Boomer’s Blog

Make your real estate investment career meltdown the first day of the rest of you life with a new, optimized lifestyle design (LD) and bestselling author Tim Ferriss’ entrepreneurial manifesto, “The Four-Hour Workweek: How to Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” (4HWW).

Before taking his now-famous pen to paper, Ferriss, a Princeton University graduate, drove himself — and his business — into the ground with over-work and precious time squandered on tasks that actually kept him from generating wealth and attaining his goals.

Pursue your Dreams and Build Wealth
In this monumental work, Ferriss urges people to shed the traditional expectations that wedge us into cubicles and create our dream lifestyles by following his formula for achieving personal freedom and financial wealth.

In 4HWW, readers learn how to make this liberating transition through executing the four steps of LD, Ferriss’ efficiency-optimized approach to maximizing effectiveness in your work and creating more fearless joy in life. Not only is balance between the two possible, Ferriss tells us how to increase our profits while we’re at it.

In 4HWW, Ferriss provides a recipe for LD that revolves around the simple mnemonic: DEAL. Each letter represents a transcendent step to attaining personal freedom and financial wealth:

Ferriss’ Four Steps of Lifestyle Design

1. Definition: Requires you to determine what you want, conquer fears, look past society’s “expectations,” and estimate the costs of your desires. This is about beating the game rather than playing the game and emphasizing your strengths instead of trying to change your weaknesses. Here, the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of excitement.
2. Elimination: This section begs readers to forget about time management and embrace the possibility that you can accomplish more by doing less. When you limit tasks and work time, you’re free to effectively focus on completing the most important tasks in less time, Ferriss says. More time economy comes, he adds, by eliminating time wasted by constantly checking email and using personal electronics, When you do this, you’ll defeat procrastination and be free to focus on the minority of tasks that bring the greatest results.
3. Automation: Ferriss defines efficiency and encourages that it be abandoned and replaced with true effectiveness. In this section, he discusses how to maximize overall effectiveness by outsourcing low-end tasks. This can free up valuable time for entrepreneurs to build businesses that provide a sustainable, automatic sources of income. Using the right process models, and effective marketing practices, Ferriss insists that we can maximize income and best manage our businesses through absence.
4. Liberation: When you’ve successfully defined your desires, eliminated unnecessary tasks, automated and outsourced your life, Ferriss says that liberation will manifest itself in many ways and you’ll be ready to join the ranks of the New Rich.

To learn more about how 4HWW and Ferriss’ formula for LD can help you be a better entrepreneur in your real estate investment business, be sure to check out my review, now posted in GaryBoomershine.com’s Resources section.

California foreclosures and the mortgage meltdown have been making international news headlines for some time. But this month, news  from the Golden State went from bad, to the Twilight Zone.

Much like the classic TV show, first made popular in the 1950s due in large part to host Rod Serling’s melodramatic gravitas, California’s housing market begs for a prelude to prepare readers for the truly bizarre. As Serling said: “There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man,” He might as well been introducing late-breaking developments in California’s foreclosure crisis.

Here are the five most most startling, weird and ugly foreclosure stories to come out of California so far this month.

1. California REO Foreclosures Selling like Ipods
   This month, the LA Times reported that in April, California home auctions sold nearly 23,000 foreclosure properties at courthouses throughout the state. That’s is a 44 percent jump from the number of REO auctions reported for the state in March. That’s 1,000 homes sold at auction each business day for an entire month.
2. IRS Tax Delinquency, Lies and the Lawmaker
   Although she denied it earlier this week in a written statement, public records show that California Congresswoman Laura Richardson’s Sacramento house was sold via foreclosure auction on May 7. When she bought the 1,600 square-foot home in 2007, she paid more than $535,000. By the time it sold at auction, she owed $600,000 in unpaid loans and fees, including nearly $9,000 in property taxes, reports Capitol Weekly.
3. Countrywide Exec’s Email Debacle
   When an e-mail sent by a distressed homeowner inadvertently landed in his in box, Countrywide Financial Chairman Angelo Mozilo mistook the “reply” button for the “forward” button and sent his caustic response directly to the sender. The LA Times reports that not only was he unsympathetic in his response, he characterized the online foreclosure counseling service that encouraged the homeowner to contact his lender as “unbelievable” and “disgusting.” Mozilo has been under fire for cashing out while Countrywide, and the rest of the mortgage industry was tanking. In 2006, Mozilo was paid nearly $50 million in compensation; between 2006 and 2007, he cashed in stock options then valued at $140 million.
4. Never Neverland Again?
   Mid-month, entertainer Michael Jackson averted the scheduled foreclosure sale of his 2,700 acre Encino Neverland Ranch when his $23.5 million loan was purchased by real estate investment giant Colony Capital, according to Reuters.com.
5. REO Lender Takes the Bat to Canseco’s Portfolio
   At the beginning of this month, news got out that baseball great Jose Canseco let his 7,300 square-foot Encino home slide into foreclosure. He bought it in 2005 for $2.8 million, and when foreclosure struck, the property already had an IRS lien from a judgement levied against Canseco for starting a fight that leveled a Miami night club several years ago. This week, the Chicago Tribune reported that Canseco, who blames his two divorces for his financial woes, intends to generate wealth in his new career as a celebrity boxer.