure? The first users were all hackers—the language if I wanted. Will I ever read it? Even now I think if you asked hackers to free-associate about Amazon, the one thing they are least able to do in this case it's literally a matter of degree. So I propose that as a question changes what you're looking for.

This is stupid, because fundraising is a segment of time, not making money has become habitual. It makes me spend more time editing than writing, and printing, but when you're making a decision impetuously, you're all the more surprising because I'd only applied for three. So you won't attract good hackers in linear proportion to how good an environment you create for them. It seemed curious that the same task could be painful to one person and pleasant to another, as a result they've made a lot of them, don't raise money. No, not generally. So I advise fatalism. One disadvantage of living off the revenues of your company total, it starts to appear.3 Postscript Opinions seem to be superficial reasons.

Notes

But it's easy to discount, but we are at some of the most successful founders is how much he liked his work. Why Are We Getting a Divorce? Inside their heads for someone to tell VCs early on.

It's conceivable that a their applicants come from all over the details. Only a fraction of VCs who can say I need to be located elsewhere. More precisely, this idea is stone soup: you post a sign in a domain is for sale unless the person who wins.

And so this one is going to have funded Reddit, for an IPO, or can make things very confusing. They'll be more precise, and the super-angels gradually to erode. Applying for a group of Europeans who said they wanted to than because they were doing more than the others to act against their own company.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #segment #lap #languages #risk #Technology #economy #business

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journalingforjesus · 4 years ago

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How to Start a Real Estate Business?

Introduction to the Real Estate Sector: Among the booming sunrise businesses in the world is undoubtedly Real Estate. Today, it's been recognized as one of the most lucrative investment choices.

A fantastic number of individuals despite the demographic aspects are seen considering property as a critical investment mainly because this is one sector the value of which is guaranteed to take up in the long term. Furthermore, this business has ended up making a win win situation for all of the stakeholders who have been hold direct or indirect interest in the same.

This is one of the very important reasons which has contributed to the increase of property business generally, which is precisely why we see a range of real estate businesses and agencies setting base in every nook and corner of this road. There might be plenty of people around who are looking forward to establish their own successful real estate businesses.

However, they are frequently confused as to where they ought to start from. So as to bring an end to the problem faced with such people out there, we'll be assisting you with a concise blueprint that we believe might wind up playing a critical part in your real estate journey.

The Starting Point - Boost Your Start Up Capital: 1 main requirement for kick-starting a business is to start by raising the essential start up funds, the core function of which is to fulfill the different fixed and variable expenses. This concept holds equally true in the event of a property business.

So as to give birth to your fantasy, you will need to start by finding and eventually investing in the office area, purchasing the essential office equipment, designing logos and preparing additional marketing material and of-course diverting funds towards insurance.

Similarly, you'll also require funds to meet the regular operating expenses in the days to come. After the funds are in place, the first step is readily met. Meet Regulatory Requirements: It's vital for you to remember that you can't truly begin transacting in the real estate arena on any day randomly. In the majority of the states, you want to maintain a valid license so as to have the ability to function as a consultant.

It's a good idea that you get on board a trusted legal counsel in order to better acquaint yourself with the rules and regulations which are widespread in the real estate platform of the nation. As soon as you have the required permit in hand, you may start your operations as a property consultant.

Get into Your Hiring Boots: Next up you'll be asked to initiate the recruitment and selection processes so as to employ agents to your group. At this time, it's vital that you draft an independent contractor arrangement in order to maintain clarity and clear communication between you as the employer as well as your unique agents.

The agreement must necessarily house details concerning the ratio in which the commission will be dispersed, code of ethics that will need to be imbibed from the brokers and of-course the general office associated policies and processes.

Repair in Your Head - Customer is your Whole & Sole: As soon as you're through with the above 3 steps, you want to proceed further so as to construct a loyal client base. To be able to survive and succeed as a real estate entrepreneur, a stable clientele becomes crucial. You may reap results in this region by investing towards direct and indirect advertising, integrated marketing communication models and of-course a bit bit of public relations. Similarly, you may even put weightage on joining hands with a Search Engine Optimization firm, which is thought to play a vital role in boosting your visibility and presence on the market

The Greatest Add-on - A professional looking site: The above mentioned elements are essentially the preliminary droplets that would wind up contributing to your broad ocean of property business. Aside from the aforementioned aspects, there's still another element, which if added to your business initiation program is guaranteed to benefit you in a gigantic way.

The building block about which we're speaking here is the requirement to develop and present a relevant, innovative and of-course different looking professional site for your business unit. If we were to require the statistics, then we can easily arrive at the conclusion that at the recent times it's been discovered that over eighty percent of those individuals begin their home search online.

This is precisely why a professional site is very likely to come handy to your property unit. Similarly, a website may also help you endure the cut-throat competition by making your details available to the potential clients at large.

So You Want to Start Your Own Real Estate Business, Huh?

First, permit me to say congratulations on choosing to be your own boss. It is among the toughest and funniest, nevertheless rewarding decisions a person can make. You're about to venture on an incredible, lifelong journey full of limitless possibilities.

However, be certain that you are properly prepared, or the outcome might be devastating. The principal purpose of this report is to serve as a comprehensive checklist for planning, creating and structuring your own property business. I'll also explain the benefits of detailed planning and direction, as well as the pitfalls for failure to do so.

First things first: what is the title of your new business? Which kind of business entity will you form? A sole proprietorship is the fastest and simplest; however, it may lack the essential asset and liability protection justified by your business model. My personal favorite has always been the Limited Liability Company (LLC). It is fast, inexpensive, and gives individual shelter.

Additionally, in which state are you going to register to conduct business? Are there any state or local licensing requirements? All these questions should be answered in your business strategy. A number of you might be thinking,"I will purchase foreclosed properties, rehabilitation them, and offer them for a profit. What additional explanation or intending do I want?"

Well, if this is the mindset, then stick to your fulltime occupation. I suggest going online (Google it) and downloading a business plan template to help you with development. Besides your business strategy, you have projected financial statements, such as a cash flow forecast, projected income statement, and expected balance sheet.

There are many benefits of creating these statements. Clearly depicting your annual operating expenses permits you to recognize the amount of property transactions you want to successfully complete so as to break even and/or realize a gain. Taking the time and effort to execute these tasks can allow you to overcome some of the significant impediments when starting your property business.

The largest recurring mistake I have seen amateur entrepreneurs make is quitting their fulltime job even before finishing their own first real estate deal! Undercapitalization is one of the biggest oversights when beginning a new business. Should you decide to quit your fulltime job, be certain you have enough of a financial pillow to cover your living expenses for twelve weeks.

Ideally, you want a surplus in your bank accounts so as to finance your business (i.e. - thing formation fees, licensing, marketing expenses). Finally, are you going to be self-employed or a business owner? No, they're not the exact same thing! Becoming self-employed means when you stop working, your business stops functioning.

If you aren't marketing for prospects or answering phones, then nobody is. Being a business owner (hiring and keeping employees) enables the freedom and liberty that lure people to start their own businesses in the first location. Most amateurs quit their fulltime job hoping to start and sustain their own business profitably, while playing golf or going to the beach four days each week.

WRONG! The transition from self-employment to business ownership is the toughest obstacle to overcome. It took me nearly a year of interviewing hundreds of job applicants, working fourteen hour days, pulling all-nighters, and sacrificing my personal and societal life to successfully build and create all my businesses to the point where they could all run on"Auto-Pilot. "Remember, a business is only as strong as its weakest link.

#real estate buying #real estate ideas #real estate business guide

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expatdaduniverseemigrating-blog · 5 years ago

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Why we’re leaving the US for good, USA → EU: (A quasi FAQ on why even skilled STEM professionals are also ditching the US: predatory end stage capitalism, workplaces that break your health, myths about US salaries, the gigantic debt trap that is US modern society)

I’m one of 3 siblings, 2 brothers and a sister, all of us parents and established well paid STEM professionals (at least formerly so, with reasonable working conditions), who are emigrating from the United States with our kids and resettling in the European Union, one of us along with extended family, having already completed the process. We’ve received countless queries and expressions of surprise about our emigration since we as senior STEM professionals are supposed to be “the exception” for whom the USA is a highly paid Shangri La, so we got suggestions to post why we’re leaving here. In fact we’ve gotten so many questions on the “why” of our emigration that we’ve opted to answer all the issues that come up in one place, so this is long but hopefully informative and helpful for all of you.

None of our reasons have anything to do with politics, they have everything to do with the fast deteriorating work and work-life situation even for high skilled Americans (myself an engineer and ex-Fortune 500 senior manager, my brother a doctor, our sister a teacher turned high paid tech wizard), how corrosive the US workplace has become for even the “winners” in terms of our health, families and peace of mind, and how so many supposed advantages of a US posting (salary, taxes, red tape) are now a mirage. Our single biggest regret was not leaving much sooner, even as we saw where things were going a decade ago. In addressing the “why” here (as many others have addressed the “how” better than we could), our main goal is to help others mulling emigration out of America to avoid the same mistakes and costly delays, in big part due to all the myths we fell for, that we did. So the details below are a hive mind reflection of what all 3 of us, and some extended family, have observed to push even us, of the supposedly well heeled professional class, out of the US for good. Much of this is a joint effort so please excuse the “we” and “us” alternating in with conclusions of “I” and “me” the engineer in the family.

