(This post is part 2 in a series about how everyone can love their job. It is mainly based on the work of The Gallup Organization and more specifically the books of Marcus Buckingham.)

In the previous post we were talking about the strengths revolution and the front man for that revolution - Marcus Buckingham. I am excited to tell you about how this strengths concept can help you find a job you love or work your current job into that place. BUT, the best way to learn about it is to read it for yourself straight from the experts. So, below I want to tell you about some resources you should check out. They’re all written by Marcus Buckingham.

I will tell you about them in the order they were written in. (I own and have read almost all of them.) “First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently” was his first breakout book in 1999.
“Now, Discover Your Strengths” was written in 2001 with the late great Dr. Donald Clifton of the Gallup Organization. This book was my first introduction to the strengths concept and completely changed the way I look at my life and work!
In 2005, Buckingham wrote “The One Thing You Need to Know: About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success” and it is a must read for anyone who is a leader or manager in their organization.
“Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieving Outstanding Performance” was recently written in 2007 and builds on “Now, Discover Your Strengths”.
Most recently Marcus wrote an amazing new book that I will tell you all about in the next post!

Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate.

(Just for the record, I love my job here in Charlotte North Carolina.)
(This post is part 1 in a series about how everyone can love their job. It is mainly based on the work of The Gallup Organization and more specifically the books of Marcus Buckingham.)

If you do not enjoy your job there are REASONS for that. Just as there are reasons that you do enjoy your job. Many times the reasons are deeper than you might realize. There are many of you who probably make a lot of money and have jobs that everyone would describe as a “good job” but you do not enjoy it at all!
So, in this economy, how can you work at a job that you LOVE?

There is something that has been stirring over the past ten years or so called the “Strengths Revolution”. It holds many of the secrets that will answer these questions for you. It contains the tools that will help you figure out how to get and work at a job you absolutely love.

The leading voice and main man in the Strengths Revolution is a brilliant and young british man named Marcus Buckingham. He is a prolific speaker and a great author. His books include some huge bestsellers that have sold over three million copies! (In the next post I will tell you about his books specifically.)
I firmly believe that EVERYONE should love their work. Life is TOO SHORT to do something you don’t enjoy!

Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate.

Here is some more wisdom from the financial guru – Dave Ramsey. You can catch up on the multi post series over the last few weeks by scrolling down on this

Myth = Leasing a car is what sophisticated people do. You should lease things that go down in value & take the tax advantage.
Truth = noted experts and a good calculator will confirm that the car lease is the most expensive way to operate a vehicle!
The average interest rate on a lease is 14%!

Myth = You get a good deal on a new car at 0% interest.
Truth = a new car loses 60% of its value in the first four years; that isn’t 0%
- “The average millionaire drives a two-year-old car with no payments.”
- Buying a new car is like throwing $100 out the window every day for 4 years. Wow, that’s sobering and puts it into perspective…

Myth = you should get a credit card to build your credit.
Truth = You won’t need credit if you pay cash for everything, except maybe for a mortgage, and
you don’t need a credit card for that.
- Professional companies can underwrite a 15 year fixed loan for most people -even if they have never used a credit card!
60% of people don’t even pay off their credit cards every month!
Our economy would actually prosper if no one used credit! Only the banks would suffer.

“Your largest wealth-building asset is your income. When you tie up your income, you lose. When you invest your income, you become wealthy and can do anything you want.”

Here is a great question = *** “How much could you give every month, save every month, and spend every month if you had no payments?”

Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina.

I wanted to tell you a little bit about my FAVORITE clothing store in the whole country! And it is right here in Charlotte North Carolina! There is only one in this city and I think only one other in the entire state! Thankfully, we live only five minutes away from the Buckle here in Charlotte.

Buckle is a clothing store that is hard to describe. It is “high end” in the sense that the clothes are very expensive (compared to what I have been used to all my life), they carry many of the brands that NO ONE else is able to carry, and the quality of their clothes is very very high! Many of the brands they carry are straight from the United Kingdom and Buckle is the only store in the whole United States who carries them! (Such as “Projekt Raw” and “Manchester”.)

