Happy Thanksgiving from everyone at Aridni.

We’re thankful for the great time and great lessons gained through this website and your ideas.

Best Wishes,

Katie and Todd

Non-organic feed lots devise highly sophisticated system to make sure that every cow is getting her ration of food. Some heifers run the show, and those that aren’t the bosses wouldn’t get their fair share of corn according to the farmers.

Cows are just like us–not that we diet on corn and antibiotics, but that the leaders push everyone else around.

A boss doesn’t want to give you a raise. Big business doesn’t want to give you extra time off. You’ve heard the complaints about WalMart employees who try to form unions, gain health care, and get raises–can’t happen.

The funny thing about these farmers who notice the little guys getting pushed from the food is that small farmers don’t see how they’re getting pushed around, too. Their purchasers demand cheap meat. And so do we.

Todd and I established Aridni as a base for ideas on ethical money making. After all, we grew up next to one of the world’s largest superfund sites, an area so polluted that the acidic waters kill any animal that ventures near. The soils even dissolve a miner’s boots!

Sometimes I get so caught up in counting my net worth that I forget the worth I have the potential to bring. Saving ten bucks on a shirt made through child labor. Or buying twice as many eggs for half the price because the chickens were molted (ie starved for 10 days so they could produce 3 more months of eggs). Is it worth the addition to my net worth?

In Germany, everything is recycled–from your cardboard and candy wrappers to your dinner scraps. Figuring out the system is tough at first. But tying your shoes was tough at first now. Who think of that process any more?

What ethical choices are worth the nickels and dimes that you can add to your net worth? I guess I’m finding worth in different choices.

If you’re always tapping at your budget and trying to find ways to cut expenses, you might want to check out The Simple Dollar’s recent article: Trimming the Fat: 40 Ways to Reduce Your Monthly Required Spending.

Trent has done an excellent job summarizing a lot of the things we think about but never act on in our budget… and he’s got a few more ideas. It’s worth a look.

Last year, Todd and I ran a rather successful and valuable column called “Weekend Homework” every Friday. We wanted to educate our readers on the basics of personal finance and development, ranging from calculating your net worth to reducing redundancies. Today we’re proud to announce that the column is back by request.

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When I was young, my little sister would snap at anything. I could antagonize her without even trying. Most of the time, in fact, I didn’t even know that my actions stressed her out. My dad would turn to her and ask, “Do you need to read ‘Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff’ again?”

She’d grumble, “NO.”

Do you find yourself grumbling? The little details of business driving you bonkers? Sometimes I want to go crazy. I’m letting details that don’t even matter control my perspective.

I’m not going to lecture you on how to let things go because the solution is different for everyone. For example, I start baking (maybe even crying). Something tells me that Todd doesn’t do that stuff. Maybe he goes out and shoots tin cans. We all have our own ways of dealing with stress. In any case, check out the Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff website. They have a few quick-read articles that you might find refreshing. Plus you can get your mind off of work for a few minutes.

Then throw your rants and raves into our comment box of this article. Get those silly frustrations out before your weekend really starts.

1. A degree doesn’t mean you deserve the job

The unfortunate truth is that while you were busting you butt to learn anthropology, science, and statistics, many of your peers were getting jobs. A degree will help land you the interview. But a few years of work experience will probably land the other guy the job.

The textbook rules I learned in my human resources course are nothing like the procedures of most businesses. In fact, most businesses don’t have written procedures. School is nothing like the working world. No one at work revolves around you. In fact, you’ll find that success means you have to revolve around them (and it’ll drive you crazy!).

Your job won’t be glamorous.

My poor cousin dreamed of saving dolphins and marine life, so she went into environmental engineering. She was hired by a huge engineering firm that specializes in treatment plants. Can you imagine being the low man on that totem pole? Talk about the s_its! All she wanted to do was save animals.

But just because she earned the degree doesn’t mean she–or you–is entitled to a corner office with a huge salary, a month of vacation, or an amazing retirement plan. Work hard, and you’ll eventually earn those positions. The problem is that most of us college grads walk in with a sense of entitlement. Some day my cousin might be able to land her dream position, and you will, too. Just know that no one will hand that opportunity to you on a silver plate.

How many people do you know that are getting degrees at the same time as you? How many people are getting degrees at your school this year? Now how many new college grads are there entering this country’s workforce along with you?

You’ve got to prove why your lack of work experience makes you better than (a) everyone who didn’t go to college and (b) everyone else who did go to college. Why should an employer pull your name from the hat?

