You just have to invest wisely

Source: http://www.min.com.my/teen/html/fr_saveit.html

Congratulations! You have managed to save, and quite a bit too!

Now, do you have plans for your savings? Perhaps you intend to buy a
Playstation or that expensive tennis Wilson racquet once you have
accumulated enough. It’s good to have a goal when you embark on a
savings programme because the goal encourages you to save – rather
like dangling a carrot in front of the donkey, although you are far
from being a donkey if you are clever enough to give yourself a
motivation to save.

So if you don’t have a goal, think of one. You don’t have to confine
yourself to one goal – have several goals if they help you save more,
as long as they are realistic and worthwhile objectives.

Meantime, while you save furiously towards your goal or goals, where
do you keep your savings? Stashed away in your drawer? That’s not a
wise thing to do, because there is this terrible thing called
Inflation which, figuratively speaking, is just waiting to gnaw at
idle savings. It sees your money just lying there in your drawer and
wham! it’s got your money in its jaws!

Inflation & Purchasing Power

What is Inflation? No, it’s not an insect or animal. It’s abstract.
Inflation is the economic term for rising prices, or rising cost of
living. Inflation is when the prices of things you buy are rising.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say your family takes grandmother
out to dinner at your favourite Nyonya restaurant. It’s your
grandmother’ s first visit to Kuala Lumpur or to a city for that
matter – she lives in a small town and she hardly ever ventures
beyond her garden gate.

Of course, you have to order your favourite dessert – ice kacang! You
can’t resist that pile of crushed ice rainbow-coloured by syrups and
milk, sitting on top of various beans, corn, bits of jelly, longan
and what-else-have- you, and topped with ice-cream. When your father
fishes out RM4.50 to pay for your ice kacang – watch out for grandma!
She might fall off her chair in shock! Why? Because during the time
she was a kid, ice kacang probably only cost 10 sen. TEN SEN??!! Now
it is your turn to fall off the chair!

That’s what we mean by inflation. Rising prices. Sixty years ago, an
ice kacang cost 10 sen. Today it costs RM4.50 at a proper restaurant
and RM1.50 from a hawker stall. Its price has shot skyward. Put in
another way, inflation has reduced the purchasing power of money
through time. Your granny’s 10 sen cannot buy a bowl of ice kacang
today, maybe only that bit of crushed ice. The 10 sen has lost a lot
of its buying power; it buys less than what it did 60 years ago. In
fact, today’s hawker price of ice kacang won’t stay RM1.50 forever.
It will go up and you don’t have to wait till you are a
grandmother/ grandfather to see this. By the time you are a
mother/father, we’ll bet an ice kacang would probably cost nearer to
RM2 at the stalls.

That’s inflation for you. And the sad news is that inflation does not
only attack foods. It is pervasive, sinking its claws in all things
and services that are part of living – clothes, furniture, bicycle,
house, cinema tickets, taxi fares, park rides etc. etc. That’s why it
is called the rising cost of living.

So what does this mean for your savings? Simply that if you just
stash away your savings – let’s assume that you have saved RM100 – in
a drawer, your RM100 just remains RM100 until you want to use it.
Meanwhile inflation is nibbling away at the value of your RM100 so
that when you actually use it much, much later, your RM100 is not
going to be able to buy you as much as when you started to save it.
This is because – depending on how long you keep your money – prices
of things would have risen in the meantime. Of course, if you
immediately use your savings, inflation probably won’t have a chance
to work yet. But then, we are talking about a savings programme here,
and that means a long enough time frame for your savings to grow –
and for inflation to kick in.

So what must you do? To fight inflation, you must make your savings
grow in value, faster than the inflation rate. If you just let the
RM100 of your savings stay the same, you know that through time the
purchasing power of your RM100 will not be RM100, but less – because
the prices of things are continuously rising. However, if your RM100
savings could grow to, say, RM150; then in future you can not only
buy the same things that your RM100 could at the start of your
savings, you can also buy more things.

Investing is the way to go

To make your money grow, you certainly do not leave your cash in your
drawer or stuff it under the mattress or anywhere else where it just
stays put, and forget about it until you want to use it. To make your
money grow, you must do a second smart thing – your first smart move
was to save – you must invest it.

Investing is defined as using your money (in this case, your savings)
to make more money. Grown-ups, the wise ones, do that. They invest to
make money with their money and when this has grown, they re-invest
the bigger sum and in the process of re-investing again and again,
their money is doubled, tripled or multiplied many times more. That’s
how people get rich – not through winning the lottery (you have one
chance in 7 million or something like that) but through saving and
investing. You can do the same with your small sum of savings and
watch it grow.

There are different ways to invest your money so as to earn a return.
A return is the amount of earnings or income that you get from your
investment. The easiest and most common way is to put your savings
into a bank savings account or fixed deposit. Your savings will grow
because the bank pays you a certain sum of money (your return) called
interest, as long as your money stays with the bank. This way your
savings grows until you want to use it and when you withdraw it from
your bank account, the amount of money that you have now will be your
original savings plus the interest it has accumulated. It is no
longer just your RM100 but a bigger sum.

So bank accounts are one type of investment. Another is investing in
the stock market by buying shares of companies. Many adults do this.
We shall explain more about shares in another article. For now, know
that people invest in shares, hoping to earn a return in two ways.
One is from receiving dividends, which is simply the monetary reward
that companies pay out to shareholders when the companies perform
well. The second is from realising a profit when they sell off their
shares. Profit is the gain in money between what you paid for the
shares and what you get when you sell the shares. Simple Maths will
explain profit. For instance, if you had a savings of RM600 and
bought 200 shares for RM3 a share, and three months later, you sold
your 200 shares at RM4 a share, you would make a profit of RM200.

