Do As I Say, Not As I Did

Michael N. Marcus

Description

LAUGH & LEARN

This bestselling book is a collection of amusing anecdotes and useful advice on a wide range of subjects: money, relationships, parenting, business, work, cars, food & drink, life & death, education, health, technology, media, aging, time, animals, baseball, sailing, sex, writing & publishing and law.

The book is the sad—and also humorous and helpful—story of what the author did wrong over a lifetime and what he learned from his mistakes, plus what he learned from observing other people, companies, animals and events.

Marcus often fantasizes about traveling back in time to warn himself not to make stupid mistakes.

He says, "The ten-, twenty- and sixty-year-old me might have ignored the advice of parents, teachers, doctors and accountants—but not the advice of me. If I talk to myself I have to listen. While technology will not yet allow me to go back and talk to myself, I can warn and advise anyone else who's willing to pay attention. That's why I wrote this book. And maybe by looking back I can influence my own future."

Sujets

• Business
• Economics
• Personal Finance

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 08 juillet 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780981661780
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

SilverSandsBooks.com
Milford CT 06461
888.225.3999
[e-mail]

 
 
ISBN: 978-0-9816617-6-6 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-9816617-8-0 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014912643
 
Version 8.51
 
Unless otherwise noted, contents of this book are © Copyright 2009-2015, Michael N. Marcus. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to quote brief sections in reviews or articles.
 
Published in ebook format by Silver Sands Books
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 
Please use the email address on the previous page for corrections, questions and comments.
Portions of this book were previously published online and in other books by the author.
Some details in anecdotes were slightly changed.
Some website addresses and prices may have changed.
Some tricks may no longer work.
Some items appear in several chapters. This is deliberate, not an error. Items that appear more than once in the same chapter shouldn’t be there more than once. This is an early version. Some corrections have to be made in text and design.
The book includes anecdotes that demonstrate mistakes and the lessons learned from them, as well as assorted tidbits of hopefully useful information.

Y ou can read the book from beginning to end, scan the table of contents to find something that interests you, or just poke around. You can skip what you don’t care about—but if you read the entire book you should know more than you know now. All knowledge has value, but the value may not be immediately apparent. Sometimes it takes years, or even decades, to see the value in what you learned.

 
 
 
For Marilyn, Marshall, Meryl,
Mom, Dad, Hunter, Sniffer

Support your local author
 
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If you find a book useful and/or entertaining, please tell others and please leave a nice review on booksellers’ and readers’ websites such as Goodreads.com.
Disclaimer
 
This book is intended to provide help and entertainment.
While I’ve learned a lot from life I am not a doctor, lawyer, engineer, veterinarian, horticulturist, psychiatrist, travel agent, Realtor, fortune teller, marriage counselor, stock broker, detective, sex therapist, accountant, meteorologist, financial advisor or mechanic.
I have tried to provide accurate and useful information. If faced with a major decision, please consult a qualified professional.
/ mnm
Introduction

 
T ime travel is a pervasive theme in popular culture. For something that doesn’t really exist, time travel is strangely popular.
• Google shows about ten times as many links for time travel as for European travel.
• Time travel has inspired countless books, movies, TV shows, videogames and comic books.
My interest in time travel has often been extremely personal. I fantasize about talking to myself —not dead presidents or future interplanetary voyagers.
I’ve contemplated how the 11-year-old me would have reacted to the 20-year-old me. And would the 15-year-old me think the 40-year-old me is interesting, cool, smart, boring, stupid, scary or a jerk?
More importantly—and the impetus for this book—I’ve thought that if the old me could have spoken to the young me, maybe I wouldn’t have made so many stupid mistakes. Maybe now I’d be happier, healthier and wealthier.
 

