The Resilient Family

Moving Abroad with Children

Coley Hudgins — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:03:14 +0000

Dear Resilient Family reader,You’ve probably noticed that we’ve been quiet as church mice these last couple of months, and we thought we owed you an explanation.We’ve been busy on an incredibly exciting new project that we just launched called MovingAbroadWithChildren.com.Here’s the “long story short” version…

For the past year and a half we’ve been focused on innovative ideas and strategies to help you become more resilient and self-reliant in a day and age that is increasingly challenging for families.

We realized that while this was important, it was only one part of the picture.

The reality is that a substantial number of our readers were looking for something more: They wanted information on how they could escape the rat race, explore new cultures, or discover new economic opportunities by living, working and raising their families abroad.

So, that’s what MovingAbroadWithChildren.com is all about. In a nutshell, it’s for families that are ready to dream, explore and discover again.

It’s a place where you’ll learn how to travel, take a long term family sabbatical, split time between your home and an exotic destination, make money overseas, and even live abroad permanently… even with children.

And we’d love to have you join us.

If you’re interested in signing up for Moving Abroad With Children we’ll automatically send you our Free Moving Abroad Starters Guide as our way of saying thanks.

Simply send us an email (no need to put anything in the subject line or the body of the email) and you will be automatically subscribed, and we’ll send you a link to your free report. As always, your email will not be shared or solicited with anyone else.

We’re really excited about Moving Abroad With Children, so please join us today.

Best,
Coley & Trey

PS – We’ll still be posting at The Resilient Family from time to time as well, but if you’ve ever considered moving abroad with children, we encourage you to join us today.

Prophets, Nomads, Heroes and Artists

Coley Hudgins — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:12:26 +0000

William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book called The Fourth Turning back in the ‘90s that has enjoyed a lot of renewed popularity recently.

The two authors proposed a really cool idea of history: Rather than advancing in a linear fashion, which always propels us forward to higher and higher levels of progress and advancement, history is actually cyclical and should be viewed just like the changing of the seasons in nature.

They argue that the growing perception that the world is in crisis today shouldn’t be surprising. Based on their cyclical theory of history, we are in crisis, and these crises happen with fairly predictable timing every 80-100 years.

In Strauss’ and Howe’s view, each season of history is defined by a generational archetype – prophets, nomads, heroes, and artists – and these archetypes largely define the age in which they live, called “turnings.”

In recent history (say the last 70-80 years), the four generational archetypes, as well as the time periods in which they live, and the defining example of each era break down roughly as follows:

1945-1965 – The First Turning (Prophet Generation): Born during a High; Post WWII America when everything in society seemed to be clicking and when society, the economy and the nation advanced at a break neck pace. Think baby boom, the “golden age” of capitalism, growth of the middle class.

1965-1985 – The Second Turning (Nomad Generation): Born during an Awakening; Society begins questioning established values and institutions. Think the hippie movement of the ‘60s, Vietnam, Watergate, civil rights movement, women’s rights, inflation and gas lines.

1985-2005 – The Third Turning (Hero Generation): Born during an Unraveling; Pervasive distrust of institutions and leaders and the splitting of national consensus and cohesiveness into competing “values” camps. Think Generation X teens, crummy popular culture, fall of the Berlin Wall, political gridlock.

2005-2025 – The Fourth Turning (Artist Generation): Born during a Crisis; Institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to a society’s or nation’s survival. Think Wall Street mortgage crisis, deep distrust of big government and big business, Tea Parties and Occupy Wall Streeters.

Now, your first instinct might be to dismiss all of this as pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo that more closely resembles palm-reading or astrology – throwing around enough generalities that can be interpreted to support the author’s conclusions.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss their conclusions out of hand.

For one thing, Strauss and Howe do a very convincing job outlining how these four turnings and archetypes keep repeating in the same way through history.

For another, as a “Nomad” who was born during an Awakening and came of age during an Unraveling, the archetype has me pegged pretty accurately.

If you’re a Nomad, see how accurately the following applies to you:

Nomads survived a hurried childhood in a society with new spiritual agendas (hippie movement) when young adults passionately attacked the established institutional order (Vietnam, Watergate). We grow up as under-protected children at a time of social convulsion and adult self-discovery (divorce, latchkeys, AIDS).