Here’s how:

Cost of buying 200 shares at RM3 a share = 200 x RM3= RM600.
Amount of money received from selling 200 shares at RM4 a share = 200
x RM4 = RM800.
Profit = Sale minus Purchase = RM800 – RM600 = RM200.

The profit has made your savings swell from RM600 to RM800.

There are other ways of investing your money.

You could even buy a house, if you have loads and loads of money
(say, through inheriting a fortune from your favourite aunt who
passed away). If you rent out your house, your return will be the
amount of rental income you receive from your tenant. Which
investment method you choose depends on factors like how much savings
you have and how much returns you want to make. Each investment has
its pros and cons.
For instance, investing in shares can earn you more returns than bank
accounts, but it is riskier. If you put your savings into a bank
account, your money is safeguarded. You can’t lose it like you can
lose your money in shares if you pick the wrong share to buy. Even if
the bank gets robbed, or burnt down or goes bankrupt, the law of the
country provides that you will get your money back. Not so with
shares investing. However the return from the bank interest is rather
small.

Investing in property like a house could earn you massive returns,
but it is a long-term investment. It would be years and years before
the prices of houses rise for you to sell your house and make a
profit. (Remember? Profit equals Sale minus Purchase.) Getting your
return from investing in shares is much, much faster but like we said
before, you must be smart (and lucky enough) to select the right
share to buy or else you could lose your money invested.

In fact with all types of investment (except perhaps for bank
accounts), there is always a possibility of losing your savings, much
less about getting a return. If you invest unwisely, you could lose
both your original sum of savings and get no returns at all.

However, there’s no mistake about this: investing is the way to build
your wealth.

You just have to invest wisely.

Understand the Compounding Effect of Money

Source: http://www.free- financial- advice.net/ compounding- effect.html
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— –

Understand the Compounding Effect of Money

The compounding effect of money is extremely important when making
any financial decision. The compounding effect of money is often
overlooked or underestimated by people when making decisions. When
applied to all of your financial decisions, this effect is the KEY to
long-term success! To illustrate the compounding effect of money, let
me use some financial examples:

Suppose you had invested $1,000 today in a 5% savings account. In one
year, that account would be worth $1,050 [$1,000 + ($1,000 x 5%)],
yielding a $50 gain. However, in year two, that same initial
investment would be worth $1,102.50 [$1,000 + ($1,000 x 5%) + ($1,050
x 5%)], yielding a $52.50 gain. And in year three, the same $1,000
would be worth $1,157.63, yielding a $55.13 gain. By year ten, the
initial $1,000 investment would be worth $1,629 and by year 25 it
would be worth $3,386.

From looking at this example, you can see that investing $1,000 today
is much more valuable than investing $1,000 even a couple of years
from now. To accumulate wealth, you MUST use the time value of money
and the compounding effect of money to your advantage. Click here to
see how long it will take to save a million dollars.

This second example shows how the compounding effect can work against
you:

Suppose you borrowed $20,000 to purchase a car and your auto loan was
at a 10% interest rate (for 5 years). Your monthly payments would be
$424.94. Because the $20,000 loan continues to compound over the life
of the loan, you actually pay $25,496.45 over the five-year period,
meaning that you’ve in essence paid $5,496.45 because you spent the
money before you had it. In fact, in your initial payments, the
interest alone will account for almost 40% of your monthly payments.
In this case, the bank or lender that gave you the loan uses the time
value of money to their advantage.

Now look at this scenario, where instead of making the $424.94 car
payment, you invest that payment at the same rate as what your car
loan was (granted it’s a little high for a savings rate, but not
unreasonable for other investments) . Now, instead of paying the bank,
you are actually earning interest and compounding the benefit
yourself. After one year you will have saved $5,340 and have earned
$240 in interest. After two years, you will have saved $11,239 and
have earned $1,039 in interest. By the third year, your investments
will be worth almost $18,000 and you will have earned $2,457 in
interest. By month 40, you will have enough money to purchase a
$20,000 car in cash!

So let’s weigh the differences between the two scenarios above. In
the first case you paid the bank $5,496 to borrow the money and in
the second case you earned $2,457 and could buy the car in cash after
just 40 months (just over 3 years)! The opportunity cost of the first
alternative versus the second alternative results in a net difference
of $7,953 (a $2,457 gain versus a $5,496 loss). That means that by
making a simple deferral decision (buying the car in 3 years versus
today), you can get ahead by almost $8,000!

When should I start saving?

When should I start saving?

The answer is simple: as soon as you can. Ideally, you’d start saving
in your 20s, when you first leave school and begin earning paychecks.
That’s because the sooner you begin saving, the more time your money
has to grow. Each year’s gains can generate their own gains the next
year – a powerful wealth-building phenomenon known as compounding.

Here’s an example of what a big difference starting young can make.
Say you start at age 25, and put aside $3,000 a year in a tax-deferred
retirement account for 10 years – and then you stop saving –
completely. By the time you reach 65, your $30,000 investment will
have grown to more than $472,000, (assuming an 8% annual return), even
though you didn’t contribute a dime beyond age 35.

Now let’s say you put off saving until you turn 35, and then save
$3,000 a year for 30 years. By the time you reach 65, you will have
set aside $90,000 of your own money, but it will grow to only about
$367,000, assuming the same 8% annual return. That’s a huge difference.

