Revive Fashion Show combats human trafficking, fast-fashion – UW Badger Herald

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The verb revive means to restore to life or consciousness or to regain life or strength. The first-ever Revive Fashion Show on Oct. 6 did exactly that.

Hosted and sponsored by Fair Indigo, an ethical and sustainable clothing company based in Madison, all of the proceeds from the show benefit the Dressember Foundation.

Dressember, a non-profit organization founded by Blythe Hill, provides education, life skills, training, medical treatment and aftercare to the survivors of human trafficking. Hill initially started to hear about human trafficking in 2005 when she learned that slavery continues to exist in every city in the world, including all fifty states.

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According to the foundation, approximately 35 million people are currently confined to slavery, 70% of them being women. This is becoming the worlds fastest-growing criminal industry and its flourishing. Because of what we know as fast fashion in the clothing industry, society is purchasing 400% more clothing today than we did 20 years ago.

Not only this, but the workers making these clothes earn just 1-3% of the retail price of an item. Statistics such as these are what inspired the Revive fashion show to come to fruition.

We at Fair Indigo really realized how Dressember and Fair Indigo have been combating this issue separately and in different ways for years, Stacy Imhoff, a co-organizer for the Revive Fashion Show, said. We thought it was a great opportunity to get our two like-minded organizations together to bring more awareness to the issue of ethical and fair trade fashion.

As a graduate of the University of Wisconsins textile and apparel design program, Imhoff approached other women who had also graduated from the program in addition to harmonious brands and businesses within the community. The event had a mix of different brands, vendors and models participating, all of which were proponents of ethical fashion.

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At this family-friendly event, vendors were eager to educate the public about the benefits of this cause.

A pop-up market before the show featured handmade ethical goods from makers and brands around the area, where a portion of the proceeds would go towards the Dressember Foundation.

Here, guests of the event were immediately engrossed in an environment full of passion and enthusiasm to inform individuals about the cornerstone of Fair Indigo and Dressember: ethical fashion.

Ethical fashion the exact opposite of slave labor that is employed to make cheap fast-fashion clothing is what Fair Indigo is all about, Imhoff said. We pay the people who make our clothes a fair, living wage and ensure they have clean and safe working conditions and are treated with respect.

These brands intend to stray away from the expectation of inexpensive and disposable clothing, which causes a high demand for cheap labor.

[Cheaply made clothing] also results in more waste more clothes are thrown away or donated to second-hand shops that are then exported to other countries for resale or disposal. If we can find a way to reuse what we already have, there is less demand for cheap labor. Plus its just generally better for our environment too, Imhoff said.

One stand at the market was home to Lev Apparel company where founder Krystle Marks said she employs women from New Delhi, India at a fair living wage to make clothing. This pulls the women out of poverty while empowering them to contribute to a product with a purpose.

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Following the pop-up market, guests gathered around the runway to witness models dressed in unique, fashion-forward, recycled garments. Models wore pieces made of everything ranging from neckties to mens collared shirts to old tablecloths.

Fabric that was otherwise deemed unwearable was converted into hand-painted art. The oohs and ahs were audible as each piece was presented and smiles lit up the room.

We at Fair Indigo see this as a community-building event to bring like-minded organizations and people together around a common goal, Imhoff said in response to her hopes for the fundraiser. Its been a really fun event to organize and see how excited people are to participate.

What started as a style challenge for a college student in need of a creative outlet ultimately became a global campaign stretching across over 115,000 supporters, 45 countries and six continents and continues to grow. As the Dressember Foundation website says, Dressember is more than a dress.

Join thousands of advocates around the world by wearing a dress or tie every day this December as a symbol of liberty and empowerment to declare inherent dignity for all people, a line from one of the videos played during the fashion show.

According to a video from Dressember at the fashion show, For one month, with a dress as our flag, we will carve a path to a better future for women everywhere.

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Revive Fashion Show combats human trafficking, fast-fashion - UW Badger Herald

Keep me in your heart: Race and class politics in the Trump era – People’s World

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People in the audience hold up signs as President Donald Trump speaks at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, Pa., April, 29, 2017. Some academics are beginning to seriously study the fascination some white Americans have with "Trump's fascist rhetoric," and how, in the face of intensifying exploitation, they are looking to Trump "the boss" to save them. | Carolyn Kaster / AP

Idiomatic expressions by their nature are difficult to pin down. They point to intended meaning but depend mostly on the hearer or reader to construct a definition from context. But meanings arent arbitrary, and they depend on the contested and conflicted sociality of language.

This linguistic dynamic holds for the expression heart of America. That idiom is in the subtitle of a new book by sociologist Jennifer M. Silva, titled, Were Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America. The books goal is to explain the puzzle of working-class politics, or why the working-class, in part, seems to support the authoritarian philosophy of the Trump administration.

Consider: The heart of America implies something definable and knowable about the two objects presented in the phrase. America seems obvious. It refers to a place, a country, usually by the political name of the United States of America.

But, many critical voices challenge this conflation of America with the U.S., pointing instead to its contested history, replete with genocide, slavery, brutal war, class exploitation, and imperialism. What Mexican-American author Jos Ordua calls, in his book The Weight of Shadows, our foundational violence. Foundational in the sense that it is continuously the starting point, repeatedly, for constructing Americanness in a particular way.

The U.S. Constitution supposedly created a democratic, representative, and liberal set of freedoms. The framers, however, crafted many of its provisions to defend slavery and genocide, as historian Gerald Horne writes in his books The Counterrevolution of 1776 and The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism. These atrocities had become imperatives for capitalist development and territorial expansion.

While some people usually regard the political system as a democratic one, it is also accurately characterized as corrupt and dominated by the 1%. (Although saying that can earn one the label of being unpatriotic). Americas economic system is called a free market. But it is defined by worker exploitation, oligarchy, environmental waste, racist and gendered income and wealth inequalities, and corrupt, inefficient corporations that control most political processes.

America furthermore means more than the United States. A name derived from its colonialist history, America may refer to the entire Western Hemisphere and its peoples. The narrowest usage of the term America typically betrays willful indifference to the existence, histories, and cultures of most inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, including the descendants of the indigenous, enslaved people, and migrants. The political and economic interests of corporations whose power emanates from the U.S. and the comprador classes govern many Western Hemispheric countries.

At bottom, America is a place saturated with contradiction. A never-perfected (dis)union of geographies, cultures, peoples, and social classes; lands of white colonial settlement, white supremacy, and cultural oppression. A site, too, of anti-colonial struggle, anti-racist insurgency, and revolutionary consciousness.

So, what does it mean to be at the heart of this place?

A quick look at an online list of 70 American-English idiomatic expressions that use the word heart reveals that it tends to mean something like a site of ones authenticity, honesty, integrity, love, emotion, fervency, compassion, courage, romantic love, ones feelings. Spatially, we use it to mean a center or fountainhead of passion, meaning, values, and essential humanity.

When we get to the heart of the matter, we speak of a place of origin, authentic meaning, the truth about a situation. When something is in our heart, we mean that it has a deep, compelling value and worth in the meaning of our lives. When we talk about a heartland, we likely mean the place of the original identity, the place where you can find those who are the original people of that culture. When we heart something, we mean that we love it, identify our interests, goals, culture, and sense of worth with that thing. When something is felt deep in my heart, it means that truth beyond the surface is felt rather than rationally known. The heart is an instrument more powerful than logic in discerning truth.

Silvas phrase in the heart of America, then, locates her research findings in the space of a merged emotional center, original identity and authenticity, and fundamental truths about America. Because America is more than the geography of the U.S., I argue that meaning is implicit in her words, even if she doesnt intend it.

The full subtitle is Pain and Politics in the Heart of America. Pain in ones heart references a deep wounding, possibly life-threatening, but perhaps of such emotional effect as to render permanent the disruption of bonds of friendship, love, or even kinship. I will return to the political dimension indicated in the subtitle shortly.

The main title, Were Still Here, an utterance from a working-class person, stakes a rhetorical claim to endurance and resilience, despite the pain experienced at the heart of America.

In her opening chapter, Silva describes her methodology for this study as a fluid one. She had intended to study white working-class views of Donald Trump in the campaign season before the 2016 election. She focused her research on a community in the Southern portion of Pennsylvania, which she labels Coal Brook, to hide the identities of her interviewees. She claims, however, that she struggled finding people who felt strongly enough about politics to fully identify with a political party or advocate for specific policy platforms. So, her research agenda shifted.

