634,000 people over age 50 are delinquent on the mortgage on their home. 1 in 8 houses are in foreclosure in Fort Meyers, Florida. Stimulus packages from the government, the prospect of an infusion of cash to the banking system so foreclosed homeowners can have a modified loan with lower payments, lower interest, longer fixed terms etc., are all on the horizon.

But the real truth of the economic crisis lies within each of us. We need to take control of our own financial futures. Mortgaging your future can have serious impacts on the financial stability of your retirement years. Just ask any retiree who has been forced to live on a fixed income. With talk that social security maybe privatized, that major investment houses and the government may really be bailing people out of the financial crisis will eventually catch up to all of us who have used leverage to acquire a home, business, car and more. Today is not the time, unless you are in excellent financial shape, to leverage your future. No matter what happens with the government, the one thing we can count on is change; and this time, change maybe painful for all. Get your financial house in order now!

Have you ever read the book the 7 habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Covey? Deemed an outstanding book at the time, the one line that has always stayed by me is, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

This quote has never been more timely. We as women are great listeners, we express empathy, and we are organized and disciplined as a whole.

Lately, I have received emails from women who listen to my radio show or respond to an article or blog I wrote who are looking for ways to be understood when they communicate their wants and needs. It appears many of us, me included, have a way of saying something that at times can be misinterpreted. How we seek understanding in our day communications with others is directly related to our happiness in our lives.

There are dozens if not hundreds of books on the market on how to communicate, books on men and women and how we think; there is even a new book out by Miss Piggy called The Diva Code listing her tips for getting what you want, Miss Piggy style. Very cute book if you need light reading. But, I keep coming back to the line, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” It has become a mantra I repeat to myself when I am in especially tough situations where I feel I need to be heard clearly with no misunderstanding.

Yes ,I am a business owner, yes I have to set rules, yes I have to act like a scout troop leader, or as some who know me say, I am always herding cats. Most importantly, I am a woman, wife, mother and grandmother. How I communicate my needs to everyone important to me and how they respond with understanding makes all the difference between having a happy, productive, contented life or being sucked up in negativity, stressed that people don’t understand you and you become discouraged and unhappy.

So the next time you are in a situation where you need to be understood, step back, take a deep breath, try to look at the communication as an observer and seek first to understand the dynamics of what is happening before you jump the gun to say something that turns into a debate, or worse. We all deserve to be understood. Try this next time with your 3 year old. It is hard to reason with a 3 year old at times, but if you get more cooperation, you know you are heading in the right direction!

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration issued a scam alert today to small businesses, warning them not to respond to letters falsely claiming to have been sent by the SBA asking for bank account information in order to qualify them for federal tax rebates.

The fraudulent letters were sent out with what appears to be an SBA letterhead to small businesses across the country, advising recipients that they may be eligible for a tax rebate under the Economic Stimulus Act, and that SBA is assessing their eligibility for such a rebate. The letter asks the small business to provide the name of its bank and account number.

These letters have not been sent by or authorized by the SBA, and all small businesses are strongly advised not to respond to them.

The scheme is similar in many ways to e-mail scams often referred to as “phishing” that seek personal data and financial account information that enables another party to access and individual’s bank accounts or to engage in identity theft.

The SBA is working with the SBA Office of Inspector General to investigate this matter. The Office of Inspector General asks that anyone who receives such a letter report it to the OIG Fraud Line at 1(800) 767-0385, or e-mail at OIGHotline@sba.gov.

Is it confusing to you that every year we seem to have tax changes that can either benefit us or hurt us if we are not prepared? Here are the biggies to keep in mind when you are doing your tax returns.

1. Larger standard deductions for homeowners. This year, homeowners will be allowed to increase their standard deduction by the amount of their state and local real estate taxes up to $500, or $1,000 for married couples.

2. First-time home buyer credit. To encourage more people to buy homes for the first time, Congress created a $7,500 tax credit for homes purchased between April 9, 2008 through July 1, 2009.

3. Higher standard deductions for disaster loss. If your property was damaged by hurricane, flood, fire or other natural disaster last year, you maybe eligible for a tax break that will make it easier to deduct casualty losses.

If you have a good accountant they should be up to speed with these and other potential changes such as not having to take Retirement Minimum Distributions in 2009. Seek advice before you file. Happy Savings!

One of the strategies that is on the rise is using your self-directed IRA or 401(k) to grow your portfolio with paper investments.

What is paper? Paper is an IOU, a promise being made from the person who needs the money to you, the person who is lending the money, with the terms of how they will pay you back. If an investor lends money secured by an asset, the IOU will also have a security document like a mortgage on a piece of real estate. If the borrower defaults, then the security instrument, the mortgage, gives the investor the right to take back the property. Paper can include houses, cars, boats, planes, businesses—you name it. I have even seen cemetery paper! Paper can be secured by assets like the ones I just mentioned, or unsecured as in a loan with no collateral at all.

Private mortgages are bought at a discount off of the face rate of the loan. Here is an example.

Sally sells her home to Sue and takes back a second mortgage for $10,000. Sally will receive $132.15 for 10 years at 10% interest. Should Sue not make her payments, Sally could foreclose and take the property back. Sally would rather have a lump sum than take payments, however she needed to sell her home and this was one way to do it quickly. Along comes Mary who offers to buy Sally’s seller financed note. However, in order for it to make financial sense to Mary, she cannot pay $10,000. She offers to buy the payments for $7,000 cash today. This is a 30% discount. Mary gets the right to receive the payments, Sally gets cash, of course not all of it but she feels it was worth the discount. Sue makes her payments to Mary instead of Sally.