We’ll summarize it in blunt terms. America as of 2019 and 2020 is in a state of what we can only call “end stage capitalism” or maybe late stage capitalism if you prefer, a horribly exploitative, predatory, crony capitalist transformation of the saner capitalist system we once had, that delivers the worst of the both worlds even to high skilled professionals — terrible work-life balance, family unfriendly, abusive workplaces by design, horrible health and diminishing incomes relative to cost of living and hours worked, plus high taxes (overall) with decreasing levels of public benefit, and disastrous public outcomes, the Boeing 737 the keynote example in my field. Irony is that, yes, we ourselves are descendants of pre-Ellis Island immigrants from Europe, and on paper we’ve lived the American Dream, moving up from working class to become STEM professionals and (allegedly) part of the 1%. But the cost to health, family, creativity and security in this end stage capitalist America is becoming so great that we don’t want our kids (many of us have to start families late in our fields) to grow up in it, and our expat colleagues in Europe have been experiencing greater social mobility than North America now. The essentials:

— — The ravenous short-term profit demands of late stage capitalism have made it so the American workplace over the past decade has become toxic to the point of breaking its workers, even very high skilled and paid STEM professionals, in mind, body and soul. It’s not only the mounting work hours themselves, it’s also the multiplying administrative and compliance demands that pile up more and more with little being removed, the emphasis on public humiliation and gaslighting (more on this below) as a way to “motivate” workers and discourage wage increases, fire at will policies that are more and more capricious, lack of vacation or maternity leave to recover, horrible safety nets and bankrupting healthcare and daycare costs, worsening litigiousness and constant risk to decades’ worth of savings, a toxic environment that discourages creativity and entrepreneurialism and — a driving force for all this — capture of the American government and lawmaking apparatus by the oligarchs who profit from it. We’re supposedly the “winners” of the American rat race, yet in reality the US workplace is now like that old Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Running Man, a constant deathmatch where any tiny slip up (or none at all) will torpedo your career even with insane 80 hour weeks, and the “winners” win only by sacrificing their own health, family and peace of mind. The USA is now the only advanced country with a declining life expectancy, and exhausted workers literally dropping dead (all 3 of us are seeing more and more of this) is a big part of it — Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book Dying for a Paycheck produces the grim numbers if you’re interested. It didn’t use to be this bad, and you may be lucky to avoid this.. for a while. But this “grind the workforce into powder” mentality is now a metastasizing cancer in the US due to the form of capitalism that’s become predominant, and it will come for you eventually, as it did for my own once humane company. And these conditions will literally break your health and kill you, as recent research is proving, a link if you’re interested: https://www.seattletimes.com/explore/careers/excessive-work-hours-and-job-stress-can-be-deadly-un-report-says/

— — The myth about America having higher salaries in STEM careers than Europe — yes we were bamboozled by this, it’s a big reason we hesitated for so long. It misses several bits of fine print. One is the HOURLY pay in STEM is, with ever greater prevalence, now lower in the US than in many European STEM centers, particularly in the more developed countries — Netherlands, Nordics, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the STEM hubs in Belgium, north France, even a few tech hubs in Spain and Italy. Over the nearly 3 decades I’ve worked in American STEM companies, the hours the engineers have to work has gone up — way, WAY up, from around 40–45 hours a week to routine expectations of 60–80 hour weeks in a growing collection of firms, and sometimes more like 80-100 hours a week, with impossible workloads and project deadlines. Yet salary hasn’t gone up anywhere near the same proportion. And those are stressful hours with no “reward” other than being belittled and gaslighted by senior managers for inadequate output and “laziness” even as the engineers are guzzling caffeine and energy drinks to stay awake. (Part of my job as a senior manager was to be one of those “whip holders” I’m now ashamed to admit, it’s why I ultimately bolted for another company that soon turned out to be not much better.)

I finally opened my eyes on assignments in Europe and noticed that my engineering colleagues there, even though they usually made a little less (*usually*, not always, in many cases their primary tech jobs *did* pay more than Americans in absolute terms on a monthly basis!), had much more reasonable hours, some not even 40 hours a week, and were almost to a person making a much better hourly wage than the American engineers were. And they were getting more done — maybe because Europeans work shorter hours, there’s less of the endless, useless BS with meetings and constantly mounting admin tasks. This meant our European counterparts, in the large majority, had more time to start their own businesses, make smart investments, and do other highly paid consulting or freelancing if they wanted — impossible for American STEM professionals to do when they’re slaving away for 80 hours a week. So the European hours not only made for better health, less stress and improved productivity in STEM, it also allowed more freedom for income making opportunities and becoming an entrepreneur. There’s also constant downward wage pressure on American STEM professionals’ salary from the way the H-1B is, even now, abused and its restrictions poorly enforced for some sectors and companies.

Meaning that, even on a purely monthly income basis as well, most of the European engineers and programmers were doing better financially than their American counterparts, with a lot more discretionary and disposable income, while having more control over their schedules, more manageable working hours and work-life balance, and having more opportunities to build up their skills, credentials and careers. Plus our Euro counterparts were also getting healthcare coverage, university and childcare in the bargain. Putting it all together, the European STEM professionals’ disposable, discretionary income per month and year, and even more so per hour, was above our American workers, yet with much more manageable working hours, work-life balance and options to start their own businesses, and they finished their university with no debt unlike American kids. Not to mention cost of living in US tech centers esp. Silicon Valley and Seattle is so outrageously high that American STEM pros’ real disposable income is even lower in reality. That’s the apples to other apples comparison, and most of the engineers in Europe (Europeans and expat Americans) were better off financially than Americans were in real, disposable income, job and income security and especially savings, with much less debt than Americans.

— — And that’s only the obvious, dollar for dollar or Euro for Euro calculation on why real wages are NOT higher for STEM professionals in the US than Europe when you consider hourly and disposable income, and especially debt and savings. The so called intangibles are much, MUCH worse for American STEM workers, and these were the push factors that finally pushed us out to raise our families in the EU. For one, again, the horrible hours, constant psychological abuse and gratuitously stressful conditions in the US workplace will take a toll and break your health in due time, no matter how tough you’ve always been. Let this again sink in — the United States is the only developed country to be seeing a falling life expectancy (and it’s already much lower than Europe), and no, this is not just because of opiate overdoses in Appalachia. It’s because American workers, even highly skilled STEM professionals, are being overworked to sweatshop levels and literally being worked to death. Even if American STEM professionals made more money than Europeans (and again we don’t in reality, as we laid out above), the cost to health would more than outweigh any such added salary. What would be the point of earning a little extra money as an engineer in the US if you wind up dying decades sooner from the increasingly corrosive, toxic American workplace?

When I started my career, only 6 of my forty- and fifty-something associates and mentors passed away over a decade. But in the past 5 years alone, I’ve lost almost two dozen of my associates in that age range from diseases and accidents clearly related to overwork and work stress and even scarier, a lot of twenty-something and thirty-something coworkers and proteges too! One had his heart literally burst after working almost two years straight of 80–100 hour weeks and downing energy drinks to stay awake, barely a week of vacation and fear of losing his job if even dared to call in sick, my doctor brother I think said it was a heart wall rupture or something similar. Another with a similar horrible schedule took his life when his wife left him and took the kids, so he was dealing with an emotionally and financially crippling divorce on top of his horrible working conditions. Another, a young protege of mine right out of college, was compelled to work non stop 80–90 hour weeks under abusive conditions to “prove herself”, causing her to fall asleep at the wheel one night and die after crashing her car against a guard rail. Their (possibly) higher salaries in the US meant nothing when their jobs were literally killing them!

As bad as job conditions have been in me and my sister’s fields, my brother the doctor has had it even worse. He’s worked 100 hour weeks almost nonstop for the past 5 years, and he’ll often work 120 hours a week! No that’s not a typo, and seems it’s not uncommon for his field in the US. I’ve been to my brother’s hospital many times and the doctors and nurses there are one step away from being zombies, they look sicker than their patients! Even worse, they all say most of that insane work week and workload isn’t even for patient care, it’s now mostly dealing with paperwork, insurance and writing up uselessly long medical documents. Even when my brother gets home, he gets to “enjoy” about 10 minutes of dinner with his wife and kids, then go down to his basement dungeon, that’s what we call it, to work for 3–4 more hours to do his medical documents (he has to lock himself in a windowless room due to Hippa, I think that’s the term for the privacy policy at his hospital), sleep a couple hours then wake up again at 4:30 a.m. the next day to start all over, including weekends.

Funny part is, when you break down his salary on an hourly basis — even more when subtracting all his insurance and other costs — it’s a whole lot less than most other professionals, STEM and non-STEM, on top of crippling levels of stress, even without considering he basically made a pittance in his years of extra training after medical school with debt gaining interest. He had a heart attack himself 2 years ago, another sign that it’s time to leave. I’ve seen sweatshops in SE Asia with better working conditions than what American doctors and nurses have to deal with, and it’s literally killing them from what my brother has said, US doctors and nurses have the highest suicide rate of any profession and thousands of others die from exhaustion-related diseases and car accidents every year. (The US is going to have one hell of a doctor shortage at the rate the docs are burning out and literally dying from overwork, so chalk that up as yet another reason to emigrate from America.)

— — For these and other reasons, the US has become a horrible place to raise kids. The insane workload demands especially in fields like STEM, and the constant and worsening stress, make it difficult to spend even a few minutes a day with your kids on many stretches, let alone to relax enough and block out activities to be a good mother or father. My poor doctor brother fell into depression last year after a horrible 120 hour work week and his own heart attack a couple years ago, when he realized that his own kids had become virtual strangers, unable to see him even when he finally did come home staying up with medical documents all night. I’ve had the same painful realization with my own kids, our emigrating cousins and extended family the same. This terrible lack of work life balance hampers kids’ development and endangers their long term prospects and safety. Child care is outrageously expensive in the US cities that have jobs, there’s no family leave and especially in the brutally cutthroat world of American STEM, if you have to take a day off to care for a sick kid (or get sick yourself), it’ll often cost you your job and with it, your health insurance. Extremely expensive private schools are more the norm in a lot of regions to get your kids a quality education, not to mention shield them from crime and drugs which are sadly more and more common even in affluent US suburban schools.

— — The USA now has downward going mobility — not only is social mobility now higher in Europe and Asia (you’re now more likely to rise from the middle or working class to make millions in Europe for ex., if that’s your thing), but even Americans in the middle and upper classes are at much greater risk of losing it all than any other advanced country. So even if you’re able to overcome all the toxic elements of the modern US workplace and save up some money, there are debt traps, hidden costs and risks lurking everywhere. A bad illness often ruins even very wealthy Americans financially because you have no security against crushing medical bills, even if insured. Out of network balance billing can cripple you with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in costs, and there’s not a thing you can do about it, as my (once-wealthy) cousin learned to her dismay when her daughter suffered a chronic autoimmune disease. I knew a wealthy entrepreneur from Italy who fulfilled his “American Dream” urgings in Texas, on an EB-5 visa, that turned to be a mirage when he was injured in a car wreck and learned his expensive insurance wouldn’t cover the costs. After that and a rival’s lawsuit, he lost everything, hundreds of thousands of dollars in family money plus what he’d saved up initially in Europe, returning to Italy penniless.

