Back in December when I reviewed  Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, I did not live in a community dotted with a Starbucks at every block, so I have never been to a Starbucks.  I was able to read the book and see the vision Howard Schultz, the CEO, had of the company.  I saw how he wanted the Starbucks image to exist. I wrote my review of his business techniques in the book here.

Now my commute to work passes three Starbucks Cafes, so I decided to check the place out.  My brain carried the image Schultz painted in his book.  The experiences have been totally different.  Yes the employees were great and the coffee was delicious–but it was the other things that were off.  He said they give real cups unless customers ask for to-go cups.  The baristas told me it’s actually the opposite.  They don’t even have enough porcelain cups to accommodate the seats in their shop.  Schultz said his business was green; the places I visited had no recycling for the disposable cups.  The differences between what Shultz said was standard and what I saw were shocking.  But it just goes to show:

A CEO can’t always be in touch with what is really happening in his company.  It’s like a king–does he really know everything his subjects are up to?  There are so many people and so many cups of coffee.

I feel lucky that I read the book before I walked in the coffee shop.  Of course, it means I was disappointed when I walked in while the average person is won over by the experience.  Oh well.  No wonder this book is on clearance at Amazon now.

Now that the holidays are over, the number of divorcees looking for a rental house explodes. I thought it was just an interesting fluke last year when we were trying to rent out a larger property. This year, a property manager has confirmed that he finds more newly separated people looking for a new home than any other time of year.

How interesting since it’s also Valentine’s Day time, huh?

Valentine’s Day and personal finances make an interesting combination… a situation we haven’t figured out the best way to handle. Spend a fortune on stuff? Bypass the big spending? Put the money toward something “super sweet” like your hubby’s Roth or a new stock pick?

We’ve always downplayed this holiday at our house–usually because we’ve had a house to rent out! Now I’m contemplating all of the past articles on Aridni and wondering what the best solution is.

The net worth is struggling to maintain itself these days, and to be honest, I’m not thinking about money to the point of obsession like I used to. Instead, I’m experiencing the things that I haven’t been able to do since college:

learning how to cook
writing a book

My husband is doing something he’s always wanted to do:

earning a master’s degree

While my co-personal finance bloggers experience rapid growth this year, we’re setting different goals for ourselves that involve personal development and enrichment. I work part time until May, which is the coolest feeling I have ever experiencing about work. Working 9 to 5+++ was the most miserable experience I have ever had.

Now I don’t have to worry about what the boss thinks or if I’ll lose my job or how to spend my messily vacation days. I have total freedom for myself, which no one else in my office experiences. Sure I get paid less. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves what matters most: lots of money or lots of freedom.

I read a fantastic book that illustrated the way I was feeling:
The Anti 9-to-5 : Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube

I suggest that anyone feeling frustrated with work take a glance. It has some fantastic strategies for reflecting on what makes you happiest and determining how to obtain the best situation for your working self. The fact that it’s targeted to women is something pretty much only relevant in the title. The rest is easily male or female.

I received my property tax receipt yesterday along with a note:

Just a reminder that this parcel is delinquent for 2006.

WHAT! I’ve always thought that I was on top of all our bills. The key here, though, is BILLS. I didn’t actually get a bill for this property last year when I received all of the other tax bills. If I don’t have a bill for something, how can I know to pay it?

We bought the property last year, and the bill was sent to the previous owner. Now most local folks would probably forward tax bills to the new owners because that’s what us good guys do. But we bought the property as a foreclosure. The maga-bank who sold the property doesn’t waste time with details like, I don’t know, TAXES. They just tossed the paperwork.

Now I owe $75 in interest, and state law absolutely positively does not waive payments. Unless you’re the governor, I think. On one hand, I’m really frustrated. I would have paid those taxes one year ago. Where was the title company lady’s obsessive highlighter on the line item TAXES?

But on the other hand, I’m also thankful that one of the Treasurer’s secretaries took the time to write me a note. Otherwise, I NEVER would have known until the horrible day when I would receive this deadly note:

Your property’s up for auction due to dilenquent taxes.

