Bryan C. Fleming

Want to know where you’ll be five years from now? You don’t have to go any further than the words coming out of your mouth!

I read a good article today called “Words are Containers for What We Believe”. It struck a cord with me, so I thought I’d pass it along. Bill drives this point home and even gives some action steps towards the end.

Enjoy!

I get letters from the Social Security office here in the United States, just as everyone else does. These letters tell you how much money you’ll get when you reach retirement age. What’s funny is how they keep changing the ‘retirement age’.

Below is a photocopied section of the letter I got from them yesterday

In telemarketing there is a term called ‘spiffing’ your phone operators. It means to give them a big incentive to close one more sale. Looking at the picture above, I’d say the government is trying to ‘spiff’ everyone into working longer. Consider that they will pay me almost twice as much if I hang in and work another 7 years.

You also can’t help but read the bold print on the bottom that this could change at any moment. So none of this is guaranteed.

You simply can’t depend on the government to take care of you. That’s why you need to save money. Even by saving a modest amount of money regularly you’ll gain more interest from your retirement account than Social Security will pay you. That is, if they can even pay you at all.

If you have not been able to save money, start today. Join the Million Dollar Savings club and build the habit of saving money. You won’t need to rely on the government. In fact by the time YOU decide to retire (not when they tell you to) you’ll probably have too much money and they will disqualify you. Personally, I’m OK with that.

Welcome to the September 12, 2006 edition of The Personal Growth Carnival.

We’ve been spending a lot of time saving money. But you should always take time out and read something that will make your life better. I’ve done the work of erasing some of the submissions that came in this week. I just didn’t feel you would benefit from them. The articles below are the best of the bunch. Bookmark this page and come back to it throughout the week. You’ll find it makes for great reading.

Brian Kim presents How to Believe You Can Do Anything posted at Brian Kim.

Peter Kua presents Not another cholesterol lowering drug! Innovation vs. blockbusters posted at RadicalHop.com.

Peter Kua presents Building a successful business: 8 qualities of an expert posted at RadicalHop.com.

Christine Kane presents Are You A Quitter? posted at Christine Kane.

This is Jeff’s first post, make sure to stop by his blog and say HI!
Jeff presents How to Overcome Guilt posted at Jeff

Gleb Reys presents Don’t Be Afraid To Be The First posted at Personal Development Ideas Blog.

Joseph presents help with everything: Goal setting and your destiny posted at help with everything.

Mary Jo Manzanares presents Diffusing Anger posted at Leadership Turn, saying, “No matter how we try to avoid it, anger is a part of our business life. We can’t eliminate it, so we may as well learn to deal with it.”

Shuchetana presents 10 questions to ask before you join a new job posted at Life PBS.

Andrew Leahey presents Overcoming fear posted at Leahey.org.

Kevin Chu presents Don’t wait until it hurts posted at Smart Living 4 Smart People.