Evidently, reality forced her to reconsider the media and political stereotype that equates the working class with white people or the equally distorted distinction between the working class and low-wage workers. In this vein, Carmen Rojas, the founder of The Workers Lab, has argued, The caricature is a blue-jeans wearing, Harley Davidson riding, white man who has a job his dad and granddad once had. This working man, as hes often portrayed in the media coverage he gets, feels left behind, misunderstood, and angry because he cant go anywhere without hearing a language other than English and cant turn on the TV without Black and Latinx faces overwhelming his options. The frequent association of the white working class exclusively with small towns and rural communities adds a further distortion of reality.

As it turns out, none of Silvas interviewees were coal miners. And, while the surrounding area once employed 175,000 coal miners, since the 1970s, it has become a collection of abandoned mines with only a handful of workers still associated with that industry. Further, as she notes, in the past decade, rising housing costs, poverty, and crime have pushed black and Latino people out of urban economies and into the coal region.

Instead of finding some realistic correspondence to the white male miner stereotype, Silva spoke with people who hold a variety of jobs, educational statuses, income brackets, genders, ethnic and racial identities, political beliefs, and relationships to the concept of the heart of America. Many white people, who had made this place like Alabama without the blacks, felt threatened by the demographic changes. Change threatened their claim on white racial exceptionalism and identity as the working class in the heart of America.

This threat produced an emotional response articulated as loss and being left behind. It fueled resonance with Trumps racially coded slogans and demands such as Make America Great Again, a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, and restrictions on migration from non-white and majority Islamic countries. Trumps rhetoric seemed to align with prior equations of crime and disorder with people of color encoded in the assertion that Blue Lives Matter. This transitional period represented a new landscape in Southern Pennsylvania politics, which had just a few years back tended to support Democratic candidates actively.

Economic change does lie at the heart of these big political shifts to the authoritarianism and racism of the Trump campaign. Larger numbers of non-white, working-class people in their midst, however, served most to disrupt white self-identifications with the media stereotype. Indeed, Silvas evidence reveals that many whites had (perhaps reluctantly) accepted the exchange of economic insecurity for the psychological comfort of white racial exceptionalism. White emotional affiliations with a caricature of the hard-working white person recall W.E.B. Du Boiss concept of a psychological wage of whiteness.

Class politics in a multi-racial society, by their nature and by all rational logic, require a political and cultural identification with other people from racial and ethnic communities based on the work they do and their relation to the boss and to capital. As Silva writes, borrowing from the Marxist cultural historian E.P. Thompson, social class as a political identity, is neither automatic nor something to be assumed in advance. Rather than a response to sharing the same education level, income bracket, or job, it is a process of constructing, contesting, and remaking a collective identity through concrete social relationships that generate values, traditions, and shared interests.

In other words, organized action, community building, and struggle produce a politicized class identity.

She writes that the new political terrain represented by support for Trump indicates that class is not happening as it used to. This is an insightful remark. It links a shift in class politics to the emergence of a significant fracture in class identity and action in the region that is new, perhaps within the last decade. It suggests attempting to associate this fracture solely with structural changes, such as the decline of coal, manufacturing, unionization rates, or of the emergence of neoliberalism, would be flawed and partial.

What it indicates rather is something potentially more disturbing. If the process of class identity formation has shifted in the past decade, it suggests that class had been made and remade in ways that seemed to uphold racial/gendered pieces of the working-class caricature. Indeed, that this caricature was identified with Democratic Party politics in Southern Pennsylvania suggests a disastrous association of white males as icons of Democratic Party working-class politics up to the Trump era. Silva shows that this iconic association made voting for Hillary Clinton far too hard.

Any way you skin this cat, the evidence shows that many people, in the worst traditions of Americas foundational violence, had constructed a working-class identity that rested primarily on their whiteness. Instead of a democratic alliance of all people aiming to claim power over their lives and communities in the face of corporate dominance, environmental disaster, and rampant economic exploitation, many whites seem to want tight control over the advantages of being a white person. The seeming loss of these feels like the worst disaster, the beginning of the decline of our country.

As a result of apparent trends such as this, researchers have begun to talk about white Americans fascination with Trumps fascist rhetoric, as political scientist William E. Connolly argued in a recent study of similarities between Trumps and Hitlers leadership styles. Philosopher Samir Gandesha pointed to an increase in popular identification with the aggressor among white Americans as a component of the authoritarian personality now apparently more visible in American society. Anthropologist Gregory Duff Morton linked popular acceptance of Trump as the boss to emergent structural changes in the economy that have intensified exploitation for workers.

Since altered racial demographics have challenged the caricature of white working-class identity, a rupture in political identities occurred. This crisis shows that the decline in unionization, especially one focused on organizing a multi-racial alliance, has left the ground open for such a disastrous turn of events. It also shows that racism wont let us put into our heart of hearts the people who should mean the most to us: those who share our struggles, our workspaces, our aspirations for a fully democratic and equal society, our love for hard work as a source of meaning for our lives, our belief that we, together, all of us, make the world every day through our joint labor and deserve to control its future.

Were Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America

Jennifer M. Silva

Oxford University Press, 2019, 224pp., $24.95

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Keep me in your heart: Race and class politics in the Trump era - People's World

ALICIA WALLACE: Where does loyalty lie – with the party or the voters? – Bahamas Tribune

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With Member of Parliament for Centreville Reece Chipmans departure from the Free National Movement, there is been quite a bit of talk about loyalty. The prime minister took the opportunity, while speaking at the funeral of Tennyson Wells, to drive home the point that political parties require loyalty. This is no secret. We know that members of political parties are expected to toe the party line. They are supposed to think the same way, or do an exceptional job of pretending they do. There are to be no arguments, no differences of opinion - and definitely no public positions that oppose the party point of view. Since Members of Parliament are elected by their constituents, this presents a problem.

We have already seen how a partys position can disadvantage a community, and difficult decisions representatives must then make. Do they stand with their constituents and point out the issues, demanding reconsideration of the issue, or do they stay in the good graces of their colleagues within the party and go along with the programme? Recall the debate about increasing Value Added Tax. FNM Members of Parliament were taken to task for opposing the proposed increase, even though they spoke on behalf of their constituents, as they are elected to do.

For whom do Members of Parliament work? Is it for us, the Bahamian people? Or is it for the puppet masters behind every move the political party makes? We know where the money comes from and who makes the final decision about who gets the job (or, more precisely, who doesnt get the job), but those employers - Bahamian citizens - do not have direct, consistent oversight. Maybe we have the right to oversight, but do not exercise it, possibly because we have never taken the time to develop the tools that would enable us to do it within the existing political environment. We may have been lax in developing appropriate tools due to lack of confidence in the current system.

Are we saving our energy for the deconstruction of the ill-fitting neo-colonial system that, in more ways than we care to consider, is failing us?

Politicians are called to be loyal to their parties. In the last election, we saw an overwhelming number of independent candidates. This was exciting, and many of us were prepared to consider them. The issue many of us could not think past was their relative power in parliament if they were, by some miracle, to win their seats. How much influence would they have? If one party got an overwhelming majority of seats, what good would our independent Members of Parliament do?

We now have an independent Member of Parliament, due in part to the reality of partisan politics. He noted a great distance between parliament and the people of The Bahamas. It is unclear how this move will do more than demonstrate Chipmans dissatisfaction with the FNM or the nature of party politics, but it will be interesting to see how it affects proceedings, decision-making, and public discourse.

Members of Parliament are elected by the people. There is, of course, a conversation to be had about the way candidates are selected and the exclusion of the general public from the process. We are presented with candidates, usually tied to a political party, and instructed to make a choice. From the moment they are announced, they become synonymous with a party, a set of colours, and a potential prime minister. Their representation of constituencies is already secondary.

It follows that their loyalty is understood to be, first and foremost, with the party and its leadership.

We have to go back to system, to process and to practice addressing the issue of loyalty and true representation.

Chipman might just show us what it looks like to have a true representative, focused on service to his constituency rather than an old machine and the people who insist it is working just fine. We have two and a half years to see how it goes.

A level playing field?

Conversations about Haitian migrants continue in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian and it is clear many see the disaster as an opportunity to expel people they consider undesirable.

It is interesting to observe frustrated Bahamians as they lament the inability of Bahamian climate refugees to enter the United States while insisting that Haitian migrants have got to go. The real issue here is not immigration itself.

