Green burials are available in nearly 30 cemeteries nationwide, up from a handful at the start of 2008, says Joe Sehee, executive director and president of the Green Burial Council, a non-profit organization that encourages environmentally”

Click here to read the whole article.

“A useful checklist of qualities to look for in high-quality child care can be found at ChildCareAware.org by clicking on “Parents,” then “Site Map,” and finally “Evaluating a Provider.”

The state-funded child-care resource and referral agency that serves your county (Riverside, Calif.) employs counselors who can answer your questions and provide free referrals to state-licensed providers near your home or work, says Jill Johnson, coordinator of the agency, part of the Children and Family Services unit at the Riverside County Office of Education. They can send you a handout about what to look for in quality child care, Ms. Johnson says. These referral agencies can be found almost anywhere in the U.S. by searching at ChildCareAware.org by ZIP Code, or by calling 800-424-2246.

Before signing up, ask to see the facility’s license and health and safety documents …   Perhaps most important, trust your instincts. Observe classrooms, and take note of whether teachers seem to really like the children; behave in a nurturing, responsive way; create a positive emotional climate; and seem willing to communicate with parents. Beyond safety and cleanliness, research shows the central element of good child care is the relationship between caregivers and each child … child-care centers in (Riverside, Calif.) are accredited for high quality by the National Association for the Education of Young Children; find them at naeyc.org.”

While I’m not one who believes the Ivy League has cornered the market on great ideas* or analysis or teaching, there are many useful resources.

*In fact, many of those who bear significant responsibility for the Great Recession of 2007+ are from the often overvalued “Ivy League”

“Lesson to billionaires: get a will. Especially if you have fathered nine children with mistresses.

That sounds blindingly obvious, of course. But a nasty estate fight breaking out in New Jersey demonstrates that even multibillionaires can sometimes neglect the most basic of wealth-management issues.”

Here are my remarks in the comments section:

Ms. Beck, you hit the nail on the head about being aware of our genetic predispositions.

I’m sorry for the loss of your great-grandmother, grandmother and mother to osteoporosis (directly or indirectly), however knowing your family medical history arms you and your health care providers with very important information about what to be especially on the lookout for, as well as preventative actions to you can take.

Here http://12criticalthings.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/12cr_med_hist.pdf is a free PDF for documenting and your family medical history. Share it with your family members and consider keeping a copy in your travel luggage.

-Mark Gavagan
http://12criticalthings.com/
http://www.affairsorganizer.com/

Excerpt:

“Review insurance policies. …(including) property insurance policies, which cover the cost of replacing damaged or destroyed equipment or buildings. But also consider business interruption insurance, which covers lost income in the event that your business is forced to shut down temporarily.

Develop a contingency plan. Come up with a list of backup vendors or suppliers in case your primary ones are shut down. Consider alternative work sites so that you can keep operating. Keep a list of twenty- four- hour emergency numbers for all your employees, and develop a quick and efficient way of keeping employees informed.

Back it up. Make backup copies of all critical records, such as accounting and employee data, customer lists, production formulas and inventory. Keep that information in a separate location at least fifty miles away, or subscribe to a online data backup service provider.”

The WSJ article was adapted from Colleen DeBaise’s upcoming “The Wall Street Journal. Complete Small Business Guidebook,” which I have not yet read.

Excerpts:

“One of the things that happen to us when we become overconfident is that we start to blur the line between the kinds of things that we can control and the kinds of things that we can’t.”

“Most people are inclined to use moral terms to describe overconfidence—terms like “arrogance” or “hubris.” But psychologists tend to regard overconfidence as a state as much as a trait.”

“As novices, we don’t trust our judgment. Then we have some success, and begin to feel a little surer of ourselves. Finally, we get to the top of our game and succumb to the trap of thinking that there’s nothing we can’t master. As we get older and more experienced, we overestimate the accuracy of our judgments, especially when the task before us is difficult and when we’re involved with something of great personal importance.”

When looking to understand what happened in this meltdown, also consider Joe Nocera’s “Risk Management” article in The New York Times Magazine which skewers the “Value At-Risk” method of risk management employed by most banks.

“Managing our time needs to become a ritual too. Not simply a list or a vague sense of our priorities. That’s not consistent or deliberate. It needs to be an ongoing process we follow no matter what to keep us focused on our priorities throughout the day.

I think we can do it in three steps that take less than 18 minutes over an eight-hour workday.

STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you’ve been productive and successful? Write those things down.

Now, most importantly, take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. And by the beginning of the day I mean, if possible, before even checking your email. If your entire list does not fit into your calendar, reprioritize your list. There is tremendous power in deciding when and where you are going to do something…

If you want to get something done, decide when and where you’re going to do it. Otherwise, take it off your list.

STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don’t let the hours manage you.

STEP 3 (5 minutes) Review. Shut off your computer and review your day. What worked? Where did you focus? Where did you get distracted? What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow?

The power of rituals is their predictability. You do the same thing in the same way over and over again. And so the outcome of a ritual is predictable too. If you choose your focus deliberately and wisely and consistently remind yourself of that focus, you will stay focused. It’s simple.”

Thank you, Peter Bregman, for your great ideas!

“EVEN in these hard times, Peter Moloney, a funeral director, believes that people should have what they want.

lthough not all of his customers can fully express their wishes, Mr. Moloney and his brothers, who own six funeral homes on Long Island, have worked hard to arrange customized send-offs. And the touches are as varied as the customers themselves.