I have simplified this process to illustrate how seller financing, or buying notes at a discount, works. If you would like more recommended reading on this subject, please email me.

Back in the mid to late 80s seller financing was very popular. However, when interest rates came down, more people were able to qualify for commercial loans, so seller financing dried up. Today, seller financing has made a comeback. One must be very careful when using personal or IRA funds to purchase a seller financed loan at a discount in today’s market. This investment is not for everyone.

Private lending to others is also on the rise. Most people look at private lending as lending money to family or friends who need the money to say, buy a car. However, there is a large potential opportunity for private lenders who want to participate in an investment by lending money that is used to acquire an asset. Or the investor is lending money to someone to start a business. There are as many ways and reasons why investors make loans to others. Many investors lend money out of their IRA or (k) plan to others to get a higher return on their money than they could get with conservative investments such as a money market account or CD.

Of course, when you self-direct your IRA or Individual (k) you, the IRA owner does the work—you identify the investment, you do the research, you instruct your administrator to make the purchase on behalf of the IRA or (k), and you get the profits or income back into your retirement plan tax-deferred or in the case of a ROTH, tax-free! It’s no wonder that others are utilizing OPI (other people’s IRAs) to help them accomplish their dreams.

Many investors prefer to use paper as their investment of choice instead of real estate. In the paper business, investors evaluate which is better: 1% in a savings account or investing in paper at rates that will be higher then 1% (of course the return will be greater than 1%–I am using this for illustrative purposes only)

They also ask themselves “which is better for me; greater than 1% tax deferred or 1 % that you pay tax on?” If you came up with 1% tax-deferred, than using your IRA or (k) plan is right for you!

Investing in paper whether through lending or purchasing notes can make sense to an investor who understands what he/she is getting into, does the required due diligence necessary to protect themselves and their retirement accounts before making the investment, and sees the value of alternative investing.

If you are interested in learning more about how to invest in notes or private lending with your IRA or 401(k) log onto www.theentrustgroup.com to locate an office near you!

What’s your investment strategy these days? Well, you can read the thousands of newsletters online or in print, but there are so many newsletters with different opinions and so little time to digest it all. The suggestions out there as to where to stash your cash can be overwhelming. Some investors are worried about safety and security, others want to seek to find a deal in this market, be it real estate, a business or more with the intent of building long term wealth.

You can read newsletters or financial help books which are out by the dozens, or pay a professional to help guide you on your financial journey. But always remember what, or rather who, is vital to decision making on any investment in today’s economy – you. The buck stops with you. No one is going to care about your money as much as you. It is your financial future. Now more than ever you must take an active role on any journey in your life whether it be financial, health, relationships or anything you want to accomplish.

There are some things in life we have no control over, but there are many where we get to “write our own ticket.” Become an active partner with your money and your life. You will thank yourself for taking this advice.

Here is a nice little tidbit of information that came my way this morning. So if any of you are wondering why I didn’t return something to you that said something like ‘if I don’t get this back I’ll….or, ‘See how many flowers you can get back’, or ‘ Forward this to 10 people in the next 5 mins. or something bad will happen to you’, etc.

The following is why I don’t send them back

1) Any time you see an E-Mail that says forward this on to ’10′ of your friends, or sign this petition, or you’ll get bad luck, good luck, or whatever, it almost always has an E-M ail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and E-Mails of those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of ‘active’ E-Mails to use in SPAM E-Mails, or sell to other spammers.

2) Almost all E-Mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards.

All it was, and all any of this type of E-Mail is, is a way to get names and ‘cookie ‘ tracking information for telemarketers and spammers – - to validate active E-Mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.

You can do your friends and family members a GREAT favor (PLEASE) by sending this information to them; you will be providing a service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam E-Mails in the future!

If you have been sending out (FORWARDING) the above kinds of E-Mail, now you know why you get so much SPAM!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound! You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT in the long run. Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let’s don’t make it easy for them!

Also: E-Mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition.

Read the full story here.

With technology making life easier, we tend to forget the small considerations in life are still what counts. Writing a personal thank you note on your own stationary still shows your thoughtfulness and gets attention. Did you know that only 15% of people read online greeting cards compared to 98% of people reading a handwritten thank you note? Think about this the next time someone does something nice for you. Sometimes the old fashion way is still the best way.

There is no way that programs like Social Security and Medicare will be in a position to keep paying dollars out to boomers in retirement. With the amount of money going out of the government for today’s emergency bailouts, by the time us baby boomers are ready to retire, there will be nothing left. I have read in three different publications projecting that there will not be a Social Security program the way we know it by 2016.

So what is one to do if we were planning on some of our monthly allowance coming from Social Security? Be prepared to expect zero. Develop a plan now to invest your hard earned retirement dollars and make them work for you. Consider alternative investments for your self-directed IRA such as energy, health care for the aging population, green investments and investments that are the wave of the future. Get on the forefront, start researching and learning how you can invest for your future now.

Visit www.theentrustgroup.com. Check out the variety of different online and live seminars catered to your development of knowledge from instructors who know and understand your apprehension in today’s economy.

If state governments like California are considering freezing tax refunds to their citizens because they need the cash, how can we expect any payout in our future?

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, here are the top 10 growth fields if you are considering a career change or new business.

1. Network Systems and Data Communication Analysts
2. Personal and home care aides
3. Home Health Care
4. Computer Software Engineers
5. Veterinary Technicians
6. Person Financial Adviser
7. Make Up Artists
8. Medical Assistant
9. Veterinarians
10. Substance Abused/Behavioral Disorder Counselors