We understand that people enter and exit countries for various reasons, and we are happy to participate in this activity. We intentionally travel to other countries to give birth in order to give our children access to another citizenship. We encourage our children to leave The Bahamas, get their education elsewhere, and try to stay.

We are happy to hire low-wage workers to do the tasks we do not have the time or the will to take on.

As long as they remain underfoot, it is fine. As long as they are humble, defer to us, and do not aspire to anything beyond the work and standard of living we consider suitable for them, they can remain. Cut the grass, mind the children, paint the house, sit with mama, and iron the clothes. That is all those people are meant to do.

A friend of mine shared a personal story a few days ago about his experience as the child of Haitian migrants.

They lived on the property of the parents employers who tried to keep them from leaving, impacting the childrens access to education. They were treated as tools for production rather than human beings.

It is important to note the similarities between slavery and the Bahamian micro-economy and its dependence on migrant (low-wage) labour.

We accept that wealthy people from Canada, the U.S., and the UK come to The Bahamas to take ownership and control of resources and get jobs that were never meant for Bahamians.

These are not the people we target with our Bahamians first rhetoric. We imagine they are somehow more deserving than migrants from the south. We are prepared to embrace people who have far less in common with us, and shun those who experienced the same historical violence, oppression and trauma. Is it an issue of race, colour, or class? What is it, exactly, that makes one group of people more eligible to come to The Bahamas to live and work?

What do they have to do to earn our respect as human beings or, at the very least, to be safe and have their physiological needs met, particularly in a disastrous situation like the one we face now? Who gets to be human?

Dont wait to be asked

Most of us are fortunate enough to have what we call true, true friends. They are there in an instant when we call, they celebrate our wins as if they are their own, they tell us when we are wrong and they help us to meet our needs. We do the same for them and consider ourselves good friends too.

I have a few friends who give me their support whenever I need it. Perhaps more importantly, I have friends that do not wait for me to ask. I think about these friends and the way they pay attention, anticipate and show up, especially as I try to help others.

I think about how difficult it is, when under pressure or experiencing great discomfort, to assess ones own needs and ask for help.

We cannot always expect people to be able to tell us what they need, and we should not make the assumption that all is well unless they tell us otherwise.

We all have strong friends, and we often forget to check on them. Ask them how they are doing and find out if they need anything, but go further than that.

Think about their situation, and offer the help you know they need. Particularly for friends who have experienced trauma, it is important to have visible support systems. Regular check-ins, planned events, and helping without being asked can go a long way.

Good friends, advocates, and community workers take the work out of asking for help.

We use the information we have combined with the resources we can access to meet needs because, in many cases, we see the need before they do.

Dont wait for them to ask for help. Give it.

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ALICIA WALLACE: Where does loyalty lie - with the party or the voters? - Bahamas Tribune

Research links UK supermarkets to abuse of farm and plantation workers – Retail Insight Network

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Some farms and plantations that supply UK supermarket giants are being linked to poor pay and harsh working conditions, according to new research by charity Oxfams global Behind the Barcodes campaign.

The research found that workers in India, Brazil and five other countries are being exploited during the production of tea or fruit for import to retailers including Lidl, Aldi, Sainsburys, Tesco and Morrisons.

Interviews with workers across 50 tea plantations in Assam found that a lack of access to toilets and safe drinking water spreads typhoid and cholera among workers. Wages are also low, with women workers being the lowest paid when doing labour-intensive jobs, causing them to be on ration cards from the government.

The supermarkets confirmed they source their own brand tea from the companies visited in Oxfams research, with Lidl confirming they source their tea from the Assam region. The supermarkets also take the largest share of the price of the tea bought by consumers, with workers collectively receiving 3p of the 79p pence paid by consumers.

Oxfam ethical trade manager Rachel Wilshaw said: Despite some pockets of good practice, supermarkets relentless pursuit of profits continues to fuel poverty and human rights abuses in their supply chains. Supermarkets must do more to end exploitation, pay all their workers a living wage, ensure women get a fair deal and be more transparent about where they source their products.

Supermarkets are snapping up the lions share of the price we pay at the till but the workers who toil for hours to harvest tea and fruit face inhumane working conditions and are paid so little they cant even feed their families.

Dun & Bradstreet head of product and strategy Chris Laws said: With more than 40 million people living in some form of modern slavery in the world today, this problem requires a global situation which has NGOs, governments and businesses working together. Oxfams research has shone a spotlight on how this problem allegedly extends to some of the biggest retailers in the UK through their supply chains and the call for more supply chain transparency to identify and address risks has never been louder.

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Research links UK supermarkets to abuse of farm and plantation workers - Retail Insight Network

Stay Tuned with the Epic Battle in the Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Market – Online News Guru

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A new research document is added in HTF MI database of 121 pages, titled as Global Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Market Report 2019 with detailed analysis, Competitive landscape, forecast and strategies. The study covers geographic analysis that includes regions like North America Country (United States, Canada) and important players/vendors such as Fulcrum Biometrics,Delaney Secure Ltd.,Neurotechnology,360 Biometrics,AKSA Solution Development,AutoStar Technologies,Bayometric,Bromba Biometrics,California Peripherals and Components,Digital Data Systems,DYDEX-HS,EyenetwatchThe report will help you gain market insights, future trends and growth prospects for forecast period of 2019-2025.Request a sample report @ https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/1591640-global-fingerprint-biometrics-in-the-var-market-8

SummaryGlobal Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Market Report 2019Full Report: 2350 USDMulti License (Section): 4700 USDSection Price: As belowPage: 115Chart and Figure: 124

With the slowdown in world economic growth, the Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR industry has also suffered a certain impact, but still maintained a relatively optimistic growth, the past four years, Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR market size to maintain the average annual growth rate of XXX from XXX million $ in 2014 to XXX million $ in 2018, HTF MI analysts believe that in the next few years, Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR market size will be further expanded, we expect that by 2023, The market size of the Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR will reach XXX million $.This Report covers the manufacturers data, including: shipment, price, revenue, gross profit, interview record, business distribution etc., these data help the consumer know about the competitors better. This report also covers all the regions and countries of the world, which shows a regional development status, including market size, volume and value, as well as price data.Besides, the report also covers segment data, including: type segment, industry segment, channel segment etc. cover different segment market size, both volume and value. Also cover different industries clients information, which is very important for the manufacturers. If you need more information, please contact HTF MI

Section 1: FreeDefinition

Section (2 3): 1200 USDManufacturer DetailFulcrum BiometricsDelaney Secure Ltd.Neurotechnology360 BiometricsAKSA Solution DevelopmentAutoStar TechnologiesBayometricBromba BiometricsCalifornia Peripherals and ComponentsDigital Data SystemsDYDEX-HSEyenetwatch

Section 4: 900 USDRegion SegmentationNorth America Country (United States, Canada)South AmericaAsia Country (China, Japan, India, Korea)Europe Country (Germany, UK, France, Italy)Other Country (Middle East, Africa, GCC)

Section (5 6 7): 500 USDProduct Type SegmentationNon-AFIS Biometrics in VARAFIS Biometrics in VAR

Industry SegmentationCommercialHousehold

Channel (Direct Sales, Distributor) Segmentation

Section 8: 400 USDTrend (2018-2023)

Section 9: 300 USDProduct Type Detail

Section 10: 700 USDDownstream Consumer

Section 11: 200 USDCost Structure

Section 12: 500 USDConclusion

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Table of ContentsSection 1 Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Product Definition

Section 2 Global Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Market Manufacturer Share and Market Overview2.1 Global Manufacturer Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Shipments2.2 Global Manufacturer Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Revenue2.3 Global Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Market Overview

Section 3 Manufacturer Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Introduction3.1 Fulcrum Biometrics Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Introduction3.1.1 Fulcrum Biometrics Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2014-20183.1.2 Fulcrum Biometrics Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Distribution by Region3.1.3 Fulcrum Biometrics Interview Record3.1.4 Fulcrum Biometrics Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Profile3.1.5 Fulcrum Biometrics Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Product Specification

3.2 Delaney Secure Ltd. Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Introduction3.2.1 Delaney Secure Ltd. Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2014-20183.2.2 Delaney Secure Ltd. Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Distribution by Region3.2.3 Interview Record3.2.4 Delaney Secure Ltd. Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Overview3.2.5 Delaney Secure Ltd. Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Product Specification

3.3 Neurotechnology Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Introduction3.3.1 Neurotechnology Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2014-20183.3.2 Neurotechnology Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Distribution by Region3.3.3 Interview Record3.3.4 Neurotechnology Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Overview3.3.5 Neurotechnology Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Product Specification

3.4 360 Biometrics Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Introduction3.5 AKSA Solution Development Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Introduction3.6 AutoStar Technologies Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Business Introduction

Section 4 Global Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Market Segmentation (Region Level)4.1 North America Country4.1.1 United States Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Market Size and Price Analysis 2014-20184.1.2 Canada Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Market Size and Price Analysis 2014-20184.2 South America Country4.2.1 S

.ContinuedView Detailed Table of Content @ https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/1591640-global-fingerprint-biometrics-in-the-var-market-8

Its vital you keep your market knowledge up to date. If you have a different set of players/manufacturers according to geography or needs regional or country segmented reports we can provide customization accordingly.