For me, the edge came from one thing: my senate internship in Washington D.C.. Know your edge over the competition, and push it.

The experiences have to set you apart. Working at summer camp is a blast, but if you’re not going seeking a profession with children, you’ve got to reach a point of saying goodbye to summer camp. Do internships, make contacts, and try different things. What makes you stand above the line of other applicants?

2. Make it a job you love

Many people develop a professional skill set by accident. Art students run pet shops. Women’s studies majors become construction management experts. I think it’s pretty hard for anyone to know exactly where he/she is going to end up. And the people who know from age twelve that becoming a doctor is the perfect profession often find themselves hating their work. After all, a 12-year-old chose their career.

So now you’re walking from that stage with a diploma. Where do you go? My dad always told me,
Katie, make sure your first job is one of two things: something that interests the heck out of ya or something that provides the stepping stones for the career direction that you want to pursue.

I didn’t take his advice, of course. My first job looked like a dream to most people with some great perks–four days a week, flexible hours, discounted international travel… The job didn’t strike me as fascinating, and it certainly had nothing to do with my self-vision twenty years from now. But I pushed to land the job. I nailed all three interviews and won the job over 300 other candidates. I felt so proud… I also felt so miserable.

You have to find a job that you love… or at least like enough to give your best. A full time job is nothing like school or a summer job. Every day for eight hours a day is a lot. It wears you out. And your boss isn’t going to let you leave early to go camping with your buddies.

Don’t pick a job because it’s secure, because you’re parents think it’s great, or because you’re afraid you won’t find another job. You’ll hate getting up. You’ll hate working. And worse of all, you’ll ruin your spirit. You won’t want to do anything but mope during the evening.

3. Make a million dollar money plan

The worse part of life after graduation is all of the bills. You can’t stay on your parents’ insurance, student loans have to be paid, and you’ve got expenses like garbage pickup that you didn’t even know existed. Your friends will be trading in their cars, buying new furniture and houses, eating out more, and spending gobs of money. Live as frugally as you can. And remember this:

if you want to make a million dollars, you have to put in a million dollars worth of work

Life is only going to get more expense as you grow older, so you need to have a plan. Do you want to work six years or 60? Most people chose to work sixty, relatively easy and relaxed years. They’ll patiently work for vacation days and save until they can retire.
You, however, are reading Aridni, which leads me to believe that you’re willing to work like crazy for six years. You’ll give up your weekends, evenings out, and most free time today. You’ll probably collapse into bed most nights. But isn’t it better than 60 slow years? When I work weekends on my own projects, I often want to quit because I feel so tired. Then I think, “If I want to make a million dollars, I have to put in…”

You don’t need to update your net worth every month. But if you really want out of that rat race soon (and believe me, once you enter that race, you’ll probably want to leap out as soon as you can), figure out what money means to you. What do you want money for? Who do you want money for? And what do you want with your time?

4. Think about today.

My last tip is something that I try to ask myself every day:

What can I do better tomorrow to reach my goals that I learned from today?

If someone were to invite you to go skiing this weekend, though you’ve never skied in your life, what would you say?

Probably: “Oh, I can’t ski.”

What if you were invited to shoot some pool?

“Oh, I can’t play pool.”

When else have people been inviting you, even daring you, to try something new, only to find you turning them down? You don’t know how to shoot pool. You’d rather stay home and watch TV than try to ski.

I think that saying you can’t do something means that you don’t want to try to do it. In fact, I would bet that if you played pool every day, not only would you be able to play the game, but you might also become the best player there is.

Now what about all of those ideas that pop into your head that you shoot down before you even consider your new thoughts? How many million dollar ideas might be passing through your head, simply to be met with, “Oh, I can’t”?

Before other people can believe in you, you have to believe in yourself. Some day, no one is going to ask you to ski. No one is going to invite you to shoot some pool. And you’ll be looking back. Maybe you really could have done it.

It was about a year ago that Katie and I started Aridni, and in the last year we have had some all kinds of articles. Some good ones, some Great ones, and of course some lousy ones. Today I want to highlight what I think have been some of the years best articles for each month in 2006.

1. January - Investing: When can you start? How can you start?

One of the earlier articles from Aridni to help get you going in the stock market. What are the issues and skills you need to be aware of and possess?

