Countless books and internet sites exist to try and help people plan getaways to exotic locations and vacation hot spots for less money. A trip to Vegas for someone concerned with saving money, since it is a town built upon lost money, shattered dreams, and the decomposing bones of those who tried to beat the system back when the casinos were owned by East Coast “interests” who had first names like “Lucky,” “Rocco,’ and “Fat Louie.” There’s much more to Las Vegas than gambling and adult entertainment, however, and it is quite possible to visit the city without spending a mint for hotels, food, and entertainment.
Forget the Strip for Lodging
To save money on your stay in Vegas, choose a hotel that is off the strip. The landmark resorts like the Paris, the Bellagio, the Luxor, and others are beautiful places to visit, but you don’t have to pay to stay there. There are many hotels that are a short drive from the attractions on the strip which have prices that are far lower.
Free Entertainment
Fortunately you can see many of the attractions on the strip for nothing or next to nothing. The Bellagio has an impressive water fountain show set to popular music that plays every thirty minutes. Treasure Island puts on an interesting Pirates of the Caribbean style battle between ships, and Siegfried & Roy’s white tigers are often on display at the entrance to The Mirage. There is no cost for any of these attractions.
The City of Las Vegas saw the casinos in the older part of town suffering heavy losses due to the popularity of the resorts along the “new” strip and responded by building a fabulous multimedia display along Freemont Street, home to some of the older landmark casinos in town. Called The Freemont Street Experience, the presentation is a marvel of sight and sound displayed on an arced canopy that runs for about half a mile along Freemont Street. Shows run every hour after dark and there is no charge.
Although The Freemont Street Experience was designed to attract people into the casinos, the bazaar atmosphere in the area outside is appropriate for all ages. It’s definitely something that visitors to Vegas should experience before going home.
Believe it or not, it is possible to visit Las Vegas and have a good time without dropping ungodly amounts of money in the casinos or gambling at all. You can bet on it.
Isabel Zelaya came to the United States with just $50 dollars in his pocket. But overnight, he became a multi-millionaire.
How?
He bought a Mega Millions lottery ticket which won him $26 million. Isabel Zelaya came to United Stated from El Salvador in 1984. He spent the last 20 years working in a kitchen and factory. Now, he is retired.
Zelaya plans to spend his $12 million after tax lumpsum on his family, travel and a restaurant that he plans to build for his sister.
I don’t remember any immigrant in the recent history who made money playing lottery. But still It’s always fascinating to see the television coverage of someone winning the lottery. Some guy who was pushing a mop for a living yesterday is suddenly on the news being handed an oversized check for some ungodly amount of money while we all look on and think to ourselves “that could be me.”
Guess what? It’s not going to be you. Statistically speaking, anyway. We’ve all heard that a person has a better chance of being struck by lightning than he does of picking those six winning numbers, and it’s true. Yet people buy lottery tickets every week, sometimes by the hundreds.
I had a conversation with my neighbor, Phil the plumber about it just last week. I was watering my lawn when I saw him come bustling out of his house and heading for his SUV.
“Where ya headed, Phil?” I asked, not really caring much but being friendly.
“Gotta get my lottery tickets,” he called back, “It’s up to fifty-five million tonight. Want me to pick some up for you?”
“I don’t play the lottery, Phil.” I don’t. I’d love to have someone hand me a check with a lot of zeros at the end of a big number as much as anyone would, but I don’t like to throw my money away.
“You can’t win if you don’t play,” Phil retorted as he got into his monstrous, gas guzzling vehicle.
He was right, of course. I’ll never win the lottery. I’ll also never lose anything on it. Phil buys about fifty dollars in lottery tickets every week. Fifty bucks! It wouldn’t bother me so much if we weren’t talking about the same guy who told me that he wouldn’t buy stocks because the stock market is “too risky.” I’d find that funny if it weren’t such a sad reflection on the American public in general. If you ask the average person what they know about the stock market, they’ll probably tell you that they know you can make money there, but that it’s very risky. And they’ll tell you that while waiting in line to buy lottery tickets.
You want to know how to win the lottery? Don’t play it. Take every dollar that you would spend on lottery tickets and put it in a jar. At the end of the year, count the money in the jar. You are now closer to the fifty million dollar jackpot than the tickets would have ever brought you. Now go and invest it.
This post is some what inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s plight to get a proper haircuts as an immigrant in South Africa.
People have a bizarre love affair going on with their hair. They love to style it, comb it, brush it lovingly, and baby it with all sorts of creams, herbal shampoos, and special conditioners. If just one gets loose and turns up in the potato salad, they tend to freak out, but generally people love their hair. This has got to be why they spend so much money on it.
In those long gone by days of the seventies an interesting phenomenon took place. Barber shops started to die. One by one they slowly disappeared, as if they were the last of the dinosaurs fighting against the radioactive effects of the giant meteorite that did their species in. In their places sprung thousands of unisex salons. The replacement of barber shops by salons ushered in a new era of hair styling and a new era of overpriced hair care. Before long, people thought nothing of spending thirty and forty dollars for a haircut that once cost four or five.