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Stay Tuned with the Epic Battle in the Fingerprint Biometrics in the VAR Market - Online News Guru

The US military is trying to read minds – MIT Technology Review

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In August, three graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University were crammed together in a small, windowless basement lab, using a jury-rigged 3D printer frame to zap a slice of mouse brain with electricity.

The brain fragment, cut from the hippocampus, looked like a piece of thinly sliced garlic. It rested on a platform near the center of the contraption. A narrow tube bathed the slice in a solution of salt, glucose, and amino acids. This kept it alive, after a fashion: neurons in the slice continued to fire, allowing the experimenters to gather data. An array of electrodes beneath the slice delivered the electric zaps, while a syringe-like metal probe measured how the neurons reacted. Bright LED lamps illuminated the dish. The setup, to use the lab members lingo, was kind of hacky.

A monitor beside the rig displayed stimulus and response: jolts of electricity from the electrodes were followed, milliseconds later, by neurons firing. Later, the researchers would place a material with the same electrical and optical properties as a human skull between the slice and the electrodes, to see if they could stimulate the mouse hippocampus through the simulated skull as well.

They were doing this because they want to be able to detect and manipulate signals in human brains without having to cut through the skull and touch delicate brain tissue. Their goal is to eventually develop accurate and sensitive brain-computer interfaces that can be put on and taken off like a helmet or headbandno surgery required.

Human skulls are less than a centimeter thick: the exact thickness varies from person to person and place to place. They act as a blurring filter that diffuses waveforms, be they electrical currents, light, or sound. Neurons in the brain can be as small as a few thousandths of a millimeter in diameter and generate electrical impulses as weak as a twentieth of a volt.

The students experiment was intended to collect a baseline of data with which they could compare results from a new technique that Pulkit Grover, the teams principal investigator, hopes to develop.

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Nothing like this is [now] possible, and its really hard to do, Grover says. He co-leads one of six teams taking part in the Next-generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology Program, or N, a $104 million effort launched this year by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. While Grovers team is manipulating electrical and ultrasound signals, other teams use optical or magnetic techniques. If any of these approaches succeed, the results will be transformative.

Surgery is expensive, and surgery to create a new kind of super-warrior is ethically complicated. A mind-reading device that requires no surgery would open up a world of possibilities. Brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, have been used to help people with quadriplegia regain limited control over their bodies, and to enable veterans who lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan to control artificial ones. N is the US militarys first serious attempt to develop BCIs with a more belligerent purpose. Working with drones and swarms of drones, operating at the speed of thought rather than through mechanical devicesthose types of things are what these devices are really for, says Al Emondi, the director of N.

UCLA computer scientist Jacques J. Vidal first used the term brain-computer interface in the early 1970s; its one of those phrases, like artificial intelligence, whose definition evolves as the capabilities it describes develop. Electroencephalography (EEG), which records electrical activity in the brain using electrodes placed on the skull, might be regarded as the first interface between brains and computers. By the late 1990s, researchers at Case Western Reserve University had used EEG to interpret a quadriplegic persons brain waves, enabling him to move a computer cursor by way of a wire extending from the electrodes on his scalp.

Both invasive and noninvasive techniques for reading from the brain have advanced since then. So too have devices that stimulate the brain with electrical signals to treat conditions such as epilepsy. Arguably the most powerful mechanism developed to date is called a Utah array. It looks like a little bed of spikes, about half the size of a pinkie nail in total, that can penetrate a given part of the brain.

One day in 2010, while on vacation in North Carolinas Outer Banks, Ian Burkhart dived into the ocean and banged his head on a sandbar. He crushed his spinal cord and lost function from the sixth cervical nerve on down. He could still move his arms at the shoulder and elbow, but not his hands or legs. Physical therapy didnt help much. He asked his doctors at Ohio State Universitys Wexner Medical Center if there was anything more they could do. It turned out that Wexner was hoping to conduct a study together with Battelle, a nonprofit research company, to see if they could use a Utah array to reanimate the limbs of a paralyzed person.

Where EEG shows the aggregate activity of countless neurons, Utah arrays can record the impulses from a small number of them, or even from a single one. In 2014, doctors implanted a Utah array in Burkharts head. The array measured the electric field at 96 places inside his motor cortex, 30,000 times per second. Burkhart came into the lab several times a week for over a year, and Battelle researchers trained their signal processing algorithms to capture his intentions as he thought, arduously and systematically, about how he would move his hand if he could.

A thick cable, connected to a pedestal coming out of Burkharts skull, sent the impulses measured by the Utah array to a computer. The computer decoded them and then transmitted signals to a sleeve of electrodes that nearly covered his right forearm. The sleeve activated his muscles to perform the motions he intended, such as grasping, lifting, and emptying a bottle, or removing a credit card from his wallet.

That made Burkhart one of the first people to regain control of his own muscles through such a neural bypass. Battelleanother of the teams in the N programis now working with him to see if they can achieve the same results without a skull implant.

That means coming up not just with new devices, but with better signal processing techniques to make sense of the weaker, muddled signals that can be picked up from outside the skull. Thats why the Carnegie Mellon N team is headed by Groveran electrical engineer by training, not a neuroscientist.

Im super motivated for it more than anyone else in the room.

Soon after Grover arrived at Carnegie Mellon, a friend at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School invited him to sit in on clinical meetings for epilepsy patients. He began to suspect that a lot more information about the brain could be inferred from EEG than anyone was giving it credit forand, conversely, that clever manipulation of external signals could have effects deep within the brain. A few years later, a team led by Edward Boyden at MITs Center for Neurobiological Engineering published a remarkable paper that went far beyond Grovers general intuition.

Boydens group had applied two electrical signals, of high but slightly different frequencies, to the outside of the skull. These didnt affect neurons close to the surface of the brain but those deeper inside it. In a phenomenon known as constructive interference, they combined to produce a lower-frequency signal that stimulated the neurons to fire.

Grover and his group are now working to extend Boydens results with hundreds of electrodes placed on the surface of the skull, both to precisely target small regions in the interior of the brain and to steer the signal so that it can switch from one brain region to another while the electrodes stay in place. Its an idea, Grover says, that neuroscientists would be unlikely to have had.

Meanwhile, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), another N team is using a completely different approach: near-infrared light.

Current understanding is that neural tissue swells and contracts when neurons fire electrical signals. Those signals are what scientists record with EEG, a Utah array, or other techniques. APLs Dave Blodgett argues that the swelling and contraction of the tissue is as good a signal of neural activity, and he wants to build an optical system that can measure those changes.

The techniques of the past couldnt capture such tiny physical movements. But Blodgett and his team have already shown that they can see the neural activity of a mouse when it flicks a whisker. Ten milliseconds after a whisker flicks, Blodgett records the corresponding neurons firing using his optical measurement technique. (There are 1,000 milliseconds in a second, and 1,000 microseconds in a millisecond.) In exposed neural tissue, his team has recorded neural activity within 10 microsecondsjust as quickly as a Utah array or other electrical methods.

The next challenge is to do all that through the skull. This might sound impossible: after all, skulls are not transparent to visible light. But near-infrared light can travel through bone. Blodgetts team fires low-powered infrared lasers through the skull and then measures how the light from those lasers is scattered. He hopes this will let them infer what neural activity is taking place. The approach is less well proven than using electrical signals, but these are exactly the types of risks that DARPA programs are designed to take.

Back at Battelle, Gaurav Sharma is developing a new type of nanoparticle that can cross the blood-brain barrier. Its what DARPA calls a minimally invasive technique. The nanoparticle has a magnetically sensitive core inside a shell made of a material that generates electricity when pressure is applied. If these nanoparticles are subjected to a magnetic field, the inner core puts stress on the shell, which then generates a small current. A magnetic field is much better than light for seeing through the skull, Sharma says. Different magnetic coils allow the scientists to target specific parts of the brain, and the process can be reversedelectric currents can be converted to magnetic fields so the signals can be read.