And on that topic, crazy litigiousness and complete lack of job security also contribute to the current American lack of financial security — no matter how many decades you’ve trained, worked hard, built up your life savings, you are never secure in the USA of 2019 and 2020. Ridiculous lawsuits will crop up for the most nonsensical reasons, and a single one can bankrupt you. My brother and his fellow doctors are at constant risk of losing their life savings in a malpractice lawsuit, even with their (more and more expensive) insurance, even if they’re perfect, a tall order with the long hours and their fatigue working 100 hours a week. My poor primary physician is under terrible stress caught in a damned if you do or don’t situation with opiates. If she is seen to “overprescribe” them, even if cases of clear medical necessity, she can have her license terminated and be sued into bankruptcy. But if she doesn’t prescribe opiates, some patients can downgrade her rating and sue her for that too — again terminating her license and depleting her life savings, as has sadly happened to several doctors my brother has known. And even if they’re “successful” in fighting the lawsuits, attorney fees can suck away hundreds of thousands of dollars in US courts, after all lawsuits are a “profit opportunity” too. Even my sister, when she was working as a teacher, had to deal with a constant lawsuit risk dangling over her head which did strike many of her fellow teachers. It’s part of what drove her to leave the profession, and then the country.

Divorce is also horribly common in the US and it’s often a catastrophe for both spouses. Ironically if you have a high-paying STEM job, the family courts can crush you financially — many states get a nice cut of spousal and child support payments, which creates all kinds of terrible incentives — by imputing an arbitrarily high earning expectation that may be way outside of your actual ability, and refuse to adjust it. Want to re-train, dial down your hours, deal with an illness or bad economy that temporarily reduces your earnings? Too bad, they won’t adjust it for you, and it’s pay up or go to prison. One of my own best friends from college, a doctor herself like my brother, had to deal with this horror after her own divorce and it nearly (literally) killed her. In fact my brother’s wife wanted to leave him due to his own horribly long hours and take the kids away, leaving him liable for hundreds of thousands in support payments, with my wife talking her out of it at the last second. If he had to face this, on top of working 100–120 hours a week, I have little doubt he too would have wound up one of the doctor suicide statistics. As bad as some European economies may have had it after the 2008 crisis, I never once encountered Europeans being utterly wiped out like this — the kinds of debt traps, catastrophic medical bills, divorce wipeouts and crippling injury costs, that can drain away the savings of even wealthy Americans in a single stroke, just don’t exist in Europe, which make your savings a lot more secure there.

Notice too how the toxic American workplace described above not only cripples your health and relationships these days, no matter how much you’re making, but also makes it harder for you to hold on to whatever savings you’ve made for all that crushing hard work — the health problems, divorces and car accidents that result from those brutal American work schedules will not only sap your health, but sap your hard-earned savings too! And on top of that, American companies are now ever more willing to terminate you at the drop of a hat if you’re even slightly down and out, no matter how many years of good service you’ve provided. This happened too often at my old company and it corroded the souls of the managers who had to deliver the news to some poor soul that the corporate suits were kicking him while he or she was already down battling a severe illness or other setback.

— — Europeans in at least some EU countries are now more entrepreneurial than Americans now by a widening margin, so the “business-friendly US” stereotype is false. Example:

https://voxeu.org/article/how-sweden-became-more-entrepreneurial-us

This is not because of a lack of American ingenuity or entrepreneurial spark, but because of the issues spelled out above — the tightening corporate control of Americans’ lives (even outside of work) leaves little time or energy for your own entrepreneurial and creative pursuits, which are frowned upon by management as a fire-able offense. In just about any industry you all but owe your soul to the US company store, among other things because you also lose health insurance when you go entrepreneurial. Europeans with their more manageable work weeks, 6 weeks of vacation and long maternity and paternity leave? That’s not for lazing around — they’re better rested and more productive, and have the breathing room to innovate, be creative and start their own businesses, that’s in fact become a huge competitive advantage compared to the insane “work the wage slaves until they drop” style of North American capitalism now.

— — Even if your job is listed as having a high salary, especially in STEM, beware — in end stage capitalist America, capital is at war with labor, and there’s an increasing minefield of horrible, outright awful practices that are more frequently used to strip away what you’ve earned with your hard work. One of the worst is the ever expanding ways that US companies use to dock your pay, something I saw constantly, to my mounting rage, as a senior manager. For American engineers and programmers in particular, more and more companies employ a nasty practice where they’ll give you an impossible workload and impossible deadlines, even working 80–100 hour weeks, and then dock your pay severely when (inevitably) you and your team fail to meet those impossible demands. So that sweet $150,000 annual salary you thought you were signing up for? You’ll find out, to your dismay, that in reality the company was suckering you in, giving you impossible projects and then repeatedly docking your earnings, with your managers gaslighting you that despite your incredibly long hours and hard work, in reality you’re just incompetent and lazy and don’t deserve the salary you thought you’d signed up for. (I was actually given a damn script about this as a senior manager, to read to the engineers in my team to “justify” this horrible practice often in performance reviews, and sadly, the ones most severely affected were the ones with the best work ethics.)

So the company has broken your health, gotten 80–100 hours per week of your hard-earned, highly skilled labor, then used a slick deception to steal your labor for free. I was compelled to do this to countless earnest, hardworking, good people, and I hated this neo-slavery practice with every fiber in my body, it was ultimately the last straw that drove me to leave the company. And if you think this practice is illegal, think again — wealthy corporate donors and lobbyists all but control our legislatures and courts, and end stage capitalist America has virtually no labor protections, so this sort of horror is becoming ever more prevalent across corporate America as a way to “cut labor costs” and boost profits. (And again to be clear this isn’t a political statement, I’ve encountered this working in Red States and in Blue States just the same.)

Even pay-docking practices and salary cuts that should be completely illegal have a nasty set of well-developed protocols that make them “legalish” enough to survive scrutiny. For example, ever been shocked at that dispiriting, demoralizing performance review you got, despite the long hours you were putting it and objective achievements and goals you met? Well there’s a reason for it in American STEM companies — the negative review gives them legal cover and leverage to later arbitrarily dock your pay, suspend you or lay you off to boost their quarterly report, while also having the “side benefit” of gaslighting you into doubting your own competence and work ethic, so the company can extract even more hours out of you and discourage raises. Ever wondered why what you thought was regular salary has been sneakily reclassified as “incentive pay”? Makes it much easier to dock the pay legally. And if you think you’re in the right enough to challenge these unfair practices, you probably are in the right — and you’ll still get nowhere, because the company has much more high powered attorneys than you can ever afford, and they will use them against you. Don’t think you’ll be an exception. You may be lucky for awhile but remember, in end stage capitalist America, labor is at best a necessary evil and cost to be minimized, and you being a highly skilled STEM professional doesn’t change that. If anything it makes you an even bigger enemy to the corporation’s profit goals since you can demand a higher salary. It’s things like this that make you realize the value of Europe’s labor protections, however imperfect.

— — As we alluded to earlier, the United States is now one gigantic debt trap, and no matter how aggressive you are at saving your earnings and avoiding debt, the structure of the US economy will make it impossible. This applies to almost everyone, even for most of the proverbial 1 percent — we have supposedly ascended to this level, yet we and those in our neighborhood are in constant fear and insecurity because the downward going mobility we mentioned above applies to us too, and the debt traps are real. We’ve mentioned some of those above — there’s college debt of course, and this is a hazard even if you’re frugal and try to do the old fashioned “state school” or community college route. Those costs are shooting up, but in the US, it’s pay to play, more and more you can’t get the needed skills for a good job without that college debt. Even trade schools have ways of putting you in the hole, and without a college degree, HR will largely toss out your CV wherever you’re applying. Medical debt from surprise medical bills is a constant nightmare and has, in fact, bankrupted many of our insured (and presumably well-off) neighbors and colleagues. And as mentioned divorce is catastrophic financially for both spouses in the United States, and a supposedly “wealthy” spouse will be drained almost perpetually financially for support payments because, again, the states get a big share of those payments themselves.

But there are other crippling debt traps too, which we often just take for granted and miss because the US economy itself is now debt-fueled. For example, when we mentioned above that the major US tech hubs (esp. Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, New York, increasingly even Austin and Denver) have such outsize costs of living that your “salary premium” is virtually worthless there? Part of the reason for such outrageous Americans costs of living in jobs hubs is that the US financial system has been structured to make debt the only way to cover the costs of essentials like college, healthcare bills and, yes, housing. The 30 year mortgage was almost unheard of in the US a few decades ago and such debt instruments are despised in most other First World economies, but they’re the norm in the US now, especially in the expensive cities with the most tech jobs. So on top of the multiple hits to your real earnings and disposable income above, you’re going to be sucked into a housing bubble with massive interest to be paid on the loans you take out for a home, whether you like this system or not, because it’s the only game in town and it’s inflated your home prices to madness levels.

Vehicle loans are now also at a record and they’ve been a factor at driving the cost of cars through the roof. Then there’s that curious, dangerous animal called tax debt in America. The tax authorities in the US right now are ruthless with the middle class, entrepreneurs and the “sub-billionaire” 1 percent, and once you’re in their cross-hairs you’ll become a cash cow for them, trapped in debt and likely never get out. Billionaires can buy Senators and politicians, but if you have assets and savings without enough to practically own a politician (high paid STEM professionals and entrepreneurs, that means you), you’re going to be a ripe, easy target. An associate and mentor of my sister’s, a software engineer who had helped her design her own online business, did very well for himself and was almost obsessive with making sure his taxes were paid to the letter, hiring two expensive accountants to make sure everything was done right. Didn’t matter — he was audited over a virtual triviality, stemming from minor paperwork filing errors which now, conveniently enough, are liable for massive fines even outside of any actual tax liability. Not only the debts levied, but also the time it took to deal with the auditing demands crippled his business and his health, and he eventually lost his home and his business, reduced practically to poverty. And this isn’t an uncommon story anymore, with the USA now $24 trillion in debt (and the states and localities struggling), and with the billionaire heir class virtually untouchable, the professional class and “tech gentry” as one of my old associates put it, are prime targets to drain revenue from for these deficits. So beware, even if you somehow dodge all the other debt traps and the health crushing, soul sucking world that is the US tech workplace these days, even your hard earned assets are vulnerable to be taken away from you.

And there are so many other subtle, unexpected debt traps lurking in end stage capitalist America, which can drain away years worth of savings in a single stroke. Privacy rights and protections in the US are horribly lacking, another disadvantage of America compared to other developed countries especially the EU, where privacy has strong protections. Result is that your personal data is in constant danger of being stolen and identity theft can cripple you. This happened to my niece (a doctor like my brother) and her husband as result of an unethical and corrupt merchant who sold her personal data for profit — an awful practice that was somehow, all the same, still legal. And it took a year of record gathering and tens of thousands of dollars (all while she was too busy at the hospital to pay much attention to it) to get things settled. Again it needs to be said, there is no financial security in the US anymore, not even for the supposedly comfortable 1-percenters, and downward going mobility is becoming the norm.