Fortunately it’s easier to save money today on this form of personal grooming. Discount haircutters are everywhere, offering haircuts for about ten dollars. They also offer lower costs on styling, coloring, perms, and other such services.
More money can be saved on hair styling by simply doing it at home. While it may not be a good idea to cut your own hair, if you wear you hair in a short military style cut, a family member can do it with a set of clippers. These can be purchased for about thirty dollars. Buy them once and you’ll never pay for another haircut.
Hair color treatments can also be performed at home for a lot less than it costs in the salon. Buying an over the counter hair dye and doing the job yourself will cost you about ten dollars. Having it done in a salon can cost as much as a hundred. Obviously that’s a serious difference.
With a little careful shopping for a salon, a bit of willingness to do it yourself when you can, and the understanding that it’s just hair (whatever happens to it, it will grow back – ya big sissy), you can save money on your hair care and let the follicular love affair continue unabated. Also, should worse come to worse, there’s always Hilda’s House of Human Hair Wigs.
Lukaz Zbylut wasBorn in Poland and moved to the United States when he was 13 years old.
During the first six months in New York, he taught himself English and went to a public school in Brooklyn. At 18, he graduating as the valedictorian from Utrecht High School next week.
In high school, he was part of Model UN, and created and headed the debate team. He was also part of a soccer team in his community.
He applied to 21 universities, including 7 Ivy League schools. Out of the 21, Lukasz withdrew from 2, and was only denied by 1, MIT.
Lukasz was accepted to: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania, Cornell, Columbia, Georgetown, NYU, Middlebury, Amherst, Occidental, Richmond, Ohio Wesleyan, DePauw, Carnegie Mellon and CUNY HunterH.
He does not use social networking sites, instant messaging or watch entertainment television. He considers all of it a waste of time.
He does, though, watch network news channels. While he was in high school he took 12 Advance Placement courses and received perfect scores on all his final A.P. tests.
This gave him full credit towards college and a final count of 45 college credits at the end of it all. BUT according to Harvard rules, they are only accepting 6 of those 45 credits. (30 credits=1 year of college).
Lukasz plans on going to Harvard Law after his undergrad and pursuing a career in politics from there.
He is the only student from his graduating class to be accepted to an Ivy League school. (575 students graduating next week)
Zbylut is graduating from New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn with a 4.7 GPA.
Thanks To CivilizedJerk for posting this video. Please visit him at http://www.youtube.com/user/CivilizedJerk and subscribe to his youtube Channel
Nido Qubein came to the United States as a teenager with no knowledge of English, no contacts and only $50 in his pocket. Today he is a successful businessman and award-winning motivational speaker. How did he do it? Learn from Nido how to achieve success and significance in business and life by: Creating meaningful change that moves you to a deeper, more satisfying level; Distinguishing among tasks, goals and purpose; Developing strategies for going beyond communicating, selling and training; Discovering how the 21st century rewards extraordinary people
A Word About Penny Stocks: You may or may not have heard the term “penny stocks” before. It almost sounds like an attractive term, seeming to indicate stocks from companies that have just gone public or are just starting out. Everyone’s got to start somewhere, right? The penny stocks of today could be the Microsoft and Google of tomorrow, right?
Not necessarily.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) considers any stock that is trading for less than one dollar per share to be a penny stock. According to Investopedia dot com, different investors and investment companies may have differing definitions of what a penny stock is. The one thing that most agree on is that they are risky.
According to the experts at Investopedia, penny stocks are riskier than regular stocks because there is usually less information about them available, they do not need to meet any minimum standards to remain on the smaller exchanges where they are traded, there is not much history about the companies available, and they suffer from a lack of liquidity, making them harder to sell. Because of the absence of minimum standards requirements, these stocks are often targeted by fraudulent and dishonest brokers. Take a look at the film Boiler Room fro an indication of what some penny stock brokers may be up to.
They’re Not All Nay-Sayers
There are some investors that swear by penny stocks. Peter Leeds, owner of Penny Stock dot com, Peter Leeds dot com, and publisher of The Penny Stock Insider newsletter has made a career of recommending penny stocks to his customers, advising on which ones should prove worthy and which ones to avoid.
Leeds does make an interesting point regarding the different definitions of what a penny stock is and points out on his website that under those definitions companies can move in and out of the realm of penny stocks repeatedly over time.
One thing to definitely look out for is spam email offering great deals on penny stocks or any investments. Many of these offers try to tell you that stocks which are currently trading at high prices were once penny stocks. Microsoft and Wal Mart are common examples, but there is no truth to the claim. Both Microsoft and Wal Mart first went public with prices in the twenties and were never considered to be penny stocks under any definition of the term.
Consult your broker for more information about penny stocks and whether they’re right for you.
History shows that Andrew Carnegie was, at one time, the richest man in the world, but he wasn’t born that way.
His story is a true American rags to riches tale of a Scottish immigrant without a penny to his name rising to become a millionaire industrialist and this country’s “King of Steel.”
How did he do it? How did a poor immigrant, who got his first job working in a textile mill for about $1.20 per week, rise to become the richest man in America and then the world?