It remains to be seen which, if any, of these approaches will succeed. Other N teams are using various combinations of light, electric, magnetic, and ultrasound waves to get signals in and out of the brain. The science is undoubtedly exciting. But that excitement can obscure how ill-equipped the Pentagon and corporations like Facebook, which are also developing BCIs, are to address the host of ethical, legal, and social questions a noninvasive BCI gives rise to. How might swarms of drones controlled directly by a human brain change the nature of warfare? Emondi, the head of N, says that neural interfaces will be used however they are needed. But military necessity is a malleable criterion.

In August, I visited a lab at Battelle where Burkhart had spent the previous several hours thinking into a new sleeve, outfitted with 150 electrodes that stimulate his arm muscles. He and researchers hoped they could get the sleeve to work without having to rely on the Utah array to pick up brain signals.

Burkhart had a Utah array, shown at right, implanted in his motor cortex in 2014. The Battelle group is now trying to develop a way to read his brain signals without a surgical implant.

Damian Gorczan

If your spinal cord has been broken, thinking about moving your arm is hard work. Burkhart was tired. Theres a graded performance: how hard am I thinking about something translates into how much movement, he told me. Whereas before [the accident] you dont think, Open your handthe rest of us just pick up the bottle. But Im super motivated for itmore than anyone else in the room, he said. Burkhart made it easy to see the technologys potential.

He told me that since he started working with the Utah array, hes become stronger and more dexterous even when he isnt using itso much so that he now lives on his own, requiring assistance only a few hours a day. I talk more with my hands. I can hold onto my phone, he says. If it gets worked out to something that I can use every day, Id wear it as long as I can.

Paul Tullis is a writer living in Amsterdam.

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The US military is trying to read minds - MIT Technology Review

These Identical Twins Seek Financial Independence In Very Different Ways, Together – Forbes

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When David and Stephen Baughier took on part-time jobs in high school, they remember their dad telling them to save 80% of the money they made, spending only 20% of it. At the time, they saved for big-ticket items, like buying or maintaining a car, but the concept stuck.

Since leaving the childhood home, the identical twins have gone down far different paths. David will reach 20 years of service in the Navy in early 2021, while Stephen worked as an accountant after his Naval service ended in 2002 (he also spent six years as an Air Force reservist). And their personalities differ as well David, the more Type-A one while Stephen more laid back. Yet, theyve both become acolytes and even voices within the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement. Despite their similarities, their strategies, tactics and goals for extreme early retirement were far different.

Identical twins, Stephen and David Baughier lean on each other when questions arise about navigating extreme early retirement.

Our spending habits are fueled both by our environment and genetics. Studies have found, for instance, that twins, even when raised in different homes, invest similarly. But as we move out into the world, were also greatly impacted by those around us. Researchers, using a real financial firm offering, found that if presented with the investment, there was a 42% signup rate. When social groups were told their friends invested, the success rate rose to nearly 93%.

Were motivated by those around us which is why having a social group thats pursuing the same purpose, whether youre seeking FIRE or just typical-aged retirement, helps in the quest since it takes years to achieve. The community allows for a safe place to ask questions while in the process of super-saving.

While you dont need an identical twin to find this advice, for David, founder of the FIRE education platform Fiology, and Stephen, founder of the retreat CampFI, having a brother pursuing the same end goal - financial independence - has provided them with someone to lean on when concerns or questions arise.

Stephen Escapes The 9-to-5 For Now

Working as an accountant within a defense contractor, Stephen understood what it looked like to make more money. Yet, he couldnt ever seem to get ahead in his own finances.

With two kids, a wife and a mortgage, much of his financial thoughts went into just figuring out how to pay the credit cards, he said. The debt always took a front seat to retirement planning. It took a divorce in 2014 for him to really hone in on why he couldnt get ahead.

Around that time, David had come across the notion of financial independence (FI). With two kids and a wife of his own, he began to engineer his own FIRE mark. Through regular conversations with his brother, David mentioned the FI concepts, and a light bulb went off for Stephen as well.

Soon after, Stephen moved into a smaller home, one that could still hold his two children but it wasnt nearly as expensive as his previous house. He also became much more aware of what he spent his extra funds on. His expenses plummeted to less than $20,000 a year and magically, money started piling up, he said.

After two years, he had saved enough to step away from the day-job, at least for a couple of years. He helped out with peoples taxes during the tax season that first year, but covers the majority of his expenses with a rental property and CampFI. Its not the independence that most people seek, but for him he wanted the freedom to spend time with his kids, since he had less time with them due to the divorce.

Yet, in three years of his mini-retirement, hes never struggled to pay the bills and couldnt imagine living life differently, even if his portfolio reached the millions.

David Realigns With Stephens Advice

Davids likely retirement looks much more traditional for service members that seek to give up a career. After he reaches 20 years of service, he will have the pension for part of his income, as well rental properties and a Roth IRA. The combined amount should give him a little more than $100,000 a year in retirement income.

But theres some nervousness around stepping away from the workforce in your early 40s, preparing for a potential 50-year retirement horizon. Because of that, David has struggled with the notion of whether to pay off all of the rental property debt before he steps away from the job or to continue to funnel money into his retirement funds.

After battling with the decision, he went to Stephen for advice. While Stephen understood Davids concerns, he also recognized that David didnt have much downside either way. Stephen essentially said, dont worry about it, do what you want to do, said David, depending on where you want to be on the tightwad-spectrum.

For David, whos the ultimate planner, he needed to hear that to realize he was overthinking it. He eventually decided to cut back some on the savings, so he could pay down more properties.

I call him and talk to him about stuff, said David, and it helps to realign why hes pursuing FI in the first place.

Developing Extra Income Streams

Stephen built CampFI, which now hosts a number of retreats a year to discuss FIRE.

Maybe highlighting the differences in how the two have reached their version of financial independence, more than anything else, is in the development of income streams. David began building a portfolio of rental properties in 2011, and now owns seven homes, providing about half of his soon-to-be retirement income.

While Stephen has the one rental property, his path to CampFI was far different. After he quit the day job, with the free time, he wanted a way to connect with others that live life in a similar vein to him. In 2016, he attended a Camp Mustache excursion and enjoyed it so much that he ran his own Camp Mustache in Florida. After that experience, he realized he could build something, and changed the name to CampFI. He will host seven such retreats across the country this year, with a higher-end goal of ten in 2020.

He never thought it would turn into a moneymaking enterprise, but now he recognizesit could be a meaningful business, Stephen said, one that pays the bills, potentially extending that mini-retirement further.

And just because they make money differently, doesnt mean they also cant help each other.

We understand the decisions to be made in the context of each other's life, said David. This makes us better able to support each other as we talk through the pros and cons of a potential course of action.

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These Identical Twins Seek Financial Independence In Very Different Ways, Together - Forbes

F.I.R.E. Movement: What to know about the extreme-savings trend – Fox Business

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A TD Ameritrade survey finds that most people believe $1 million is enough to retire. FOX Business Lauren Simonetti with more.

Would you be willing to save 75 percent of your income in order to retire by the age of 30?

Thats the premise of the F.I.R.E. movement,which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early.

Participants in the movement save up huge percentages of their paychecks for several years in order to retire much earlier than the typical retirement age.

The trend has become particularly popular among millennials, who are fed up with demanding, high-stress jobs and want to devote their time to more fulfilling pursuits.

However, its not an easy trend to follow. According to Forbes, there are essentially three steps to pursuing F.I.R.E., which include significantly cutting down on expenses and saving 75%(ideally) of your income in investments.

The F.I.R.E. movement -- which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early -- has become popular with millennials in recent years. (iStock)

The third step is to retire once youve saved 25 to 40 times your annual expenses -- depending on how old you are.

To find out more about the trend, here are five things to know about the F.I.R.E. movement:

Even though the F.I.R.E. movement has picked up steam in the last few years, one of the greatest inspirations for the F.I.R.E. Movement is the book Your Money or Your Life, by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, according to Money. The book was published in 1992 and Robin, who is now in her 70s, hasnt worked since she was in her 20s, the magazine reported.

The 1992 book "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez has greatly influenced the F.I.R.E. movement in recent years, according to Money. (Photo: Penguin Random House)

However, Robin didnt necessarily intend for her book to have the impact that it has.

Our aim was not just to have a whole bunch of people quit their jobs, Robin told The New York Times last year. Our aim was to lower consumption to save the planet. We attracted longtime simple-living people, religious people, environmentalists.

