Which Project Gets the Most for Returns on Home Remodeling?

In recent years, many homeowners spent 4 percent more on home improvements than before. But all these projects do not get money back when it comes to recouping costs. The remodeling data shows that few projects would get a positive rate of return.

According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, despite rising interest rates, U.S. homeowners in the past 12 months spent about $155 billion on home remodeling, an increase of more than 4 percent compared with the previous 12-month period.

Unfortunately, there is not enough research to show the returns that homeowner received on their investments. The most widely used figures come from a construction trade magazine, Remodeling. It publishes every year, an estimate of the cost of various projects in 58 cities compare against estimates of how much those projects increased the value of a house under the Cost vs. Value Report. This report also appears in Realtor magazine.

The Cost vs. Value Report shows various remodeling can recoup the cost depending on the projects. For examples, a minor kitchen remodeling would cost average $14,913 and return 98.5 percent of that investment when the house was sold. If you add a midsize master bedroom with a walk-in closet, dressing area and bathroom, would cost around $73,370, of which approximately 82.4 percent returns on investment. Remodeling a modest bathroom costing about $10,499 could earn back 102.2 percent of the investment.

These estimates for its return-on-investment data come from a survey of about 1,600 real estate agents and appraisers. However, the report is too small to provide reliable estimate on a city level but it is reliable only on the regional or national level.

If you are thinking of remodeling your home, an expert suggests that keep the following in mind:

• Remodeling projects ought to be appealed to your taste and style.
• You shouldn't worry about resale value and do the renovations you want.
• You should enjoy it while you are living in the house.

Either way, someone will appreciate your renovation when you sell your house.

The following is tips for improving the value of your house without spending fortune and get the most on your return on investments.

• Painting on interior and exterior.
• Kitchen top resurfacing.
• The modest bathroom remodeling.
• An upper-range siding replacement.
• Floor remodeling or floor replacement; wood floor or new carpet.

The Formula of Success

The law of success starts from your thinking is neither new idea nor new discovery. It helped many people in their process of creating wealth. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for your process of building your own financial freedom. The following is one of the modern motivational stories and about a person who created original formula for the law of success.
We all cheer average person who made extraordinary wealth from unfortunate circumstances and try to emulate their success to our own. The law of success gives us the platform to start our journey for financial freedom.

When it comes to personal-success literature, Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883-November 8, 1970) is considered one of the earliest modern creators. His most successful work, Think and Grow Rich, has been one of the best-selling books of all time and he received an honorary doctorate in English Literature.

It is not surprised to anyone that his book is based on his research with Carnegie through successful and famous people. Discovering formula through process of success, later he elaborated in a simple recipe that could be duplicated by the average person. That’s why his book has sold over thirty million copies and it is still popular to many people who want to create wealth. Hill also created the phrase ‘Mastermind’ and defined as "coordination of knowledge and effort in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose."

His success was neither spoon fed by his parents nor a sudden fortune. According to his official biographer, Hill was born into poverty in a two-room cabin in the town of Pound in rural Wise County, Virginia. His mother died when he was ten years old and his father remarried two years later.

At the age of thirteen he got a job as a "mountain reporter" for small-town newspapers. He tried to enter law school with his earnings as a reporter but soon had to withdraw for financial reasons. In 1908, one of his assignments as part of a series of biographies of famous men, to interview industrial Andrew Carnegie, turned out to be the turning point in his career. Hill discovered that Carnegie believed that the process of success could be explained in a simple formula that could be copied by the average person.

Carnegie impressed with Hill and commissioned him to interview over 500 successful men and women without pay but offered him to provide him with letters of reference. Later, Hill became one of Carnegie’s advisors. In order to discover and publish this formula of success, Hill interviewed many of the most famous people and millionaires of the time, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, George Eastman, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, John D. Rockefeller, Charles M. Schwab, F.W. Woolworth, William Wrigley Jr., John Wanamaker, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Jennings Randolph. This project lasted over twenty years. The initial formula of success called The Law of Success by Hill and Carnegie was published in Hill’s book Rags-to-riches in 1928. The formula was later published in home-study courses, including the seventeen-volume "Mental Dynamite" series until 1941.

Hill owned Hill’s Golden Rule magazine and worked as the editor and publisher from 1919 to 1920 and he became an advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt from 1933 to 1936. The Ladder to Success was published in 1930. Hill elaborated this success formula in his most famous book, Think and Grow Rich, published in 1937 and it became one of the most selling books all time.

Napoleon Hill Books:
Think and Grow Rich
The Law of Success
How to Sell Your Way through Life
How to Raise Your Own Salary
Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude
You Can Work Your Own Miracles
Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success

His other works are a lecture on Science of Success with Stone and a teaching on Philosophy of Personal Achievement. He died in 1970 in South Carolina.