As teens, we generally had a reputation as real shits: Wild and out-of-control. We listened to music every other generation thought was crappy (grunge and hip hop). We were defined as slackers (Reality Bites, The Breakfast Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High). We had sex and smoked weed in our parents basements. We were described as the “Nowhere generation”.

Now adults, we’re much more likely to keep our distance from established social orders. We’re inclined to go-it-alone and do our own thing. While previous generations climbed the corporate ladder or went to Washington to staff the Great Society, we want no part of either.

We’re four times more likely to be entrepreneurs and have little loyalty to institutions. We change jobs or careers frequently. We have no strong allegiance to political parties and are far more likely to register as independents or to not vote at all. We tend to be realists with a harder edge who are highly individualistic and self-reliant.

Coming of age during a Third Turning or unraveling, our world view is largely defined by the generational season of autumn.

But what happens in the “Crisis” or “Fourth Turning” we’re entering now?

Strauss and Howe predicted the following – keep in mind that they wrote this in 1997, four years before 9-11 and roughly a decade before the Wall Street crisis;

Sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America will enter the Fourth Turning…a spark will ignite a new mood…In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party.

The following circa-2005 scenarios might seem plausible: A global terrorist group blows up an aircraft…Congress declares war…Opponents charge that the president concocted the emergency for political purposes.

An impasse over the federal budget reaches a stalemate. The President and Congress both refuse to back down, triggering a near-total government shutdown...Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Default looms. Wall Street panics.

Pretty eerie isn’t it?

The bad news is that we still have roughly another 10-12 years before we reach what Strauss and Howe suggest is the “grave moment of opportunity and danger – the climax of the crisis.”

The good news if you buy into Strauss and Howe’s theory of generational cycles is that we’ve been there done that numerous times before in history and come out just fine.

Interestingly, once crises become fully catalyzed, there is a natural regeneration or counter-entropy that reunifies civic life and gives birth to a new social and institutional order that results in a new “High.”

Yes, things can seem pretty grim at the moment, but hang in there, because Strauss and Howe argue convincingly that this is all just the natural cyclical rhythm and flow of history.

Fourth Turnings, they say, always begin with a low-note of cynicism, distrust, and society-wide demoralization. However, they almost always end on a high note of optimism, trust and a rebirth of civic confidence as the old order is swept away and new orders and institutions rise to take their place.

The end of the world as we know it

Trey Morrison — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:58:39 +0000

Let’s be clear about one thing…

The end of the world as we know it, is not the end of the world.

There are a million things you can do to prepare for the end of the world as we know it. None of them are more important than preparing your mind.

If your mind is not sharp, flexible, and agile, you will struggle no matter what else you do to prepare, because no one knows what the future holds.

There are many who believe Western economies are about to fall to their knees, and there is a lot of evidence to support this. But remember, there was a lot of evidence things would fall apart during Y2K …and we all know how that turned out.

A careful study of history sounds like a good idea, but it has pitfalls as well.

Educated people may point out parallels between our society and the third dynasty of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia. They may point out the similarities to the Roman Emperor, Diocletian, who let inflation get the better of him. They will tell you that our government is like the French government in the 1790s, that lost control of its currency and food shortages ensued. This is all very compelling. ”Is this our path?” we might rightly wonder.

Other intelligent folks break out historical graphs showing the trend of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and point out that it has traded flat for about 13 years. Usually after long periods of flat we see new technologies that are true game changers, and when everything is looking bad things are really about to boom. Maybe that is actually the direction we are heading. The masses are often wrong, as the Y2K example showed. If everyone thinks the sky is falling, or at best that we are going to move sideways with meager growth, maybe they are all wrong. Maybe the economy is actually about to skyrocket? If you look for it, there is a lot of evidence to support this too.

Here at the Resilient Family, we have no desire to pinpoint the exact way the future will unfold. Our desire is to make sure you prepare for whatever might happen, and more importantly, to have fun along the way.

How do we do this? How do we prepare our minds?

One great way is to read opinions that are contrary to our own. It is easy to find people who agree with you, but what good does that do?

We need to find thinkers who have opinions that vastly differ from our own and try to take what they say seriously. Let it stretch our minds.

Another thing we can do is look for ways we are influenced without our consent.

Listen to yourself. Listen to the words you use. If you hear yourself talking about groups of people in blanket ways, it is a strong sign that you have been intentionally deceived by a group that wants something from you.

