The two main points of my book, Money, Balance, Joy - Improving Your Life Story, are: 1. individuals and financial professionals allow their fear and greed emotions to hurt their long-term investment returns; and 2. We make decisions based on our biases and ideology, pick one or two facts that support it, and ignore all the facts that show it to be a bad decision. Let's review these two key points as they apply to Wall Street right now in reverse order. The elites of Wall Street and the financial media worship at the altar of globalism (have little actually made in America). Equal tariff arrangements with other countries is blasphemy to both The Financial Industrial Complex and the Financial Media Smut Club. Neither one cares about Main Street businesses, nor about the working and middle class. This is why we are hearing about the "existential financial crisis of fair tariff arrangements". The elites who don't care about you love to use words like "existential." We know how brilliant these elites are (because they tell us how brilliant they are at every point) - or are they?! Are they using biased or false logic?! The elites of Wall Street and the financial media all of a sudden are concerned about rising prices of the cost of goods because of the cataclysmic (oops, that is a word elites use - let's use "really bad", instead) tariff war that shows no signs of actually happening. But they didn't have these same concerns about the significant level of inflation that we had for about four years. Not only were these rising prices not a concern to these elites, but they tried to convince us peasants that it was just "transitional inflation" (whatever that was suppose to mean.) Now all these investment influencers are certain that we are in for a depression. Why do they feel tariffs are evil and high inflation isn't? Because inflation isn't an attack of their globalism religion. And, yes, the elites from both political parties at worst think Trump is the Devil, and at best think he is too reckless. But that wouldn't skew their analysis of the evils of trying to harm globalism. 😁

I was asked to give an example of a quick return on investment (ROI) pitch to give to a boss to take a class that will make you more effective. Here we go: "Hey boss, this training program that has a great track record of helping salespeople like me quickly increase their revenue by 25%. Let's be conservative and say the odds are good that it can help me increase my sales by half that. That means a 12-month $25,000 increase in your gross revenue from my work! It only costs $970 for this training, which I won't do during company time. I can be a test for the other salespeople. Do you agree with me that this is a wise expense for our company to cover?" Notice I didn't give the cost of the program upfront. Instead, I let the boss think, "this is going to be expensive if it is this good." The boss will think that it costs at least a few thousand dollars. When you do give the low number, they will be relieved.

Although we are starting our Money, Balance, Joy community now, we hope you end up wishing that we had started our group sooner. Our mission is simple in concept, yet requires much effort on my and others' part - to help you and your fellow members start your journey to having a more fulfilling and meaningful lives. Everything you see in our group will help you have a holistic wealth life of money (monetary wealth), balance (time wealth) and joy (social wealth). The spark for our group was my highly acclaimed book, "Money, Balance, Joy - Improving Your Life Story" (Amazon). Our group has 5 main focuses/help for you: 1. A platform for you to save money on most of your everyday purchases (worth our member fee, alone!). 2. Tips on ways you can make more money. 3. Guidance on how you can avoid the biggest challenges with investing (no financial advice!). 4. Life hacks on how you can have more free time. 5. Insights into ways in which you can have more joy in your life. For financial professionals: 1. All of the same benefits and guidance as for all members, and 2. Special training courses and tools for both income growth and happier clients. Please guide us on how we can help you (non-financial members): Please post your top 2 reasons for joining our group, from the above list. Michael Sakraida Founder of Money, Balance, Joy Group