One of the most frightening things (to me) about the 2008 investment bank failures of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns coupled with the fraud of Bernie Madoff is the impact it had on individual investors who had used these groups as a means to invest. It’s no different than what most of us do with our 401(k) plans and our Roth IRAs and our other investment plans: we put that money with an investment house, using them to facilitate our investment into stocks or bonds or real estate or money markets or gold or porkbellies or whatever it is we choose to invest in.

I’m no different. I have a Roth IRA through Vanguard, as well as an individual investment account there with which I’m investing with the goal of eventually buying land in the country and building a home. My money is sitting there in those accounts. It’s the product of a lot of hard work and it represents a lot of dreams for the future.

What happens to those dreams, though, if Vanguard were to fail? Lehman Brothers failed. Bear Stearns failed. What happens if your investment house of choice buys into the next bubble for whatever reason, sits there while the bubble collapses, then finds that they can’t cover the withdrawals that people are making?

What happens to your money then?

Enter the SIPC
The SIPC is the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, whose website you can visit at sipc.org. The SIPC’s mission is to step in when a troubled investment house has missing assets – meaning they took the assets held by individual investor(s) like you or me and used them to cover other expenses in a desperate hour, which was then followed by a complete collapse of the investment house or a near-collapse in which people attempted to withdraw assets that were not there.

This might happen, for example, if there’s a “run” on an investment house when there are rumors that they are having trouble (where lots of people simultaneously try to clear out their accounts), or if an investment house does not have the assets available to keep their doors open.

These investment houses purchase insurance from the SIPC on the accounts that they manage as a service to their customers, and you can usually find information about their SIPC affiliation on their website. Vanguard, for example, discusses their SIPC insurance on their brokerage FAQ page.

What the SIPC Is Not
“If that’s the case, why isn’t this just part of the same FDIC insurance that banks offer on savings accounts?” you might be asking yourself.

The key difference is that SIPC insurance does not protect you against investment losses. If the stock market loses 90% of its value next week, SIPC insurance on your account will not help you one whit. Instead, it merely reimburses you for the value of your account at a moment when you would try to withdraw it and the investment house could not comply with your withdrawal.

Most investment types have some risk of investment loss. Your stocks might lose value. Your home might depreciate. Your bonds might not retain as much value as you hope. Porkbellies might become soft. SIPC insurance does not protect you against investment loss.

What SIPC insurance protects you against is investment house fraud and mismanagement, not poor investment choices.

What You Can Do
First, make sure that your investments are in an institution that carries SIPC insurance. Visit their websites and click around a bit to find out, and if you can’t, send them an email asking about it. Virtually all large investment houses are covered by such insurance.

Second, manage your money with respect to SIPC insurance. Keep in mind that if you exceed SIPC insurance limits (often $500,000), your excess would disappear in the event of your institution’s failure. While it’s a tiny risk, it is one worth noting, particularly if you’re considering diversifying your money across multiple investment houses.

Finally, avoid investments that don’t have SIPC insurance. I would generally feel as though an investment firm without SIPC insurance might not have my best interests in mind, and thus I would avoid them.

For most of you, SIPC insurance is mostly an extra dose of security that will help you sleep a little sounder at night.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. What does “savings” mean?
2. Getting out of a lemon
3. Dealing with multiple debts
4. Is a prenup needed?
5. Investing help
6. Best movie of 2010
7. Working on a goal
8. Saving for someone else’s college
9. Using multiple companies for investing
10. Best books of 2010

2011 has begun. I’ve been to the gym. I’ve practiced on the piano. I’ve read almost one book on my long list.

The goals are moving forward. It’s going to be a great year.

Q1: What does “savings” mean?
I read an article in Money that says that we need to save at least 25% of our after tax income. I agree. What I am not sure is what can I categorize as a saving. Here is my list:

My question is: What really is a saving? You know, I save for vacations. But I now that I will spend that money at some point during the year. Do I include vacation as a saving to calculate % of money on savings?
- Fernando

Generally, I define “savings” as meaning any portion of your monthly pay that you’re not spending within a month or so of receiving it. In other words, take your monthly take-home income, subtract all of your normal bills and all of your normal monthly expenses and all of the frivolous spending that you do. What’s left is what you’re saving.