* When should I start saving for retirement?
* Where should I save my retirement money?
* How should I invest the money?
* How should my strategy change as I get older?
* How much money will I need in retirement?
* Will pensions and Social Security be enough?
* How much should I save?
* What if I can’t save enough?
* How can I reduce the amount I’ll need?
* What if I’m running out of time?
* I’m saving a lot but will still fall short – what now?
* When can I retire?

Source:
http://money. cnn.com/retireme nt/guide/ basics_basics. moneymag/ index.htm? postversion= 2008090815

Why Should You Save Money?

Why Should You Save Money? – By Martin Lukac

We are always hearing save, save, save. But if you don’t have a reason
to save, it isn’t likely you will.

Most people live paycheck to paycheck. Many people simply do not have
the money to save. There just doesn’t seem to be enough money left
over after paying the necessities.

And I’m not just talking about the lower-income groups. Often, those
driving new cars, living in nice homes and wearing name brand clothes
are barely making it by financially. They often have a harder time
finding extra money than do those who make incomes below poverty level.

There are a lot of people that wear money well, yet they don’t really
have any. Is that you? Are you caught in an endless cycle of wanting
more and wanting better? Do you see that it just isn’t working for you?

Sit down and examine what your main goals are in life. I mean the
really important financial ones. You may want to retire someday. Have
you started saving? Do you want your children to go to college? Have
you started saving? You might just want to be able to pay all of your
bills? Have you started saving?

You get the hint — it’s all about the saving. I’m not going to go
into how to save, you can research that later. Let’s talk about why
you should save.

The number one reason to start saving right now is for emergencies.
Things happen. People pass away. People get hurt at work. People get
laid off. We have accidents. We have cars break down, washing machines
stop working and sometimes even disasters hit our homes.

With an emergency savings, you are cushioned from the financially
ruin. You can make ends meet until you are able to figure something
out. You are able to buy that new washer without hurting your monthly
budget. You are able to sleep without worrying where you will find the
money. It’s in your savings.

I suggest starting with three to six months worth of monthly expenses.
This gives you a pretty good cushion. Put as much in as you can. My
husband recently lost his job, and we found that three months fly by
fast. Before we knew it, the fund was gone. But it gave him valuable
time to find a good job — he didn’t have to take one just to make
ends meet.

Once you have this savings built up, you should start working on your
goals. You can work on several at a time. For example, if you are able
to put $100 from each paycheck into savings, yet have three goals you
are saving for, do a portion to each.

For example, your goals are for retirement, college for your child and
buy a home. Decide which is most important to you and what you need to
dedicate of that $100 to each goal. You might put the largest amount
to your retirement, the second largest to your home and the third to
the college education.

You should save money. I can’t tell you why. That is your decision.
There are goals that can only be fulfilled from savings. Think about
what you want in life. If you want out of debt, to own your own home
or to retire comfortably, you have to start saving now.

Savings to Wealth Or Poverty

Savings to Wealth Or Poverty
By Olumuyiwa Johnson

INTRODUCTION

Savings is the act of putting aside, for sometime certain portion or
percentage of your income to either buy an item, prepare for some
unexpected expenses, or for investment purposes. For the purpose of
this write-up, we would be considering savings for investment
purposes. Most people would advice you to save up to 10% of your
income, but taking a look at the biblical story of Joseph in Egypt,
where he saved one fifth or 20% in the year of abundant, which was
their saving grace in the year of famine. I believe there is a divine
wisdom in paying yourself 20% of your income, if you can afford it.

WHY SHOULD YOU SAVE

Some people believe that their income is too small, and not sufficient
to meet all their basic needs, so they use this as an reason not to
save. This shows that they do not understand the commandment, you
shall love your neighbour as yourself, and not you shall love your
neighbour more than yourself. Whenever you spend money, you are paying
someone else, rent your landlord, transport fair the owner of the
means of transport, school fees the proprietor and buying food or
cloths the retailer. As you continue to do this, you are helping all
those you paid financially, but when you spend all your income, you
are not helping yourself. It is the little that you pay yourself by
saving, that would empower you (enable) to take advantage of
opportunities, when it they come.

It is the first step out of poverty and rat race. Many people believe
that the first step to wealth is getting a good job or starting a good
business. But what has been discovered overtime is that your expenses
and taste will increase as your income increases, so the only way out
is for you to put a certain portion of your income aside for
investment purpose. Do you know that a seed in your hands today can
become a tree tomorrow, and a tree a forest? Likewise that small
amount of money with you today has the potential of becoming millions
and billions if, it is allowed to grow and multiply with time.

SAVINGS TO POVERTY

In as much that it is good to save, make sure that it does not exceed
six month before you put it to productive use, if not, the effect of
inflation would reduce the economic value of your savings. No matter
how small your savings is, find something to invest in. All savings
that are not made for investment purpose cannot empower you to create
wealth.

SAVINGS TO WEALTH

SAVINGS + GOOD AND TIMELY INFORMATION + ACTION= WEALTH

Savings itself has a spirit, the spirit of being sensitive to
investment opportunities. As you begin to save, you should become more
interested in what in the stock market, real estate and so many other
opportunities offline and on the Internet. Seek for information,
subscribe to some financial journals or site on stock, to get updated
information on investment opportunities, and when necessary please be
prepared paid for such information, proverb 4:7 Wisdom is supreme,
therefore get wisdom, though it cost all you have, get understanding.
As you begin to gather and analyses information on difference
investment opportunities, you will discover that there are some, in
which you could start small, like buying into penny stock. Please do
not wait until you have about half of your monthly income, before you
invest, start small. Continue to do this and watch your investment
grow and grow, until it turns into a well, where you can always draw from.