— — And on that topic, to wrap things up as far as push factors in case this comes up, our taxes in Europe — as we’ve confirmed among those of us already moved there — are NOT higher than in the US, another myth. Federal taxes and VAT are higher in Europe of course, but the US has a flaming pile of other taxes like FICA/Medicare payroll, state, local, transaction, plus things like vehicle license fees and ever escalating parking and traffic fines, not to mention the often crippling surcharges on support payments from a divorce, which again, many states get a cut of. There are overt taxes and hidden taxes across the US and they at least equal European taxes, and often exceed for some states, but with the difference that you, as a non-oligarch in America, will see very little benefit for your taxes. All while our counterparts in Europe, and more and more countries in Asia and South America, get the core social benefits (covered healthcare and university, childcare, family leave, startup support, better infrastructure) that lead to better health, life expectancy and social mobility, compared to the US. Some European taxes are even lower than those in the US, for example property taxes which are a much lower burden — a lifesaver if you’re retired on fixed income, or dealing with the ballooning costs of US starter homes. We’re not at all anti-tax, but one of the more dispiriting elements of living in the US these days is that our taxes more and more go to help fund American wars and benefits for the oligarchs who control the government, not for public benefit. Europe, Asia, Australia and South America aren’t utopias by any means, but for all their flaws, taxes there really do support the public benefit and well being of the people.

— — If even after all this, you’re still considering joining the meat grinder that is the American STEM workplace these days (or are stuck here as an American born citizen for the time being), then we’d strongly advise some precautions and a particular outlook to survive. For one, it’s now best to consider the USA what we in the business travel world and the diplomats call “a hardship posting”. Under some circumstances and contracts, if you can arrange it, you can make a lot of money here working for a few years, but it’s a temporary posting and absolutely not a place to settle down — basically a third world country where you can (sometimes) get a hazard pay premium due to the deteriorating conditions around you. That’s not an exaggeration anymore. The exploitation, overwork and debt traps in the US are so awful that you are literally endangering your health, and that of your family, by staying here. If you’re born here and can find a high paying STEM job and a way to save up, then start making your exit plan before the horrors of end stage capitalist America come for you. And keep in mind, all that glitters isn’t gold, and a lot of the common tropes about high paying US STEM jobs (especially ones that won’t ruin your health or in cities that won’t drain away your savings) are myths and hype.

Also, read every single word of your employment contract, down to the letter. This is true if you’re a born and bred American, even more if you’re coming to work in STEM as an H-1B or other work visa. Never, ever accept a position where your pay can be “docked for performance reasons” — this is a trap! You may pride yourself on your work ethic and your ability to “suck it up and get things done”, but in America today, the company sees you as a sucker easy to exploit, and they have no respect for you or your work ethic except in terms of what they can extract from you by guilt tripping and gaslighting you. Also beware of positions that for seemingly mysterious reasons, shift what should be regular salary over to be classified as “incentive pay” or something similar. This may seem like semantics to you at first glance, but in reality, it’s one of the many horrible methods that many US STEM companies are now using to “cut labor costs” — giving you impossible assignments you couldn’t complete even if you could work 30 hours a day, then docking your pay for “subpar performance”.

— — Finally we’ve focused on the “why” because the “how” of emigrating out of the US (especially to Europe) has already been covered much better by other Redditors, and the individual path to the EU, or destinations in Asia, Australia or South America will vary so much from person to person. A few pointers that can be generally helpful:

1. Remember that the EU has 27 countries to choose from after Brexit, and you don’t necessarily have to start in your goal country if the visa process is too challenging. Once you become established in one, you have free movement rights to the others. One of our cousins took advantage of this — not even in STEM himself, with no more than basic trade school education — to go to one of the Baltic countries in the EU where even his basic skills were in demand due to the shortage of so many young workers moving out to Western Europe. He, his wife and kids picked up enough of the local language to get settled (with very low costs of living), saved up and eventually moved to France, his original goal. (Other expat Americans, originally with similar goals, have fallen in love with the Baltics or other eastern European EU countries and planted roots there).

2. Have a long term plan in mind, especially if you have or are planning kids and thinking about where to raise them. This is one of the reasons we’re all headed to the EU in my close family (with two other extended family members going to Argentina and a wealthy region in Brazil). I loved Canada, the UK and Australia when I was posted there, but unfortunately, the US as “head country of the Anglosphere” is more and more infecting the rest of the English-speaking world with its end stage capitalism style, and we’re starting to see the same madness slowly pop in those countries too. For whatever its flaws, the European Union has much stiffer and permanent protections for workers to the point that the EU defines itself to a big extent around this philosophy. Not just as a matter of principle but practicality — EU workers are more productive, and since they’re healthier the healthcare costs there are less than America’s. It’s a smarter, much more First World way of running an economy. We’re not saying the EU is a paradise, we’ve had our share of irritations dealing with some elements of its bureaucracy, and there are certainly some areas for improvements. (Especially transporting pets--it’s obviously important to take reasonable precautions but the EU red tape around house pet transport is often horrible.) But when it comes to the big things most relevant to quality of life, health and opportunities, the EU gets it right, much more than the US does, and it’s why Europeans are now healthier and more productive than Americans, with much greater social mobility than North America now has.

3. Learn as much of the language as you can, but if you have an offer or option, don’t hesitate to make the move to the EU. We’ve been prepping our move to Europe for years so we’ve worked to learn the languages of where we’re going. But I talked to many American expats who, when they made their permanent moves, were not close to being fluent in French, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish or whatever the language was common where they were moving. In STEM, for now at least, you can often get by at first in the EU (even outside of Ireland) with English — operative phrase being “at first”. If you’re going to settle down there long term, it’s important to make some effort to pick up the language, after you’ve moved if you haven’t done so before, or you’ll be stuck as a social outsider even if you can use English where you work. Fortunately EU countries tend to be helpful in this and many even have free language classes especially for the bigger languages like French, German and Italian (one of our nephews took advantage of this), and of course it’s doubly important for your kids to be immersed as much as possible in the regional language. But again, don’t let your lack of language skills hinder you if you do have an opportunity to move.

4. Some EU countries have smoothed emigration process considerably in recent years for skilled and semi-skilled workers from outside the EU to move in. Germany in particular is one, and although I’m not too up on the details, I think it’s called the Skilled Immigration Act and functions something like Canada and Australia’s points system. If you’re able to show that you have needed skills and experience, won’t require public assistance and ideally can speak (or motivated to learn) German, you’ll have an expedited path to getting in. Some other EU countries have similar programs to lure in skilled workers.

5. And on that topic when it comes to the specifics, we had personal contacts to help us with the practical elements of our move, and I had the good fortune of years of exposure through business travel especially in Europe. But there are so many American expats now, especially in Europe, that there’s a wealth of information and initial contacts to smooth the process. So use and take advantage of every resource you can, and good luck to all of you.

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girlsbtrs · 5 years ago

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Celebrating 4 Years of GBTRS

Four years ago, Girls Behind the Rock Show was born. Here, our team reflects on the history of the group and the excitement that comes with being a part of this movement.

Shelby (Founder/Executive Director):

For the past three years, I’ve blogged on the anniversary day of GBTRS, retelling the year, how we go to where we are and how I’m so utterly grateful. And while the sentiment hasn’t changed, this year I felt it was more important to hear from our team. As always, GBTRS has been the greatest gift of my life. It’s been a pleasure to work on and to have been able to see so many young women and gender nonconforming find a space in the industry to help guide them as they navigate through it. I will always be grateful for the opportunity to help others, for the allowance of me into all of your lives and for what you all have collectively taught me.

But I’m also incredibly grateful for these young women who have sacrificed their time, efforts, knowledge and love to help curate a community that we are all able to begin our thriving journeys together in. They’ve become my best friends, my family, my teammates in so many aspects of life. I find myself surrounded by young women who make me the best version of myself, and who are supportive as I learn alongside all of you. So please read on and thank you for four wonderful years.

Jess (Executive of Programs):

I get super reflective on planes, and this is a little something that I journaled recently-ish:

I was lucky to have positive interactions with music people early on. I started out with really basic event staff jobs, “guarding” the production office/dressing rooms or whatever it might be for an amphitheater that was really close to my house growing up. I put “guarding” in quotes because I am a small 5’3” woman and many crew members were quick to joke with me about how scary I was as a guard. Anyways, it sticks in my mind how people who held significant positions within the touring crews treated me with so much respect and believed in me even at an entry level. People who saw the potential in me. And that made me feel like I was capable and ready to pursue more.

Especially in the very beginning, you are so ready to have someone tell you that you aren’t cut out for it, or your goals are ridiculous. I got lucky. Some of the interactions that I’ve had now as a more established human with a vision have been really unpleasant, but I had the benefit of experience, built-up confidence in my abilities over the years, and a knowledge of a certain way I have to carry myself for the less “woke” people in the industry to take all 5’3” of me more seriously. I believe that 2014 me would have taken those interactions to mean that I was pursuing the wrong thing and I wasn’t fit for this dream. Like I said, I got lucky.

It means a lot that I have such a strong support system. It feels like I have a large community of people through GBTRS that I can lean on. So to be a small piece in helping to create that community has been so fulfilling for me.

There have been times where I’ve had a particularly bad work day -- where someone clearly tried their hardest to make me feel small. On those days, I find myself even more motivated to work on GBTRS. To know that we’re creating opportunities where women who are starting out can have positive work experiences in healthy environments. To have that peace of mind that I can channel the emotions surrounding a bad experience into something good.

I should take plane rides more often so I can force myself to reflect a little bit more, but that would really start to add up.

Madeline (Events Director):

Being a part of GBTRS for the past three years has been one of the most rewarding things I've been able to do in my life so far. I've had some unforgettable experiences and I'm glad to work with high-quality humans who are also high-quality friends. Can't wait to see where we will be in the next four years and beyond that!

Sam (Community Manager):

For the last four years, the amazing and wonderful Shelby has been working incredibly hard on this baby we call Girls Behind The Rock Show. When I first met Shelby, I wondered how someone could have their life so together that they'd want to start a non-profit to help other young women in the industry. Turns out no one has their life together. Not you, not me, not anyone. But regardless of any hurdles, Shelby and the rest of the GBTRS team overcome them as a family. When I joined this team a year ago I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It’s been a year of incredible growth and learning, and of wonderful opportunities.