Seriously, you only get one notice of taxes each year, and you only get one warning that you’re about to lose your property for unpaid taxes. Wouldn’t you think that maybe, just maybe, this year’s tax bill would have included a mention of unpaid taxes from the past?

So I’m writing a huge check right now and hand-delivering since 2007 taxes are due TODAY, and fees gets jacked up a notch tomorrow for late payments like mine. Thank goodness I mailed my taxes early this month and was warned! And even more thankfully, I’m glad property tax payments don’t make it to credit scores.

This morning, I didn’t have time to write my post because I had to meet the insulation installers across town. As I watched them stuff insulation into every crack and corner and saw insulation blowing around in the attic as though it were a giant snowglobe, all I could think of was

Asbestos! Vermiculite! Lung cancer! Poison! Death!

(dun dun dun)

Now I KNOW that modern companies don’t blow that stuff into our houses any more; it’s been banned for years. Yet I can’t help but wonder what IS being put into our houses and lives that we don’t know the safety of. We trust others to make the judgment call for us–usually the business itself. Of course, being interested in business and money ourselves, you and I kind of know what most businesses usually focus on–the money. How can we know who to rely on?

It’s like everything in our lives is marked “low fat”. Sometimes I feel like I’m STILL trying to convince some people that low fat doesn’t mean (1) no sugar, (2) low calorie, or (3) chalk full of nutrients. Yet the candy isle is filled with reminders of low fat content. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see “low sugar” on a hunk of cheese? So we have this idea that it’s okay if the label says its okay, and marketers and businesses know this fact and they use it against us.

The silence… the deadly silence… of American industry has been shown in Libby, Montana where asbestos was mined. From the research and personal stories I’ve had over the years, I gathered that miners were encouraged to wear breathing masks, but the masks got so clogged that the men quit. These same men were sent to company doctors when they started to hack, and when these men came home from work, wives would shake the clothes out on the porch, sending the asbestos into the air. The stuff did wonders for gardens, too (hmm, wonders), so the company often donated to community members. NOW that the town is all getting sick and losing citizens, the EPA has an entire directory that educates newcomers to the superfund of Libby. Funny thing, though, do you think anyone actually thinks of moving there any more??

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what industry REALLY tells us.

The essays by Paul Graham often come up in my family. Graham made millions when his team sold their programming work, Viaweb, to Yahoo for millions. But the knowledge Graham shares goes beyond programming.

He’s got a lot of social wisdom. My favorite is his article, Why Nerds are Unpopular.

Here’s an excerpt:

The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They’re like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head. Other players who can focus their whole attention on the game beat them effortlessly, and wonder why they seem so incapable.

Even if nerds cared as much as other kids about popularity, being popular would be more work for them. The popular kids learned to be popular, and to want to be popular, the same way the nerds learned to be smart, and to want to be smart: from their parents. While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please.

Nearly every modern business and finance book quotes the theory of Napoleon Hill. His most popular book is “Think and Grow Rich” and naturally, I had to snag the book to see Napoleon Hill’s wisdom for myself.

The most important thing illustrated so far is that money doesn’t make happiness. Money is only a piece of your happiness formula.

The 12 things which constitute happiness:

1. a positive mental attitude
2. sound physical health
3. harmony in human relationships
4. freedom from fear
5. the hope of future achievement
6. the capacity for applied faith
7. willingness to share one’s blessings with others
8. to be engaged in the labor of love
9. an open mind on all subjects toward all people
10. complete self discipline
11. wisdom with which to understand people
12. financial security

Take out a pen and paper and write this down:

I want to be wealthy so that I can ______________________.

To reach my goal, I am willing to sacrifice the following: _____________________.

Your thoughts establish the role of money in your life, and I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while. If you feel good about yourself and the efforts you are making, your positive ideas can cultivate more change and more satisfaction. Having money just to have money doesn’t provide much purpose, so it’s important to define why the heck we’re working so hard toward these goals.

Do you make/want to make money by creating value for other people or by competing and cheating other people?

Do you devote yourself to the highest good, not just for yourself, but for as many people as you can possibly touch?

