Life Or Debt: Wipe Out Credit Headaches In Just 7 Days - Softcover

Johnson, Stacy

 
9780345455642: Life Or Debt: Wipe Out Credit Headaches In Just 7 Days
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345455649 ISBN 13: 9780345455642
Verlag: Ballantine Books, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

The author of Money Made Simple offers a step-by-step program to achieve financial freedom by eliminating debt, learning to live sensibly, and developing a sensible inventment plan. Reprint. 18,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stacy Johnson, fascinated all his life by the power of money, has worked as an accountant, a stockbroker for E. F. Hutton, and a vice president and branch manager for Prudential Securities, advising hundreds of people on financial security. In 1991, Johnson began producing, writing, and starring in the highly successful television news series Money Talks.


From the Hardcover edition.

Aus dem Klappentext

Freeing yourself from debt is easier than you think! Take it from Stacy Johnson. As creator of the hugely successful Money Talks television news series, Johnson has helped millions of people get out of debt, achieve enduring financial freedom, and earn big from wise investments. Now it's your turn. In this focused, practical, and inspiring new book, Johnson shares the secrets of his amazing program that will win you financial freedom in just seven days.

Strange but true, financial freedom has almost nothing to do with how much you make or what you know about high finance. It all comes down to three basic principles: get rid of the debt that is shackling you, learn to live below your means, and start investing sensibly and consistently. In Life or Debt, Johnson spells out exactly how to accomplish these goals in a step-by-step plan that covers

* How to calculate what you really earn, where your money goes, and how you can quickly convert debts to investments
* How to quit "working" for credit card companies and mortgage holders by reducing (or eliminating) your debt now
* Why you're actually paying three times the sale price of the items you buy --and how to stop
* How to work out a simple budget that provides ample money for what you need and cuts out unnecessary expenses
* How to melt away that mountain of debt by prioritizing which debts should be paid off first and at what rate
* The secrets of investing wisely and with minimum risk
* 205 ways to save money--it really does add up!

Destroying debt does not mean radically changing your lifestyle or giving up the things you love. It does mean taking charge of your financial freedom and making sure the money you earn goes to the things you care about. The power to live without debt is yours--let Stacy Johnson and this revolutionary new book help you unleash it now!


From the Hardcover edition.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

My Story

This chapter is about me and my life. It’s not necessary for you to know anything about me at all for this plan to work for you, so if you feel like skipping this part of the book, feel free. But I think it may make sense for you to know the person you’re getting advice from, so here’s the abbreviated version of how I came to be writing Life or Debt.

Ever notice how practically all self-help or motivational books start out with the author revealing some sort of catharsis that suddenly caused them to see the light? You know, stuff like “There I was, forty-five years old, living on the street and eating from a Dumpster, when suddenly inspiration struck like a divine lightning bolt! All I had to do was follow the seven magic steps and I’d become rich beyond my wildest expectations. And sure enough, it’s happened! Now I have a mansion in Malibu, my own helicopter, and I party at the Playboy mansion.” What the author often leaves out, of course, is how much of that newfound wealth comes from following the seven magic steps and how much comes from selling books and videotapes on infomercials and home shopping channels.

Here’s the first of many embarrassing admissions I’ll make: While I have made my share of stupid mistakes, I’ve never been poor, gone bankrupt, or had a sudden revelation that laid the “true path” to fame and fortune at my feet. Nor am I rich now, at least not in the “beachhouse in Malibu” sense. And while I hope that I make money from this book (and get invited to the Playboy mansion, for that matter), it’s not really that big a deal to me one way or the other. Why? Because my life is fine exactly the way it is. I’m doing precisely what I want to do, and what I make doing it is fine by me.

But that isn’t how my life has always been. As you’ll soon discover, there was a time—and not so long ago—that I forgot who I was and what I wanted out of life.