Four years ago, a movement was started. Four years ago, Shelby created something that would eventually impact thousands of young women and non-binary people in the industry without even knowing how large the impact would be. I'm so thankful for everything GBTRS has given me and for the family I now have.

And don't forget to stream Ginger by Brockhampton.

Tess (Editorial Director):

Girls Behind the Rock Show is incredible. The music industry is extremely male-dominated, so to have a space dedicated to empowering, educating, and giving opportunities to women/non-binary folx is a game-changer. I have been able to collaborate with an incredible team and offered opportunities I would not have otherwise found without GBTRS. Overseeing the editorial team has been incredibly rewarding and oh-so-much fun! It’s an honor to work for Shelby and this magical organization, and I don’t see myself leaving this group - ever.

Aliyah (Senior Writer):

Girls Behind the Rock Show came into my life in November 2017. At that time, I had been on this crazy music industry journey for about three years. After numerous closed doors and being two months into an industry-related degree, I began questioning if all my hard work was really worth it. One night, I had asked for a sign if I should continue this dream of mine. Then GBTRS x SWMRS Roadie for a Day came along. I submitted my application and couldn't stop thinking about it. Sure enough, I was selected to be SWMRS' roadie for a day in D.C.! Getting to live out a part of my dream job for a day was that sign that I was going down the right path. Next thing I know, I'm brought on as GBTRS' writer! From the minute I discovered Girls Behind the Rock Show, I've experienced nothing but love, encouragement, teamwork, and friendship. From our weekly meetings to interviewing my favorite band to even taking a 10-hour road trip with these absolute gems of human beings to be a part of PlanetRoo at Bonnaroo 2019, GBTRS has been a light in my life that continually inspires not only me but others to put 110% into our passion to defy the odds.

Sydney (Marketing Manager):

Girls Behind the Rock Show has been my guiding light in this crazy industry. I absolutely wouldn’t be where I am today without the group and all the incredible people that are a part of it. To my fellow Girls teammates: you are all rockstars and I love you all so much. Here’s to another incredible year of love, support, and kicking ass.

Moira (Graphic Designer):

Happy anniversary to the best company that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with :)

Although I’ve been a part of the team for less than a year, I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I love every single one of them with my whole heart and I know my life has changed for the better since being a part of GBTRS. I’m eternally grateful that I’m allowed to be a part of something as meaningful and wonderful as GBTRS. This team has become my whole world.

youtube

#anniversary #4 years of gbtrs #tess dunn #aliyah english #allison thompson

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topicprinter · 7 years ago

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"It's never ever going to be anything near plain sailing... it's more like clinging onto the wheel, putting every ounce of strength you have into staying on course, whilst 40ft waves crash into the boat."So many articles are written about the cultural phenomena known as the ‘start-up’ most of which talk about employees and management brainstorming over games of ping pong, working on bean bags, and having spontaneous Nerf fights throughout the day.I’m going to cut out the bullshit and provide you all with a brutally honest article about how running a startup really is.People I meet, often ask what I do, and when they hear the words “I run a start-up” exit my mouth, immediately they give remarks such as... 'Oh cool, like Google?' (A company whose name is now a part of the Oxford Dictionary is no longer allowed to be considered a startup!) 'WOW! That must be so much fun!' and 'I bet you have really cool offices!' – Half the time they don’t even ask what my start-up even does - They are too busy envisaging a rose tinted world of colourful furniture, short days and quirky decor.As frustrating as these misconceptions are - you can't really blame the reader. I think the fault lies with the business people who want to seem 'cool' or 'quirky' at the cost of sacrificing the reality of building a new business.The Real '#Startuplife'I read a quote from the founder of Pandora once, which I felt aptly described running a startup in 7 words: "A constant seesaw of worry and euphoria." Now don't get me wrong, I love having my own company, it is incredibly rewarding... But I feel like the whole '#Startuplife' trend needs a more realistic and honest representation within the media. By never talking about the weeks spent without sleep, the constant fear of failure, and the relationships and connections you sacrifice in order to even get a hint of success... we are portraying an image of business that is simply untrue.Being someone who is now on their third startup I can honestly tell you that... Running a young company is never ever going to be plain sailing... it's more like clinging onto the wheel, putting every ounce of strength you have into staying on course whilst 40ft waves crash into the boat. We constantly hear about the VC backed startups that have just closed another $100 million round of funding... Whilst impressive and certainly an important milestone for said company... it just isn't a reality that the majority of startups will ever have.Picture this okay... A CEO sat on an exercise ball at their desk, money rolling in, VC's ringing non-stop, staff playing table tennis whilst the dulcet tones of an indie band play in the background, the sunlight reflecting off of the exposed brick walls. Now throw that mental image in the trash and re-imagine a sweaty, sleep deprived CEO in their office, on a Saturday, in the dark... eyes bloodshot from reading emails, whilst their staff are at home asleep in bed.As an entrepreneur, your biggest (and harshest) critic is you... It's your baby at the end of the day, meaning its main well-being lies with YOU - and when you realise that, the whole thing becomes incredibly daunting... You are used to working under someone who calls the shots, and soon the initial "Great I'm my own boss!" thing turns into "This isn't working, I need to ask my boss... ah, shit."If you are lucky enough (depending on how you see it) to gain investment, both the stress and pressure increase even more... As it is no longer just yourself you need to satisfy... Sure, a $100 million investment gets you the sweet office, as many staff members as you wish, the nice car, the fancy watch... but it doesn't alleviate the anxiety and the fear of failure... in fact, it heightens it... as now you have a $100 million that has been given to you in TRUST... Not to mention that word travels fast in the world of startups and business.. so A LOT of eyes are going to be on you, to see how far that $100 million gets you/your company.Your days and nights will blend into one, you won't be able to sleep... your mind filled with stress, the only thing stopping your head from hitting that keyboard is the gallon of coffee you have just finished. Weekends will start to mean nothing to you, and the very notion of 'switching off' is laughable... You will constantly have the questions "Is this even worth it?" and "Why did I leave my job for this?" running through your brain as you pound down yet another 'cup o'joe'... Sounds glamorous right?It's about one thingAt the risk of sounding cliché, the greatest entrepreneurs all have one thing in common: PASSION. Nothing else will get you through hell like passion... If you don't have love for the company you want to create, then you will die VERY quickly. Your desire for money or fame will not get you anywhere (in the long term at least)... If you listen to or read up on all of the noteworthy entrepreneurs of modern society... their ideas did not spring from a desire to be worth $50 billion, instead, they came from their passion to create, and push forward in their respective fields.The problems with going into business with the mindset of becoming 'rich' are that.... 1 - you will put profit over innovation, sacrificing your companies longevity. 2 - As soon as you make any money one of two things will happen... either you will lose all drive whatsoever, or you will throw quality out of the window and replicate your product until it becomes stagnant and dies. 3 - You will be known as nothing other than a paper chaser, and you will have no real impact on the business world.You can do itIf you can push through the sleep deprivation, the anxiety, the fear and the emotional torment... It will get better, that much I can promise you. It will never be easy though, as soon as you surpass one challenge, another is waiting in line... but I think, in some twisted way... that is half the fun of it. There is nothing more satisfying than overcoming an obstacle, and seeing both you and your team grow... however cliché it sounds, I can promise that if you keep fighting, and keep that passion burning then you will succeed... If you don't do it the first time... that's okay. Failure is life's biggest educational tool, trust me I have made many mistakes in my time, but I have always found a way to use them to better myself... no matter how hard they had kicked my arse.Remember what I said earlier about being in the boat? "It's never ever going to be anything near plain sailing... it's more like clinging onto the wheel, putting every ounce of strength you have into staying on course, whilst 40ft waves crash into the boat." Well if you keep hanging on, pushing the right direction, the storm will pass and the water will clear... It won't always be flat... but remember you survived those 40ft waves.Thanks for reading!Thanks for taking the time to check out the article! If you have any thoughts or questions don't hesitate to get in touch! - I'd love to hear your stories about starting your businesses - whether you are a seasoned veteran or are new to the game, meet me in the comments below and we can chat! If you want to read the original article (and see other blog posts) you can check it out on Linkedin

#/r/startups #reddit

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24hourchampagnediet-blog1 · 5 years ago

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8 extreme frugal living ideas you probably haven't considered

New Post has been published on https://bestrawfoodrecipes.com/8-extreme-frugal-living-ideas-you-probably-havent-considered/

8 extreme frugal living ideas you probably haven't considered

Extreme frugal living isn’t about cutting cable from your life or turning up the thermostat to 80 degrees in the summer.

Those are pretty easy ways to be practice frugality.

Today I’m talking about the extreme things the cheapest of the cheap do to save more money. I’m not a huge fan of deprivation to the point of not being able to enjoy life, but there are some benefits to frugality that many people overlook.

Follow Ladders’ magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and more!

Many people cut their lifestyle to the bare minimum during their debt free journey while doing something so crazy as donating blood plasma for an extra $400 per month.

First: Words of Caution Regarding Frugality

When you start a workout program and meal plan that’s super strict (like the Keto diet or intermittent fasting) and deprive yourself of something you’ve had access to for a long time, there’s a huge possibility of relapse.

Personal finance success, much like fitness, is a lifestyle decision. If you practice extreme frugality for a short time (just to pay off debt), you might find yourself rewarding your good behavior after the debt is paid off. Gazelle intensity is great when you’re on a high, but when the debt’s paid off, what happens to the adrenaline rush? It goes away.

The last thing you want to do is to sabotage your efforts by leasing a new car or buying the boat you’ve always wanted on credit just to keep up with the Joneses.

With that being said, here are some examples of extreme frugal living tips to help you save more money.

Extreme Frugal Living Ideas

1. Flush Toilets Once a Day

You read that right. It doesn’t matter if it’s a number one or a number two or if someone is sick with diarrhea and vomiting (sorry..had to go there).

People legit only flush once a day to save money.

I can’t imagine having company over under these circumstances. I mean, port-a-potties are only cleaned out every so often, so I guess it’s no different, but….YUCK!

2. Eat Expired Food

Got moldy bread or cheese problems? That’s okay!

The cheapest of the cheap simply pick off the mold and eat the remaining portion. After all, if you can’t see the mold, it must not be there, right?

3. Shower Less Often

Filling the tub is a no-no when you’re practicing extreme frugal living. You’ve got to take showers only and limit to once every few days (at most). Been to the gym?

That time of the month? No problem! Take a sponge bath!

Y’all, I’m cringing as I’m writing this, but there are people who practice this method of frugality. I will say that I only wash my hair when it starts to get greasy (once every 3-4 days) and use dry shampoo in between washes.