It is easy to talk about “them”, the morons who don’t know what the hell they are talking about; liberals, republicans, democrats, conservatives, atheists, catholics, rich, poor, muslims, terrorists, Jews, immigrants, whatever. One of the techniques influencers use is to get us to hate the ever elusive “them.” When we unite as a group, opposed to some other group, we are much easier to control.

To protect yourself from manipulation, I highly recommend the book Influence, by Robert Cialdini. It gives you an overview of the different ways we are influenced by others and what to do about it. The groups who want to influence you study this stuff religiously. You owe it to yourself to at least have an overview of the psychological weapons being deployed against you.

The cost of doing nothing is your freedom.

Have a great day!

The future is behind us.

Trey Morrison — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 19:25:04 +0000

Most of what I learned in college has left me. But there are two linguistic facts that have always stayed. To this day, I think of them often.

I remember an anthropology class where I learned about a native tribe who only had 4 numbers in their language: ”One”, “two”, “three” and “more than three.” I often wondered how that worked with their accounting and tax returns.

Secondly, I learned that ancient Greeks considered the future to be behind us. This sounds backwards to English speakers, but the Greek word “opiso,” which literally means ”back” or ”behind,” refers to the future and not the past. And if you open your mind to it, this makes a lot more sense. We know very well what happened in the past. We, hopefully, know with certainty what we had for breakfast this morning. From this perspective, we can see what is in front of us (the past) very clearly.

The future, however, is another matter entirely. It is difficult to predict or know what will happen in the future. From this perspective, the future would naturally be behind us, because we cannot see it.

I have long held these thoughts to remind myself that my conception of reality is arbitrary. It is just what I was taught and what I perceive. It is not, necessarily, truth. This has helped me become a great problem solver.

This is also one of the reasons Coley and I recommend learning a new language. Not only does it open geographical doors, but it expands your mind in ways that are hard to explain. At least, it has always been hard for me to explain, but with the help of the following example, I will attempt.

Keith Chen, a behavioral economist (I know, what the hell is that?) and a professor at Yale, did a study that adds more fuel to the fire. He ran across a curious map of Europe that showed which languages have a strong sense of the future and which ones do not.

To clarify, some languages have many rules, tenses, and grammar concerning the future. English is a perfect example. Other languages do not. These languages pay little attention to the future. In fact, when the context is right, they treat the future as if it were now.

Here is how Professor Chen describes it…

“If I wanted to explain to an English-speaking colleague why I can’t attend a meeting later today, I could not say, ‘I go to a seminar,’ English grammar would oblige me to say,’I will go, am going, or have to go, to a seminar.’

If, on the other hand, I were speaking Mandarin, it would be quite natural for me to omit any marker of future time and say, ‘I go listen seminar,’ since the context leaves little room for misunderstanding.”

Ok, so back to the map.

As an economist of sorts, he noticed the languages that did not spend a lot of energy differentiating the future from the present were located in countries that were doing well economically. As you can guess Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, and French are not on the list. He found that curious and conducted some studies.

Here is what he determined:

If your language is not strong in future time reference (FTR) then you are:

Likely to have saved 39% more by the time you retire
31% more likely to save money in a year
24% less likely to smoke
29% more likely to be physically active
13% less likely to be obese

That is pretty interesting! Maybe I should have continued studying German and not Spanish.

There are plenty of folks who have taken issue with his findings, as you may guess. They argue that cultural, economic, and social issues might explain his results. But Chen took those things into account. He studied multi-lingual countries where he found people with the same education and social structures. The only difference, their language.

OK, so if you buy this premise, the next question would be why? Why would this make a difference? In fact, it might seem that people who pay more attention to the future would save more than their less concerned counterparts. They would be considering the future, not ignoring it, right?

Try this on for size:

The act of saving is fundamentally about understanding that your future self -the person you’re saving for- is in some sense equivalent to your present self. If your language separates the future and the present in its grammar, that seems to lead you to slightly disassociate the future from the present every time you speak.

How does all this concern me, you may ask? My point in sharing it is to emphasize how much learning a new language changes your worldview. It gives you flexibility to see the world in new ways and this type of flexibility is exactly what is needed to become resilient.

It is what allows you to see novel solutions to new problems. Today learning a language has never been easier. (Think Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone) So whatever language you started to learn and then never finished…get back to it!

Here is a great resource that I have used…. LiveMocha.com

If you want more info on Chen’s research here is the actual study: LINK

Or if you are not up for reading a 46-page Yale professor study (with a 9 page appendix), here is a 13-minute Ted talk Professor Chen did that is a lot easier on the brain: LINK

Guten Tag.