I think most of what you listed above would be considered “savings.” They’re sitting around making sure that a major expense you’re going to face later on doesn’t sink you. That’s really the heart of what “savings” is – it’s making sure that you don’t get sunk by something unexpected.

Eventually, we wind up spending almost everything that we save. We save for retirement – and we will eventually spend it. We save for a down payment – and we will eventually spend it. The idea behind savings is that you’re saving for significant important things that you know will occur later on and that you’re financially and personally mature enough to begin preparing for it now.

Q2: Getting out of a lemon
I purchased a used car in 2008 (2004 Mini Cooper). I bought it from a dealership with an extended warranty which is now expired (time & mileage-wise). The car cost $22,000 (that price includes an extended warranty). The dealership’s finance manager told me I wasn’t able to get a traditional bank loan and could only finance through a subprime lender (15.9% interest rate). (I discovered this was a false statement as a month after closing the deal I rec’d a letter from a bank wanting to know why I turned down their loan offer.) Anyway, I used my Jeep as a $5500 down payment and went ahead with the purchase. I admit now, this was an ‘ego’ purchase and have vowed to leave my ego at home in the future.

The car started giving me problems, mechanically speaking, 9 months into ownership (the dealership said they no longer had any responsibility as to their warranty; the NYS Attorney General’s office agreed). I had to deal with the extended warranty co directly and AAMCO and borrow thousands for dollars worth of rentals while my car was in the shop. The transmission is acting up yet again (replaced twice with new, not rebuilt, in the last 2 yrs). Obvioulsy, I owe much more than the car is worth. Having gone through a lengthy and ridiculously expensive divorce my credit was terrible for years but I have recovered (good job/no late payments for 4+ yrs) and fear giving the car back to the loan company is going to damage my credit once again. That’s a really long, hard road to walk down and the idea of revisiting it makes me anxious. I’ve already gone to a few dealerships but due to the excessive amount owed, it’s not a viable trade-in at this juncture. I’ve taken on additional work, selling what we don’t need, etc., trying to pay this loan down so I can trade in the vehicle and start over. The way the engine is performing, it’s most likely going to break down before I reach that point. I don’t have a savings account or own property so throwing more money at a losing proposition is miserable. What do you think? Give the car back to the loan company and call it a lesson learned?
- Barbara

You’re in a pickle. This car is a lemon, and it’s something that is always a concern when you’re buying a used car that’s out of warranty. Sometimes, it’s a rust bucket full of imminent problems. That, unfortunately, is part of the risk, which is why I start to get hesitant about buying used cars that are on the verge of going out of warranty.

If you walk away from this car, it will be an absolute bomb on your credit history. Your credit score will go through the floor and stay there for years. This will cause higher insurance rates, inability to get future car loans (or, if you can get them, they’ll have very high interest rates) and/or loans of other kinds, and other credit issues. I’m not going to get into the morality of defaulting on loans by choice, but that’s another concern.

I know you have all sorts of reasons for not wanting that car, but it’s going to cost you no matter what you do with it.

Q3: Dealing with multiple debts
I’m about to get married, and my fiance and I have really been working on a budget and ways to tackle a little debt and to save some money at the same time.

We end up with a surplus at the end of the month even with all of this, but I don’t feel comfortable if we do not have a cushion in our checking account–it just makes me nervous. Are we doing what we’re supposed to? Am I just worrying about it too much? Is there something we should be doing differently?
- Stephanie

I think you’re doing things as well as you can. You’re making progress on the debts each month, which is a good thing. I think you’re mostly just facing the long and painful slog of debt repayment.

One approach you may want to take is to use the Dave Ramsey method, which is to pay off the small balance loans first. I would probably wait on the jewelry loan for a few months since it’s interest free at the moment, but instead focus heavily on the credit card debt.

The idea behind that plan is to get rid of a debt payment as quickly as you possibly can so that you have more breathing room in your monthly budget. Of course, ideally, you roll that extra breathing room into larger extra payments on your remaining debts.

It’s an option that might help with the debt-related stress you seem to be feeling.

Q4: Is a prenup needed?
I want my bride-to-be to sign a prenupital agreement. She tells me it’s not necessary. What do you think?
- Ronald

My feeling is that if a prenupital agreement is a wedge issue in your relationship, then you probably need to season that relationship a bit more.

