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Posts Tagged ‘good-times’

How to Laugh at the Rising Cost of Living

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

The rising cost of living is the number one worry for those living in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. One way to cope with the ever increasing cost of goods and services is to adopt a plan of frugal living.

For many, living on reduce buying power will mean a very uncomfortable reduction in life style. They will try to get by on the same income even though prices for food, transportation and health care continues to climb. This will lead to a good deal of unhappiness.

Phooey to Frugal Living

You don’t have to sit there and take it. You can banish any worries about losing your job or accepting a lower salary. While others see their chances for a comfortable retirement slip away you can begin building a secure financial future.

Yes, you can continue to live a very good life if you are willing to take action right now.

What’s the answer to cost of living increases? Learn to generate independent sources of income. That’s right, take responsibility for your own income and financial security. There are a number of ways to do that, because you live in a country where anyone can prosper, if they are willing to change their thinking.

You must stop thinking like a helpless employee and transform yourself into cash generating business person. That can be much easier than you think.

Three Roads To Extra Income

You can make the leap through the help of training sources like CreatingWealthClub.com. In the Club we researched the opportunities for wealth building and narrowed down the best choices to these three:

1. Real Estate

2. Internet Income

3. Stock Investments

Those three areas have proven themselves over the years by producing millions of wealthy people. During good times or bad those three areas can produce all the income you’ll ever need.

Forget About Your Debts

I am sad to report that thousands of people are so burdened by debt that they won’t even consider building a second income that could grow to two or three times what they are now earning. They think they will need lots of cash to build an independent income. The truth is that in both ecommerce and real estate there are ways to get started with little or no money.

Those two areas can provide a way to quickly pay off your debts and move on to a new life with no money worries. After you’ve begun generating steady, extra income you can compound that income by carefully investing in shares of profitable companies through the stock market.

Financial Independence

Just what is financial independence? That’s an easy question to answer, but it’s different for every person. The basic answer is that you just need enough income to do what you want when you want!

You don’t have to have millions. For many people just an extra income that allows them to maintain their comfortable style of living is enough. For others it’s a business that provides a full time income on part time effort. For a few only the life style of the rich and famous will satisfy them.

Believe me when I tell you any of those choices is within your reach. The secret is that you have to change you thinking. You must open your mind to a whole new world of financial opportunity. All it takes to be successful is effort, persistence and some expert guidance.

Thousands have done it, so I know you can laugh at rising costs and begin living the good life.

By: Mark Walters

About the Author:

Mark Walters is a third generation real estate investor and founder of CreatingWealthClub.com. For a limited time Mark is offering his big guide to finding hard money loans for real estate investing free. Free guide to private money loans. http://www.FindPrivateMoney.info

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Tags: good-times, Independent Sources, Losing Your Job, stock investments, Unhappiness
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Wal-Mart And Dollar Tree, Discount Retailers, Face Tough Times In 2009

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The good times may be over for U.S. discounters, even as recession deepens. After a year of winning over shoppers and investors, low-priced retailers could see their momentum stall in 2009 as they cycle through tough comparisons on financial results. Market interest is also expected to shift to other retailers who are performing very poorly now but might start to outperform in 2010.

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Wal-Mart And Dollar Tree, Discount Retailers, Face Tough Times In 2009

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Tags: 17-18-billion, alleged-assault, also-expected, disturbance, good-times, news, performing-very, reddit, retailers, shoppers-and, stumble, their-momentum, will-unveil
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Fibromyalgia, Questionable "Disease," Boosted By Eli Lilly And Pfizer, Reports AP