2. February - I’ve got a Big Sky Booya coming at ya!

Watching Jim Cramer is like jumping into the stock market. It isn’t easy for the novice, but here are some tips to getting started.

3. March - “Acey said ten percent.” – Why less is more.

I still really like this ideology about investing less to learn more.

4. April - Weekend Homework: Define ‘Value’

What is important to you? How are your actions stacking up to what you hold important?

5. May - Marketing with MySpace

While this approach works out well in theory, it’s a lot harder than my article makes it look. I’ve been trying things out and will certainly post some new ideas about it.

6. June - How you might destroy $1,000,000 dollars or more today.

Do you keep track of your ideas? Tomas Edison didn’t either, until got fed up with losing to many. From then on Tom and ‘the boys’ filled up thousands of notebooks with all kinds of ideas and discoveries.

7. July - Expand your business with “The Three C’s”

What’s the best way for you to set raise the capital needed to increase the output of your business?

8. August - An employee finds a second job. An entrepreneur finds an opportunity.

Katie takes a moment to ask just what exactly is she working towards.

September - Have you ever considered that you are not good enough? With Billions of people in the world, you might not be good enough. By no means does it mean that those who are won’t be willing to work with you.

9. October - Is real estate calling you?

This is an article Katie wrote about some of here experiences and thoughts after spending some time in the real estate market.

10. November - On hiatus for the month!

A little break before it’s back to the grindstone.

11. December - Step back from the obsession with $

Katie gives us some reflections about money and the desire for wealth. What is money, and how does it work?

Katie found some of her favorite posts from the past year and put them in an article called Seeking Goals and Reaching Objectives - THIS YEAR

I hope that we can provide another great year of ideas and inspiration. And as always, feel free to leave a comment or even send a message with our Contact form

Last night, the musician screamed into his microphone, “45 seconds until the new year. Have you made your resolution?”

Did you spend any time reflecting on ways that you wanted to be better this year? Given 45 seconds, I didn’t come up with a foolproof improvement plan. Lucky for me, I have a database of favorite Aridni articles that I often look to for inspiration:

What does it really take to make money? This article guides you in defining and reaching your financial desires

Is it better to let your dreams die or do a poor job? Todd’s had an idea for about a year… but he lacks skill. What does he do? What do you do?

No longer the bride today I celebrated my one-year anniversary this summer and found a finance partner to boot for - I discovered a 5-step plan to seeking goals and reaching objectives.

Are you climbing to the top when there is no top? Before you can get somewhere tomorrow, you have to think of where you are today. Examine the corporate ladder at your office.

Make your success move from the polls to the ballot Women are starting new businesses twice as fast as men. Three success secrets revealed–

One month to impress Define your image in one month, step by step.

Do you remember the last time you decided to set up some New Year’s resolutions? I’ll go out on a ledge and assume it was roughly a year ago. Now exactly how long did that self improving quest last? If you’re like the majority of people you set up your resolution and soon drop it within weeks. By the time you see a coin stamped with the year 2007, your mind will be the so far away from resolutions that they won’t pass through until we’re getting ready to set up the set for 2008.

So what exactly is the resolution solution? How can we keep our resolutions to improve ourselves for this New Year?

The best way to stick to your resolution is to make resolutions that you can stick with.

Instead of making a drastic resolution that you know you won’t be able to keep, why not make something that actually has a fighting chance.

If last years failed resolution was, ‘I will stop smoking.’ Perhaps you should make this year’s resolution be simply, ‘I will smoke 5 less cigarettes a day”

Frustrated because you can’t stick to your resolution to stop eating junk food? How about go with something along the lines of the 90-10 eating rule. Ninety percent of the time, eat foods that are okay for you. The other ten percent of the time you can eat grease burgers and fries. You know, the tasty stuff.

So when you resolve to improve yourself this year, make it something that you can achieve.

What are your resolutions?

Do you ever become so obsessed with something? So distracted that your daily living becomes influenced by your addiction?

I took a break from Aridni–I had to. My thoughts were too focused on net worth. And while money is an important topic, we cannot let it consume us. We can’t become this holiday’s Scrooge.

Stop to think. What is money to you?

Does money serve as a positive resource or an obsession?

Sometimes money does great things for us; sometimes money distracts us from the things that really matter. Can you spend a whole day without thinking of your net worth? Do your dreams, ideas, and inventions get blocked from your mind if you think there’s no money in your thought? Is it possible to be an enlightened millionaire? Would you do something for free, knowing that you could easily make a few bucks?