People have a prenupital agreement as a hedge against potential divorce down the road so that they have a legally binding plan for separating their assets. I understand that some couples want to have a hedge against that, but it works if the couple is in agreement about that hedge. It means they have a similar view of the commitment they’re about to enter into.

If one person wants a prenup and the other does not, there’s obviously some conflicting views about marriage going on. You need to sit down and explore those differences. Likely, if there’s one difference on a key issue like this, there’s more than just that, and if you’re finding you’re not on the same page on a lot of issues, it may be that marriage is not the right choice for the two of you.

Take it slowly. Make sure you’re compatible and you have similar views on key issues – or at least understand and respect each other’s views.

Q5: Investing help
In the past few years I have begun investing and basically I am self-educating on the topic. It took me a while to figure out that in order to invest my money that is sitting in an IRA, it needs to be with an IRA that offers a way to invest in the stock market. Currently my IRAs are with ING Direct, and as far as I can tell you get the small interest rate or you can put funds into a CD, but that’s about it. So, I need to transfer the IRAs to a place that can do what I want (I am looking at Vanguard currently from everything I have read).

And for a little background, I have been self-employed for the past two years as an illustrator. All my student loans, car and debts have ben paid off, save for some gadgets I have on a 36-month no-interest plan that I pay automatically each month (less than $1500). Being self-employed I need to handle my own retirement as you I am sure are familiar with. I am basically looking for something that gives me a better return than the 1.25%, but still conservative as I am just dipping my toes into all of this.
- George

My honest suggestion is that if you’ve settled on Vanguard, call them up and ask what plan they suggest for minimizing your effort and your tax burden. It is in their best interest to identify that plan for you, because the smaller your burden, the more you’re likely to invest there and the more money they can collect instead of Uncle Sam (Vanguard earns the money to keep the doors open by taking a small percentage off the top each year, often a fraction of a percent).

When you convert a Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, you’ll have to pay income taxes on the amount you converted – it’ll be treated as additional income for the year. You’ll be liable for that. The best approach is to convert early in the year and then take some of your usual retirement savings and channel them into a different account for your tax bill at the end of the year.

It’s worth it, though, because you’re paying the income taxes now as opposed to paying them in retirement when, in theory, they will be higher.

Q6: Best movie of 2010
What was your favorite movie of 2010?
- Antonio

People might expect me to name Inception or The Social Network or something like that. While I did enjoy Inception (and, unfortunately, I’ve yet to see The Social Network), my favorite film was a bit more obscure.

My favorite film in 2010 was Exit Through the Gift Shop, a documentary about the commercialization of street art. I watched it mostly due to the recommendation of a friend and a vague interest in street art, but the story told in this documentary – about an individual who masters the commercial nature of an art movement – was utterly fascinating and, in places, hilarious. I’ve watched it twice and spent more time discussing it than virtually any film I can name in the last several years. Is it a hoax or not? I lean towards hoax, my wife leans towards not. You need to see it to know what we’re talking about, but it’s well worth seeing.

If you have Netflix streaming, it’s available on there.

Q7: Working on a goal
You often recommend ways for people to change their lives – transition to new careers, decrease spending, and pursue goals.

I know we don’t all get to have every part of our dream but when I look at big questions about my life (what would you regret if you died tomorrow, what can you give to the world) it’s the part of my that feels missing/unfulfilled. And, deep down I know it’s not a goal I can seek in a traditional manner. Any thoughts?
- Mary

I think what you’re asking me is how you would go about finding the right person to marry, settle down with, and have children with.

I’m going to say something that goes against a lot of the “relationship” advice out there. I dated my best friend and eventually married her.

Sarah was my best friend before we even thought about dating. We had conversations about not wanting to be single all of our lives and how we each wanted to eventually have children, but we knew each other for years before even the slightest hint of dating occurred.

I think at some point we simply realized that we enjoyed spending a lot of time together and we decided to try dating, just to see how it would work out, and what we found is that we loved each other deeply, especially over the six years that we dated before marriage. I would not have anyone else in the world by my side. Sarah is my wife, but she’s also my best friend. I would rather just hang out with her than anyone else that I know.