Here’s how I came to be your humble narrator:

In 1973 I was seventeen years old. For those of you who weren’t alive and/or aware at that time, trust me, it was an interesting time to be in America. By 1973, the hippie message of love, peace, and togetherness may have been fading, but you couldn’t tell it by talking to me. Another aspect of the love generation that I could especially relate to was the wholesale rejection of all things material. The idea of sharing with your brothers and sisters (that is, everyone younger than thirty) and thereby avoiding the traps that lurked in money, property, and politics seemed both reasonable and realistic. But I wanted to try it for myself. So promptly after graduating from high school, I left my middle-class home in Atlanta and hitchhiked across the country. My goal was to forget how my parents and society had taught me to view the world and instead to live life the way it was meant to be lived: with no obligations and plenty of adventure.

And this wasn’t a summer vacation we’re talking about here. This was going to be my life. So for several months, that’s what I did. I experienced the ultimate in freedom. I went where I wanted, did what I wanted, and stayed as long as I wanted. For most of that time, I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. I survived mostly by doing day labor, stuff like furniture delivery or unloading boxcars. Always something different, which was cool because I got to learn how to do lots of things and had the opportunity to meet lots of people. Then, when I’d satisfied my curiosity and earned enough to meet my meager needs, I moved on. My ultimate goal was to reach the Mecca of my generation: San Francisco and Haight-Ashbury. That was the capital of this brave new nation, where society was being reinvented, where free love and flower power were going to replace greed and war. When I pictured my future, I saw myself pitching in at a commune or homesteading in Alaska. Naive? Of course, but hey, this is my story. So stop laughing and listen.

You can probably guess what happened during the course of my personal path to spiritual enlightenment. It didn’t take long to figure out that the love and peace movement was either nonexistent or at least so far underground that I couldn’t dig it up. What I did find a lot of, however, were deviants, con artists, and common crooks. That’s not to say I never found genuine, kind, caring people. I did. But by the time I reached San Francisco, I understood that flower power was an idea whose time had either come and gone or had existed more in song than in real, day-to-day life. I also had firsthand experience that many of the people living on the streets weren’t poets and adventurers who had rejected the possession-obsession society; they were people who were rejected by that society and had no place else to go. So while I valued my experiences, I realized that this was not the life I wanted to lead.

After I returned to Atlanta, my life soon began to resemble those of my more traditional contemporaries. I went away to college. And since the freedom of the road hadn’t lived up to my lofty expectations, I thought I’d try a more old-fashioned way of finding freedom: making tons of money! My dreams of homesteading in Alaska were gradually replaced with visions of yachts, mansions, and Penthouse Pets. Seem like a major about-face? I guess it was. But considering my newfound cynicism about the hippie movement, and taking into account that virtually every mass-media, peer, and parental message I ever received was all about acquiring money, my transformation was both simple and rapid.

I started college intending to major in philosophy, but by my junior year I decided that accounting would take me where I wanted to go a lot faster. In retrospect, I believe the reason I chose that particular degree went back to a casual dinner conversation I’d had with my father years before. I must have been about twelve or thirteen years old. While talking about one of his old friends who was a CPA, he had casually mentioned that CPAs were never out of work and always made a good living. So there you have it! Security, money, and parental approval all rolled into one. In any case, I graduated in 1977 with a degree in accounting, cut my hair, and took a job with the state of Arizona as an auditor.

Unfortunately, there was an integral part of accounting that my dad had forgotten to mention to me at that dinner years before: An accountant has to go to work and actually do accounting for eight hours a day, five days a week. While some people may find this an exciting and rewarding way to occupy their working lives, for me it was like watching paint dry, only slower. Still, another thing my dad had taught me was that work wasn’t supposed to be fun (“That’s why they call it work!”). So I did it for a few years, picking up my CPA certificate along the way and trying to ignore the narcolepsy that had become a prominent feature of my working life.

By 1981, I came to the conclusion that I’d rather chop off my own foot with a dull ax than be an accountant for a minute longer. In other words, my fear of being out of work had finally been outweighed by the despair I was enduring in my chosen profession. Besides, I had another idea that would forward my ambitions to obscene wealth a lot faster. In the office building where I worked, there was a big E. F. Hutton office. And it looked really cool—a giant open space filled with desks and people and a stock ticker dancing across the front of the room. There was even a place for spectators! Can you imagine an office job so interesting that people actually stopped to watch? You could practically feel the excitement just walking by the place. Bye-bye, crummy...

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Verlag
Ballantine Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2005
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345455649
ISBN 13 
9780345455642
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
208
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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