What is The Carnegie Secret?

The "Carnegie Secret" is a concept that Hill studied extensively. Carnegie believed that the formula for success was so powerful, that if it was applied and taught to students, the time they needed to spend in formal schooling could be cut in half. He also believed that this formula was used by all the leading businessmen and inventors of the late 19th and early 20th century and asked Hill to go out and confirm the application of the formula.

Hill refers to this formula in his introduction to Think and Grow Rich as a conception and "secrete" which is the foundation of all success and essential to the concept itself.
Think and Grow Rich discusses the life of inventor Thomas Edison who used the formula as being necessary for the attainment of all achievement, including riches.

Make Money With Cash Flow

Create Your Wealth with Cash Flow Business

In any business or personal finance, cash flow is important element for surviving in the long run. To have a positive cash flow, a company or an individual has to make more money than what they spend during a defined period of time. In order to make wise financial decisions, the business and individual have to examine the amount of cash being generated and spent.

Cash flow business comes in when the business and individual needs cash for their business or personal finance. For example, the business needs cash right away for operating expenses but its cash has been tied up on receivable notes. Now, that’s where your cash flow business comes in. Your job is to find someone with cash and wants those notes and matches them together. The company gets cash they need and the investor gets what he wants, receivable notes in this case. The best thing is that you get paid handsomely for that service. Everyone benefits by your service. This is only one of them.

It is one of the lucrative home based businesses and many people created wealth by doing it. Fortunately, it is untapped industry and not well known to many people.

The reason it is not well known to many because it is not traditional way of dealing in financial transactions such as the banking and institutional lending. Cash flow business is a wide variety of privately held debt and other cash flow instruments that are actively bought and sold, which provides flexibility, availability, and softer underwriting requirements.

The benefits of the business are:

• You can start with no or little investment.
• It provides tremendous freedom.
• You can work at home.
• No limit to geographical boundaries.

Cashing in With Other Cash Flows

Seller-financed Transactions have existed for decades. The cash flow business has gradually grown to encompass a wide spectrum of diversified debt instruments and it becomes profitable financial niches.

Alternative cash flow has expanded into private investors and has become more interested in purchasing non-debt related forms of cash flow. This means there are more cash flow business opportunities for new comers in areas such as, annuity agreements, structured settlements, lottery awards and similar prize entitlements, pension benefits, royalty agreements, deferred casino winnings, deferred sports contracts, and more.

There are approximately 60 identifiable debt and cash flow niches including the non-debt-related above and others such as commercial receivable the example above, business notes, medical receivables, automobile, marine and aviation paper, equipment leasing contracts, timeshares, government contract payments, retail installment contracts, manufacturing housing paper, and real estate notes.

Therefore, you have the variety of possibilities that you can expand for your cash flow business.

Start making money with Russ Dalbey's Winning In The Cash Flow Business!


Tax Break

There are tax benefits that accrue to those who have their own business even if it is part time and especially if it is out of their home. I am not an accountant or an attorney and I will leave the sophisticated tax lessons to those more qualified than I. But I do know that too much wealth is eroded by taxes and one of the best, if not the best, defense against this is having your own business. I have been told that the average person can save about $5,000 per year just by having his or her own business.

Let baseball be just a game! (about Barry Bonds)

Should Barry Bonds record stand? (Steroids & Sports)

Being a Major League Baseball player is one of regular boys’ dreams. In recent months, every boy’s dream has been tainted by the suspicion of illegal substance use by some of the baseball superstar players and it raises a question about many players’ baseball records and cheating.
Barry Bonds has not been charged and he has denied knowingly using any illegal performance enhancing drugs. Despite investigation and dark clouds over Barry Bonds career and his home run records, San Francisco baseball fans seemed not disturbed by steroid news and anxious to see him play throughout the season for their beloved baseball team.
Whether he has been charged or not, there were overwhelming testimonies of observers of Bonds that his home-run records of recent years got a significant boost from a various performance enhancing drugs, including steroids and human growth hormone. There is no doubt that steroid scandal corrupted the view of the highest levels of professional athletic competition particularly Major League Baseball. The question is that Barry Bonds’ extraordinary records were achieved by his talent, or by cheating. Should Barry Bond’s record stand?
Without knowing much about baseball and baseball players, my personal opinion however, it is not about Barry Bonds. It is about the integrity of athletic competition at its highest levels. Everyone seems to have a different opinion about baseball players who have been suspected of taking steroids or tested positive; others want to see Major League Baseball teams to clean up while die-hard fans want to ignore whole investigation of steroid use.
Since Roman times, one thing we all cherish and tend to honor the sportsmanship, character, and integrity in any sport competitions, the recent steroid scandal has not only compromised these elements of players but also raised suspicion of other players’ merits in all sports.
No doubt that steroid use is a serious problem. We have seen increase in steroid use in high school and college athletes across all sports. The tolerance for performance-enhancing drugs in the professional baseball league will inevitably catch on to the colleges and high school sports programs.
By stripping away Barry Bonds’ record wouldn’t solve the problem. I am not even sure that this will get rid of performance enhancing drugs completely in the Major League Baseball. He might have been the greatest baseball player ever as he insisted that his accomplishments were purely a result of hard work and talent. It is sad to think that Barry Bonds’ single-season home run record and his legacy would be tarnished because of it.
However, it will teach other players a lesson about the virtue of fair play and cheating should not be tolerated in any sports including Barry Bonds’ extraordinary records. Let this be a lesson to all boys who have taught by baseball moms and dads that cheating is okay and winning is everything. Let baseball be just a game.

Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Freedom

Author of rich dad, poor dad Robert Kiyosaki paired up with Sharon L. Lechter to write a book Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom (Paperback). It is the follow-up of his first book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad and guide to financial fast track. He explains difference between rich dad and poor dad’s advice on a life’s path along with reasons why some people work less, earn more, pay less in taxes, and feel more financially secure than others.

This book helps realize where you are today based on the Quadrant chart and where you want to be in five years.Changing from industrial age to information age, there is difference between an employee and a business owner and between average investors and successful investors. It is based on his unusual circumstance to learn how to create a wealth from his rich dad and guide you to take new direction for your financial future. Although he talks about his own ability at school as an average student, his keenness of insight about how to create a financial freedom is hardly an average.

It is written in plain language, which is easy to read and understand by any level of education. As Robert Kiyosaki recommends, "This book is about choosing new options, new directions, and a new financial future." Sharon L. Lechter, C.P.A. Inventor, and Business Executive says, "RICH DAD’S CASHFLOW QUADRANT provides a road map to financial success." And, it is certainly for people who are ready to take a new step for his own destiny of financial freedom.

Recently, Robert Kiyosaki has been working actively with Donald Trump, another real estate tycoon, engaging in a real estate wealth building seminar in Los Angeles.

Article resource: www.road2million.com

Home Based Business Guide: Road to Wealth

Are you tired of working for someone else? Are you a risk-taker and fiercely independent? Are you persistent and driven to succeed? "YES" to all these, you can be a candidate to be an entrepreneur. At least, you have the basic ingredients.
Making money from home is a growing trend. As the Internet accessibility increases, thousands of online home based business opportunities are created every day. Even though, working from home requires certain personality traits and vision, many people are joining the bandwagon to make money online.
Some starts a home based business on a part-time basis while balancing work and home life, and others start full-time if their family and finance allow. Either way, some people are driven by their goal to turn their home based business to a multi-million dollar corporation. This shows you, if you have a passion and desire for the unknown challenge and independence of being an entrepreneur and commitment to follow through on your passion, it will take you where you want to go.
There are however, a few tips you can consider before starting your own home based business.Create a vision. Having a vision for your life and work will guide you through trying times and help you focus on your path to get to where you want to go.

• Assess your personal inventory. Believe in yourself but be honest about your weaknesses and strengths.
• Find out your interest and hobbies. Explore what makes you happy and what is your interest and hobbies are.
• Research your chosen industry. Learn from successful businesses and interview the successful business owners.
• Draw up a business plan. Having a business plan will help you achieve your goals and make sure you follow through your plan.
• Formulate your budget. Think like an entrepreneur and take charge of your business finances and stick with your budget.

Finally, starting a home business requires some capital but capital alone doesn’t make you guarantee for success. A few businesses started with shoestring budgets often became one of the most successful businesses. Running a home based business is not a child play but it is rewarding. It takes challenge and it will test you in all different situations. Do not afraid of falling off the boat, you get back up and try again. If you are persistent and driven, you will be successful at the end and your rewards will be more than you can imagine. GO GET HIM TIGER!!

Article source:

Memoirs of a Geisha (Movie Review)

The movie, Memoirs of a Geisha is an adaptation of Arthur Golden’s best selling novel directed by Rob Marshall. His previous musical ‘Chicago’ showed his talent as a director, this movie confirms the brilliance of his ability as a director.

The movie starts with a girl, Chiyo and her sister are taken from their fishing village and sold to a slave trader by her father. Chiyo ends up at a Geisha house. Her journey starts as a servant and becomes a possible candidate for training to be a geisha while her sister Satsu (Samantha Futerman) is immediately forced to work as a prostitute. We get to see the first glimpse of the geisha of the house, Hatsuomo (Gong Li), who uses Chiyo as an escape goat for her own misbehavior and threatens to crush her. She never suspected however, Chiyo could become her rival later on.