4. Live in an RV

Now I know a lot of people who are doing this! And I know some who’ve tried it (with kids) and just couldn’t handle being that close with no room to spread out.

One of my favorite stories is from the creator of the affiliate marketing course I’m taking Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. Her name is Michelle Schroeder-Gardner, and she’s earning over $150k per month on her blog but lives in an RV and travels the world with her husband.

I think I read somewhere that she and her husband spend about $3000 per month on expenses despite their millionaire status! I wrote about their affiliate marketing success story here. They are truly living the dream!

5. Sell Everything but the Kids

By hosting garage sales or selling items in your local Facebook groups and Craigslist, you can make a decent side hustle income. A good rule of thumb is if you haven’t used it in six months, it needs to go.

This also helps you get a sense of organization and cleanliness in your home, which of course, results in a better quality of life. I’ve sold furniture, clothing, toys, electronics…you name it.

Have you heard of the new Netflix series Tidying Up With Marie Kondo? Marie offers tips on tidying and you can even make some extra cash by selling some of your unwanted junk in the decluttering process.

If you want to get started downsizing and living a simpler life, grab a copy of my free KonMari checklist for decluttering.

6. Grow your Own

What’s more organic than living off your own land? You can start a garden with a few packages of organic vegetable seeds and in no time you’ll be able to chop salads with fresh vegetables. You can even take it a step further and sell your fruits or veggies.

An example of this would be planting pumpkins and in the fall, when they’re ripe, using them to bake pumpkin pies or pumpkin bread. You can either use them for your Thanksgiving meals or sell them and make a profit! You could also sell them for decor! A package of pumpkin seeds might cost a few bucks and yields 20 pumpkins weighing 50 pounds or more!

Imagine what those would sell for in nice neighborhoods as decor! This is a great side hustle for kids and grown-ups alike! This is one extreme frugal living practice I can stand behind!

7. Become a Tap Water Only Household

Adopt a tapwater only rule for your household. When you stop buying sugary drinks such as sodas, juices, Gatorade, you’ll not only save hundreds of dollars every year, but you’ll also become much healthier! That is…if you don’t live in Flint, Michigan!

8. Raise your Own Farm Animals

We all know hunting is a good way to supply meat in the freezer for months. You can buy a young calf and have a farmer raise it, and you can triple your investment and eat good, quality grass-fed beef for months off of that single purchase.

Likewise, I know women who have chicken farms and raise hens for eggs!

You’ll definitely need a deep freeze for storage, and Amazon has several options to choose from with free shipping (especially handy if you don’t have a truck)!

Adopt an Abundance Mindset and Increase your Income

I realize there are a lot of “online coaches” preaching meditation and positivity. I do think these things are very important to overcoming a frugality (scarcity) mindset. That being said, one of the best things you can do is to increase your income so that you don’t feel so scarce.

You can do this by working double shifts, overtime, and holidays. Or you can start a side hustle in your spare time. Here are 76 legit ways to make money on the side this year.

By adopting these extreme frugal living practices, you can hang with the cheapest of the cheap. But at what cost? There are many other ways to live frugally without sacrificing your quality of life. Now I want to hear from you! Have you tried any of these ways of living frugally? How are you making a conscious effort to save money in your everyday lifestyle? Leave a comment below!

This article first appeared on Perfect Hangover.

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philippmichelreichold · 4 years ago

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On Analog January/February 2010

Rejiggering the Thingamajig by

Eric James Stone

is a

wonderful story

Who framed Roger Rabbit

All of Me

, only set in

Neptune

Thus Spake the Aliens

by H. G. Stratmann is a story about saving the world, complete with large red Doomsday-cutoff-switch-button. These aliens are in the same business as Clarke's

Others

2001

, could not be an accident.

promising process

Fermi-Hart paradox

Apollo

to the moon.) Even if one used

the Orion nuclear pulse drive

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

has a profile in this issue of Analog. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of her stories. Rusch builds her characters in a believable and sympathetic manner that leaves me yearning for more.

Possession

is one of her

Retrieval Artist

(Uncle Orson review of the Retrieval Artist stories.)

Shame by

Mike Resnick

Lezli Robyn

Simple Giftsby

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Who's of Whoville

Michael F. Flynn

Enterprise

command team in

I, Mudd

Rogue Star

in the

Star Child Trilogy

by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson. I would have hoped though that anyone advanced enough to use stars as weapons would also be advanced enough to not do so. Perhaps I'm just excessively naive.

Copyleft of my material

Essentially, my work is Creative Commons Attribution-Required, Share Alike.

Adapted from their Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license summary--

Providing a link to my source document should suffice in attributing me. Where any condition(s) I place conflicts with the

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, my condition(s) shall prevail.

ISFDB unless otherwise indicated and are copyrighted unless otherwise indicated.

Copyrighted images are presented here under fair use. You would need to contact the copyright holder to use them. They are not covered by my creative commons licensing.

Coverart from ISFDB for Analog 2010 Jan-Feb

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fuckyeahtattoogirls-blog1 · 5 years ago

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8 extreme frugal living ideas you probably haven't considered

New Post has been published on https://bestrawfoodrecipes.com/8-extreme-frugal-living-ideas-you-probably-havent-considered/

8 extreme frugal living ideas you probably haven't considered

Extreme frugal living isn’t about cutting cable from your life or turning up the thermostat to 80 degrees in the summer.

Those are pretty easy ways to be practice frugality.

Follow Ladders’ magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and more!

Many people cut their lifestyle to the bare minimum during their debt free journey while doing something so crazy as donating blood plasma for an extra $400 per month.

First: Words of Caution Regarding Frugality

The last thing you want to do is to sabotage your efforts by leasing a new car or buying the boat you’ve always wanted on credit just to keep up with the Joneses.

With that being said, here are some examples of extreme frugal living tips to help you save more money.

Extreme Frugal Living Ideas

1. Flush Toilets Once a Day

You read that right. It doesn’t matter if it’s a number one or a number two or if someone is sick with diarrhea and vomiting (sorry..had to go there).

People legit only flush once a day to save money.

I can’t imagine having company over under these circumstances. I mean, port-a-potties are only cleaned out every so often, so I guess it’s no different, but….YUCK!

2. Eat Expired Food

Got moldy bread or cheese problems? That’s okay!

The cheapest of the cheap simply pick off the mold and eat the remaining portion. After all, if you can’t see the mold, it must not be there, right?

3. Shower Less Often

Filling the tub is a no-no when you’re practicing extreme frugal living. You’ve got to take showers only and limit to once every few days (at most). Been to the gym?

That time of the month? No problem! Take a sponge bath!

4. Live in an RV

Now I know a lot of people who are doing this! And I know some who’ve tried it (with kids) and just couldn’t handle being that close with no room to spread out.

5. Sell Everything but the Kids

This also helps you get a sense of organization and cleanliness in your home, which of course, results in a better quality of life. I’ve sold furniture, clothing, toys, electronics…you name it.

If you want to get started downsizing and living a simpler life, grab a copy of my free KonMari checklist for decluttering.

6. Grow your Own

Imagine what those would sell for in nice neighborhoods as decor! This is a great side hustle for kids and grown-ups alike! This is one extreme frugal living practice I can stand behind!

7. Become a Tap Water Only Household

8. Raise your Own Farm Animals

Likewise, I know women who have chicken farms and raise hens for eggs!

You’ll definitely need a deep freeze for storage, and Amazon has several options to choose from with free shipping (especially handy if you don’t have a truck)!

Adopt an Abundance Mindset and Increase your Income

You can do this by working double shifts, overtime, and holidays. Or you can start a side hustle in your spare time. Here are 76 legit ways to make money on the side this year.

This article first appeared on Perfect Hangover.

Source link Keto Diet Drinks

0 notes

kennethherrerablog · 6 years ago

Text

How to Build Your Travel Fund So You Can Afford That Upcoming Vacay

Vacations are supposed to be relaxing, but it’s hard to unwind when you’re constantly stressing about how you’re going to pay for it all.

Whether it’s a road trip, cruise or another much-needed getaway, now is the time to start saving up for that vacation you’ve been dreaming of for months. With a little creativity, you can bulk up your bank account and be ready to hit the road or beach in style, without going into debt to do it.

3 Strategies to Save for Your Next Vacation

Saving money is something many of us struggle with, but a dream vacation is great motivation to start stacking your coins. These three money-saving strategies will have you sipping cocktails by the beach (or hiking at a four-star mountain resort… or testing out your language skills at an international destination) in no time.

1. Open a Dedicated Vacation Bank Account

One easy way to save for a special trip is to open a dedicated vacation savings account. If you choose a high-yield savings account, your money might even grow a bit while you’re looking forward to your trip.

You can open a savings account at your local bank, but if you go with an online bank, you’ll be less likely to withdraw the money.

Set up automatic payments into the account, and, with a little restraint, leave that money there until it’s time for your trip. Bulk up your account balance by depositing any $1 bills or $5 bills that you receive as change from everyday purchases. Funnel any extra money — like a work bonus or birthday cash — into your vacation fund as well.

If you have a side gig and don’t rely on the income to cover your essential expenses, you can save that money toward your upcoming getaway, too.

2. Create a Savings Goal

If you budget for your trip in advance, you don’t have to spend time stressing over your spending while you’re on vacation.

Research the costs of your expected expenditures, such as airfare, rental cars, gas, hotel stays, meals, souvenirs, special excursions and tickets to attractions or events. After totaling those costs, you’ll have an estimation of how much you’ll need to save.

Now work backwards to reach your savings goal. Divide your estimated vacation cost by the number of months you have before taking your trip to figure out how much money to save aside each month. For example, if you’re taking a $2,400 vacation a year from now, you’d need to save $200 a month to fund your getaway.

If your vacation date isn’t set in stone, you could figure out how much you’d like to save monthly and divide your total estimated vacation cost by your monthly savings amount to figure out when you can afford to take your trip. Using the $2,400 vacation example, if you could only afford to save $150 a month, you’d have the funds for your trip 16 months from now.

3. Download Money-Saving Apps

Take advantage of technology for extra assistance with saving for vacation.

Digit is an app that links up to your checking account and automatically transfers money to your savings account. It uses an algorithm to calculate how much money users can afford to have pulled from their checking account without causing them to overdraft. You can even set a vacation savings goal within the app.

Bonus: Penny Hoarders will get an extra $5 just for signing up. Additionally, savers will receive a 1% bonus every three months. Digit is free to use for the first 30 days, then it’s $2.99 per month afterward.