When people ask me for relationship advice, I’m never sure what to say because that experience with Sarah is simply what worked for me. My best friend and I sat down, decided that we really enjoyed spending time together even though there wasn’t initially that big romantic “spark” that is lauded in the movies, and decided to give dating a try. If it fails, so what? You have something to laugh about with a close friend. If your friendship is fragile enough to not survive that, then how deep is that friendship?

Who do you really enjoy spending time with? I would start there, because that is what worked in my own life.

Q8: Saving for someone else’s college
A couple friends of mine recently had a baby. They used to live in my state and have been friends with me since junior high school. They recently bought a house and neither one has a great job, but they are not struggling financially. However, I don’t think they have much money to contribute to a college fund for their new daughter. I am going to fly and visit them later this year and wanted to get something for their daughter, like a college savings account. Neither one of them finished college, so I am not sure how much importance they will put on sending their daughter to college. I don’t want to ask them beforehand as I want it to be a surprise, but I don’t want to put money into a college savings account that will never get used. I am thinking about putting about $500 in it to start, then contributing smaller amounts every birthday and Christmas and hoping they’ll contribute a bit here and there. So my question is: Is contributing to a 529 the best idea? Is there another type of account that could be used either for college or just be good for general getting off her feet expenses when she grows up? And is $500 as an initial investment sufficient to get a good amount in 18 years?
- Dan

A 529 is a very good idea in this case, I think. Make sure that it’s an “open” 529 that can be used for any educational expense, not just a prepayment program. Iowa’s college savings program is a very good one.

If I were you, I’d tell them about the plan, start it yourself, contribute $500, and have that child as the beneficiary. After that, don’t mention it until the child is close to thinking about college, then let that child know that you started this for her when she was a baby so that she could make a go of having the life of her dreams.

I am always hesitant to encourage people to turn over control of such accounts to parents in situations like this because I have personally seen such gifts horribly misused.

$500, after 18 years at a 7% return, would add up to about $1,700, which will certainly help. You might also put a small amount each year into the account on her birthday.

Q9: Using multiple companies for investing
Is there anything wrong with doing my 401k with Fidelity and my Roth IRA with Vanguard? I searched through your blog history and never specifically read about utilizing two different companies. Do you foresee any issues with this? OR, is it better to stick with Fidelity exclusively? I always worry about spreading out my funds too much, as it seems easier to have everything consolidated with one company.

I’m 24 years old, contributing 12% to my 401k (with 6% match from my company) , and have decided to use the money from my most recent promotion to go exclusively towards a Roth IRA. I also have 27k in savings and zero debt (i’m living home rent-free).
- Jenna

I don’t see any issues with this at all. The only concern I would have is simply making this arrangement clear in your personal papers, so that anyone who might inherit your money is aware that you have both of these accounts open. There’s also minute identity theft concerns, but I consider them to be negligible.

There’s also an additional benefit that both companies are separately insured, meaning that you have $250,000 in insurance with Vanguard and $250,000 in insurance with Fidelity. Insurance means that if the investment house fails, up to $250,000 of your investment is protected and will just appear in an account at another investment house (you’ll be informed of this).

Fidelity is a good company. If you feel more comfortable with Vanguard, then use them for your Roth.

Q10: Best books of 2010
I know you read like crazy. Give me your top ten books for 2010.
- William

Aside from personal finance (a genre where I try to be objective), I read about eighty books in 2010. After looking through my list, I’d name these as the top books of the year. These eight were clearly ahead of the pack for me – whenever I tried to find two more, they just weren’t up to the others, in my opinion.

The Big Short, by Michael Lewis, is a brilliant retelling of the financial crisis of 2008, with some deep insight as to who was ahead of the curve in figuring out what was going on (leading to Goldman Sachs profiting from it).
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver, is the tale of a novelist lost in Mexico in the 1930s. I didn’t like the novel when I first read it, but it has stuck in my head like few others.
Chronic City, by Jonathan Lethem, works for me because of Perkus Tooth, one of my favorite literary characters in a long time.
Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon, is a wonderful collection of essays on fatherhood, a theme that ran through my reading in 2010.
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike, was easily the best “classic” literature I read in 2010. Updike’s writing style draws me in. I’ve read a lot of his books over the years, but never this one (arguably his most famous one).
The Kingdom of Ohio, by Matthew Fleming, is a wonderful chunk of historical fantasy involving alternate universes where history didn’t go quite as it did here (hence the title).
Are We Winning?, by Will Leitch, pairs with the next book in a way as a look at how baseball impacts the life and the relationship between father and son. This is a modern take, while…
The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn, covers much the same material, just a few generations earlier. It is that longstanding thread of baseball, fathers, and sons that draws me in.

Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag. However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book or other book of interest.

For my first book review of 2011, which will pop up on the site on Sunday and appear in subscriber’s mailboxes early in the morning of the first working Monday of the year, I thought I’d take a look at one of the best books out there about defining and setting goals, since so many people start out the year with goals and resolutions of all kinds (and I’m no exception to that).

Goals! is one of a pile of self-motivation and self-improvement books written by Brian Tracy. I’ve read several of them, but the only one that really clicked with me was this one because it offered so many good pieces of advice about setting personal goals and working towards them. It worked for me because so much of the advice was actionable – I could actually do the things in the book and apply them immediately to my own goal-setting habits.

As with most of my book reviews, the things I share with you below just scratch the surface of the content. Instead, I usually try to seek out a key highlight or two from each chapter that really had an impact on me.

1. Get Started: Unlock Your Potential
Everything you have accomplished in your life up to this point is mere preparation for what is to come. You now have a pile of skills, experiences, and motivations to draw upon that you’ve accumulated throughout your life, and you should use those as constant fuel for the fire to move towards whatever you want in life. Think of the biggest things you’ve accomplished in life. Are the things you want in the future really that out of reach compared to what you’ve already done, especially considering all of the things you have at your disposal now as compared to then?

2. Take Charge of Your Life
You are responsible for everything you do in your life. You make the choices of how to spend your time, how to spend your money, how to spend your energy, and what you spend your time thinking about. Those things are up to you. Don’t blame others or make excuses when you make choices related to how you spend your time, money, energy, and thoughts. Instead, focus on using your thoughts, money, energy, and time to achieve the goals you have in your life. When you spend an hour idling, you’re not just losing an hour of time. You’re losing an hour of energy. An hour of thought. An hour of forward progress on the things you really want.

3. Clarify Your Values
What do you really believe in? What do you truly care about? If you’re trying to work towards goals that aren’t fed by those beliefs and cares, you’re going to have a very hard road with regards to achieving them. Spend some time clarifying what you care about and believe in before you even begin to set goals for yourself.

4. Analyze Your Beliefs
What do you believe with regards to your own abilities? What do you believe about the world around you? Is it holding you back or is it a giant pile of opportunities? It is these beliefs that will drastically constrain – or leave wide open – the goals that are available to you. Most of what’s possible is defined within your own head.

5. Create Your Own Future
Imagine that you could progress towards the goals you have in life with no obstacles preventing you from doing so and you had all of the resources you needed. What would your life look like? I often call this a “five year sketch,” in which I draw a picture of what I would like my life to look like in five years or so.

6. Determine Your True Goals
What do you want to accomplish in every major part of your life? Your finances? Your professional life? Your relationships and family life? Your health and wellness? What about other areas of importance to you? Think about each one and figure out what you most want in that area. This builds upon a foundation of your beliefs.

7. Decide Upon Your Major Definite Purpose
Often, when you look at the main goals you have for your life, it will become clear that they actually all point to a singular goal that rules them all. For example, in my case, my singular goal is to be a great father – it really does overlay every other goal and mission I have in my life. All of my significant goals are at least in part connected directly to my desire to be the best possible parent.

8. Start at the Beginning
What is your starting point for each of these goals? Where are you at right now? The more honest you are about your current situation, the easier it will be to create goals that actually work for you instead of goals that are completely out of touch with your current state. The more in touch your goals are, the easier they’ll be to accomplish.

9. Set and Achieve All Your Financial Goals
Tracy spends this and the next few chapters focusing on goals people typically have in certain areas of their life. His financial suggestions are straightforward: in essence, he suggests making a net worth calculator in order to get a full view of your assets and debts, then look for specific ways to improve both areas (as foundations for goals).

10. Become an Expert in Your Field
You’re better off being the best around at a very specific area than being just one of the bunch in a larger pool. Focus on getting to the very top in a specific area so that you can gan reknown for that expertise rather than being just one of a hundred people that throw their resume towards yet another essentially identical job.

