Today I want to focus on a story that I heard a couple months back, another professional athlete is broke. I am not talking about an athlete that made a couple million bucks and spent a little too much. I am talking about Allen Iverson, one of the biggest stars in the NBA for a little over a decade. The man made over $150 million during his career and figured out how to squander it away (that is not including the lucrative endorsements he had with some of the biggest companies in the world). This is a prime example of why I write this blog, I care about how people are using their money and want to make sure they don’t end up with nothing.
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During the next few posts I will be writing a series that refer to the traits that millionaires display. This is the first of the posts…

One of the biggest challenges in my life is learning how to be patient. It’s getting harder and harder to be patient in the world we live in. Think about it, in order to get a document to someone, you used to have to send it via the United States Postal Service, which would take days or weeks. Now, you can scan a document and have it to its destination in about 1 minute. With everything else in the world moving faster and faster, patience seems to be disappearing at a rate just as fast.
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Post #4 in the millionaire series….

I like to think that I am an efficient person, because of that, I sometimes forget to tie up loose ends or rush to get through something because I become impatient. One aspect of my financial life that could use some considerable improvement is thoroughly researching items before making a purchase, to find the best value. Thorough research includes price comparison, product comparison, and sometimes personal preference to decide which product, if any, that we will ultimately decide to purchase. Thorough research and comparison typically drives us to make purchases that we perceive as the best value. Often times I become lazy when researching a purchase and just decide to go with a certain product because it seems good enough and by not completing thorough research I probably lose out on the best value.
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This post was originally written back in March, even though it may not be tax time anymore… you get the idea

Ahhhh….. Tax time, the time of year when we get our tax returns and spend them on a vacation or some other item that we have not been able to save for but really want. I know that I am not the only one guilty of spending my tax return like it’s a prize that I am supposed to spend immediately upon receiving. It’s easy to justify spending money like a tax return or some other irregular income because we seem to convince ourselves that we were not expecting the money anyway, so we should spend it right? Wrong! Yep, that was a trick, but income is income regardless of how we receive it and we should not be careless with any of the money we bring in.
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Post #3 in the traits that millionaires display

Control is a powerful word that means to exercise restraint or direction over, dominate, or command. Control brings a sense of safety to the person that is displaying it. When on the highway, the ability to control your car brings a sense of comfort that allows you to get from point A to point B without fear. On the other hand, the lack of control is a helpless feeling that will leave a person frozen by fear. When I was 21, I lost control of my 1996 Ford Explorer going 85 mph on I-95 in Jacksonville, Fl. It was the most helpless feeling that I had ever felt in my life, I lost control and my sense of comfort while being gripped by the fear that I didn’t know what was going to happen. All in all, I hydroplaned for about 3 seconds, it felt more like 3 hours and the whole time I was completely helpless. As my car drew to a stop, I was left scrambling for my sense of control while watching cars continue to fly by me, hoping that no one else would lose control and slam into my immobile car that was inches from sliding back into the highway.
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This is Post #2 in the series of traits that millioinaires display…

Remember how I mention that I am impulsive in periodic posts, well, because of that I have made quite a few mistakes in my life. One mistake that comes to mind is when, as a kid, I laid on my skateboard and decided it would be a good idea to turn it into a luge and cruise down a hill that I had no business being on. Everything was going great until I got about half way down the hill, which is when my skateboard started shaking uncontrollably, about that time my t-shirt decided to get caught under one of the wheels. As I was flying through the air, and every time my skin ripped as I tumbled over the cement, I decided luging was probably a mistake. I had some pretty nasty cuts that reminded me, every day for about 2 weeks, that I had made a mistake.
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We are continually witnessing the greatest marketing feat in the history of mankind. Banks have figured out how to borrow the money that their members deposit and then lend it back to the members at a higher interest rate, and somehow convinced us that it’s a good idea along the way. Banks realized that consumer behavior has changed over the years; we used to work, then get paid, then consume. Now, we consume, then work, then get paid. That doesn’t even make sense; banks turn massive profits because of one little word that gets most people in trouble at least once in their lifetime, credit.
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I don’t particularly love politics and all the hate that it brings with it. What I do know is when you spend more money than you make, you are headed for disaster. Whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, or a third party, we should all be able to agree that spending more than we make is not a good idea. Below is a fake letter to the U.S. Government.
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