———— ——— ——— ——— —
Source:
Article Source: http://EzineArticle s.com/?expert= Olumuyiwa_ Johnson

Workplace Bullying

Workplace Bullying
http://www.mystupidboss.com/msb/WorkplaceBullying.aspx

Bullying doesn’t just happen to kids at school; it is a very real problem in the workplace as well. Millions of days are lost to businesses each year as a result of absenteeism caused by bullying. Bullying results in low morale, lower productivity and high staff turnover. Surveys suggest bullying is responsible for 30 – 50% of all stress related illnesses in the workplace.

Have you ever been bullied by your boss? Have you witnessed a co-worker being bullied by a supervisor? A recent study by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health suggests that most incidents of workplace bullying are between employees, rather than perpetuated by a supervisor. Frankly, we find that very difficult to believe. Can it be true that most workplace bullying is by co-workers?

We believe a survey recently publish by the British Trade Union Congress on workplace bullying is highly significant. According to the survey, 2 million workers claim to have been bullied in the six months leading up to November 2005. What is particularly striking about this British evidence for workplace bullying is that it is senior managers, rather than co-workers, who are singled out as the worst offenders when it comes to acts of workplace bullying.

We think bullying by bosses is stupid because it is counterproductive. It is estimated that 18 million working days per year are lost through the effects of workplace bullying in the UK alone.

Are bullying bosses just a British phenomenon? Use the Submit a Story page to tell us what you think.

What is Bullying at Work?

Bullying at work is basically any behaviour that is malicious, intimidating, insulting or upsetting. It is a deliberate attempt by a colleague or boss to undermine, intimidate or control you. Bullying tends to be sustained over a long period rather than being a one off occurrence. Bullies rarely commit a physical attack but instead use more psychological tactics. The emotional problems that the victim experiences can be very hard to deal with. Any of the following can be regarded as bullying behaviour:

Verbal/physical threats
Being humiliated in public or shouted at
Blocking access to training/overtime and other benefits
Spreading malicious rumours
Persistent criticism that is undeserved
Setting impossible deadlines – setting you up to fail
Offensive reference to sex, race, age, etc
Exclusion from meetings or communications that are relevant to your job
A bully may be quite subtle when talking to you in front of other people, but when you are on your own with them, you may be subject to explosive outbursts.

Bullies will quite often try to wear you down by placing unreasonable demands on you. They may accuse your standard of work or accuse you of not pulling your weight.

What can you do about it?

Admit that you are being bullied
The first step you need to take is to acknowledge the fact you are being bullied. If you just try to ignore it, the problem will not go away.

Stand up for yourself
Try not to show the bully that their behaviour has upset you. Try to improve your assertiveness and communication skills. Look at your body language, don’t stoop or hang your head. Stand up straight with confidence and maintain eye contact. If you stand up to the bully rather than just take it lying down, chances are the bully may lose interest and turn their attentions elsewhere. Bullies prey on people that accept their bad behaviour. Don’t give them an easy ride – simply choose not accept the way they treat you. If they speak to you abusively, stand up to them and ask why they are treating you so badly. Tell them how their behaviour is affecting you. If they know that they are always going to have to account for their behaviour, your direct approach will potentially reduce the chances of them bullying you in the future.

Make a case
Gather information about this person. Is it just you they are targeting or are they bullying anyone else? Build a case to show the negative impact they are having on the workplace.

Keep a diary of bullying tactics. Make sure you include specific incidences and record exactly what was said. Specifics are much more useful than vague recollections.

Tell someone
Write a memo to the person concerned stating your criticism of the way you are being treated. Make sure you copy in your Human Resources manager. If you are called into a meeting, request that a colleague or friend comes in with you.

Request that your Human Resources department spell out clearly their policy on bullying.

What if the company does nothing?

Talk to friends
Talk to your friends and supportive colleagues. Don’t try to deal with the problems on your own.

Don’t be embarrassed to seek professional help
If you have been badly affected as a result of bullying, seek professional help. Your family doctor can refer you to counsellors and psychologists. Bullying causes stress, which can, over a sustained period of time have very harmful effects on your body. Symptoms of prolonged stress include tiredness/feeling run down, difficulty sleeping, headaches, heartburn, stomach ulcers, high blood pressure and heart disease.

Know when it’s time to move on
You need to ask yourself whether it is worth the stress of staying on. Some bullies will not back down and will continue to make your life hell. Is your job really worth it? If it is just the individual that is the problem, then the problem may be worth tackling, but in some cases the organisation may have a ‘bullying culture’. Why would you want to continue to work in an organisation that supports bullying?

Take some time out and make a list of what you are good at. Document your achievements and update your CV. Take this opportunity to push your career in a more fulfilling direction. Your health and sanity are much more important.

