Once I’ve read a book I keep it. It becomes a part of me. Serious leaders who are serious readers build personal libraries dedicated to how to think, not how to compete. It is impossible to put together a serious library on nearly any subject for less than several hundred thousand dollars. Perhaps that is […]

Once I’ve read a book I keep it. It becomes a part of me.

Serious leaders who are serious readers build personal libraries dedicated to how to think, not how to compete. It is impossible to put together a serious library on almost any subject for less than several hundred thousand dollars. Perhaps that is why — more than their sex lives or bank accounts — chief executives keep their libraries private.

Few Nike colleagues, for example, ever saw the personal library of the founder, Phil Knight, a room behind his formal office. To enter, one had to remove one’s shoes and bow: the ceilings were low, the space intimate, the degree of reverence demanded for these volumes on Asian history, art and poetry greater than any the self-effacing Mr. Knight, who is no longer chief executive, demanded for himself. “I’m always learning.”

Forget finding the business best-seller list in these libraries. Students of power should take note that C.E.O.’s are starting to collect books on climate change and global warming, not Al Gore’s tomes but books from the 15th century about the weather, Egyptian droughts, even replicas of Sumerian tablets recording astounding changes in climate.

Personal libraries have always been a biopsy of power. The empire-loving Elizabeth I surrounded herself with the Roman historians, many of whom she translated, and kept one book under lock and key in her bedroom, in a French translation she alone of her court could read: Machiavelli’s treatise on how to overthrow republics, “The Prince.” Churchill retreated to his library to heal his wounds after being voted out of power in 1945 — and after reading for six years came back to power.

It took Dee Hock, father of the credit card and founder of Visa, a thousand books to find The One. Mr. Hock walked away from business life in 1984 and looked back only from his library’s walls. He built a dream 2,000-square-foot wing for his books in a pink stucco mansion atop a hill in Pescadero, Calif. In his library, Mr. Hock found the book that contained the thoughts of all of them. Visitors can see opened on his library table for daily consulting, Omar Khayyam’s “Rubáiyát,” the Persian poem that warns of the dangers of greatness and the instability of fortune.

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Many parents say they will do anything for their kids. But that doesn’t mean you have to go out on a financial precipice. Median Price Per Child: $338,000   Kids born in the U.S. this day will cost their parents more than $338,000, on average, by the time they graduate from a public college. Send your precious […]

Many parents state they’ll do anything for their children. But that doesn’t mean you’ve to go out on a financial precipice. Median Price Per Child: $338,000  

Children born in the U.S. this day will cost their parents more than $338,000, on average, by the time they graduate from a public college. Send your precious offspring to a private university, and you can expect to shell out an additional $70,300 for tuition. Think education is your only large tab? Think again. Just keeping a roof over junior’s head will cost almost $105,000 through age 18. Food will eat up $41,400, and health care will set you back $17,400 over 18 years.

Experts state the ideal way to plan for many of the biggest expenditures, be it college, vacations, child care, summer camp, or a Bar Mitzvah, is to set aside individual reserves of cash for each goal.  Most people don’t do that. Instead, they just throw it on a credit card and worry about it later. A good plan is an automatic investment program that transfers money out of your bank account on a recurring basis. Businessweek asked financial planners and advisers for additional strategies and tips on planning and saving for some of the biggest costs of child rearing.

College: Since this is your biggest potential expenditure, begin saving as soon as possible, ideally within the first year of your child’s birth. Your best bet is probably a what’s known as a 529 college savings plan because the money accrues tax-deferred—and some says let you put away as much as $300,000. Here’s a good calculator to give you an idea why you should begin saving now.

Housing: Aside from college, one of the biggest costs associated with raising kids is providing shelter, which amounts to more than $100,000 per child over an 18-year span. The bulk of those costs go toward a mortgage, property taxes, maintenance, repairs, utilities, and furnishings. You can save money by handling some home maintenance yourself—but only tasks you’re capable of doing well.

Food: It certainly helps to shop in bulk at stores like Costco and Sam’s Club, but make sure you bring a list and stick to it. Another smart way to keep food costs in line is to learn to cook.

Activities: Extracurricular activities can get very costly, with an average cost of $35,000 over an 18-year period. While your son or daughter might play ice hockey for just five months out of the year, your best bet is to set money aside year-round to finance things like the cost of team membership, additional ice time, travel, and equipment. Though parents may want to expose kids to many different experiences, one way to limit expenses is to focus your kids on a few activities they’re passionate about.