He invested.
While working for the Pennsylvania Railroad under a superintendent named Thomas Scott, Carnegie learned about the American stock market.
He was making about $35.00 per month at that time and invested his extra money in stocks. As he was paid dividends on those stocks, he invested further.
Soon he had the funds and the opportunity to go into business for himself and found success in the steel industry.
One might argue that Carnegie’s success story doesn’t mean much today. After all, Carnegie died almost a hundred years ago. When he was a young man, the nation was young as well.
There were opportunities then that don’t exist today.No one can mimic the success of Andrew Carnegie in today’s world.
Phooey.
While it’s true that the world is very different today than it was back in Carnegie’s day, and his story is rare (if it was so easy for everyone to become a multi millionaire, they’d be everywhere), there is much in Carnegie’s story that we can learn from and emulate today.
The nature of investing and investing well is really not much different today than it was when Carnegie started buying stocks.By following his example, we can also turn pennies into dollars, dollars into hundreds of dollars, and so on.By seeing the stock market as a long term investment opportunity and not a “get rich quick scheme,” people in today’s world can also take command of their destinies just like Carnegie did all those years ago.
Will everyone become powerful captains of industry and be among the richest people in the world? Probably not. But there is no reason why each and every one of us can’t take control of our own financial lives and start building today for a more secure tomorrow.
That is the spirit of what Carnegie did and it is alive and well today.
Stephen Klein 31 arrived in New York from the Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938. Upon his arrival he literally spent two days in New York researching the chocolate buying habits of New Yorkers.
He observed that Americans bought the sweet chocolates more. Instead of selling sweet chocolates he decided to launch bittersweet, Viennese-type chocolates.
The Launch Model was simple too. He made a batch by himself and started selling door-to-door himself in the garment district of New York. The garment district was filled with immigrants and Klein’s continental candy turned out to be an instant hit.
In one year he brought his wife and brothers from Vienna and partnered with a local attorney to create a candy business. In 1940 Barton’s Inc started with one store. Within one year there after Barton’s had four stores. By 1951 Bartons was a near $7 million dollar business with fifty three stores.
Yes Barton is a thriving business today and is still producly doing business after 111 years. ie, One Hundred Eleven Years.
You can read the entire story of Barton’s history by visiting their site BartonsCandy.com Their site doesn’t talk about the humble beginnings of Stephen Klein and his heroic entrepreneurial pursuits.
Stephan’s story touched me and there are many lessons that can be learnt from it. Here are a few of my take homes.
If you really know what you want to do all you have to do thereafter is validate. A lot of entrepreneurs spend their valuable time chasing money instead of validating their ideas. Stephen Klein is an example, how you do not need to spend valuable time in extensive market research and pay hefty to analysts to prove the viability of a market.
Why sell the same thing that others a selling? why not sell some variety. Stephen observed what others were doing and just did the opposite. He sold tasty continental bittersweet candy to the sweet loving public. Talk about risk..:)-
Not sure if your product is going to click? Just create small quantities and sell it yourself. You don’t need a salesforce. Stephen made the candy and sold it by walking door-to-door.
Not sure how to target your markets, learn from Stepehen. He only sold his candy within an area where there were a lot of immigrants. Immigrant candy, Immigrant Consumers.
New to the area or the idea? Find a good partner. Stephen was probably lucky to find an attorney who understood candy business as well as the entity structuring & taxation well.
I was struck by an interesting life lesson recently, and it came from the most unlikely of sources; the Disney version of Mary Poppins starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. In one scene of the film, little Michael Banks comes across two pence (“tu’pence” in the movie’s Cockney vernacular-pretty much the equivalent of two cents, not in terms of exchange rates, but in those of general value) and wants to give it to the lady in the park selling pigeon feed. Michael’s father, a stodgy banker, admonishes him and advises him to deposit the money in savings, where it can grow into more money.
Michael just wants to feed the birds and the chaos that ensues provides the climax of the film, leading Mr. Banks to lighten up and appreciate his children so they can all live happily ever after flying kites.
While I appreciate the lesson that Mary Poppins is intending to teach, I found that I reacted to it differently as an adult than as a child. The fact is that Mr. Banks, stiff and lifeless as he may have been, was right. Michael could have saved that money for his education, his eventual wedding, his first home, or his future.
As parents we have the duty to teach our children about a great many things, not the least of which is fiscal responsibility. The habits we form as adults stem from the behaviors taught to us by our own parents and the adults around us. The children of spendthrifts tend to become spendthrifts and the children of the thrifty grow to be savers, generally speaking.
Encourage your children to save by setting the example yourself. Let your child understand the value of money by teaching her that it must be earned and managed carefully. A wonderful opportunity exists when your child points out something at the store that she’d like you to buy for her. Instead of just saying yes and buying it or simply saying no and enduring pleading and whining for the remainder of the day, discuss with your child ways that she can earn the money herself. This will help her value both the money she earns and the items she purchases with it.
She may even choose to save her money, rather than feed it to the birds in the park at two cents per bag of feed.