Success Quotes

Perseverance, n.: A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.
– Ambrose Bierce

Success for the striver washes away the effort of striving.
– Pindar

The penalty of success is to be bored by people who used to snub you.
– Nancy, Lady Astor

The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
– Benjamin Disraeli

There are few successful adults who were not first successful children.
– Alexander Chase

What is success? To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; That is to have succeeded.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
– Henry David Thoreau

The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool.
– William McFee

Out of every fruition of success, no matter what, comes forth something to make a new effort necessary.
– Walt Whitman

Though a tree grow ever so high, the falling leaves return to the root.
– Malay proverb

Success is that old ABC- ability, breaks and courage.
– Charles Luckman

How can they say my life isn’t a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?
– Logan Pearsall Smith

You always pass failure on the way to success.
– Mickey Rooney

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.
– Artur Rubinstein

High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
– Tennessee Williams

Everything bows to success, even grammar.
– Victor Hugo

Never having been able to succeed in the world, he took his revenge by speaking ill of it.
– Voltaire

The successful people are the ones who think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.
– Don Marquis

It is no use saying ‘we are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
– Winston Churchill

Survival is triumph enough.
– Harry Crews

It takes time to be a success, but time is all it takes.
– Anonymous

There is a passion for perfection which you will rarely see fully developed; but you may note this fact, that in successful lives it is never wholly lacking.
– Bliss Carman

Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday’s triumphant cause.
– Phyllis McGinley

The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.
– Irving Berlin

Nothing fails like success because we don’t learn from it. We learn only from failure.
– Kenneth Boulding

Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; If not, by any means get wealth and place.
– Alexander Pope

Success is not so much what you are, but rather what you appear to be.
– Anonymous

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is – try to please everybody.
– Herbert Bayard Swope

Success has made failures of many men.
– Cindy Adams

A successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellow men, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man, however, should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.
– Albert Einstein

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
– Reggie Leach

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.
– Earl Nightingale

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.
– Albert Schweitzer

Failure changes for the better, success for the worse.
– Seneca

Behind every successful man there’s a lot of unsuccessful years.
– Bob Brown

If people knew what they had to do to be successful, most people wouldn’t.
– Lord Thomson of Fleet

The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.
– Oswald Spengler

Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look what they can do when they stick together.
– Vesta M. Kelly

Damon Runyon. A day-coach boy in a parlor car seat.
– Damon Runyon

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.
– Christopher Morley

Find a need and fill it.
– Ruth Stafford Peale

The successful person is the individual who forms the habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do.
– Donald Riggs

The victory of success is half done when one gains the habit of work.
– Sarah Knowles Bolton

The secret of every man who has ever been successful lies in the fact that he formed the bait of doing those things that failures don’t like to do.
– A. Jackson King

Nature gave men two ends-one to sit on, and one to think with. Ever since then man’s success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most.
– George R. Kirkpatrick

Make yourself indispensable and you’ll be moved up. Act as if you’re indispensable and you’ll be moved out.
– Anonymous

What is the recipe for successful achievement? To my mind there are just four essential ingredients: Choose a career you love. … Give it the best there is in you…. Seize your opportunities. … And be a member of the team.
– Benjamin F. Fairless

Vacillating people seldom succeed. They seldom win the solid respect of their fellows. Successful men and women are very careful in reaching decisions, and very persistent and determined in action thereafter.
– L. G. Elliott

Many people have the ambition to succeed; they may even have a special aptitude for their job. And yet they do not move ahead. Why? Perhaps they think that since they can master the job, there is no need to master themselves.
– John Stevenson

I’ve been polite and I’ve always shown up. Somebody asked me if I had any advice for young people entering the business. I said: “Yeah, show up.”
– Tom T. Hall

The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.
– Andrew Carnegie

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.
– Frank Lloyd Wright

Success is that old ABC-Ability, Breaks and Courage.
– Charles Luckman

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
– Benjamin Disraeli

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imaged, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
– Henry David Thoreau

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.
– Henry Ford

To be ambitious for wealth, and yet always expecting to be poor; to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for, is like trying to reach east by traveling west. There is no philosophy which will help man to succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so, and thus attracting failure. No matter how hard you work for success, if your thought is saturated with the fear of failure, it will kill your efforts, neutralize your endeavors and make success impossible.
– Charles Baudouin

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is-try to please everybody.
– Herbert Bayard Swope

We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely, but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.
– Agnes Repplier

A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways…. A determinate purpose in life and a steady adhesion to it through all disadvantages are indispensable conditions of success.
– William M. Punshion

The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back.
– Marcus Annaeus Seneca
The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.
– Sir William Osier

I studied the lives of great men and famous women; and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.
– Harry S. Truman
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but the principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.
– General Colin L. Powell

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it…. Success is shy-it won’t come out while you’re watching.
– Tennessee Williams

Three outstanding qualities make for success: judgement, industry, health. And the greatest of these is judgement.
– William Maxwell Aitken

Thirteen virtues necessary for true success: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility.
– Benjamin Franklin

Find a need and fill it.
– Ruth Stafford Peale

Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.
– Swami Sivananda

Four steps to achievement: plan purposefully, prepare prayerfully, proceed positively, pursue persistently.
– William A. Ward

Success follows doing what you want to do. There is no other way to be successful.
– Malcolm Forbes

Always aim for achievement, and forget about success.
– Helen Hayes

Success, which is something so simple in the end, is made up of thousands of things, we never fully know what.
– Rainer Maria Rilke

Self-trust is the first secret of success.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
– Henry Ford

So once I shut down my privilege of disliking anyone I choose and holding myself aloof if I could manage it, greater understanding, growing compassion came to me.
– Catharine Marshall

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.
– Theodore Roosevelt

Remember, the bread you meet each day is still rising. Don’t scare the dough.
– Macrina Wiederkehr

The art of dealing with people is the foremost secret of successful men. A man’s success in handling people is the very yardstick by which the outcome of his whole life’s work is measured.
– Paul C. Packe