But the clothes there are not really “normal” or “mainstream”. So, if you are looking for something “different” I would definitely recommend buying some clothes from Buckle. If you buy a shirt from Buckle you can be guaranteed that you will never see anyone else with the same shirt as you (unless of course they shop at Buckle too!).

I love going to Buckle because they have the MOST FRIENDLY sales staff of any store EVER. When we go there my wife and I have our very own “personal shoppers”! We have about three of them who work there and they are SO NICE and they spend an hour or two with us putting together outfits and finding stuff we might like, etc… They are awesome!

I haven’t bought anything from Buckle for over one year. Mainly because everything there is so expensive. So, after a year break from Buckle I finally broke down tonight and bought a new pair of “Big Star” jeans. “Big Star” is known along with “Meck Jeans” as the most comfortable jeans in the world!

I recommend that you go visit Buckle very soon!

Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate.

I looked at the Charlotte Observer today and on the front page of one of the sections was an article about Moms losing weight! I was intrigued.

These 3 moms all together lost 35 pounds, 5.5 percent of their body fat and almost 12 inches off of their waists. These three moms from the Charlotte area were doing this as part of the “MomsCharlotte.com Lose Weight challenge.”

This challenge began with the YMCA and the Charlotte Observer’s website for parents. These two organizations teamed up in early January to help moms and dads lose their extra weight. A YMCA trainer gave the women tips for what to do each week. Here is what they were in case you want to try them = drink three quarts of water every day, do cardio exercise for 45 minutes three times a week, and lift weights for 30 minutes twice a week, and on and on. On top of that help the website gave these moms online support groups too.

Three of the moms agreed to be before-and-after models. They each went into the program with goals far beyond the 6 weeks. They wanted to make lifestyle changes and stop simply bouncing back and forth between different diets.

They amped up their work out routine, whether it was something simple such as family walks after dinner or something more intense, like kickboxing classes at the Y.
All in all this work out and heatlthness program is working out quite well for these moms who even do lunges while doing laundry.

Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate.

(This is part of an ongoing series about how YOU, a resident of Charlotte North Carolina or any other place in the country, can become debt free and financially independent using a simple plan and process known as the Total Money Makeover. You can review the previous posts to catch up on everything you have missed. This post is part two of yesterday’s post which dealt specifically about a debt myth related to purchasing a car.)

Myth = car payments are a way of life; you’ll always have one.
Truth = staying away from car payments by driving reliable used cars is what the average millionare does; that is how he or she became a millionaire.

My wife and I are trying to go about our car decisions with this truth in mind. The average car payment is $464 per month like we said in the previous post. Simply saving this $464 per month in a COOKIE JAR would buy us a $4,000 car in only ten months. And we would be paying cash! Then 8,000 in twenty months, then $12 in thirty months. So, you could buy a pretty nice paid for car in 2 ½ years! And that is not even investing that money… that’s with no interest because the money is in a cookie jar!

And sure, some of your family and friends who don’t understand might make fun of your junky cars but this is a good sign you’re on the right track! And honestly, it is probably a bigger deal to you than it is to anyone else. I have always driven “paid for” cars that have been on the junky side, and since it doesn’t bother me I don’t think it bothers anyone else. It shouldn’t anyway. No one has ever made fun of me, but that’s probably because even if they did it wouldn’t bother me.

I think you just have to tell yourself that you need to be willing to sacrifice for a while! Drive a cheaper car and save up money so that later you can pay cash for a really nice car. Or like Dave always says - “Live like no one else, so later you can live like no one else.”

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

(This is part of an ongoing series about how YOU, a resident of Charlotte North Carolina or any other place in the country, can become debt free and financially independent using a simple plan and process known as the Total Money Makeover. You can review the previous posts to catch up on everything you have missed. This post will follows up on the specific myth about car payments that was discussed in the last post that dealt with our financial situations.)

We ended the previous post about your financial situation here in Charlotte with this myth…
Myth = car payments are a way of life; you’ll always have one.
Truth = staying away from car payments by driving reliable used cars is what the average millionare does; that is how he or she became a millionaire.

Like I have said before, this Total Money Makeover Program was built by a financial guru named Dave Ramsey. He is really smart with finances—a genius really—but he is not always nice about what he says. Such as with this statement he makes to car buyers. “Taking on a car payment is one of the dumbest things people do to destroy their chances of building wealth.” Ouch. That hurts! But it comes from an expert.