Bike lovers pay an extra $200 or so to take their last ride in a special hearse towed by a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Gardeners select wildflower seed packets to include with their funeral programs. One gentleman wanted to be remembered for comforting his grandchildren with ice cream, so, after the funeral, mourners were greeted by a man in a Good Humor truck, handing out frozen treats.”

More excerpts:

• Revenue in the American funeral industry will grow 1.2 percent this year (2009), to $20.7 billion.
• A preference for cremation is already transforming the funeral industry in the United States. Cremations will account for a projected 38 percent of all deaths this year, compared with 26 percent in 2000, according to the Cremation Association of North America, an industry group based in Chicago.
• Americans may be living longer than ever, but the reality of a graying nation is stark. The annual death rate of about 2.5 million has been rising about 1 percent a year, and is expected to spike in the early 2020s as older baby boomers reach their mid-70s.
• Families are increasingly abandoning traditional religious funerals, which are typically organized by funeral directors, in favor of secular ceremonies they may arrange themselves. Natural burials, which avoid embalming and concrete burial vaults, are more commonly considered than they once were, while a minority of families are bypassing funeral homes altogether to take care of their dead themselves.

Click here to read the whole article.

1. What’s in the adviser’s background?
2. What do the adviser’s clients say?
3. How does the adviser get paid?
4. Where are the adviser’s checks and balances?
5. What’s the adviser’s track record?
6. Can the adviser put it in writing?
7. What do other pros think?

Take a few minutes to read the whole article at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123913983139498483-email.html

On Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, the astonished leadership of the U.S. Congress was told in a private session by the chairman of the Federal Reserve that the American economy was in grave danger of a complete meltdown within a matter of days. “There was literally a pause in that room where the oxygen left,” says Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.).

A fantastic job explaining what happened and why:

Many thanks for another great visual guide from the talented people at WallStats.com

“The builders’ lobby is ramping up its sales pitch for a $250 billion stimulus package called “Fix Housing First,” arguing that financial markets won’t recover until home prices stop falling. They are calling for a generous tax credit for home purchases and a federal subsidy that would lower a homeowner’s mortgage rate … Housing economist Thomas Lawler … and others argue that effectively setting a floor for home prices will prolong the pain because it will keep supply and demand out of sync. “The government does not have the tools to rewrite the laws of supply and demand,” said Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser. “By artificially increasing prices, we are encouraging more building.”

I’m certainly not a Harvard economist, but the proposal by the Homebuilders is a terrible idea.

Will the “leaders” of all these firms ever tire of trying to keep profits private and untaxed, while having the public bear their risks and losses?

Endless borrowing by the US Government to bail out every losing bet or struggling industry is not capitalism and is not sustainable.

No one likes to see companies go bankrupt and employees lose their jobs, but bankruptcy plays an important role by helping our economy evolve and allocate resources efficiently.

A strong social safety net for those who lose their jobs is important and I’m happy to pay my share of taxes to support this system, but artificially propping-up industries that overbuild and/or make products consumers don’t want to buy weakens our system in the long-run and warps the risk/return equation.

I do make exception to this philosophy, to a very limited extent, to allow for the financial system being temporarily preserved because the consequences of this entire industry failing are too great for the economy to bear.

Also, at some point – perhaps not so far in the future at the rate we’re going – US Treasury securities will lose their “zero risk” assumption, and then we’re really in for some difficulty.

Click on the map’s upper-left to view on a state-by-state basis:

(1) the percent of homes with negative equity;

(2) the number of homes with negative equity; and

(3) ratio of mortgage debt to property value

A related article by David Streitfeld about Mountain House, Calif. reads: “This town, 59 feet above sea level, is the most underwater community in America. Because of plunging home values, almost 90 percent of homeowners here owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth, according to figures released Monday. That is the highest percentage in the country. The average homeowner in Mountain House is “underwater,” as it is known, by $122,000.”

It continues later: “The Martinezes bought their house in early 2005 for $630,000. It is now worth about $420,000. They have an interest-only mortgage, a popular loan during the boom that allows owners to forgo principal payments for a time. But these loans eventually become unmanageable. In 2015, Mr. Martinez said, his monthly payments will be $12,000 a month. He laughed and shook his head at the absurdity of it.”

Thanks to David Streitfeld for an interesting article.

Source: Christina S.N. Lewis – many thanks for her interesting WSJ article “The Stampede of White Elephants: Slowing Sales of Luxury Properties Reveal ‘Trophy Homes’ Weighing Owners Down”

• Nevada leads the U.S. in the proportion of households whose mortgage debt exceeds the current estimated value of their homes, a condition known as being “under water.”

• Many Americans are under water because they bought homes at or near the peak of the housing boom and put little or no money down.

• (A new study estimates) 48% of owners of single-family homes with mortgages in Nevada are under water. That compares with 18% nationwide.

Cheers to WSJ’s James R. Hagerty for a fine article.

“…Human beings have a remarkable capacity to get used to things. This means a capacity to get used to miserable situations. And it means a tendency to become bored with stuff that used to thrill us: to overestimate how much pleasure any given purchase will give and for how long. Thus, the iPod eventually gets taken for granted, the visually thrilling high-end kitchen appliance simply becomes your stove, and the (Lance Armstrong) Livestrong bracelet ends up at the back of a drawer.

We all know that novelty fades … What we’re not good at is judging the ‘intensity and duration’ of our feelings about events (i.e. purchases) that haven’t happened yet … we’re not good at figuring out how to factor (our knowledge of fading novelty) into our decision making. ”

(disclosure: my wife and I just bought a new vehicle)

(2) homeowners policies aren’t commodities – variations in contract language between one policy and another can make the difference between a $10,000 claim being paid or not. An experienced professional broker (not beholden to a particular company) could help.