The ability to form friendships, to make people believe in you and trust you is one of the few absolutely fundamental qualities of success. Selling, buying, negotiating are so much smoother and easier when the parties enjoy each other’s confidence. The young man who can make friends quickly will find that he will glide, instead of stumble, through life.
– John J. McGuirk

Networking is an enrichment program, not an entitlement program.
– Susan RoAne

Respect for people is the cornerstone of communication and networking.
– Susan RoAne

No matter how much a man can do, no matter how engaging his personality may be, he will not advance far in business if he cannot work through others.
– John Craig

The way to rise is to obey and please.
– Ben Johnson

Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.
– Sir Archibald Mclndoe

Whatever your grade or position, if you know how and when to speak, and when to remain silent, your chances of real success are proportionately increased.
– Ralph C. Smedley

That they can strengthen through the empowerment of others is essential wisdom often gathered by women.
– Mary Field Belenky

A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.
– Charles M. Schwab

You have to block everything out and be extremely focused and be relaxed and mellow too.
– Jennifer Capriati

I’ve never sought success in order to get fame and money; it’s the talent and the passion that count in success.
– Ingrid Bergman

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
– Dale Carnegie

How to be powerful PERSON

How to be powerful PERSON

Learn how to handle

If you want power, you must first learn how to handle it. This is because if you can’t handle it, it can be your worst weakness. Also, if you know how to handle your weaknesses, it can be your best power. People always crave to gain strengths and powers, while usually ignoring their weaknesses. Thus, they don’t achieve a balanced power – the true power. It is the power that can overcome not only a weakness, but also another power.

If you can manage knowledge, the truth, your million dollar income, or even just your one month free Internet access, then it’s a great power. Moreover, if you can manage your life even when you’re in the dark, you’re poor and don’t have any advantages, then that’s also a great power. If you will combine these two, you can have a greater power – a power that can handle almost everything in life. Thus, you should have power in both hands. So practice not only handling troubles, but also pleasures – if you don’t want to get into another form of trouble.

Have the best self-defense

You need to have the greatest self-defense anyone could have. This is the one that is more powerful than any of the Earth’s nuclear weapons. This is the one that is more effective than any of the world’s best martial arts. Your best self-defense is one that can defeat your greatest enemy – your worst self. Your worst self is your external self that conspire your worst adversaries, such as your greed, wrath, pride and envy. Your best self is your inner and spiritual self that works together with the things that can give you eternal salvation, such as love, faithfulness, compassion, forgiveness, gentleness, humility and patience.

Plant and harvest powers

Do you want to get powers? Plant them so that you can harvest. Do you want a stable financial power? Be prudent and diligent. Do you want to have a firm political power? Be helpful and be nice to people. Do you want to have a marketing power? Then be social and relational. Do you want a powerful body? Then invest discipline and hard work. Do you want to have a great spiritual power? Then keep on planting love, patience and humility. The secret of power is that it is not what you get after you work, but it is what you get while working. That is why power is defined as the rate at which work is performed.

Be spiritual and metaphysical

Our science and technology becomes more powerful as the time passes by. This happens because our discoveries on the things in the smaller scale are increasing. Before, our phones and televisions are huge and heavy. But now they are getting smaller and more powerful. This is because our knowledge is moving into the smaller world – the world of nanotechnology. Furthermore, our scientific understanding of the Universe has also increased because of the formulation of quantum physics. But what’s the point?

The point is that the more we get into the smaller and more invisible things the more we become powerful. So if atoms and subatomic particles are powerful, how much more those that’s more invisible – the spirits. The Universe is not infinite and it will end, but the spirits will remain forever. If you want to become powerful and eternal, you should understand the spiritual things. You should live in the spiritual world. You should feed on the spirits of love, kindness, joy and the like.

Serve greatly and humbly

If power is the rate at which work is performed, you can be powerful if you work in full. Powerful persons are the ones who work purely. They are the ones who love fully and serve greatly. And more than that, they are the people who can serve while staying in humility. These are the people who are considered the servant leaders. They are called great leaders because they serve what’s the greatest, without making themselves proud. They do it not for pride, but for the honor and glory of their people. Just think again and consider this: the greater the people they serve the more the power they obtained. Now are you wondering why God is the most powerful? It is because He serves the greatest in the humblest way.

Remember that true power is not just an ability, but also a purity. It is not just a rate, but also an immeasurability. Finally, it is not just a quantity, but also a harmony. So, how do you feel? Did you feel an increase in your power? Did this article somehow increase your power to live? Thank you for reading. Please consider sharing this humble power to your friends.

http://secretcontents.com/how-to-become-a-powerful-person/

November 2011 Gatherings by Camelia

November 2011 Gatherings by Camelia

“Came” means Business Networking (referral business/business gathering)
welcome to Camelia gatherings

Came 404
7 November 2011 (monday)
Time: 3pm to 5pm
Venue: Old Town White Coffee,Jaya One,Petaling Jaya,Selangor,Malaysia.

Came 405
8 November 2011 (tuesday)
Time: 8pm to 10pm
Venue: Kluang Station,1utama shopping mall,Petaling Jaya,Selangor,Malaysia.

Came 406
11 November 2011 (friday)
Time: 10am to 12pm
Venue: Old Town White Coffee,Ampang Point,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.

Came 407
18 November 2011 (friday)
Time: 3pm to 5pm
Venue: Old Town White Coffee,Berjaya Times Square (3rd floor),Jalan Imbi,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.
Came 408
21 November 2011 (monday)
Time: 4pm to 6pm
Venue: Old Town White Coffee,Jalan Raja Laut,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.