Dangerous mobs rampage in Panama! … Or not.

Coley Hudgins — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:13:49 +0000

Coming home from my office yesterday, I drove headlong into this…

It was a protest blocking traffic on both sides of the Panamericana Highway — the main traffic artery for the entire country.

Burning tires, smoke, covered faces. Looks pretty intimidating doesn’t it? Exactly the type of image that media and government propagandists often use to convince us that the world beyond the safety and protection of our first world borders is full of anarchy, disorder and roving mobs of violent thugs that seek to do us grave harm.

I actually shared the photos with some friends in the U.S. last night and one of them replied “What in the hell is going on down there?!!?”

Despite the scary photo, the reality was “not much.”

The truth is that this had to have been one of the mellowest protests of all time.

Yes, the roads were blocked… For all of 20 minutes. The protesters themselves were teenagers and children mostly. Some mothers and fathers. Folks from the local community. Smiling and laughing. Snapping photos of their high jinks.

Panamanians, as always, took the whole thing in stride. Getting out of their cars, chatting up fellow drivers, joking with and ribbing each other. Not one honking horn… No one pounding the dashboard. As laid back an atmosphere as you could possibly imagine.

Yes, police were quickly on the scene… All three of them. They stood to the side disinterested, almost bored, until the 20 minute mark when they huddled with the protesters in polite conversation. I imagine the conversation went down something like this: “Alright folks, top-notch caper you pulled off here… You made your point. How about we open the roads now and let these drivers get to where they need to go?”

Yes, burning tires, rocks and trash were thrown in the road… But, get this. The police and protesters actually pitched in together to carry the trash to the side and clear the roads.

The cleanup... Protesters and police pitch in

And 20 minutes later it was over. No tear gas, pepper spray, rock-throwing, handcuffs, paddy wagons, SWAT teams, rubber bullets or swinging truncheons. Not even an arrest as far as I could tell.

Now, ask yourself this: What might the reaction have been to a peaceful citizen protest such as this in a “sophisticated” first world country.

Would it look like this?

The protesters yesterday blocked the main traffic artery of the entire country without incident. The infamous pepper spraying UC Davis cop above was reacting to UC-Davis protesters blocking a sidewalk.

Here’s the point: The questions we get asked most often from those in developed countries considering a move abroad to places like Panama inevitably focus on violence, police corruption, and crime. They are often a reaction to things they read or see on TV back home that blow incidents like yesterday’s protest completely out of proportion. We had the same concerns before moving here 7 years ago, so we get it.

But when you can step back and put things in perspective, you’ll find that the safety and security you think you enjoy back home is often an illusion, while the dangers you’ve been lead to believe lurk beyond your borders are irrational.

Panama has its problems and some of them are big. Protests are a legitimate reaction to a country that is developing very quickly. Lives are being changed and not always for the better. Citizens, like the protesters yesterday, have legitimate grievances. Crime is on the increase, but still a fraction (even on a per capita basis) of many developed countries. Police and government corruption are big issues, but no more than in many developed countries — including the U.S..

But yesterday’s experience was instructive: Being inconvenienced for 20 minutes while a few peaceful protestors blow off steam, without even the hint of police violence or overreaction seems like a pretty reasonable price to pay to keep the peace.

Ask yourself what the reaction to such a protest may have looked like in your own country. You may be surprised by the answer.

Square foot gardening

Coley Hudgins — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:46:38 +0000

The road to self-reliance begins with baby steps.

It requires lots of experimentation and trial and error to determine what works for you and what doesn’t.

Take growing your own food. I’m all goofy gray thumbs when it comes to actually growing stuff out of the ground. Growing up as a city boy, the whole concept of farming was utterly foreign to me until the past few years.

Fruits, vegetables, meats… These were all things that just magically appeared in a grocery store, stacked, unblemished and spit-shiny. The only reminder to where food actually came from was the occasional small withered leaf still attached to an apple stem overlooked by apple pickers and processors thousands of miles away.

But through lots of reading (I highly recommend any of Joel Salatin’s excellent books), experimentation, and trial and error, I’m starting to see just the faintest highlights of green splotches sprout on my thumbs.

Square foot gardening is one relatively easy and affordable way to green up your thumbs and learn how to begin the process of gaining a better appreciation of where food actually comes from and what it takes to grow it.