11. Improve Your Family Life and Relationships
A big part of your life consists of the people around you, and the better your relationships are with those people, the better your life will be. Put effort into patching up rough relationships, eliminating unfixable ones, and putting continued focus on the relationships most important to your life.

12. Optimize Your Health and Wellness
Having a high level of energy and fitness makes it possible to enjoy many avenues of life that are difficult to enjoy without these attributes. You can cultivate these attributes in your life if you so choose, and the best way to do that is to take a realistic assessment of your current fitness and health and chart some goals leading you to where you want to be so you can tackle anything in life.

13. Measure Your Progress
For any goal, define a goal that has a clear way to determine if you’ve achieved it or not as well as a clear way to mark your progress. Then set milestones along the way so that you can constantly check and make sure that you’re moving in a reasonable way towards your goal. “I want to lose weight” won’t cut it; try “I’m going to lose 25 pounds this year” and have milestones each month that include losing two pounds that month.

14. Remove the Roadblocks
What are the biggest obstacles you can see that will keep you from achieving the goal? What can you do to remove these roadblocks? Goals are much easier to achieve if you don’t have things working against you with regard to those goals. Seek out ways to remove the roadblocks, then actively remove as many as you can so that you’re open to achieving the things you wish to achieve.

15. Associate with the Right People
The people you most closely associate with often set the standard for what you want out of life. For example, three of my four closest friends in the world at this point are very frugal people, and their frugality often rubs off on me with regard to my personal choices. Surround yourself with people who embody what you want to achieve. Make an effort to build relationships with them.

16. Make a Plan of Action
What is your plan for achieving your goal? Write your goal down, then write a detailed plan for achieving it. The more detail, the better. Can you boil that plan down to daily steps or individual actions? The smaller the pieces, the easier it is to just grab ahold and pull yourself towards your goal, one bit at a time.

17. Manage Your Time Well
Time management is key – if you don’t have time for the things in your life right now, how will you have time to add the behavior changes that you’re suggesting? One route is to focus on your time management and implement a better system for you, like GTD. Another route is to simply identify time you spend inefficiently in your life and free up the time needed for your new goal, as I did for exercise in 2011.

18. Review Your Goals Daily
Take time every day to review the goals you’re working on, and do deeper reviews of it every week. I do this by writing in a journal and keeping tabs on a few key goals every single day in that journal. I literally have a daily section in my journal where I write “Goal #1:” followed by a sentence on my progress, then “Goal #2:” followed by a sentence and so on. It forces me to think about that goal every day, and I feel ashamed when I have to write “no progress.”

19. Visualize Your Goals Continually
When you find yourself daydreaming, daydream about what success in terms of your goal will look like. It’s actually great to fantasize about a world where you’ve found success with your chosen goal because it keeps that goal central in your mind throughout the day and the week.

20. Activate Your Superconscious Mind
Tracy uses the word “superconscious” to refer to flashes of inspiration or brilliance, when a great idea comes into your head seemingly out of nowhere and helps you solve a particular problem. I usually refer to this as being “in the zone,” and I find it very worthwhile to spend time cultivating periods where such flashes of brilliance happen on a regular basis, which is exactly what Tracy advocates here.

21. Persist Until You Succeed
You absolutely can’t give up on a goal because of one or two small failures. A step backwards isn’t a call to quit. It’s a call to keep marching forward, perhaps seeking out a slightly different path through the woods.

Is Goals! Worth Reading?
Goals! is perhaps the single best book I’ve yet read on goal setting and goal achievement. It offers an enormous collection of advice on how to figure out what you want, articulate it into a clear and achievable statement, then move toward that statement, improving your life along the way.

Yes, much of goal-setting is common sense, but it’s the type of common sense that many people have a great deal of difficulty with (hence the huge numbers of failed New Years resolutions). This book lays the entire process out as clearly as can be.

I hope that your 2011 is filled with financial and personal success. I’ll be spending today with my family, relaxing and recharging.

Keep reading, because I have some exciting stuff planned for this year, including a completely different approach to putting my next book in your hands.

(Your regularly scheduled programming will resume Monday. A single post will appear tomorrow.)