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

WASHINGTON — Two drugmakers spent hundreds of millions of dollars last year to raise awareness of a murky illness, helping boost sales of pills recently approved as treatments and drowning out unresolved questions _ including whether it’s a real disease at all. Key components of the industry-funded buzz over the pain-and-fatigue ailment fibromyalgia are grants _ more than $6 million donated by drugmakers Eli Lilly and Pfizer in the first three quarters of 2008 _ to nonprofit groups for medical conferences and educational campaigns, an Associated Press analysis found. That’s more than they gave for more accepted ailments such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Among grants tied to specific diseases, fibromyalgia ranked third for each company, behind only cancer and AIDS for Pfizer and cancer and depression for Lilly. Fibromyalgia draws skepticism for several reasons. The cause is unknown. There are no tests to confirm a diagnosis. Many patients also fit the criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome and other pain ailments. Experts don’t doubt the patients are in pain. They differ on what to call it and how to treat it. Many doctors and patients say the drugmakers are educating the medical establishment about a misunderstood illness, much as they did with depression in the 1980s. Those with fibromyalgia have often had to fight perceptions that they are hypochondriacs, or even faking their pain. But critics say the companies are hyping fibromyalgia along with their treatments, and that the grantmaking is a textbook example of how drugmakers unduly influence doctors and patients. “I think the purpose of most pharmaceutical company efforts is to do a little disease-mongering and to have people use their drugs,” said Dr. Frederick Wolfe, who was lead author of the guidelines defining fibromyalgia in 1990 but has since become one of its leading skeptics. Whatever the motive, the push has paid off. Between the first quarter of 2007 and the fourth quarter of 2008, sales rose from $395 million to $702 million for Pfizer’s Lyrica, and $442 million to $721 million for Lilly’s Cymbalta. Cymbalta, an antidepressant, won Food and Drug Administration approval as a treatment for fibromyalgia in June. Lyrica, originally approved for epileptic seizures, was approved for fibromyalgia a year earlier. Drugmakers respond to skepticism by pointing out that fibromyalgia is recognized by medical societies, including the American College of Rheumatology. “I think what we’re seeing here is just the evolution of greater awareness about a condition that has generally been neglected or poorly managed,” said Steve Romano, a Pfizer vice president who oversees its neuroscience division. “And it’s mainly being facilitated by the fact the FDA has now approved effective compounds.” The FDA approved the drugs because they’ve been shown to reduce pain in fibromyalgia patients, though it’s not clear how. Some patients say the drugs can help, but the side effects include nausea, weight gain and drowsiness. Helen Arellanes of Los Angeles was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in September 2007 and later left her job to go on disability. She takes five medications for pain, including Lyrica and Cymbalta. “I call it my fibromyalgia fog, because I’m so medicated I go through the day feeling like I’m not really there,” Arellanes said. “But if for some reason I miss a dose of medication, I’m in so much pain.” A single mother of three, Arellanes sometimes struggles to afford all her medications. She said she is grateful that a local Pfizer sales representative occasionally gives her free samples of Lyrica “to carry me through the month.” The drugmakers’ grant-making is dwarfed by advertisement spending. Eli Lilly spent roughly $128.4 million in the first three quarters of 2008 on ads to promote Cymbalta, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Pfizer Inc. spent more than $125 million advertising Lyrica. But some say the grants’ influence goes much further than dollar figures suggest. Such efforts steer attention to diseases, influencing patients and doctors and making diagnosis more frequent, they say. “The underlying purpose here is really marketing, and they do that by sponsoring symposia and hiring physicians to give lectures and prepare materials,” said Wolfe, who directs the National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases in Wichita, Kan. Similar criticisms have dogged drugmakers’ marketing of medicines for overactive