Square foot gardening is the concept of planning and creating small but intensively planted vegetable beds. It includes a strong focus on compost, densely planted raised beds and biointensive attention to small, clearly defined areas (square foot plots).

It’s a great way for beginners to learn organic farming methods because it’s well-suited to areas with poor soil, is easy to weed, and because it’s done in raised, easily-accessible beds, which bring the soil and plant levels closer to the gardener.

Here’s a quick primer on a square foot gardening project we recently started at the kids’ school. It’s still very early as you’ll see from the photos, but so far it shows a lot of promise… Unfortunately, I didn’t take photos of the construction process, but you’ll get the picture.

Tools/materials you’ll need:

Two 10 foot, 2×8 boards (non-treated)
Two 3 foot, 2×8 boards (non-treated)
Four, 4×4′s – 12 inches in length
Hammer & 8 inch nails
Wheelbarrow, Shovel, hand spade, post-hole digger
Topsoil (We used about a half a yard. You can find a good topsoil calculator here)
Mulch or compost
Exacto knife
Plastic cups
String or twine
Tape measurer
Tacks
Seeds (For this project, we’re trying lettuce, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, basil, mustard, arugula, onions, green peppers and a few other vegetables)

Construction

Find a relatively flat area to build the beds
Measure and stake an area 10 feet long x 3 feet wide
Secure the four, 4×4 posts to your two, 3 foot, 2×8 boards with 8 inch nails
Use post hole digger to dig four holes approximately 4 to 6 inches deep and insert the 4×4′s into the holes
Now fasten your 10 foot boards to the 4×4′s
Fill beds with about a half a yard of topsoil and level, leaving a 2-3 inch space between the top of the soil and the top of the bed.
Next, using your tape measurer, string and tacks divide the bed into 12 square inch plots.

Once you have your bed divided into 12 inch plots, break out your seeds, your trusty Exacto knife, plastic cups and mulch or compost.
In the center of each 12 inch plot stick your thumb into the soil knuckle deep, drop a few seeds into the hole and cover with loose soil
Next, cut the top 3 or 4 inches off of one of your plastic cups using your Exacto knife and place the cup around the seeds you just planted
Spread a generous layer of mulch or compost around the outside of the plastic cup to a depth of 2-3 inches

Quick sidebar: Covering the soil with mulch or compost is really important. To give you an idea of how important… We’re in the middle of the dry season in Panama. It’s very windy, hot and extremely dry. When we first planted the seeds, we only mulched to a layer about an inch deep. The seeds sprouted, but the soil was exposed in areas and the wind blew away most of our mulch. As a result, we were watering the beds 2-3 times a day, the soil was still bone dry and the plants all looked like they’d been on a 48-hour bender — pale, withered, and nursing a wicked hangover.

We actually added a deep level of compost from a “hot” compost pile after the fact, and within a couple days the veggies were green, lush and rocketing upwards. We now only have to water every other day because the compost acts as a time-release sponge, retaining water and slowly releasing it into the soil around the plants. I’m also assuming that the nutrient rich compost gave the haggard little plants a much-needed nutritional jolt.

Your finished beds should look like this:

The upshot of Square Foot Gardening is that it’s easy… Easy to construct, easy to plant, and easy to maintain. You can also plant a wide variety of different fruits and vegetables. In the older beds we planted last year, we even have a few healthy pineapples in between the tomatoes and green peppers.

Once planted, the key is to keep a thick level of mulch or compost around the plants to protect the soil from harsh direct sunlight while retaining water and slowly releasing it to the plants. Weeding is also a snap because the mulch keeps them under control.

Now, will I be able to feed my hungry family with the overflowing cornucopia of produce from a few square foot beds? Not a chance… But remember, these are still baby steps and an education process (learn by doing). More importantly, it’s a skill that, once mastered, could scale very easily to something much larger that could provide lots of vittles for the family while dramatically cutting food costs.

I’ll update periodically on how things are going and growing… And for any green thumbs out there, please feel free to school us on other tips, tricks and secrets we’re overlooking.

Stop, drop and…

Trey Morrison — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:45:40 +0000

Maybe you are perfectly fit. Maybe you do not need to lose any weight or get in better shape. If so this post is not for you.

It is for the rest of us.

Obviously, your health is one of the most important things when it comes to being resilient.

The problem for a lot of people is finding the time and energy to do something about it.