 
I wish I could forcefully advise my younger self to “do this, but not that.” The 10-, 20- and 60-year-old me might ignore the advice of parents, teachers, doctors and accountants—but not the advice of me .
If I talk to myself I have to listen.
While technology will not yet allow me to go back and talk to myself, I can warn and advise anyone else who’s willing to pay attention.
That’s why I wrote this book. And, maybe by looking back, I can influence my own future.
The Best Advice I Can Give You
• Always know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
• Public opinion is overrated. If you don’t care what others think of you, you can get a lot accomplished and have a lot of fun.
• You were born with a unique package of talents and there are people and businesses that will pay for what you can do. Find them.
• If someone offers you millions of dollars for your home or business, take the money.
• If it’s not fun, either don’t do it or make it fun.
• Outside your home, always assume that someone is observing, photographing or recording you. Maybe inside your home, too.
• Taste before you add salt.
• Many things make a difference but very few actually matter.
• Everything has a price.
• Sometimes good enough really is good enough , and if you strive for perfection you’ll never complete anything.
• Always make sure your underwear and socks, stockings or pantyhose are clean and have no holes in them so you won’t be embarrassed if you are unexpectedly taken to a hospital.
• Keep your home neat so you’ll never be embarrassed to open the door for a surprise visitor.
• It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich person as with a poor person. In fact, it’s easier.
• He (or she) who hesitates is lost.
• Lost time can’t be found.
• Nothing lasts forever.
• Don’t smoke cigarettes or chew tobacco.
• Write it down.
• The only way to win the game of life is to die while owing lots of money on insured debts.
• People who live in glass houses shouldn’t.
• With computers, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out.
• Buy low and sell high.
• Cave canem.
• Caveat emptor.
• In vino veritas.
• Que sera, sera
Some Advice from Others
Katherine Hepburn:

• “If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.”
• “If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.”
• If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.
• “Never complain. Never explain.”
• “Enemies are so stimulating.”
• “Why slap them on the wrist with a feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer?”
 
Mark Twain:

• “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
• “To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.”
• “When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.”
• “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.”
• “A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”
My Worst Mistakes

M y worst mistakes (so far) involve money. Judging by the huge number of people and books providing financial advice, maybe most of other people’s worst mistakes involve money.
I became 68 years old in the spring of 2014. My wife and I collect several thousand dollars each month from Social Security. When we were younger we assumed that Social Security payments would buy us a second home and nice vacations. SURPRISE! We need the money for basic living expenses. I hear the same thing from many others.
Lesson: It’s tough to predict the future.
We have a big, beautiful house that’s theoretically worth a lot of money. We have lots of equity in the house, but we can’t eat the equity.
Lesson: If you need to buy food it’s much easier to liquidate an IRA than to sell a piece of a house.
My income went up from the early 1970s until around 2007. My wife and I didn’t live like Donald and Mrs. Trump but we could afford to pay nearly $100,000 for a swimming pool and more than $3,000 for a piece of French-made furniture. Today I’d much rather have the $3,000.
Lesson: Before you buy a non-necessity for $3,000 or even $3, think about whether at some time in the future you’d rather have the money.
My wife and I didn’t think we were rich, but we were “comfortable.”
Including non-liquid assets , we were multimillionaires for several years. We could easily afford anything that was important—and many things that were not important.
We bought flat-screen TVs and Blu-ray players before the prices came down. Our dog drinks Poland Spring water. (I am satisfied with filtered water from the fridge.)
On the other hand, we never gambled more than $25 at casinos, didn’t smoke or use recreational drugs or gamble on Wall Street—and spent almost nothing on alcohol, jewelry or vacations. We’ve owned three boats, but they were all inflatables that cost about $15 each.
We put a lot of money into IRAs.
We always tried to buy things on sale and make expensive purchases with a year to pay and no interest. We used credit card points and “miles” to pay for flights, hotel rooms and gifts. We had two timeshares on Cape Cod—bought cheaply from the estates of the previous owners.
We gave to a score of charities each year and helped some less-fortunate relatives.
We had dozens of credit cards with huge credit lines and perfect credit ratings.
In 2005 I turned down an offer of about $4 million for AbleComm , my telecommunications equipment business.
• I was not ready to spend the rest of my life on the beach.
• I liked what I was doing but didn’t want to do the same work for a boss instead of for myself.
• I didn’t know that the Great Recession was on the way.
Before the recession, the telecomm business was so good that my small company had over $100,000 in the bank, paid its bills early to earn discounts and even invested surplus funds overnight.
Then, in 2007, the shit hit the fan. It was called the “Great Recession” but “great” did not mean better than “good.”
Because of general economic malaise, more competition and lower sales prices caused by innovations in technology, my telecommunications business’s sales gradually decreased.
Now, in 2015, it’s increasing, but very slowly, and it’s unlikely to ever reach its previous high. Silver Sands Books , my tiny publishing business, provides me with hundreds of do