Money Advice Guide

Don Keough—a former top executive at Coca-Cola and now chairman of the elite investment banking firm Allen & Company—has witnessed plenty of failures in his sixty-year career (including New Coke). He has also been friends with some of the most successful people in business history, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Rupert Murdoch, and Peter Drucker.

Now this elder statesman reveals how great enterprises get into trouble. Even the smartest executives can fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility. When that happens, more bad decisions are sure to follow.

This light-hearted “how-not-to” book includes anecdotes from Keough’s long career as well as other infamous failures. His commandments for failure include: Quit Taking Risks; Be Inflexible; Assume Infallibility; Put All Your Faith in Experts; Send Mixed Messages; and Be Afraid of the Future.

As he writes, “After a lifetime in business I’ve never been able to develop a step-by-step formula that will guarantee success. What I could do, however, was talk about how to lose. I guarantee that anyone who follows my formula will be a highly successful loser.”

Author: Donald R. Keough

Hardcover: 
208 pages

Company: Portfolio Hardcover 

(2008-07-24)

ISBN: 1591842344

List Price: $24.95
Amazon Price: $1.09

Used Price: $4.60

Share This

If you’re like most consumers and are fighting the mounting bills that come your way each and every month there is a good chance that a debt management solution might be right for you. There are many debt relief and management solutions available to choose from with most easy to follow and implement. Perhaps the easiest debt management solution to implement is to simply no longer use your credit cards and instead only use a debit card. Unlike a credit card, which has, the ability to continue to let you go deeper in debt a debit card only allows you to spend what you actually have in your checking or savings account.

For many folks the debt cycle and downward spiral starts from impulse shopping. Although it may start out innocently enough it soon balloon’s into a difficult problem that is hard to eliminate. Unfortunately the only real way to completely eliminate a massive amount of debt is to limit your purchases to the bare minimum and for emergency purposes only.

There are some other options to eliminating debt that have gotten quite popular recently. They include refinancing your existing home mortgage (provided you own a home) or applying for a line of credit or home equity loan at a lower interest rate then what your are currently paying to your credit cards companies. Although these type of debt management tools can be helpful at paying off higher interest debt they do have the downside of placing your home on the line as the backup collateral should you default on paying back your loan.

Perhaps the biggest reason why credit cards are the main contributor to so many consumers’ debt problems is due to how easy it is to have your credit card swiped to pay for something as opposed to performing the act of removing money from your wallet and handing it over to a cashier. Sadly, this means that you are actually paying for something on credit (which is actually a loan) at an outrageously high interest rate. If you truly must use your credit card then it’s very important that you obtain a credit card that charges the lowest market rates.

Another debt management solution, which is also quite popular as a debt relief option, is a debt consolidation loan. The basis behind this solution is to use the money obtained from the debt relief loan to pay off all of your creditors in order to consolidate all of your bills into one monthly payment at an interest rate that is considerably lower then the combined rate of all your former outstanding financial liabilities.

In some extreme cases, some consumers are forced to sell or liquidate some of their own possessions in order to be able to pay off their outstanding debt and financial obligations. This could include items such as; antiques, jewelry, family heirlooms or even a second automobile. Prior to selling any of your possessions it might be a good idea to instead check into the possibility of obtaining a second job in order to pay off your outstanding debt and financial liabilities to your creditors

As you can see there are many debt management solutions but none of them will work if a consumer cannot properly handle their credit cards and control their daily spending habits and routines. The honest to goodness truth is that all debt management really boils down to, is making sound purchasing decisions based on having a solid financial discipline.

Timothy Gorman is a successful Webmaster and publisher of Debt-Relief-Solutions.com. He provides more debt consolidation advice, solutions and information on debt management solutions that you can research in your pajamas on his website.

Tags: bills, debt consolidation, debt management solutions, debt relief, home equity, line of credit, loanbills, debt consolidation, debt management solutions, debt relief, home equity, line of credit, loan

Share This