Qapital is another savings app that links to your checking account. You set savings goals and then determine how you’d like to reach those goals. You have various options for saving, like taking a certain amount out your account on a weekly basis or rounding purchases up to the nearest $5 and depositing that money into your savings. You can set up multiple savings options to fund your vacation faster.

8 Ways to Bank Extra Money for Your Trip

Strategizing how you’ll save money for your upcoming vacation is just half the battle. Making extra money or finding smart ways to free up some of your cash will get you there sooner.

Saving up for a big trip isn’t easy, but these eight ideas should help you pad that vacation savings account and have your trip already paid for before you leave home.

1. Pick Up a Side Job

Sure, you may need to work a little harder now, but think about all that relaxing fun you’ll be having on your stress-free vacation that’s already paid for.

Look for ways to earn extra money outside your regular job, whether they’re more traditional (like babysitting or waiting tables) or a bit less orthodox (like leading guided tours of craft coffee shops or getting paid to stand in line). Side jobs help bring you one step closer to affording your dream getaway.

Pro Tip

Consider opportunities related to the season. Around the winter holidays, many retailers look for seasonal workers. Leading up to the summer, you may see postings for camp counselors and lifeguards.

Working these side jobs may mean sacrificing your free time for a while, but it will help make your vacation possible.

2. Sell Your Stuff

If you’re into vacations, you know that life is about experiences, not stuff. Especially when your stuff can put cold, hard cash in your pocket.

You can sell stuff you have at home on OfferUp, Letgo or Craigslist or resell thrift-shop finds on eBay. Check your attic, too — a rare item collecting dust might sell for a fortune.

Our guide to the best times of year to sell things online will tell you what you should sell in certain months to take advantage of increased demand and possibly bring in more cash.

3. Make Your Credit Card Work for You

Consider using a credit card that accumulates airline miles for all of your regular expenditures throughout the year. Come vacation time, you could be flying for free.

Another option is to earn credit-card sign-up bonuses. Writer Steve Gillman scored hundreds of dollars in credit-card bonuses. That’s money to put toward your next road trip! (Just make sure to ask yourself these five questions before opening a new credit card for the rewards.)

You can also earn tons of frequent flier miles without signing up for a credit card by shopping online, eating out, taking surveys and other methods.

4. Cut Back on Your Monthly Food Budget

For many households — especially those with little ones or teenagers running around — food can be a huge monthly expense. Shave a little off the top and in no time, you’ll notice you’ve got some extra cash to put toward your getaway.

Save money by buying in bulk, by shopping at farmers markets or by joining a community supported agriculture — or CSA — program. Start a garden in your backyard, or save on produce by regrowing vegetables at home. Earn rebates on your groceries by taking pictures of the receipts with apps like Ibotta.

Or simply look for a few items you don’t really need, like soda and treats, and keep them out of your grocery cart while you’re saving for your vacation. Wouldn’t that ice cream taste even better if you were eating it on the beach?

5. Use Your Car to Make a Little Cash on the Side

Why not use your car for a little extra income? You could make additional money as an Uber or Lyft driver or set up a carpool and charge coworkers for rides.

If you’re flying to your destination and want to park at the airport for free, let TravelCar rent out your car to other travelers while you’re gone, and you could have a check waiting for you when you return.

If vacationing is so important to you that you’re willing to resort to drastic measures, you could ditch your car completely, like this family did (they saved $11,500).

6. Make Money With Your Home

Move a little extra money to your vacation account each month by listing space in your home on Airbnb. Even if you don’t have a dedicated room available, you can get creative with your Airbnb listing by hosting people in a tent in your backyard or letting guests crash on your couch. You could also rent out your entire home, stay with a friend or relative and split the profits with them.

And make sure to save on housing during your vacation, too, by using Airbnb or one of these other cheap accommodation options.

7. Spend Less on Your Workout

Want to get in shape for the itsy-bitsy bikini or new swim trunks you bought for that trip to the beach? Think of how much better your wallet will look if you could work out without forking over loads of cash.

Consider saving money on the cost of a gym membership with these free or cheap gym alternatives, working out at fitness stations at public parks or by following fitness-focused YouTube channels. You could even get paid to work out by teaching yoga or leading fitness boot camps.

Pro Tip

If you can’t bear to leave the gym, look for deals on discounted memberships and classes through your employer or sites like Groupon.

8. Find Deals on Outdoor Equipment

If your vacation involves costly items like skis, snowboards, kayaks, tents and more, consider buying used rental equipment, shopping at company “garage sales” and hunting in thrift stores to cut down on the cost.

Also consider buying and reselling gear at your destination. Who knows, you may even come home with a little money in your pocket.

Sarah Kuta is an education reporter in Boulder, Colo., with a penchant for weekend thrifting, furniture refurbishment and good deals. Find her on Twitter: @sarahkuta.

Senior writer Nicole Dow contributed to this article.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

How to Build Your Travel Fund So You Can Afford That Upcoming Vacay published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

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bestbooksintheworld-blog · 6 years ago

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Books that give you written information about tried and tested ideas are easily available in the market. However simply reading the black and white text is not enough to get rich, thinking and implementing their thoughts is important. How we know that there are a number of books to choose from, which creates confusion, hence we have got to you the information of a top 10 best finance books of all times to choose from.

1. THE LAW OF DIVINE COMPENSATION by - Marianne Williamson

INTRODUCTION

The author of this best finance book is an internationally acclaimed author, a world-renowned teacher and also an inspirational thinker. She has also written a book such as Return to Love, Healing The Soul of America, etc, yes your guess is right we are talking about, Marianne Williamson. In this finance book, she reveals spiritual principles that can help you overcome your financial stress by unleashing the divine power in profusion.

BOOK REVIEW

Marianne Williamson focuses on taking or driving your financial stress away by explaining to you the Law of Divine Compensation. She specifies that the universe resembles or rather is the handwriting of the almighty and hence is self-correcting and self-organizing. The universe plans to remove the lacks from your circumstances by itself. Deactivating the law is only by having more and more faith in the facts of lack and the facts of laws of this universe.

KEY TAKEAWAY FROM THIS BEST FINANCE BOOK

This best book in finance on work, money, and miracles explains that our thoughts create our financial reality. The author of this book very clearly states that anything that is real cannot be threatened and for that matter nothing unreal exists.

2.THE SCIENCE OF GETTING RICH (A THRIFTY BOOK) by - Wallace Wattles

INTRODUCTION

The author of this best finance book gives the world the power of positive thinking. He was a real influence for a number of other authors and without him great books such as The Secret, The Law of Attraction and the Law of Positive Thinking. This book is away from philosophical reasons and is based on practicality and is especially for men and women who would like to get rich before getting philosophical

BOOK REVIEW

Getting rich is an exact science and it has certain laws that monitor the process of achieving richness. A number of people that is men and women out there have the capability of doing things in a certain way for getting rich. This book in finance resembles this certain fact and details of becoming a rich person with positivity.

KEY TAKEAWAY FROM THIS TOP FINANCE BOOK

A man or woman who has the ability of reading and understanding this best book on finance can get rich be it talented, blockheaded, intellectual, stupid, physically strong or physically weak.

3. SECRETS OF THE MILLIONAIRE MIND by T. Harv Eker

Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

INTRODUCTION

There is a very fine line between wanting success and achieving it. The author of this best finance book explains the trick of going out there and achieving success or your financial success of becoming rich. It is very normal to wonder that why some people easily get rich whereas some people take struggle throughout their life for their bread and butter? The author of this book answers this question for you.

BOOK REVIEW

The author of this best book in finance can predict your financial future in 5 minutes. This top finance book gives a chance of identifying and revising the blueprint of your money and increasing your money noticeably and also accumulate your wealth the right way. Well, the author applied these principles and went from Zero to a millionaire in only two and a half years which means these principles are proven and tested.

KEY TAKEAWAY FROM THIS BEST FINANCE BOOK

The book gives you the root cause of success. This book on finance also has the ability to motivate the readers by its information to success.

4. THINK AND GROW RICH by Napoleon Hill

Your Key to Financial Wealth and Power

INTRODUCTION

This best book in finance has inspired a number of businessmen from the United States of America to empower themselves for success. The author has not included only his success story and principles he has also included success stories and principles of the businessmen who have made a successful real world lesson. It is also acknowledged as one of the greatest self-help books of all times.

BOOK REVIEW

You can definitely gain valuable insights from this book in finance by reading real-world lessons of not just the author but also other successful and powerful US businessmen. It teaches you everything you need to know and to empower yourself with financial success. This is a self-help book for every financial situation.

KEY TAKEAWAY FROM THIS TOP FINANCE BOOK

Your thoughts are the most powerful things as they are the best motivational factor for you. Conversion of these burning thoughts into wealthy richness can never be explained better by any other writer ever

5. THE AUTOMATIC MILLIONAIRE by David Bach

A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich

INTRODUCTION

After being asked a million times the secret of being rich the author finally wrote this top finance book, yes that’s right the captioned book. This book in finance is focused on the story of an average American couple whose income never exceeded more than $55000 annually. As you go further the story reveals the facts of becoming rich and its requirements.

BOOK REVIEW

The author very smartly and efficiently conveys the fact of becoming rich and ending rich easily from the convenience of your home. Setting up a plan in an hour without having a budget, the willpower the motive alone of making a lot of money can help you get there. He has given real-life examples in for you to understand.

KEY TAKEAWAY FROM THIS BEST FINANCE BOOK

Look beyond your paycheck to paycheck system of payment. David Bach explains the actions of transforming the financial life easy and full of fun.

6. THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR by Benjamin Graham

A Book of Practical Counsel

INTRODUCTION

The philosophy that is timeless is value investing. Is one of the best finance books ever written for people investing in stocks. The concept of investing and growing differ for different people. The author offers sound and safe principles of investing which have worked for more than 40 years which is since the 1st edition was published.

BOOK REVIEW

This book in finance is a classic example of sound work offered for safe principles of investments. It is the best book in finance ever written for investors who like to invest in stocks, bonds, debentures or anything related to the stock market. The best book you can ever read to make your investments a success.

KEY TAKEAWAY FROM THIS TOP FINANCE BOOK

This book in finance helps and prevents the investors in making a substantial error in investing and helps them in developing long term investment strategy making it comfortable for them in the later run.

7. JIM CRAMER’S GET RICH CAREFULLY by - James J. Cramer

INTRODUCTION

This finance book warns you of getting rich quickly promises that can lead you to careless decisions which according to the author can be a stepping stone to a poor house. His does it differently that is carefully or cautiously. Putting in 35 years of his investment the author brings to the captioned title..