Child and Health Care: Costs for child care and health care are significant, though they vary wildly around the country. Find out whether your employer offers a child-care or health-care flexible spending account. If you are in the 28% federal tax bracket and live in a say with a 5% tax rate, a $5,000 annual contribution saves you $1,650 in taxes.

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10 Nightmare Handshakes: Which One Are You? Handshakes have been around since the birth of civilization. In fact, they were originally a way to prove you had no weapons in your hand when meeting someone new. Nowadays, we use handshakes in meetings, greetings, offering congratulations, closing a business deal or sometimes just to say, “How’s it […]

10 Nightmare Handshakes: Which One Are You?

Handshakes have been around since the birth of civilization. In fact, they were originally a way to prove you had no weapons in your hand when meeting someone new. Nowadays, we use handshakes in meetings, greetings, offering congratulations, closing a business deal or sometimes just to say, “How’s it goin’?” No matter the basis of your handshake, it should become part of your repertoire. Handshakes are a sign of trust and help build strong relationships. Prospective employers said they’re more likely to overlook visible body piercings and tattoos than an ineffective handshake, according to a 2001 survey of human resources professionals. Plus, when you shake hands with people upon meeting, they’re two times more apt to remember you than if you didn’t shake hands. The time has come to find out if your grip is powerful, pathetic or just plain bad.

To evade making a bad first impression, losing a business deal or simply humiliating yourself, take heed of 10 terrible grips to avoid:

1. The “Macho Cowboy”… is the almost bone-crunching clasp many businessmen use to shake hands. What are they trying to prove, anyway? There’s no need to demonstrate your physical strength when shaking another person’s hand.

2. The Wimp… is usually delivered by men who are afraid to “hurt the tiny lady” when shaking women’s hands. Modern female professionals expect their male counterparts to convey the same respect they’d show their male colleagues.

3. The “Dead Fish”… conveys no power. While there’s no need to revert to the macho cowboy death grip, a firm clasp is more powerful than one that barely grabs the hand.

4. The “Four Finger”… is when the person’s hand never meets your palm, and instead clasps all four fingers, crushing them together.

5. The Cold and Clammy… feels like you’re shaking hands with a snake. Warm up your hand first before grabbing someone else’s.

6. The Sweaty Palm… is pretty self-explanatory, and pretty gross. Talcum powder to the rescue.

7. The “I’ve Got You Covered” Grip… happens when the other person covers your hand with his or her left hand as if your shake is secretive.

8. The “I Won’t Let Go”… seems to go on for eternity because the other person won’t drop his or her hand. After two or three pumps, it’s time to let go.

9. The “Southpaw”… happens when the person uses the left hand to shake because the right hand has food or a drink. Always carry your drink and plate with your left hand to keep your right one free for meet and greets.

10. The “Ringed Torture”… occurs when the person’s rings hurt your hand. Try to limit the number of rings you wear on the right hand to only one or two and be mindful of any that have massive stones.

Six Steps To An Effective Greeting:
1. Stand up
2. Step or lean forward
3. Make eye contact
4. Have a pleasant or animated face
5. Shake hands
6. Greet the other person and repeat his or her name

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If you love each other, shouldn’t you be able to live and work together, right? For many couples, this major decision is the ticket to wealth, self-actualization and happiness. For others, it can lead to severe financial and relationship stress. Such a move takes more than planning; it requires a full assessment of your personalities and […]

If you love each other, shouldn’t you be able to live and work together, right?

For many couples, this major decision is the ticket to wealth, self-actualization and happiness. For others, it can lead to severe financial and relationship stress. Such a move takes more than planning; it requires a full assessment of your personalities and your money issues to determine whether working and living side by side is right for you. Your first step should be a visit to a trusted certified financial planner. Here are some key steps to consider:

Give yourselves a timetable to startup. You might be tempted to give notice tomorrow morning, but it’s much wiser to lay out a timetable over the coming months with specific tasks, goals and objectives.

Study the viability of your business model. Speak about worst-case scenarios. Bring in trusted advisors to ask tough questions about what you’re planning to do and the viability of your idea. Convincing each other you’ll make it work isn’t enough.

Draft a business plan. Even if you don’t expect the need to seek outside financing, it is always a good idea to formalize your ideas with a business plan. Include profit and loss projections, so that you’ve a benchmark for evaluating your progress at a given point in time. Factor in both best- and worst-case scenarios, which could help with decisions down the road.