Do you want wealth or riches?

I know a couple that eats at fine restaurants every night. They drive expensive cars and travel the world with the highest class. …and they’re going to be working forever to maintain this style and consider retirement. When they aren’t traveling, they work all day and all night. They are rich.

This couple gets their riches by serving wealthy people. Wealthy people invest their money further and further through the labor of this rich couple. Wealthy people are willing to pay for temporary riches of the couple because in the end, the couple will have to seek new clients while the wealthy people will have profits without efforts.

What is money, anyway?

Money is only what you make it. We assign the dollar a value through society’s general acceptance; money, on its own, is worth nothing. The problem is that for must of us, the social acceptance of money holds no options. You can back out and say that these particular forms of exchange mean nothing to you, but then you lose.

This contract of money holds too many advantages for most of us to consider a surrender, of course. Money gives us the lifestyle we want and the image we want others to see. Image becomes especially frustrating for me at this time of year. I’m not buying expensive gifts like everyone else at my office. They’re all buying extras–newer iPods, fancy wines, media subscriptions and DVDs. If you want more money than you have today, you can purchase this money by pledging more of the money that you will have tomorrow.

On the flip side, one of my coworkers who buys fancy gifts is twice as old as me; she has no retirement savings of any sort. Money holds such strength that her decisions today will cause her to work far into old age.

What if I want more of this money? …because I DO!

I figure we have three ways of honestly making money:
1. selling our stuff
2. selling time
3. taking risks

You can guess what the first two topics represent. Sell your stuff–your heirlooms, your iPod, your house, your used appliances, and your garage sale junk. Sell your time–work for someone else for x dollars an hour.

But taking risks? That’s what Aridni is all about. Take risks by selling your money to investors, stocks, or bonds. Or possibly more powerful, find a way that your money can grow and raise more little dollar bills and coins–create a business. Your own business holds more leverage than selling your time or your stuff.

My only hope is that your business idea adds value to society, not destruction. I’m determined to find this avenue for myself, and I plan to ponder with you in the meantime.

What was the last good idea that you followed from the drawing board to actualization? Now what was the last good idea that you let slip by? How many ideas go through our minds that we simply don’t have the time and resources to bring to life?

Hopefully there is a high frequency when it comes to good ideas that were planned out and put to the test. However in the real world that isn’t quite possible. Unless of course you only come up with one good idea every couple of months, but we both know you can do better than that if you wanted!

So what should you do with all of your aging light bulbs? You can either act on them or forget about them.

If you want to act on them but don’t have the time, what are you doing now that isn’t necessary or could be postponed? What is required for you to raise the capital to fund this new project? Is it a matter of not eating out a couple times or as large of a decision as getting a second mortgage on the house? Perhaps you have to go talk to your friends and family about investing in you.

Whatever it takes to make your dream a reality, for the purpose of this article we’ll say you can’t or are unable to make the leap in a project you believe in. Now what? Do you let the idea sort of fade out of existence until the opportunity is gone, only to have it return as a regret?

Keep track of your ideas, make a folder for them. Allow them to evolve if they need to. But most importantly ACT. Act on some of your ideas. It’s much better to produce a decent project today than to search endlessly for the perfect idea.

Time is the mysterious and invisible “something” granted by our Creator as the roadway of the soul.

The flow of time is graphically recorded throughout nature and although seemingly infinite, all persons are allotted the same amount each day… no more, no less. One can neither buy it, sell it, nor barter it. Lost or unused time vanishes as a shadow in darkness, never to be found again.

Upon the skein of time are woven life’s patterns from the threads of love, joy, sadness, and pain. It is the magical element that heals the deepest wounds and lessens the spectacular.

Yesterday is dead time.
Tomorrow is unborn time.
The now time is the only live time.

Therefore, fill each waking moment with the highest you know and understand. Let the fertile moments of today spawn greater works for tomorrow.

This week’s guest writer, Duane, posts his above work in the bathroom of his airport hangar. At 90 years old, Duane continues to operate his own airport, take visitors on scenic flights, fix airplanes, and teach people to fly. Duane is the epitome of happiness–he holds passion for the aerial business in a way that few people love their career focus. He’ll kiss a girl’s hand or cheek, invite you for ice cream, show you his favorite websites and e-mail his friends, and hop up and down with cheer when he emerges from his plane work. He has the money for his dreams… that’s all he wants, all he needs.

Duane, you’re an Aridni hero.