bladder and restless legs syndrome. Many of the grants go to educational programs for doctors that feature seminars on the latest treatments and discoveries. Pfizer says it has no control over which experts are invited to the conferences it sponsors. Skeptics such as Wolfe are occasionally asked to attend. The drug industry’s grants also help fill out the budgets of nonprofit disease advocacy groups, which pay for educational programs and patient outreach and also fund some research. “If we have a situation where we don’t have that funding, medical education is going to come to a screeching halt, and it will impact the kind of care that patients will get,” said Lynne Matallana, president of the National Fibromyalgia Association. Matallana founded the group in 1997 after she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. A former advertising executive, Matallana said she visited 37 doctors before learning there was a name for the crushing pain she felt all over her body. A decade later, her patient advocacy group is a $1.5 million-a-year operation that has successfully lobbied Congress for more research funding for fibromyalgia. Forty percent of the group’s budget comes from corporate donations, such as the funds distributed by Pfizer and Eli Lilly. Pfizer gave $2.2 million and Lilly gave $3.9 million in grants and donations related to fibromyalgia in the first three quarters of last year, the AP found. Those funds represented 4 percent of Pfizer’s giving and about 9 percent of Eli Lilly’s. Eli Lilly, Pfizer and a handful of other companies began disclosing their grants only in the past two years, after coming under scrutiny from federal lawmakers. The message in company TV commercials is clear. “Fibromyalgia is real,” proclaimed one Lyrica ad. Researchers who’ve studied the condition for decades say it’s not that simple. Since the 1970s, Wolfe and a small group of specialists have debated the condition in the pages of medical journals. Depending on whom you ask, it is a disease, a syndrome, a set of symptoms or a behavior disorder. The American College of Rheumatology estimates that between 6 million and 12 million people in the U.S. have fibromyalgia, more than 80 percent of them women. It’s not clear how many cases are actually diagnosed, but Dr. Daniel Clauw of the University of Michigan said pharmaceutical industry market research shows roughly half are undiagnosed. People with fibromyalgia experience widespread muscle pain and other symptoms including fatigue, headache and depression. After 30 years of studying the ailment, rheumatologist Dr. Don Goldenberg says fibromyalgia is still a “murky area.” “Doctors need labels and patients need labels,” said Goldenberg, a professor of medicine at Tufts University. “In general, it’s just more satisfying to tell people, ‘You have X,’ rather than, ‘You have pain.’” While Goldenberg continues to diagnose patients with fibromyalgia, some of his colleagues have stopped, saying the condition is a catchall covering a range of symptoms. Dr. Nortin Hadler says telling people they have fibromyalgia can actually doom them to a life of suffering by reinforcing the idea that they have an incurable disease. “It’s been shown that if you are diagnosed with fibromyalgia, your chances for returning to a level of well-being that satisfies you are pretty dismal,” said Hadler, a professor at the University of North Carolina, who has occasionally advised health insurers on how to deal with fibromyalgia. Hadler said people labeled with fibromyalgia are indeed suffering, not from a medical disease but from a psychological condition. Instead of drugs, patients should receive therapy to help them “unlearn” their predicament, he said. Research by the University of Michigan’s Clauw suggests people with fibromyalgia experience pain differently because of abnormalities in their nervous system. Brain scans show unusual activity when the patients experience even minor pain, though there is no abnormality common to all. Clauw’s work, however, illustrates the knotty issues of drug company funding. He has done paid consulting work for the drugmakers, and he’s received research funding from the National Fibromyalgia Research Association, which receives money from the drugmakers. While Clauw acknowledges that Lyrica and Cymbalta do not work for everyone, he has little patience for experts who spend more time parsing definitions than helping patients. “At the end of the day I don’t care how you categorize this _ it’s a legitimate condition and these people are suffering,” Clauw said.