Comprehend how your tax situation will change. Depending on which business structure you select, you may need to plan for income taxes, self-employment taxes and payroll taxes. You want to make sure you’ve reserves set aside for these liabilities. 

Set a spending plan for your business and personal life. Since startups have unpredictable cash inflows, you will want to establish adequate emergency funds–both business and personal–to carry you through the startup phase.

Set boundaries. Couples who live and work together need to assess whether they want to keep their work and personal lives separate. Some people are comfortable discussing their personal lives at work, while others make it clear that during working hours, they’re at work and won’t discuss personal matters.

Make sure your legal documents are in order. If you haven’t had your estate planning documents updated in a while or don’t have them at all, this is a great time to have them drafted. Don’t forget to tell your attorney about your new business venture, which should be factored into the equation.

Plan for your children in the business. There might be good opportunities to employ children for work commensurate with their skills.

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Your Kids Can Easily Learn To Be Takers and Not Givers So many people ask how to teach their children about money, hoping they can get a 1-2-3 formula to use that will help their child become a wise caretaker of his/her money. Many parents ask this question because they are terrified that their children will […]

Your Children Can Easily Learn To Be Takers and Not Givers

So many people ask how to teach their kids about money, hoping they can get a 1-2-3 formula to use that will help their child become a wise caretaker of his/her money. Many parents ask this question because they are terrified that their kids will turn out just like themselves when it comes to spending money. They hope that the “Do as I state, not as I do” method might actually work in this case. They nearly always learn by example. They learn from your examples, dad and mom.

STEP 1 Put into practice the things that you want your kids to learn. If you anticipate a 5, 6, or 7 year old to learn to handle money wisely, surely you as a grown adult will be capable of doing it too.

STEP 2 The second step in the formula is to instruct children how to earn money before they learn how to handle it. This should seem logical and you may say, “Well of course everyone knows that!” But do they? The people we deal with on a daily basis don’t seem to know that. How many people do you know that spend money they haven’t even earned? How many dollars worth of credit card debt do you’ve? Isn’t that spending money you haven’t earned yet?

The best way to help children learn positive work ethics and give them a opportunity to earn money is through chores. There is nothing wrong with age appropriate chores and jobs. Chores help to teach kids the weights and balances of earning and spending. If you earn $10, you can spend $10. A lot of parents live with the idea that one can spend $10 and then frantically try to work to get $10 to pay for it. Another substitute that seems to be gaining popularity is to mooch off of someone like their parents or to become indebted to a credit card company.

It’s no wonder kids are getting confused.  It is because they are receiving blended messages from dad and mother. This is why it is so important for parents to get their acts together first. Whatever you do, don’t give your kids allowances when they haven’t earned them. You are doing your kids a great injustice when you do this. They learn early on that they don’t have to do a thing because mother and dad will pay for it. Twenty years later, parents find themselves with a 28-year-old man sitting on their sofa.

By giving children money and “stuff” without having to earn it, they learn to be takers and not givers. Then we wonder why, as adults, they’ve the attitude that the world owes them something for nothing. They have learned that they’ve no reason to bother to lift a finger to contribute to society. If you’re “tight with money”, kids have a very keen sense of justice. They usually know when mother and dad are not paying them because things are in “crisis” mode.

STEP 3 is to be sure and teach your child about savings. There is no better way for a child to learn to save than for that child to quickly spend all of his money at a bubble gum machine and on candy bars and then see a sibling, who has carefully saved, be able to purchase a really cool toy the next time they go shopping. Another way for children to learn about saving is, when they desire something very much, to have mom or dad tell them to save their money for it. You can’t break down and purchase it for them because you will defeat the purpose. Just wait and after a while, you’ll come to realize how exciting it is for a child to save and save and then finally reach their goal’s end.

With more money comes more responsibility. Keep the amount of money you give your kids in proportion to how responsible they’re. This will help them to learn to use their money wisely rather than to waste it because they have more than they know what to do with. Teach your kids to use a small part of their money to purchase gifts and to give to others. Remember, the whole object is to learn to be wise stewards of their money and to be givers not takers.