Would you get satisfaction signing up for multiple rewards cards from companies who don’t catch your trickery because it means more money for you?

Do your methods of making money imply selfishness and greed in the eyes of others?

Does every dollar that you make equal a dollar that another person loses?

And finally, years from now, if you were to teach a thousand people how to become wealthy the way you did, would you have done these people and society a disservice?

I thought that this image was great:

Picking a piece of property to build on is a hard task. A few pointers my husband and I have compiled that we think are important in the hunt are:

1. Talk to the Planning Department about zoning ordinances, and get a copy of the zoning ordinances

2. Examine the access roads if you’re heading toward the country. Can you get through in the winter? Do creeks need bridging? Landslide potentials or possible trees that might tip? Oh and who OWNS the access roads?

3. Look at surveys and topography maps. Get a survey.

4. Research utilities. This is the biggie. Internet access? What about power? The line itself costs upward of $6-$10/ft. Then you have to burry it. What about water? Is a well feasible? And sewer/septic. That’s a fun one. These issues are so huge in price that it can make the difference between a good investment and a horrible burden.

5. Check for existing easements* (like access roads, power lines, mining rights, etc.)

6. Look for any liens–voluntary and involuntary

7. Any restrictions placed by previous owners that are on record? (Like “thou shall not build a house here ever”)

8. Who holds subsurface/mineral rights? Check for timber and hunting rights, too.

9. How close are you to large operations like airports, slaughter houses, chemical plants, active mines, and polluted/superfund sites? These things can have a huge impact on the enjoyment of your property. If you’re really lucky, an aerial flight in a small plane or helicopter can show you everything you need to see. Otherwise, check out aerial photos.

*An encumbrance is any right or interest in land that is possessed by a person who doesn’t hold title to the land. These rights can lower the value of the owner’s estate, so you want to check on them. Lucky for us, this task is typically pretty easy; the title company does the labor. An encumbrance doesn’t prevent you from enjoyment of your property or the ability to transfer it.

Good luck with your hunt. Or in most cases right now, good luck with the dream!

Jeffrey Strain at TheStreet.com pretty much sums up the reason most people don’t have wealth: it’s not because we don’t make enough money; it’s because we don’t treat money on a day-to-day basis very well. Check out the ten poor habits he’s narrowed down as our reasons for low wealth:

1. You Care What Your Neighbors Think: If you’re competing against them and their material possessions, you’re wasting your hard-earned money on toys to impress them instead of building your wealth.

2. You Aren’t Patient: Until the era of credit cards, it was difficult to spend more than you had. That is not the case today. If you have credit card debt because you couldn’t wait until you had enough money to purchase something in cash, you are making others wealthy while keeping yourself in debt.

3. You Have Bad Habits: Whether it’s smoking, drinking, gambling or some other bad habit, the habit is using up a lot of money that could go toward building wealth. Most people don’t realize that the cost of their bad habits extends far beyond the immediate cost. Take smoking, for example: It costs a lot more than the pack of cigarettes purchased. It also negatively affects your wealth in the form of higher insurance rates and decreased value of your home.

(for descriptions of the following, check out his complete article)

4. You Have No Goals
5. You Haven’t Prepared
6. You Try to Make a Quick Buck
7. You Rely on Others to Take Care of Your Money
8. You Invest in Things You Don’t Understand
9. You’re Financially Afraid
10. You Ignore Your Finances

A lot of people love satelite TV, and I can understand why. What I can’t understand, though, is justifying such an expense every month.

I was looking at a row of houses built by Habitat for Humanity and started wondering. I’m not here to make judgment calls about these people’s habits, but I plugged in some numbers you and your friends might want to think twice about.

If you paid an additional $50 toward your mortgage every month, a thirty year mortgage could be paid off in 24 years! (I assumed a 7% interest rate, which is higher than you want for your own home.) 24 years!

Think about what a few extra bucks each month could do to any loan. Interest is a powerful thing, especially when it works to your advantage. Know of any other powerful examples?

(NOTE that some lenders don’t allow prepayments without penalty, so read the fine lines of the contracts you have signed.)