You might tell yourself you ought to do some sit-ups before you go to bed, or you should stretch every morning for 10 minutes, but then never actually do it. You might join a gym, but then not go. Then you feel bad not only because you aren’t getting in shape, but also because you are wasting your money.

There are millions of reasons to avoid doing something about your health. I have experienced everything I just listed. I don’t have time. I’ll start next week. I don’t wanna!

What we need is just a bit of momentum in the right direction. Once we get started, it is easier to keep going. With that in mind, here is a tip a buddy of mine passed along that has been serving me beautifully:

Get your phone and go to the alarm section. Most phones and even watches will let you set up multiple alarms. If you do not have a device that has multiple alarms, you can use google calendar. It can send you text messages when you choose. Set two to five alarms or reminders that will go off at times during the day that you are most likely to be able to exercise for two minutes.

Next, think about what one thing you most need that can be done in under two minutes. Push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, body-weight squats, etc. When the alarm goes off, no matter where you are (within reason), start your exercise. Be like Pavlov’s dog. When the bell rings, do your thing!

Here is an example:

I have three alarms set to go off at 10AM, 11AM and 2PM. When they go off, I stop and do 20 push-ups. Then I’m right back to what I was doing. Throughout the day, I do 60 push ups and it seems to take no time out of my day. I do this just five days a week. If I stick with it, that will total 15,000 push ups in a year!

Here is another one if you want to work on your core strength:

Do one minute of plank, every hour on the hour, while you are at work. Set your alarm to chime on the hour. When you hear the alarm, do not think, just do. Hit the floor for 60 seconds. It’s a great way to get eight minutes of plank done, as well as strengthen your core big time.

Start with something easy. Then you can move up to burpees.

This technique works because it gives you no time to talk yourself out of doing something, and it only takes one to two minutes! Who can’t spare TWO minutes to get themselves in shape?

[I'm pausing to do 20 pushups...I'll time it....28 seconds later, I'm back writing my post. How easy was that?]

You can do it too.

Take a minute now to set your alarms.

A small step in a new direction will give you momentum and lead to greater and greater things.

Have a great day.

An economic trend that will blow your mind

Coley Hudgins — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:41:39 +0000

Here’s a mind blowing economic trend that the majority of us over the age of 35 probably aren’t paying much attention to.

It’s a transition being driven by the millennial generation –those born roughly between 1983 and 2007 — and it’s taking place on the outskirts of what we consider the modern corporate economy.

Many of us who aren’t millennials might be inclined to think the trend is flaky. And that would be a big mistake, because the companies driving the transition as well as their young devotees believe it provides a golden opportunity to revolutionize the values of entrepreneurship, resilience, community and economic self-reliance.

The trend is known as the sharing economy, and it values the idea of access over ownership. Among its central tenets is a revolutionary idea… value un-utilized is economically and socially wasteful.

Here’s a quick quiz for us wrinklies that will probably underscore just how out-of-touch we are with this trend:

Ever heard of any of these companies? (no cheating by clicking on the links)

If you’re drawing blanks, don’t feel bad, the corporate world probably isn’t paying much attention to them either… But they should.

And so should you.

Because each of these companies and dozens, maybe hundreds of others tucked away in nooks and crannies all over the globe, could be an existential threat to an old economy based on an ownership model.

Take cars for instance…

Several years ago when I still lived in a big city I owned a top-of-the-line Acura TL. It set me back almost $40,000 (financed to the hilt of course).

A top-notch insurance policy cost me another $1200 annually. Parking tickets probably another $500. On an annual basis, I was paying over $12,000 to commute back and forth to an office… 5 miles away.

Insane right?

Recently, I traveled back to the U.S. for business and was talking to the millennial son of a friend of mine. He doesn’t own a car and has no plans to buy one.

Instead, he uses ZipCar and CarToGo — car-sharing services where users rent vehicles by the hour.

He pays $4 per hour and .25 per mile as well as a $10 per month administrative fee. With ZipCar, he parks the car in a designated parking space a block from his apartment when he’s finished using it. With CarToGo, he parks the car wherever he likes.

He has a wide selection of vehicles – Toyota Prius’, SUV’s, even full electric cars — and finds the make, brand and location of the car using an iPhone app which he uses to book his reservation 30 minutes before he needs it.

He estimates that his annual travel costs are about $1200, one-tenth of the cost I paid back in the day for the pleasure of “owning” my bad-ass Acura.

