Whenever I write articles on the state of the economy, I receive a slew of emails asking the same question: “Should I sell my house?” Most people who write asking whether the time is right to sell their property, haven’t really thought all the issues through. Most are merely considering selling their house because money has become tight. Here’s a typical example:

My wife and I bought a £246,000 house on interest only mortgage with a high street lender for 3years. This period ended last month.

Over the last 4 months I have been unemployed and we have been struggling to pay this mortgage.We now have one and half month payment arrears.

We have also have debt about £46,000 on credit cards and loans to pay. This has also put a dent on our credit rating as we struggle to pay as well.

Our house is now valued at £350,000. Should we sell it to sort ourselves out of these debt or is there any way out of this hell? I don’t want the house repossessed but it is a matter of time. At the moment our monthly income is around £2,400 after tax.

The issue is not whether to sell the house, but how to manage their finances. Sadly, I receive way too many of these types of inquiry. However, I received the first sensibly written query yesterday:

My wife and I are concerned that this may be the top of the residential real estate market in our area. We have talked this over, and we think the equity in our home may be at a peak. We are both willing to rent. In fact, we have talked about moving to a region that has a much lower cost of housing. What do you think?

Such a note reflects a joint decision – which buying and selling a house ought to be. It reflects an awareness of economic options. It reflects an understanding that things are not as they seem. Here are a few reasons to consider selling your house now. Continue reading

I’ve received a number of questions about the significance of the US$ Index.

The US Dollar Index is an average of six foreign currencies, weighted in accordance with somebody’s perception of their relative importance in the year 1973, when the world’s major nations first let their currencies start to float “freely” against one another:

1. 1. Euro - 57.6%
2. Japanese Yen - 13.6%
3. British Pound - 11.9%
4. Canadian Dollar - 9.1%
5. Swedish Krona - 4.2%
6. Swiss Franc - 3.6%.

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If, as I suspect, we are close to a global economic crash, it makes sense to ensure one is prepared.

When I published my first website in 2003, I included an extensive section on what can be done to prepare for any eventuality. This post takes a slightly more holistic view of how to prosper in a contractionary economy. Rest assured that economic contractions have happened many times before. Millions before us have lived through periods of depression. Almost all managed to survive and some of them really prospered. It was those with the right mindset that did particularly well.

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Just a short note to record the fact that I upgraded today to WP2.3.

If you experience any problems, please let me know, although I’d be surprised - I’ve been using the developer version for a while, and everything seems stable. Releases nowadays are far better than they weer when I first started using WP a few years back - well done guys!

I recently witnessed first-hand a bank run in the UK. While I’ve long believed the global economy cannot continue the way it is, I never thought I’d see a real life bank run.

A bank run is when customers withdraw their savings en masse because of fear a lender will become insolvent, which can cause it to go bankrupt.

A similar thing happened with Countrywide Bank in California on Friday 17 August. This after they were forced to draw the entire $11.5 billion line of credit available to them. Since then, Bank of America has bought $2 billion of Countrywide stock, effectively saving them. Continue reading

Here’s a selection of similar terms other searchers are using when searching for Enlightenment.

Enlightenment Keywords (Right click and click Save As to download). It’s a file with of over 1,000 other terms related to Enlightenment. Enjoy!

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A web search for the 19th Century Manchester School of Economics yields very little, until I finally stumbled across a speech given by Alex Singleton, the President of the Globalisation Institute on the occasion of their launch in London on July 19, 2005. This is what he said:

We follow the Manchester School of Economics. That’s the school founded in the 19th Century by economists, businesspeople and campaigners who argued for free trade. Why would we want to dig up the ideas of some dead economists?

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One of Amazon’s key to success has been their “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” program. What they’ve done is linked similarly themed items together - an extremely effective cross-selling and up-selling method.

I really am surprised that Google hasn’t found a way of doing the same thing. Sure, they have a “Find pages similar to the page” feature, but it’s not very effective. It lists other pages which use some of the same phrases, but it’s nowhere near as effective as Amazon’s program.

As a simple example, imagine if, after searching for “enlightenment”, you were presented with alternative phrases like “awareness”, “comprehension”, “critical thinking”, “philosophy”, “expanding the mind”, etc. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to see a little phrase saying

Googlers who searched for “enlightenment” were also interested in “ancient wisdom”.

Man, that would be astounding!

Well, until they develop this feature, I’ve manually extracted themes similar to those on this site, using a nifty piece of software called KeywordElite.  This program queries the Google, Yahoo, Ask and other databases to provide statistics on what people have searched for in the past 30 days.  It provides a unique insight into what other browsers are searching for.

All of the posts in this category will provide download files of related searches.  Useful stuff.

Has world class copy ever hooked you so forcefully it agitated every nerve in your body or even deprived you of sleep if you tried to resist?

Writing good copy is the key to building a world-class business.

The unfair asset that eliminates the hours of drudgery and frustration trying to create winning ads is a ’swipe file’. If you want to get your hands on the best swipe file ever put together, here’s the link:

http://www.ultimate-online-swipe-file.com/

One of the few Internet Marketers who understand the strategic value of creating an Internet Business, as opposed to jumping from opportunity to opportunity, is Rich Schefren of Strategic Profits.

He has written a series of reports differentiating Opportunists from Entrepreneurs. Read all three, and ensure you apply the principles he discusses before deciding to jump on the Internet bandwagon.

Download here (each link opens in a new window)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3