FinancialEyeQ in France

FinancialEyeQ? What's that? Why do we care about France and their FinancialEyeQ?

To me, your FinancialEyeQ is how you see the financial aspects of the world...that includes your financial responsibilities, financial investments, income, expenses, opportunity costs and much, much more. How do you look at all these things? For example, when a market takes a dive (stocks, real estate, etc.) do you see trouble and get scared or do you see opportunities to buy discounted assets? What is happening in France is really alarming and concerning because it indicates a major problem with their FinancialEyeQ. Lost or confused yet? Let me explain.

The protests from last week are because the government, which is nearing socialism, raised the retirement age from 60 to 62 years young for government and public sector jobs. [Teachers were one such group that was affected.] Why would they increase the retirement age you ask? Because they simply cannot afford to pay the pensions and benefits of all the workers in the system. Sound like another European country on the Mediterranean that was in the news recently for their financial woes? And the unions' response? Increase taxes on everyone in France to pay for the retirement of a select few. Great idea.

The bigger problem here is the misunderstanding that the government is supposed to take care of you from the cradle to the grave. The citizens of Greece, France and many other countries are under the false impression that they deserve pensions, a good retirement, health care, etc. They need not work for it...they DESERVE it! What's next...a free Mercedes for everyone?? They have an incredibly low FinancialEyeQ because they are not taking responsibility for their own future financial situation.

The government's job is to govern; to protect its citizens from each other and from foreigners, not to provide retirement benefits that guarantee your full salary for the rest of your life, as crazy as that sounds. This specific issue alone is crippling the budgets of many governments, on the local, state and federal level, all over the world. The faster we all realize that this idea simply does not work, the faster we can fix at least one aspect of the many broken governments around the globe.

So forget what the government is doing for you and ask yourself...

• How strong is my FinancialEyeQ?
• Do I want to rely on dysfunctional governments to (hopefully) provide for me during my retirement or do I want to take control of that myself?
• Does my financial scorecard look the way it should?
• How can I improve and take control of my financial future?

Start seeing things in a different way by increasing your FinancialEyeQ.

For more information on how you can begin to take control of your finances and increase your FinancialEyeQ, contact me at Cheyne@EastCoastEquities.com.

-CMS

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today I saw a child that reminded me of how life should be...pure happyness. [Yes, the 'y' is meant to be in there. If you don't know why it's there, do some reading on Chris Gardner.] This child, maybe 3 or 4 years old, was walking through a parking lot with his father telling anyone within range of his voice that he had a bag of chocolate chip cookies. Remember when life was that simple and a couple cookies could make your day?

But the reality is that adults have jobs and bills and investment portfolios and taxes and bills. Oh, and maybe even kids...you know, the ones that like chocolate chip cookies. After seeing this young buck in all his glory, I started to think about what I was going to work on that night to get my own bag of cookies...maybe not immediately but soon!

So ask yourself, are you as happy as this cookie monster? If not, maybe you should start making your tomorrow today so that you can get some chocolate chip cookies too.

Einstein's Interest

Many of you have probably heard an excessive amount of quotes from Albert Einstein. I even included one beneath my senior yearbook picture in high school. At the time, I felt that the world would be better off if people worked hard and minded their own business a little more. Kudos to you if you know that quote. Anyway, one of the more common quotations that I thought to be surprising, coming from a physicist, was the following:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest."

No disrespect to Al, but finance, really? Shouldn't he have been continuing to discover much more complicated things than compound interest? Don't waste time thinking about interest...He needs to find out that E equals M multiplied by C squared! Yes, I understand that physics involves many topics covering forces, their power and many other topics that I do not remember from Mr. Freyer's second period lectures...but I still see this as a financial topic.

Having said that, Einstein is exactly right in saying that compound interest is a powerful thing but I think he is limiting himself in his definition of the most powerful force. Compound interest is great but it is only one type of a wonderful, profitable thing called residual or passive income.

Welcome

Welcome to the FinancialEyeQ blog! There will be more info to come while this gets started but thanks for checking us out.

The current recession, and primarily the loss of many jobs, has helped to show that we cannot be dependent on anyone for our financial future. Not companies (Ex. AIG), not the goverment (Ex. Social Security troubles), not your investment advisors (Ex. Bernie Maddoff)...no one.

If you are looking for more in this area of life, then maybe it is time to open your eyes, see things in a different way and increase your Financial EyeQ.