And it’s not just cars…

The access economy is revolutionizing how we think about the entire idea of ownership and paying for services.

Airbnb.com is an alternative to hotels, which allows homeowners to generate extra income by renting out an unused bedroom in their home to travelers.

Yerdle.com is an online service where users list items they just want to give away (clothing, electronics, home & office equipment, sports equipment, movies, books) or exchange for something else they need.

Educational services like TradeSchool.coop provide a network of barter-for-education schools and instructors, in which instructors will teach you a trade skill in exchange for some service they need… all without any exchange of money.

Services like TaskRabbit even allow you to outsource your chores. You set the price for someone to do your grocery shopping, house cleaning, or yard work, and “TaskRabbits”, college students, young professionals, recent retirees, earn extra income by accepting your offer.

Yes, for those of us who aren’t millennials, it may be tempting to roll your eyes at these hipster companies with bubble gum names, but they are here to stay.

And they are part of a trend towards massive economic decentralization that is rapidly changing the way we work, play, live, commute, buy, sell and trade.

How massive? Think about it this way:

How does a central government tax and regulate barter transactions in exchange for an education in a trade skill?

What happens to mega-banks when consumers no longer need car loans or school loans because they no longer need a car or even a loan to pay for an education?

What happens to the revenues of Marriott or Sheraton when a substantial percentage of their customer base chooses to book a more affordable room through AirBnb.com or CouchSurfing.com instead.

What happens to WalMart revenues when potential customers’ first instinct is to log on to Yerdle.com to see if the site has what they need before making their pilgrimage to a Super Center?

What the early adopters of these services are learning is that sharing, bartering, renting, and trading are far less costly and often more rewarding than owning.

This is a trend that’s in it’s nascent stages to be sure… But it’s happening extraordinarily fast thanks to the Internet’s ability to disintermediate the centralized gatekeepers we’ve come to depend on for our well-being.

It’s also happening because of a very human desire to reconnect with community and move away from the isolating and impersonal aspects of massive centralization.

It’s easy to see doom and gloom around every corner in the world today, but that’s only because we’re in the midst of a cataclysmic changeover to a new economic paradigm that will tap economic and social value out of hundreds of heretofore idle and underutilized resources.

The sharing economy is but one of many manifestations of this changeover. It’s a trend that I predict won’t be a flash-in-the-pan, but one that will fundamentally alter the way we think about business, ownership, entrepreneurship, self-reliance and community.

The Only Two Things to Develop Character….

Trey Morrison — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:35:22 +0000

As a parent I spend a lot of time thinking about how to raise a successful kid?

Does success depend on cognitive ability? Higher IQ scores, better educational opportunities, advanced degrees, higher grades? Many believe this to be the case and they push their children to get into the best schools and get the best grades possible. To join the most clubs and do the most activities. They start them early because we know that by starting early our kids will have the best shot at success.

We do not buy into this cognitive theory for success.

We believe in a character model.

This is the idea that what determines success are character traits like resilience, persistence, self-control, curiosity, grit and self-confidence. In our experience this is what makes people successful. Being smart is great, but it will not make you happy and successful.

This is not to say education is not important. It certainly is, but not as important as the character traits. I’ve always said the reason a college degree is important is that it shows persistence. What is actually studied is secondary to the fact that a student navigated the system and stuck with it till they are handed a diploma. All the diploma says is that I have what it takes to overcome obstacles.

That is how character is created and fostered.

Character is achieved by encountering and then overcoming failure.

So our job as parents is twofold. First, to make sure that our kids encounter obstacles and failure and second, to help them overcome it.

Many parents try to keep their kids from ever experiencing failure. They have the best intentions, but their actions are actually binding their kids hands behind their back before sending them out into the world. I interact daily with college students who are living on their own for the first time and I am blown away by the level of hand holding still going on.

If kids have any issues at all they call their parents right away, who then call me. They don’t know how to check a circuit breaker, they don’t know how to clean. Often times when there is an issue with one of the houses I will give the tenants the number of a repairman and tell them to call him to schedule the repair. Theoretically this makes scheduling much easier. After the repair the repairman can just send the bill to me. BUT, nine out of ten times they never do it. They just ignore the problem. The reason; they do not have the self-confidence to call a repairman.

This just in: As I am writing this I JUST got an email from a mom. It seems that the light bulb on her son’s front porch has burned out! Unbelievable!