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The 2010 book Early Retirement Extreme, by Jacob Lund Fisker also greatly inspired the movement, according to Forbes. Fisker also started a blog with the same name, on which he promises to give you the tools to become financially independent in 5 years.

The F.I.R.E. blog "Physician on FIRE"explains that there are two kinds of FIRE: leanF.I.R.E. and fatF.I.R.E.

If someone is following a leanF.I.R.E. lifestyle, theyre living extremely frugally. According to the blog, thats the approach that Fisker took to retire in just 5 years.

Meanwhile, someone whos following fatF.I.R.E. spends a bit more than a typical early retiree, the blog says.

Along with the difficulty in saving so much money, the F.I.R.E. movement can have a negative impact on participants social lives, according to The New York Post.

Friends and relatives can misunderstand the motivations of F.I.R.E., and significant others can struggle to conform.

One of the bigger issues with the F.I.R.E. movement is that it isnt available to people with small incomes, according to money management expert Dave Ramsey.

In order to gain financial independence and retire early, participants have to live radically frugally for many years before they can retire. However, they have to continue to live the frugal lifestyle they adopted in order to save. (iStock)

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Many proponents of F.I.R.E. agree that no matter how much you cut down your lifestyle, its going to take a large income probably somewhere in the six-figure range to have the ability to save enough to retire before your 40th birthday. Keep in mind, youre trying to out-save a lot of inflation and non-working years the earlier you retire, Ramsey says on his blog.

After years of saving at extreme levels, young retirees still have to live frugally once theyve retired. According to The Times, many people who adhere to F.I.R.E. take out just 4% from their portfolio accounts. So if someone has saved $1 million for retirement, they should only take out about $40,000 a year, increasing it only by inflation.

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F.I.R.E. Movement: What to know about the extreme-savings trend - Fox Business

Retirement at 38 and 41: heres how this couple saved enough to retire early – Vox.com

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Welcome to Money Talks, a new series in which we interview people about their relationships with money, their relationships with each other, and how those relationships inform one another.

Tanja Hester and Mark Bunge achieved financial independence and early retirement in 2017, when Tanja was 38 years old and Mark was 41. Prior to retirement, they were political and social cause consultants who went from entry-level salaries in the low five figures to six-figure salaries during their final earning years. They started saving for early retirement around 2011 and got really serious in 2013.

Theyve been chronicling their pre- and post-FIRE the movement focused on Financial Independence and Early Retirement journey at the popular Our Next Life blog, which includes plenty of tips and insights for people who want to follow a similar path. Tanjas book Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way, published earlier this year.

In this conversation, Tanja and Mark discuss how they learned how to talk about money, why they decided to retire early, how they achieved financial independence, and what its like to live a post-FIRE life of travel.

The following conversation is lightly condensed and edited for clarity.

Mark: We started talking finances pretty early.

Tanja: Mark asked me how much I earned on our very first date.

Mark: I dont remember if it was actually our first date, but it was pretty early on, and I probably initiated some finance conversations.

Tanja: We had a weekend-long date, and I was coming in thinking we were each paying our share. He was a couple years older and I was pretty close to entry-level, so at that point Mark earned about double what I did. So he was asking if he could pay, because he earned more than I did and I had debt. It was out of a spirit of trying to be more equitable based on our means.

In the early years, it was like a whole new world. I was used to eating at only cheap restaurants, and all of a sudden we were going to nicer places, and it was a very different cultural shift for me. I had only ever had friends who were broke, I never had friends who could afford to splurge on things. So we did that for a while until we decided to dial the splurges back and focus on some bigger goals.

Mark: By the time we got together I was willing to foot more of the living expenses so that Tanja could really be aggressive about paying down debt. But its not like I was dragging Tanja into these conversations. Most of the time were pretty much on the same page with financial goals.

Tanja: We were really lucky. I managed to find a way-below-market-price rent-controlled apartment in LA so our rent never exceeded $1,000. In LA, I think we should get an Olympic medal for that. We had one car, a little Honda Civic that we still have, so our base living expenses were very low relative to the market. We could splurge quite a bit and not be talking massive numbers, so we didnt run into trouble.

It was about having low fixed expenses and earning more than we needed, to tell you the truth. I dont want to act like we did this by being the most principled or the most virtuous with our money. We earned more than we needed and we didnt have kids, so that gives you a lot more freedom than other folks might have.

When we first got married, for a few years we used those how long do you think the allowances lasted? A year and a half, maybe?

Mark: A couple years. Not that long.

Tanja: We used our individual checking accounts and gave ourselves a monthly allowance because we each wanted to be able to spend without questions. We ultimately decided that wasnt necessary because we had enough trust in each other to say, Okay, I know that if youre going to splurge on something, its for a good reason. I may not always agree that Mark needs a new mountain bike and he might not always agree that I need a new pair of shoes for one presentation

Mark: Way to make those perfectly gendered, by the way.

Tanja: Theyre not always so gendered! But we respect that the other is not being capricious about those things, so it works out.

Mark: I think it gave us space to trust each other. Having his and her accounts gave us time to realize that we could trust each other without having to scrutinize each others spending. If we had been completely combined with no allowance from the beginning, maybe it wouldnt have worked.

Tanja: We both had careers that we got a lot out of and that were fulfilling in certain ways but they really just took such a big toll on us, on our health, on our happiness, and on our marriage. We were political consultants before, and its the kind of work that you do because you feel very invested in the cause, but its also just really relentless in terms of the pace and the pressure.

As we moved up the ranks, it was always more work, never less. It was always being more reachable, never less reachable. We started to get to a point where we couldnt even go out of cell range on our vacations. We felt like, Okay, we cant do this forever. If we have to do this for 30 more years, what will we even be when we get to the end of it?

That was our overall motivation for the two of us, and then for me in particular, I have a genetic health condition in my family that forced my dad to retire when he was 42 and I knew that could be in my future too. A lot of the stuff we like doing is outdoorsy stuff and travel, so I had a lot of motivation to hurry up and get to early retirement while I was still physically able to do all of the stuff that I wanted to do.

Mark: We were living in Los Angeles and spending as much free time as we could in the mountains. Then we moved to Tahoe and bought a house after the market crashed. We realized if we just shoved all the money that we had been spending in Los Angeles and just started saving and investing, we would have a lot of extra money. We jokingly started talking about a 10-year plan to retirement, but it wasnt a plan, it was just kind of a running joke. We hadnt put any numbers on paper. Then we did sit down and start making spreadsheets and realizing we could do it.

Tanja: Right before we got married, we fully combined all of our accounts. We have our own credit card accounts, which is really because we both had a lot of work travel when we were travelling, and we each have a separate checking account, but thats really where we park money to pay the separate credit card bills. We dont do anything separate otherwise. We have joint checking, joint savings, joint investment accounts, obviously legally your 401(k)s and IRAs have to be separate, but we have access to each others. Were fully combined in that sense and have always thought of the money as fully joint, not as we pay some share each.

When we first moved in together when we were first dating, I had some debt, almost $30,000. Considering that I was earning barely more than that, it felt huge. So we at that point decided that paying off my debt was the top priority, so Mark started paying for more stuff and I focused all of my money on the debt. By the time we started saving for early retirement, it didnt feel like a new thing. It just felt like the next progression in some habits that we had been building for a number of years. We were reaching for a bigger goal, but the process to get there was the same as it was for the other goals.

The truth is that I did have an extreme couponing phase, but that was short-lived, it was time-consuming and I dont recommend it. Really what we did [to save] was that we tried to get to a spending level that felt comfortable but not extravagant, and any new money we earned we automatically banked. New raises would go directly into savings, investments would come out of our checking account on payday so wed never see the money, it would come in and right away leave, and that was the strategy we used from my debt payoff all the way through saving for two places and retiring early.

As we earned more, we saved more, and we never really saw the money. It was all automated. It didnt take willpower, and I honestly think thats the most powerful way someone can save. Not every career path has the same ability to grow your earnings, but if youre in one where your pay can go up, if you just dont see raises as an excuse to spend more and you just spend the same and save it, that stuff really compounds quickly over time.

Tanja: Its kind of a new world. Were experimenting with giving ourselves more of what feels like a paycheck, a regular infusion into our checking account, but we havent totally figured out what feels right yet. Were still learning as we go.