Came 409
24 November 2011 (thursday)
Time: 8pm to 10pm
Venue: Teh Tarik Place,The Curve Shopping Mall,Petaling Jaya,Selangor,Malaysia.

Came 410
27 November 2011
Time : 8pm to 10pm
Venue: KFC Ampang Park Mall, Jalan Ampang,Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Came 411
28 November 2011 (monday)
Time: 3pm to 5pm
Venue: Old Town White Coffee,Taman Midah,Cheras,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.

Came 412
28 November 2011 (monday)
Time: 3pm to 5pm
Venue: Mc Donalds,Masjid Jamek,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia. (Kelana jaya LRT Line station / STARline station)
Came 413
29 November 2011 (tuesday)
Time: 3pm to 5pm
Venue: Station1cafe,Sunway Mentari,Petaling Jaya,Malaysia.(next to Sunway Pyramid mall)

Pls Call /SMS to confirm the date/place/time.
Please give me time to reserve a seat for you.
Do not be LAST MINUTE.I will not entertain you.
You may bring your friends or bosses or spouse.
PLEASE BE PUNCTUAL, Thank you!!

Mobile : 6-016-9795515
Love Camelia
Malaysian Chinese lady

*Venue and time subject to change
*Please pay your drinks / meals
*No entrance fee and no membership

How to bulletproof your website

How to bulletproof your website
Test, don’t assume anything — and test again
By Esther Shein
November 28, 2011

Computerworld – ‘Tis the season to begin ramping up online shopping activity, and for retailers that means doing all they can to ensure their websites are up, highly available and able to handle peak capacity. Looming in many IT managers’ minds is the cautionary tale of Target, whose website crashed twice this fall after it was inundated by an unprecedented number of online shoppers when the retailer began selling clothing and accessories from high-end Italian fashion company Missoni.

“We are working around the clock to ensure that our site is operating efficiently and delivering an exceptional guest experience that’s reflective of Target’s brand,” said a Target spokesperson in an email, but declined to give specifics on the measures the company has taken.

One company’s hardship is often another company’s gain, and those that face well-publicized failures tend to become de facto role models, retail industry watchers say. Take what happened to Best Buy in 2005: Its website experienced what some have called a catastrophic holiday failure and customers were unable to make online purchases. That same year, competitor Circuit City saw a huge spike in traffic, says Dave Karow, senior product manager of Web performance and testing at Keynote, a firm that monitors and tests mobile and Internet performance.

“There’s nothing like falling flat on your face to give you the conviction to do right thing going forward. That was an extremely effective wakeup call for Best Buy,” he says, adding that the retailer now conducts several load tests throughout the year.

Web retailers should be shooting for 99.5% availability, otherwise “they’re not cutting it,” Karow maintains. “Ninety-nine percent is not acceptable because if you achieve that, you’re still one percent unavailable.” That has a significant impact since it means more than one percent of potential transactions didn’t occur — and likely won’t going forward, he says.

This holiday season, more than ever, Web retailers need to be prepared for the onslaught, since a growing number of consumers will be using mobile devices to shop. A report recently released by mobile ad network InMobi claims an estimated 60 million mobile users are planning to use their devices to shop during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday holiday weekend, with over 21 million intending to make purchases from those devices.
Prepare, test and review

Online shoe retailer Zappos conducts load testing early in the fall to ensure its site stays up and highly available during the holiday season, says Kris Ongbongan, senior manager, technical operations and systems engineering. Every year they follow the same procedure, he says: estimate load.

“We have our finance and planning departments give us sales predictions and we take a multiple of that to see what traffic we can absorb and test to that,” typically beginning in September, Ongbongan says. That gives them enough time to make changes and add any necessary infrastructure.
Website uptime

Retailers should go through their transaction volume testing and validation in the September/October timeframe and then code lock their systems until about January 15th, suggests Michael Ebert, a partner in IT Advisory Services at KPMG. During that period, “retailers typically freeze their systems … and don’t do updates unless absolutely necessary to avoid performance issues,” he says.

Another practice the very large Internet retailers tend to employ is having distributed networks in order to route traffic to make sure transactions are balanced around the U.S., Ebert says. That way, if one site gets too busy the customer will automatically be routed to another. “So make sure you have multiple points of your Internet presence around the U.S.” A data center “may be slow to respond, but at least I’m up and running,” he adds. “There’s always a percentage of business you never regain if someone leaves the site.”

Another metric that retailers need to be concerned with is latency, or the response time for how long it takes a page to load and for the payment transaction to be completed. “I expect we’ll see some latency concerns” or other problems during the check-out step during this holiday season, predicts Greg Girard, program director, IDC Retail Insights. That’s because there are throughput bottleneck issues at the gateway to the credit card processing network, he says.

“The micro-economic problem is that it costs money to maintain capacity that you utilize only at the peak time, which is only very infrequently during the year. It’s an economical tradeoff you have to make.”
Over-provisioning via cloud

For a lot of smaller online retailers, it’s hard to justify the return on investment for increasing the capacity they need to handle 12 hours of peak usage on one day of the year, says Girard. “That’s where cloud comes into play, and we’re seeing some retailers adopt cloud strategies. That’s really going to progress going forward.” Retailers will be able to get additional peak capacity at an incremental cost by moving to the cloud, he says.