The second thing we have to do after making sure out kids encounter failure is to help them overcome it. To just leave kids to fail will not help. Wealthy parents will often over protect their kids so they never experience failure. These kids enter the world with no ability to overcome simple obstacles and almost no ability to think critically and to respond to new experiences.

But poor children often have plenty of failure, only they have no skill at overcoming it. They don’t show up to college at all. They are accustomed to failing but not overcoming failure. They are just stressed out. This is a huge problem.

Some degree of stress is important. Kids need to learn to overcome. But too much stress affects the development of the prefrontal cortex of the brain. This is the part of the brain that allows us to self regulate. Children who grow up in chronically stressful environments have a harder time concentrating. They have a harder time rebounding from disappointments and following directions.

So here is the great news.

The best parenting is often LESS parenting.

The best thing you can do for your kid is to back off. Stop hovering over them. Get a life and do something for yourself. Let them fall down. Let them make huge mistakes. Just make sure you are there to help them overcome their obstacles. Don’t do it for them. Just give a bit of advice and send them on their way again.

Have a great day!

Taking control of your retirement

Coley Hudgins — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 06:00:57 +0000

One of the consequences of the 2007 financial meltdown is that it exposed the systemic fraud in the world financial system – fraud that continues to this day – for the world to see.

Banks and mortgage brokers would lend to anyone who could fog a mirror, package the mortgages up and sell them to Wall Street, which would then sell the toxic garbage off to unsuspecting investors.

Financial firms like Goldman Sachs sold clients mortgage-backed securities, while at the same time taking huge short positions against those very same securities, gaining at the expense of their clients.

Even that icon of American capitalism, the stock market, is now a “market” in name only – one in which seventy percent of the volume is generated by computers inside large financial institutions that ping pong equities back and forth amongst themselves, holding them for only seconds or fractions of a second at a time.

For 401K investors, the stock market, which used to be a vast market reflection of the future value of real businesses, is viewed by more and more of us as a platform in which proprietary computers drive most of the action while retail investors get taken to the cleaners.

None of this is to suggest that smart investors who invest based on fundamentals still can’t find value in stocks and even bonds.

But too many of us don’t take the time to do our research or have the confidence to do our own investing abilities. We trust Wall Street’s prognostications and the propaganda spewed by its house organ, CNBC.

If you want to take your investing decisions into your own hands, a self-directed IRA may be the way to go. Better yet, it may be the easiest way to diversify your retirement internationally.

Just as it’s important to diversify between a mix of stocks, bonds and cash (or cash equivalents), it’s also increasingly important these days to diversify into foreign investments.

And because self-directed IRA’s allow account owners to make investment decisions on behalf of their own retirement plans, international diversification becomes much easier.

With a self-directed IRA, you aren’t limited to just U.S. stocks, bonds and mutual funds. You can invest in domestic and foreign real estate, farmland, tax liens, personal loans, precious metals, foreign stocks and currencies, and even private businesses with the ease of writing a check and without transaction, holding or asset-based fees. You can even tap the purchasing power of your IRA before retirement age without incurring early distribution taxes or penalties.

There are many companies offering self-directed IRA services. I like Guidant Financial , which offers a checkbook self-directed IRA plan called iDirect.

Self-directed IRAs allow me to save money in transaction and asset-based fees by acting in essence, as my own IRA broker/custodian.

The self-directed IRA LLC account structure enables investors to:

Use your self-directed IRA LLC to purchase nontraditional (real estate, foreign properties, mortgage notes, etc.) and traditional (stocks, bonds, etc.) investments.

Purchase foreclosed properties and tax liens or make loans

Buy and sell domestic, foreign, commercial, residential, and rental properties as self-directed IRA investments – and realize the profits tax-deferred in your retirement account

Buy rental properties as a self-directed IRA investment and be your own property manager, thus saving money in upkeep expenses

Buy your retirement home now at today’s prices, rent it out, and then occupy it when you take your IRA distribution

All that said, self-directed IRA’s aren’t for everyone. You really do need to be committed to taking investment matters into your own hands and taking control of your retirement funds.

For one thing, if the investments you make through your self-directed IRA lose money, you can’t deduct the losses. For another, you don’t get capital gains treatment on profits when you make withdrawals.

But here’s the important point: If the financial crisis taught us anything, it was that the days of trusting banking institutions or Wall Street to be good stewards of our money are over. Resilience requires that we need to take our financial well-being into our own hands.