Weve saved enough to not ever need to work again. To not need to write the book, to not need to have the blog though I dont make any money off the blog, I always want to be really clear about that but we did earn more in our first year than we expected because I did get a small book advance, Mark did a little client work that he felt really passionate about. So we spent more the first year since we earned a little more. Were calling it the gravy approach to budgeting. We have a fixed income floor, but if we earn a little extra, were allowed to spend that.

Mark: We did a lot more rigorous planning in terms of the saving and investing side and projecting the growth in our nest egg. When it comes to the spending side, our general approach has been a little less line-itemy

Tanja: A lot less line-itemy.

Mark: When we were working, we always did the pay-yourself-first approach, where we would put X amount [of your paychecks] in savings and X amount in investments and keep doing our 401(k) and the rest would go into our checking. We found that once we had been together for a while we naturally spent whatever was in our checking, so if we had a car repair, we would without discussing it just go out to eat less. Or if we went on a trip that month, we would not do XYZ when we got back home. We found a way to accidentally budget, but it wasnt like we would sit down and look at our spreadsheet this month and say, Whoops, we had this expense, so we cant do these other things wed planned. Im not advocating that method, its just what worked for us.

When we started making progress toward financial independence, we started ratcheting up our savings and tightening our spending. Wed still find ways without discussing to make it work.

Tanja: The bottom line is that we dont let money sit in our checking account that we are not allowed to spend. Now were experimenting with different accounts. We paid off our house so we dont have a mortgage payment, but if we hadnt we would set up an account for the mortgage payment and put the money there. Then whatevers in checking is discretionary, and we can spend it but if we spend a lot on groceries, we cant spend as much on everything else. As long as we dont run out by the end of the month, were fine. [Tanja and Mark have a life happens fund to cover any unexpected expenses that cant be funded through their checking account, and any money pulled from the life happens account is replenished in subsequent months.] Our tracking is really in our investments. How are our accounts doing and are we running through our money too quickly?

Mark: Now that were in this brave new world of fixed income, we might need to do a three-month analysis and actually scrutinize our spending a little bit. Be a little more deliberate about it than we have been.

Tanja: Were traveling so much that its hard to define what a normal month of spending looks like. It might be easier to define a normal year than a normal month.

We just got back from the UK, where we were for almost a month, and we did have a moment because Im laughing because we didnt throw money at a problem, but we did throw points at a problem. We had a bad hotel and we needed to find another, and I was able to quickly call Marriott and say, Hey, can I use some points to fix this? Its helped that we both travel a lot for work and stockpiled a lot of points during that time. Weve used credit cards for points for a number of years, so weve got a pretty good cushion there.

Mark: Thats one of the things, both when we were saving and ratcheting down our spending to save more, and now that were early retired and trying to spend on a modest budget, weve sort of had to get out of the mindset of throwing money at problems generally. So far weve been lucky and not really had to do that on travel. Were traveling at a pretty modest level these days, not staying in five-star hotels or anything like that. Were doing hostels and Airbnbs.

Tanja: This last trip I took was for my 40th birthday so I was pretty particular about what I wanted to do, but the other travel weve done has been pretty opportunistic. We went to France last fall for a month when we basically just put into Google Flight Search look at fares from San Francisco to Europe, or from San Francisco to Asia, we priced the whole world and found that France was the cheapest. That dictated that trip. Not being attached to a particular trip or a particular set of things also helps diffuse a lot of that stress.

Mark: After each trip we try to figure out when we were feeling stressed and what was it in the trip planning we could have changed. For example: not spending just one night in places. The quick turnaround doesnt give you time, you feel like youre rushed. We try to spend at least two nights in places, even small cities where theres not much to see.

I think when youre talking about money or life in general, most people think about where you want to go, and then life just starts happening. Your spending habits start getting engrained and you get a job and the career path often has a kind of inertia to it. For us, once we had this big and audacious goal of retiring early, it just got us thinking more deliberately about money, what its for, the life choices we were making and why. Realizing that you can do something different, to align with your goals, is the biggest thing.

If you have a compelling story about how money comes into play in one of your relationships whether with a partner, a friend, a sibling, a coworker, or what have you we want to hear about it! Email alanna.okun@vox.com and karen.turner@vox.com with a little about yourself.

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Retirement at 38 and 41: heres how this couple saved enough to retire early - Vox.com

This 24-year-old is earning $230,000 a yearhere are the 3 steps he’s taking to become a millionaire by 30 – CNBC

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Alex Sanchez is on track to become a millionaire before he turns 30.

The 24-year-old is an overhead lineman in the Chicago area, works two side hustles and saves around $7,000 per month, not to mention the thousands more he invests into his 401(k) and brokerage account.

Growing up in what he describes as a lower-middle class household, Sanchez didn't know much about finances until he was around 20, and discovered personal finance videos and personalities on YouTube. After watching a few of these, he picked up books like "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki and "The Millionaire Real Estate Investor" by Jay Papasan. He's implemented the strategies outlined in these books, and others, in his day-to-day to earn and save as much money as he can.

Sanchez is a big fan of the FIRE movement Financial Independence, Retire Early but his goal isn't just to reach financial independence for himself. He also wants to help out his parents with their retirements.

"I have to give back to my parents, because they came here as immigrants to give us, their kids, a better life," Sanchez, a first generation American, tells CNBC Make It. "I know all the sacrifice and pain they went through, and I would stress it's my duty to give back to them."

When CNBC Make It interviewed Sanchez in August, he had a net worth of just over $203,000. Here's how he plans to hit $1 million in the next six years.

Sanchez is an overhead lineman for a utility company in Chicago, where he earns a base salary of $120,656. He didn't go to college his company paid for his job training and he pulls in plenty of overtime and an annual bonus.

Sanchez routinely works 60-hour weeks, sometimes only taking Sunday off to spend with his family and girlfriend. It's not a schedule everyone would want, but Sanchez doesn't mind the work.

"I never thought I would be doing this, but I fell in love with it," he says. This six-figure-salary was a big part of the appeal, but he also enjoys the physicality of the job. "I enjoy working outdoors, and there's no better feeling than turning the lights on when everyone's relying on you."

One of the main components of Sanchez's FIRE plan is building up his real estate side hustle. Sanchez owns three rental properties currently, which nets him around $1,600 per month. By 30, he'd like to own at least 20.

"I don't want to have to put in all the overtime, and I don't have to miss my kids' birthday parties or special events" in the future, he says. "I'm doing it all for the passive income so I can slowly buy my freedom back."

He says that this form of "passive" income will give him freedom should he ever want or need to leave his day job. That said, he wouldn't mind making more money for the time being.

"I don't think I'm comfortable, because I don't want to get complacent," he says. "I'm always trying to grow."

Sanchez still lives in the house he grew up in, with his mother and brother. The house is paid off, and Sanchez pays for utilities and upkeep. Though he has a long-term girlfriend he plans to marry, he says he's fine living at home for now: He's able to help out his mom, while padding his savings and investment accounts.

He brings his lunch to work every day, and tries to keep food expenses low: Chicken and rice is a common meal for him, and he limits the amount he goes out to restaurants and bars. In all, he spends around $400 per month on groceries and eating out, well below the $680 average for the Chicago area.

"I'm not really motivated by the material things," he says. "I'm more motivated [by] having the freedom to be able to do what I want, when I want."

Sanchez doesn't plan to live this way forever. It makes sense now, he says, to keep his expenses as low as possible while he puts his head down and saves as much as he can. But he plans to have a family of his own one day, with his own house and, ideally, family vacations.

"I want to be able to help people, and to be able to give back, especially to my parents," he says.

Don't miss: This 24-year-old first-generation American earns $230,000 per year working three jobs

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This 24-year-old is earning $230,000 a yearhere are the 3 steps he's taking to become a millionaire by 30 - CNBC

Easy Investing Secrets to an Early Retirement – October 16, 2019 – Nasdaq

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Building sufficient financial resources to retire early may sound like a dream, but making that dream come true is not as hard as it may sound. The main thing is simply to save more money each month. No big deal, right? Well...

Typically, advisors peg 15% to 20% of total income saved each month as a goal - but if you want to retire earlier, you probably have to ratchet that number up to 40% or 50% of your income. Not a feat easily accomplished when you review your take into account that a good portion of your paycheck goes to essential, non-negotiable lifestyle items. However, if you are willing to make some serious lifestyle changes and sacrifices, it's possible.