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Watch out for a growing number of trust fund babies in Asia The opportunities for private banks in Asia Pacific are big, and still growing. The region is home to more than a quarter of the world’s high net worth individuals (HNWIs) - the industry jargon for people with $1m of investable assets. Their wealth is […]

Watch out for a growing number of trust fund babies in Asia

The opportunities for private banks in Asia Pacific are huge, and still growing. The region is home to more than a quarter of the world’s high net worth individuals (HNWIs) - the industry jargon for people with $1m of investable assets. Their wealth is growing by 8.5% a year. By 2011, their combined riches will total $12,700bn.

The difference between North America and Europe? The wealth management business in Asia is a lot more diverse than in Europe or north America - in terms of providers, legal jurisdictions and customers. Potential clients might be a Japanese aristocrat whose family has been rich for generations, or a Malaysian entrepreneur who grew up in a kampong (village) and now wants to invest the proceeds of an IPO according to Islamic shariah principles.

China continues to boom - there are estimated to be at least 300,000 Chinese HNWIs. Foreign private banks are setting up branches as quickly as they have the ability to. They’re starting to move inland from the wealthy cities along the coast to service the growing number of entrepreneurs in China’s West. India is also showing enormous promise too. Asian HNWIs tend to be more mobile than their counterparts in Europe or north America. That diversity may mean opportunities in providing specialist tax services, for example.

Asian clients might have very different ideas about what private bankers should do for them. A western approach based solely on analysing risk tolerance in accordance with modern portfolio theory, and recommending appropriate products, might not sit well with a customer who is just looking for share tips. It takes time to build trust with such clients, and help them to understand that wealth preservation and growth is more complicated than betting on shares on China’s overheated stock market.

The need for private banking is apt to intensify as a large wave of wealth starts to flow down the generations. “In Asia people may not be as open with me as western clients about all of their investments, so I can’t always make appropriate suggestions,” says one private banker.  The “rags-to-riches” ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs of south-east Asia are beginning to die off. Many left home to seek their fortunes as manual workers in the tin mines of Malaya, or fled China when the communists took over, to start small businesses that grew into family conglomerates. Such patriarchs learned about business the hard way. Many may not have been educated past primary school. But their grandsons - and granddaughters - might well have been to top international business schools, and have very different ideas about how the family business should be run. They might even think about whether the business should be sold off, and the cash invested instead. Watch out for a growing number of trust fund babies in Asia.

Research suggests that many rich families in Asia are ill-prepared for generational change. Only half of the 33 families surveyed in Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Taiwan said they involved the next generation in managing the business. Many young graduates even felt that inheriting the family company would be a burden, as it constrained their career choices.

Asia, outside of Japan, and the Middle East would need 10,000 new private bankers by 2010. Private bankers need more than quantitative skills. They have to watch the markets, in case the client asks their opinion. It also helps to talk a few languages, especially Chinese dialects. Such people are rare and no bank seems happy with the recruitment situation. Publicly, managers talk about providing staff with friendly environments and great career opportunities to win the battle for talent.  93% of customer relationship managers in private banks in Asia stated they had been approached by rivals in the past year.  One in seven private banks risked losing a third of its staff or more. It isn’t uncommon for entire teams to follow a talented manager and take their clients with them. 

The boom in private banking is sharpening traditional rivalries between the north and south-east Asian hubs of Hong Kong and Singapore. Both have trustworthy reputations as financial centres. Wealth managers have traditionally clustered in Hong Kong. But Singapore, which has the world’s fastest growing population of dollar millionaires, has been catching up.

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If it’s done anything, it’s made me never, ever want to purchase a Chevy. Who hates those Chevy commercials because of their song “Our Country,” by John Mellencamp? According to Newsweek, everybody hates it. Mellencamp’s melancholy anthem have become so ubiquitous that they’re driving sports fans to distraction. Chevy thinks the campaign has been a success, […]

If it’s done anything, it’s made me never, ever want to purchase a Chevy.

Who hates those Chevy commercials because of their song “Our Country,” by John Mellencamp? According to Newsweek, everybody hates it. Mellencamp’s melancholy anthem have become so ubiquitous that they’re driving sports fans to distraction. Chevy thinks the campaign has been a success, and are actually making more “Our Country” commercials, despite heavy criticism from people who are sick of the song.

The company used Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock” for 11 years, helping drive up truck sales 61%. Chevy spokesman Terry Rhadigan is aware of the negative buzz but has no plans to throttle back.  When it comes to building awareness, experts state, nothing succeeds like excess—even at the danger of overkill. Just great!

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