Zappos’ Ongbongan says they handle all network functions internally and do not use cloud providers. “We have instrumentation around every transaction point on the website, from search pages to product detail pages to checkout,” he says, “so we can look at each individually to see if there’s any slowness or problems in any of those areas.”

But no matter how prepared you are, problems can still occur, especially when you outsource to third-party vendors. “Nothing is fully bulletproof, so really what [online retailers] need to try and achieve is fault tolerance,” says Mike Gualtieri, a principal at Forrester Research. He recalls a retailer he worked with that uses an external credit card service that went down one year on Cyber Monday, so the company’s orders couldn’t be processed.

“Their e-commerce system is in-house, so they had planned for volumes — searching and shopping the site — but they have a service level agreement with a credit card service processing service that said, ‘We can handle that volume.’ So they did all the right things for their own systems and planned for the [increased] volume on Cyber Monday, but were held hostage by this particular provider,” Gualtieri says.

He says he recommended that the retailer re-architect its site so if the payment processor were to go down again the company could still collect the order and payment information and process payments at a later time. That’s particularly useful for small retailers, he says, who may not be able to invest in technologies like an online shopping cart and have to rely on third parties for the functionality.

Regardless of their size, Gualtieri says, retailers need to examine every component of their systems and assign a confidence level between one and five. “Every online retailer should look at their entire ecommerce architecture and all the components they use: shopping cart, products search, account registration–whatever they have–and rate their confidence level.

“Don’t assume that everything will go right,” Gualtieri says. “Assign a confidence level and don’t fret too much, but have a mitigation strategy and backup plan.”
Optimize for traffic

Among the lessons Karmaloop learned during the 2010 holiday season were that its content delivery network configuration was not optimized for the traffic it was going to experience on Cyber Monday, says Joseph Finsterwald, CTO at the online retailer of alternative street fashion for men and women. “We worked with our CDN vendor Akamai to come up with a configuration that was a better fit for us,” he says. The firm also discovered problems with parallel processes on the network and synchronization issues when servicing up Web pages, which was corrected by rewriting code.

Revenues are growing 50% to 70% year over year, Finsterwald says, so Karmaloop is using Keynote’s LoadPro Web load-testing services to ensure its site is not strained. Because its CDN network was not optimized to handle this level of traffic in past years, the site experienced “frequent” network outrages, he said, although he declined to provide specifics.

“It gives you peace of mind that we can come up with a reasonable facsimile under peak load,” Finsterwald says. “Load testing is an inelegant science; you’re trying to simulate user traffic, but you’re integrating a lot of third-party components.” If a test is done on a quiet day, a third party may be able to scale to handle that, but all bets might be off when they’re handling multiple clients.

This year, when conducting load testing, Karmaloop scaled its systems to a high enough load to trigger a problem for the vendors to address proactively. “We saw performance degradation with some of our vendors,” says Finsterwald, “so we’re following up with them to make sure they’re doing what they need to do.”

Keynote’s Karow concurs. “Load testing done right has to be a very close representation of what real users are going to do, so it takes real thinking about what people do and the various systems involved and are you stressing those systems?”
Talk to your stakeholders

Also critical to the success of keeping systems up and highly available is making sure everyone is on the same page. “Everybody needs to be involved in the planning and predictive process,” says Zappos’ Ongbongan. At Zappos, that means everyone from brand marketing to financial planning to warehouse staff is involved in planning for peaks in site traffic.

One thing his group learned from talking with other departments was that their peak traffic typically occurs in mid-December, as opposed to right after Thanksgiving or right before Christmas.

Forrester’s Gualtieri says it’s a definitely a problem when a marketing group doesn’t let IT know what it’s doing that might cause site traffic to spike. He says he worked with a large Midwestern insurance company that spent a couple of million dollars on its first TV ad during a football game. When the ad aired, the company’s site went down “almost instantly,” because the company’s marketing department didn’t tell IT it was running the ad. “So IT had no idea they were going to expect 500 times the normal amount of traffic,” he says, and they ended up wasting their money on the ad.

Despite all the proactive measures retailers may be taking, Gaultieri predicts there will still be “some high-profile outages” this holiday season. “One, two or several will happen. I also think a lot will happen that you’ll never hear about … I don’t think this problem is going to go away.”

Although companies are becoming savvier about bulletproofing their sites, crashes will inevitably occur due to continuous changes made to enhance the online shopping experience, he says. “You can’t just put a site up and have it be static; there are lots of moving parts and it creates complexity, and there’s fallout.”

Esther Shein is a freelance writer and editor. She can be reached at eshein@shein.net.

Website-bulletproofing tips

* Test early to make sure there’s enough capacity and that loads are balanced correctly.
* Make sure traffic predictions are vetted by enough internal stakeholders so you’re not guessing what your peak might be.
* Check everything from application servers to your network firewall, all the way down to the speed of your Internet connection — and check more than twice.
* Have contingency plans in place in case you exceed your traffic expectations. One way to do that is by removing the functionality that takes a lot of processing power or bandwidth, such as dynamically displaying customized information for each visitor.
* If you’re going to take your site down for required maintenance, make sure there’s another way for people to get to it.
* Make sure an e-commerce site is secure, specifically against DDoS attacks.
* Freeze all maintenance and any non-critical code changes in the November/December timeframe.
* Make sure every component has a risk-mitigation strategy so there is a plan in place if something on the network goes down.
* Communicate with marketing and other relevant business units to make sure you understand their promotion and other plans.
* Consider a move to the cloud to handle seasonal peak capacity.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222177/How_to_bulletproof_your_website