As a young girl, Chiyo first met the Chairman (Ken Watanabe) who showed her the kindness she never had, after that moment, her desire to one day become a geisha to be with him. The idea of falling in love was not permitted in the Geisha’s life, Chiyo somehow saw her own life through Hatsuomo’s emotional pain and destruction as a young girl.

Under the kindness and guidance of Mamesha (Michelle Yeoh), Chiyo begins her training and mastered the arts of music, dance, clever conversation, crafty battle with rival geishas, and cunning seduction of wealthy patrons. Finally, she becomes a geisha and is given the name of Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang). Sayuri’s one and only the dream of being with the Chairman while she still has her difficult times with her geisha life.

Trying to outsmart the popular geisha Hatsuomo, and get the business of the powerful patrons, we can taste the rivalry and viciousness of the business side of the industry at that time in a subtle way. She became the most popular geisha in town when she got her triumphant auction of her mizuage (virginity) for a record price. Her continuous efforts to win the heart of the Chairman, and "wanting a life that is hers" didn’t come easy.

Although, many Westerners have a fascination of the mysterious image of geishas, the portrait of their lives under the elegant prose, mysterious grace, and artistic mastery, we can experience the other side in the movie. It has been made-to-believe the Gaisha was a noble profession before the WWII.

The movie, Memoirs of a Geisha gives us glimpse of the entire secret life of a geisha. In a sense, I am glad to see that the movie didn’t carry on to show the mystical side of the geisha throughout the movie, instead, it showed a human side of the epic.

Even though, many people complained about actors and actresses were not Japanese and not spoken in Japanese language, however, it captured the essence of the drama. Without a doubt, a beautiful soundtrack by John Williams (with cello by Yo Yo Ma, and violin by Itzyak Pearlman) enhanced the movie. The movie, Memoirs of a Geisha made the art of fiction became alive in a big screen.

We Welcome All LEGAL Immigrants!

The immigration is one of the most controversial issues in recent months; especially it has been on the headlines since hundreds and thousands of illegal protesters flooded into Los Angeles City streets demanding their rights. Everyone agrees that the immigrants built the United States and we all welcome them with open arms.

Many of us tried to look away from the problem as long as it doesn't affect immediate pocket books. Even though, we know that illegal immigrants cost states millions of our tax dollars in California and Arizona. Particularly, it is ironic that high school protesters, who are probably illegal immigrants being subsidized by American citizen’s tax money for free schooling, have little regard for the country. Some of us were starting to be annoyed by Mexican flags being waived by these protesters dishonoring the American flag. Yet they were demanding the same rights as the citizens. On the other hand, many companies want to cheap labor from honest, hardworking immigrants who just want a better life for themselves and their families. There’s the hypocrisy of the nonsense from both sides.

There is no simple answer to resolve the immigration problem. Currently, twelve million illegal immigrants are in the Unites States and the numbers are growing every day. One thing everyone agrees that our borders should be controlled first, while we are figuring out what to do with these twelve million undocumented illegal immigrants.

The congress wants to make them felons. No doubt it is not going to happen. Options have been discussed such as making a guest-worker program to continue the supply of labor or, make them all citizens of the United States. Either way, it is encouraging others to continue to come into the country illegally.

Non-Americans are discussing a boycott on May 1 that will stop work, buy, going to school and everything else what they are doing. We should support this effort and use the entire month of May as the month without illegal immigrant workers, and see whether we are able to survive. At the same time, make them all return their home country temporarily before they can legally return. So, they can go through the regular channel and requirements that other legal immigrants go through.

Without a doubt that the country needs immigration and all Americans welcome it. Unlike other countries, the opportunities are offered to all legal immigrants in the United States as they should be; however, not for illegal undocumented immigrants. For example, no matter how many years an American resides in other countries as an immigrant, he/she is rarely permitted to work or get a professional job in that particular country because these countries want to protect these jobs for their own citizens. We all understand that these countries have the right to protect their sovereignties. Why shouldn’t these illegal immigrants understand that?

Illegal immigration problem can be solved when politicians stop being politicians and rule by the law. Americans greet all legal immigrants with open arms when they learn and speak the English language and encourage their children to excel at a good education. We all like to see our neighbors to be diversified and learn other cultures through them. The difference between welcome and unwelcome immigrants by Americans is Legal or Illegal. As it sounds, illegal means against the law and legal means abiding the law. It is as simple as that. We welcome all LEGAL immigrants!