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Fibromyalgia, Questionable "Disease," Boosted By Eli Lilly And Pfizer, Reports AP

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Tags: condition, disturbance, Education, first, good-times, Health, national, news, pfizer, reddit, retailers, university
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BAFTA Awards: Rourke, Winslet, Brangelina, "Slumdog" And More (PHOTOS)

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

LONDON – Rags-to-riches story “Slumdog Millionaire” continued its fairy-tale journey Sunday, winning seven prizes, including best picture, at the British Academy Film Awards and sealing its place as favorite for the Oscars later this month. Kate Winslet and Mickey Rourke also gained Oscar momentum with acting wins — Winslet for her role as a former Nazi concentration camp guard in “The Reader,” Rourke for his career-reviving performance as a washed-up athlete in “The Wrestler.” Heath Ledger won a posthumous supporting actor award for The Dark Knight.” “It’s such a pleasure to be back here, out of the darkness,” said Rourke. After her onstage emotional meltdown at the Golden Globes last month, Winslet was a model of composure, thanking her parents, sitting in the audience, “who I will not look at right now, otherwise I will burst into tears.” PHOTOS OR SCROLL TO KEEP READING: “Slumdog,” Danny Boyle’s film about a Mumbai street boy’s rise from poverty to game-show triumph, went into the ceremony with 11 nominations and won prizes for best film, best director, original screenplay, music, cinematography, editing and sound. The low-budget film, shot partly in Hindi, has gone from rank outsider to Academy Awards favorite since it won four trophies at the Golden Globe awards last month and became a box-office hit. Its makers are still getting used to the change. “I thought at one stage we were going straight to DVD,” said screenwriter Simon Beaufoy. The film has caused controversy in India, where some have complained it shows the country in an unflattering light, and others have said its title insults the poor. Boyle dedicated his award partly to the people of Mumbai, where it was shot — and also to people closer to home. “The wiring in my dad’s house blew overnight, and it’s just a a big shout-out to everyone who helped him get the extension cable in so he could watch this on television,” Boyle said. The London awards, popularly known as the BAFTAs, have a reputation for predicting who will win at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles. All four of last year’s acting prize winners went on to take home Oscars. Winslet, Rourke, Meryl Streep, Daniel Craig and Penelope Cruz were among the celebs who braved a wintry London drizzle — and hundreds of screaming fans — to walk the red carpet in front of the grand, neoclassical Royal Opera House. The crowd’s biggest cheers were for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie — he wearing a mustache, she an elegant, old-Hollywood strapless black-and-yellow Armani dress. Cruz was named best supporting actress for Woody Allen comedy “Vicky Christina Barcelona.” Ledger’s widely anticipated victory was the only win for the “The Dark Knight” from nine nominations. Clint Eastwood’s L.A. noir “Changeling” was nominated in eight categories but won none. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” also lost out, taking just three awards — production design, hair and makeup, and visual effects — from 11 nominations. The 6,000 voting academy members rewarded the quirky and eclectic. Tightrope-walking documentary “Man on Wire” was named best British film, and the prize for best original screenplay went to Ireland’s Martin McDonagh for hit man comedy “In Bruges.” Director and Monty Python member Terry Gilliam was given an Academy Fellowship, a lifetime achievement award. Pinewood and Shepperton studios, mainstays of British filmmaking for decades, were awarded for outstanding British contribution to cinema. “WALL-E” took the prize for animated feature, French drama “I’ve Loved You So Long” was named best film not in the English language, and Steve McQueen won the award for best first film for his directorial debut, “Hunger,” about Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands. In the acting categories, Winslet defeated Jolie for the missing-child drama “Changeling,” Streep for the moral thriller “Doubt” and Scott Thomas for “I’ve Loved You So Long.” Rourke beat “Slumdog Millionaire’s” Dev Patel, Sean Penn for “Milk,” Frank Langella for “Frost/Nixon” and Pitt for “Benjamin Button. Associated Press Writer Dean Carson contributed to this report .

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BAFTA Awards: Rourke, Winslet, Brangelina, "Slumdog" And More (PHOTOS)

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Tags: british, condition, dvd, film, good-times, Health, ireland, pfizer, reddit, retailers, university
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Who Else Wants A Handout? Big Steel

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

The steel industry, having entered the recession in the best of health, is emerging as a leading indicator of what lies ahead. As steel production goes — and it is now in collapse — so will go the national economy. That maxim once applied to Detroit’s Big Three car companies, when they dominated American manufacturing. Now they are losing ground in good times and bad, and steel has replaced autos as the industry to watch for an early sign that a severe recession is beginning to lift.

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Who Else Wants A Handout? Big Steel

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Tags: crystell-flinn, good-times, has-replaced, nancy-pelosi-, reddit, river, steel-industry, the-industry-
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Investors Pulled Record-High $320 Billion From Mutual Funds In 2008

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

Investors pulled a net $320bn from mutual funds in 2008, a record in both dollar terms and as a percentage of assets, in one of the biggest flights to safety the industry has seen. The move out of what were previously regarded as safe and stable investments followed a record year of investor inflows in 2007.

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Investors Pulled Record-High $320 Billion From Mutual Funds In 2008

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Tags: a-record-year, good-times, industry, previously-regarded, record-year, reddit, river, the-industry-, what-were
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