Maybe it will make more sense to you this way. The average car payment is $464 per month. BUT if you that same $464 from the time you were 25 until you are 65 you would have $5,458,854.45! I really hope you liked the car!!! WOW! That’s shocking.

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

Charlotte Mayor, Pat McCrory and sixty other mayors met with President Barack Obama this week.
Mayor McCrory said he thinks there will be a big fight within the North Carolina Statehouse when it is time to get federal stimulus package money.

He said that mayors at least agreed that federal money usually gets “lost” or taken and only used at the state level.

He said the money is vital for improvements around our great city of Charlotte.
“There’s going to be an incredible money fight for federal dollars,” McCrory said. “And we’re going to try and get our fair share in Charlotte.”

It sounds like several of our needed road projects here in Charlotte will qualify and be funded and completed early on in the stimulus plan.

McCrory might simply rely on some lobbyists in Washington and possibly Raleigh to make sure Charlotte gets the money it needs. Even though he opposed the president’s stimulus plan at first, McCrory said he is going to take the money anyway. “The bill’s been passed. If I don’t seek the money, that means the Charlotte taxpayers are sending their money to other cities and these other mayors behind me. So I’d be foolish not to seek the money,” McRory said.
*Of course this line of thinking makes sense. It is not contradictory. I agree that it would be foolish not to try to get the money for our city!

President Obama addressed the mayors across the country and told them not to waste economic stimulus money. The president said - “I will call them out on it, and use the full power of my office and our administration to stop it.”

Charlotte has usually been snuffed when it comes to getting government money. Maybe it will be different now?

Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolin Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte NC.

(This is part nine of an ongoing series about how YOU, a resident of Charlotte North Carolina or any other place in the country, can become debt free and financially independent using a simple plan and process known as the Total Money Makeover. You can review the previous eight posts to catch up on everything you have missed.)

In part eight we just started talking about some myths… here are the real truths though:
Myth = by cosigning a loan, I’m helping a friend or relative.
Truth = be ready to repay the loan; the bank wants a cosigner for a reason, which is that they don’t expect the friend/relative to pay.

Myth = 90 days same as cash = using other people’s $ for free.
Truth = 90 days is not the same as cash.
1) flash cash and the manager will give you a cheaper price
2) 88% of these don’t get paid off in time! Which means you will have to pay high interest, etc…
“We buy things we don’t need with $ we don’t have in order to impress people we don’t like.” This is so true, isn’t it?

Myth = car payments are a way of life; you’ll always have one.
Truth = staying away from car payments by driving reliable used cars is what the average millionare does; that is how he or she became a millionaire.

Those were just a few of the “Money Mythbusters” we’ll be talking about in this blog series. What do you think of them?

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

It is OFFICIAL! Today the Carolina Panthers finally signed Jordan Gross!

Which means (if you read two posts ago) that the Panthers were able to put their franchise tag on Julius Peppers.

The Panthers signed Jordan Gross today to a six year deal worth over $60 million. His contract is worth over $30 million in the first three years of the contract. This allowed them to be able to put their non-exclusive franchise tag on Peppers. Peppers really wants out bad and wants to play for another team, so he said he wants to be traded under this scenario.

What the non-exclusive tag rules mean is that Peppers can still talk to other teams, but anyone who wants to sign him has to at the very least give the Panthers two first round draft picks!
Although, the Panthers offered Peppers a one year contract worth a guaranteed $16.7 million!

Information leaked that Peppers would only agree to sign with four teams - one being the Dallas Cowboys. They would be trading their first round pick plus more.

This Panthers fan hopes that no one will trade for Peppers and hopefully he will reconsider. I still cannot figure out why he does not want to continue playing with the Panthers. Especially compared to the Cowboys who have been a bust for the past decade. But all we have heard is that playing for the Panthers does not fall in line with the Panthers’ “professional goals.”

Well, even if Peppers doesn’t stay, it seems that we have had great success with our draft picks over the past few years. Maybe we’ll get another great first rounder (like Deangelo Williams or Jonathan Stewart was for us…)

Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina. Carolina Panthers.