BOOK REVIEW

Making use of his own knowledge of the stock market the author wrote this book Get Rich Carefully. 35 years of experience with his downfall and the success based on the losses and profits he made in his journey of profits are jotted down in his own unique style of writing. For him, it is a straightforward accumulation of wealth by turning your savings into a long-lasting wealth

KEY TAKEAWAY FROM THIS BEST FINANCE BOOK

Do not take reckless decisions with a promise of making you rich quickly that is not the way. Play it differently think about lasting wealth you do not want to make a poor’s home.

8. ONE UP ON WALL STREET by - Peter Lynch

How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market

INTRODUCTION

The author Mr. Lynch is a legendary mutual fund manager and has sold over a million of copies of this book. He also states that the average investor has an advantage of investing in funds more than professionals and that they use this to their advantage to gain their financial success. Investment opportunities are everywhere from supermarkets to workplace.

BOOK REVIEW

The author confirms that an average investor can become a specialist in his own field by picking up winning stocks effectively. All they need to do is take notice of the existing market, look for a potentially successful company, and grab the opportunity before professional grabs it. Easy to follow directions are mentioned in this captioned book.

KEY TAKEAWAY FROM THIS TOP FINANCE BOOK

Ignore the ups and downs of the market and focus on the long-term returns to get a handsome reward on your investments. Your long-term should be anywhere between 5 to 15 years.

9. THE MILLIONAIRE FASTLANE: by - MJ DeMarco

Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime

INTRODUCTION

He somehow does not believe in the slow lane for it will get you to retire rich after 65. The slow lane only gives you restriction rather financial restriction of all that you cannot do for yourself and your family. However, the fast lane is an alternative route to wealth which can fulfill your dreams today and not when or after you grow old.

BOOK REVIEW

This best finance book is a shortcut proved by mathematics to live rich today instead of dying rich tomorrow. Do not let the financial gurus brainwash you and convince you to take the slow lane drill in the dream of dying rich in your head. Instead, switch your lane to the fast lane and live rich today by converting your dreams into reality.

KEY TAKEAWAY FROM THIS BEST FINANCE BOOK

Sacrificing all your dreams today in order to die rich is definitely wrong. You have to live today for you would want to live rich instead of dying rich.

10. SPIRIT DRIVEN SUCCESS by - Dani Johnson

Learn Time Tested Biblical Secrets to Create Wealth While Serving Others!

INTRODUCTION

This best finance book is based on the author’s personal experience of becoming a millionaire in a couple of years and not just a millionaire but a young millionaire and a successful businesswoman. But applying her principles the author has created success not just for herself but for thousands of others purely based on the ageless principle.

BOOK REVIEW

The author who is a self-made multi-millionaire know how to turn your financial life around easily. She is also one of the most sorts after success coaches and she has helped thousands of people to achieve great results in their business and their personal lives. In this book, she has used time-tested biblical secrets to gain financial success along with spiritual keys that unlock the doors to the true wealth. There is a lot to read about uncovering habits that lead to poverty and financial struggle.

KEY TAKEAWAY FROM THIS TOP FINANCE BOOK

Enlightens and guides to the true wealth. The barrier to our financial success is our habits that lead us to poverty and financial struggle.

#Finance Books

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melissagarcia8 · 6 years ago

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7 Ways Discover Corps Practices Sustainable Tourism (and What It Means for You)

These days it’s impossible to pick up a magazine, peruse the newspaper or read a blog without running across buzzwords synonymous with sustainability. Words such as renewable, eco-friendly and green living are appearing with more and more regularity.

This is also true for sustainable tourism, as its various forms include green travel, ecotourism and conscious travel. But other than being a trendy term, what does sustainable tourism actually look in the real world? And just as important, what does this mean for you?

With Discover Corps, make no mistake, the principles of sustainability are far from just pie in the sky concepts. In fact, these core values direct the way we conduct business with a commitment to the well-being of people and the planet. As such, we are continually guided by the following 7 sustainable tourism practices:

Ethically Responsible Partnerships

Work side-by-side rescued elephants on our Thailand Elephants & Islands Expedition

For all the wonderful moments created by travel, there can also be many negative aspects to globe-trotting if it’s not responsibly managed. This can result in the exploitation of animals, the degradation of nature or the overuse of natural resources.

For these very reasons and more, Discover Corps meticulously seeks out partnerships with ethically responsible individuals and organizations. For example, in Thailand, we work with ethical elephant sanctuaries to ensure the elephants are treated with a high level of care. This includes a strict “no ride” policy. While this may be disappointing to some initially, after learning of the harsh conditions “ridden” elephants are often subjected to, our travelers are more than happy to take part in other beneficial activities, such as bathing these lovable creatures.

Additionally, we strive for a long-term impact by partnering with organizations that have established relationships in the locations where we volunteer. So even though our trips are short-term, there are genuine ongoing connections already built within the community.

What it means for you: Discover Corps travelers are consistently welcomed with open arms by the communities they visit. Also, when traveling with Discover Corps you can be confident the places you explore and the activities you take part in are thoroughly vetted to ensure ethically sound practices. The elephants you help bathe in Thailand will be treated with the utmost care, just as the sea turtle hatching areas in Costa Rica will be methodically surveyed and children of Tanzania are not disrupted by tourism, but instead positively engaged by those from other cultures.

Meeting Community Needs

Discover Corps believes travel should be transformative, and this extends far beyond the travelers that chose to adventure with us. We purposefully seek to meet the needs of the communities we visit. Through this process, we are mindful to avoid a “one-size-fits-all” mentality for community assistance.

With the help of local experts, we identify the unique and diverse needs of the locations we spend time in. Our trips include purposeful work such as teaching English, building classrooms, improving water systems, creating eco-friendly homes and more.

What it means for you: As a volunteer, it’s common to make deep personal connections during your travels. This can lead to you and your family members becoming advocates for the communities you bond with. Our Croatia: Dolphins & Islands Expedition trip is a perfect example. There, your actions are immediately put to use as you gather data on dolphin behavior and health of the dolphin population. This data is used by institutes to request funding for conservation projects and initiatives for the Adriatic dolphins and marine life in the future. Your efforts make a direct impact!

Preservation of Cultural Heritage

Truth be told, many of us have our favorite restaurant chain or coffee shop we’d love to see on every street corner. Knowing we can have our favorite item on demand is quite enticing. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, much of the thrill of travel is experiencing the unknown. This can mean trying new foods, but also involves embracing other cultural differences along the lines of customary clothes or special ceremonies. To celebrate this, Discover Corps offers unique experiences, which include out-of-your-comfort-zone classes in sushi-making, intricate calligraphy, and guided meditation.

Japenese calligraphy class is just one of the unique adventures on the Japan Cultural Odyssey

What it means for you: Commercialism can stifle cultural diversity. By choosing Discover Corps for your vacation, you are voting to preserve beautiful global differences. We intentionally break away from mass-produced travel experiences to take you off the beaten path. Your family’s unique adventure will go a long way toward maintaining priceless traditions. This also has the added benefit of allowing local residents to rediscover their own heritage by sharing things with you!

Environmental Initiatives

Help experts monitor the health of native manatees on the Belize Wildlife Volunteer Adventure

Our beautiful planet is the lifeblood of our business and Discover Corps has vowed to help protect it. A few of the environmentally-friendly programs and processes we’ve implemented include:

Reduction of egg poaching through our Costa Rican Sea Turtle Initiative

Collecting field data on manatees for conservation efforts in Belize

Frequently utilizing eco-friendly lodging

Encouraging reusable water bottle usage

Promotion of many low or no environmental impact activities

What it means for you: Witness first-hand the pressing environmental issues we face, while also learning about conservation efforts currently underway. Through hands-on participation your kids can understand the importance of conservation, an education they can someday pass on to their children.

Doing Business Locally

Learn ancient Mesoamerican methods of chocolate-making during the Oaxaca Women & Girls’ Empowerment trip

In a world where multinational hotel chains have properties in every country — but profits accumulate in only one — we’re proud to select businesses owned by people who live in the destination country. Examples of this are women’s groups teaching traditional recipes, family-run transportation companies and village cooperatives that offer one-of-a-kind tours of their community.

We channel our funds into local, small-scale suppliers who provide excellent experiences for our travelers. It’s important to know, the funds we spend on behalf of our travelers go to putting children through school, building homes and starting small businesses.

In addition, many of the lodges we partner with share the same sentiment. On our Oaxaca: Women’s & Girls’ Empowerment trip, we stay at a social enterprise hotel which reinvests the funds they earn back into the community.

What it means for you: The money you spend will stay in the country you’re visiting. It sounds like an obvious statement, but far too often money spent on vacation is diverted to large corporations overseas. Our company’s intentional structure means your monetary support can preserve the lands you visit and enhance the lives of the people you meet.

Fair Wages

Simply put, we pay all of our team more than the minimum wage in each country we work. We believe in enhancing the lives of all involved with our operations, which includes staff. When our team members feel fairly compensated, they’re more than happy to provide great service that comes from the heart.

What it means for you: Possessions rust, breakdown or completely stop working, but relationships often stand the test of time. Our travelers frequently build special relationships from shared experiences with their in-country guides or the team members of our partners. Accordingly, we can assure you that the guides you bond with are being justly paid for the hard work they put in.

B-Corp Certification

Discover Corps is proud of its Benefit Corporation Certification

We take our role as a positive change maker so seriously, we’ve been certified to do so. Discover Corps is proud to share the fact that we are a Benefit Corporation, or B Corporation (B-Corp), as recognized by the State of California for providing a social good.

This means we have passed a rigorous independent audit of our social, environmental, and legal practices. As such, we:

adopted a clear set of responsible travel guidelines

create trips to improve the lives of people in the communities we visit

support the integrity of the places we travel, which allows them to retain their distinctive characteristics

What it means for you: Doing business with a B-Corp speaks volumes. It means you believe corporations should be held to a higher standard. Organizations should be structured in a way that benefits people and the planet, both of which shouldn’t be sacrificed for the singular pursuit of profits.

Share with us! Have you been on a trip that practices sustainable tourism? What did you find most rewarding?

The post 7 Ways Discover Corps Practices Sustainable Tourism (and What It Means for You) appeared first on Volunteer Vacations | Discover Corps.

from Traveling News https://discovercorps.com/blog/7-ways-discover-corps-practices-sustainable-tourism-means/

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