A generally new development called Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) has been created around this "sacrifice and over-save now to retire early" idea. FIRE supporters create exacting savings plans (up to 75% of income) and make related compromises like living in small homes, walking to work every day, prohibitive weight control plans, etc. This way might be unreasonably prohibitive for many, yet the mentality offers a few takeaways that may merit consideration.

To start, stick with the essentials of long-term growth investing: Build a diversified portfolio of stocks with exposure to various styles, sizes, sectors, and regions.

You may be able to accelerate your potential retirement earnings by consciously seeking higher returns (and also accepting more risk) in your investment portfolio. But whatever your risk tolerance, your portfolio must be diversified to protect against extreme market movements that could jeopardize your early retirement objective. You can choose from a number of ways to allocate investments to diversify your portfolio, and these should be informed by your individual goals, growth and income needs, appetite for risk, and age.

After accelerating your savings and setting up an ongoing plan, invest your savings into your portfolio at the earliest opportunity. Try not to attempt to time the market. Stay put, and let the compounding characteristics of the markets do its work to help grow your retirement wealth exponentially over time.

You may want to look at growth stocks with attributes acceptable for retirement investing like low beta, strong earnings estimates, positive sales growth, and expected future growth.

The Zacks Rank routinely recognizes lower risk growth retirement portfolio picks, and here are a few that may be worth considering: Darden Restaurants (DRI), Brinker International (EAT) and EQT Midstream Partners, LP (EQM). These growth stocks have strong Zacks Ranks and a beta of 1 or lower, with earnings and sales growth of at least 5% over the past 5 years.

Do You Know the Top 9 Retirement Investing Mistakes?

Whether you're planning to retire early or not, don't let investing mistakes derail your plans.

If you have $500,000 or more to invest and want to learn more, click the link to download our free report, 9 Retirement Mistakes that will Ruin Your Retirement.

EQT Midstream Partners, LP (EQM): Free Stock Analysis Report

Darden Restaurants, Inc. (DRI): Free Stock Analysis Report

Brinker International, Inc. (EAT): Free Stock Analysis Report

To read this article on Zacks.com click here.

Zacks Investment Research

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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Easy Investing Secrets to an Early Retirement - October 16, 2019 - Nasdaq

What Can I Do if I Hate My Job? Here are 5 Things – Thrive Global

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I hate my job! Have you ever said that? Chances are if youve held any position for any length of time at all, youve uttered the words I hate my job.It seems like a prevailing attitude these days.

Let me contrast hating your job from pursuing early retirement or financial freedom because you want to have more control over your time and your life. Though some have said they hate their jobs, most want to take more control of their lives and put together a plan to get there sooner rather than later.

Im talking about those of us who say I hate my job but feel like they cant do anything about it.

There are a lot of reasons for being unhappy with our jobs. Heres a shortlist too many meetings, bad bosses, not enough vacation time, long hours, not appreciated, too much stress, not fulfilling, or not what matches my education.

Can I be honest with you? As the saying goes, these are first world problems. Sometimes I think we forget how good we have it. Ill spare you the soapbox about how good we have it in this country relative to the rest of the world. And Im certainly not suggesting that anyone should stay in a job thats causing them stress that leads to health problems.

Heres the thing that bothers me. I think we have lost perspective on work. That scares me a bit. If everyone hated their jobs and decided to quit, where would that leave the economy? It would be a mess. Thankfully, not everyone quits their jobs.

But should they? What should we do if we find ourselves in an unbearable job situation? Should we tell our boss to shove it? Stick it out?

Thats what I want to talk about in this post.

Polls and studies tell us that the vast majority of people hate their jobs. A couple of years ago, in 2017, Gallup conducted a survey on workplace happiness. In reality, it was about workplace unhappiness. The title of the study, The Worlds Broken Workplace, says it all. The results show that a staggering 85% of the workers of the world say they hate their jobs. Im not making this up. Its not that they dont like their jobs. They say they hate them.

The reason they cite the most? They hate their boss. Heres a quote from the article:

According to Gallups World Poll, many people in the world hate their job and especially their bossEmployees everywhere dont necessarily hate the company or organization they work for as much as they do their boss. Employees

Wow! And there is more:

Only 15% of the worlds one billion full-time workers are engaged at work. It is significantly better in the U.S., at around 30% engaged, but this still means that roughly 70% of American workers arent engaged. It would change the world if we did better.

The Ladders wrote a review of the study and said the following:

The 2017Mind the Workplace report, released by the nonprofit groupMental Health America(MHA) andThe Faas Foundation,surveyedmore than 17,000 U.S. workers in 19 industries and found that 71% were either actively looking for new job opportunities or had the topic on their minds always, often or sometimes at work.Only 19% said they rarely or never think about getting another job.

Whichever study you choose to use, the evidence is clear. People are unhappy with their jobs!

I hesitate to put this first. But I understand the reality. Many of you cant see your way out of ever being happy with your current job situation. So, lets look at some ways you can find another job.

First, get that killer resume ready. The resume should be your best first impression. Spend time getting that together. Consult an expert if you think that will help. Have others look it over and make suggestions. Dont skimp on this step. Most get passed over. Yours needs to stand out. Make sure it does.

If youre in a job that pays $100k or more, start with The Ladders. Their specialty is finding high paying jobs. You can post your resume there, get into networking groups, and so much more. Even if youre not looking for a $100k plus job, its a great site to get educated on the process.

Indeed.com is another excellent place to look. Their site is much more broad-based. YOu can enter keywords into a search box describing the kinds of jobs you want. Uploading your resume is a simple process. They have profiles of numerous companies you can research. You can search by salary range, income, location, and many more.

LinkedIn is another great job search site. Go to the Jobs tab and search for the jobs you want. Here, you can leverage your connections, get introductions, and much more.

These three would be my top choices to start the job search.

With that out of the way, I would suggest this not be your first step. Ill tell you why when I cover the next few things to do.

Im probably stepping into some dangerous territory here with this one. But if we dont do some self-reflection when things arent going our way, we are more prone to bad decisions.

Have you noticed it? The blame game is alive and well. It seems like most of us dont want to take responsibility for our actions. Thats especially true when it comes to our mistakes. Its much easier to find fault in someone else. In reality, the responsibility may not be with anyones mistake. It may have everything to do with our mindset.

Carol Dweck, who wrote a great book on the topic of mindset,Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, says the following:

In one world, effort is a bad thing.It, like failure, means youre not smart or talented.If you were, you wouldnt need effort.In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.

The latter description is the growth mindset. The former is a fixed mindset. If you have a fixed mindset in life, you will likely be miserable in your job. Heres how I described it in an article on the subject of mindset:

People with a fixed mindset believe their essential qualities,like talents and intelligence, are fixed traits.Rather than spending their time developing them, they spend time documenting their ability or knowledge.They believe their talent and intelligence are the keys to their success.Hard work has no bearing on it.Dr. Dweck says for those with a fixed mindset,its not enough just to succeed.You have to be flawless.Its the belief that says if youve got it, youve got it.If you dont, you dont.

Its a dangerous perfectionist mindset. Do you look at yourself as being flawless? If so, how do you think that impacts those around you at work? Be willing to examine yourself critically to look at your role in your unhappiness at work. People with a growth mindset are always looking for ways to learn and grow.

As yourself some of the following questions.

If youre one who says I hate my job, take a look at what it is you hate about it. Is it the area of the company? Do you hate your boss? Is the work boring? If you could do something else with the company, what would it be?

If, after self-reflection, you feel youve done everything you can, its time to talk to your boss. Before you do, though, get yourself in the right frame of mind. If you go in with an attitude, or with an accusing tone, it wont go well for you. If youre angry and cant get rid of that anger, dont have the conversation until youve settled down. Often, the root of the problems at the workplace comes down to communication.

Im not saying your boss isnt a jerk. He or she very well be a jerk. What I am saying is that it doesnt mean they arent willing to change. Think about what you want to say before setting up the meeting. Write down your thoughts. Talk to your spouse, partner, significant other, or a good friend. Vet it out with someone you trust. Be careful when you do that to look critically at both sides of the issue. There are always two sides to every story. As you contemplate the conversation, try to get a feel for your bosss side of the story. Look at things from their perspective.

Dont turn assumptions based on your feelings into facts. Facts are just that facts. Just because you think you know why someone does something, that doesnt make it a fact. Its an opinion. Look at the other possibilities outside of what you think.

Everyone is fighting a battle. Someone who is a jerk is likely an unhappy person. They have baggage you dont know about. You have baggage they dont know about. Understanding that aspect of the human condition is helpful when preparing to have tough conversations.

Lets say that, after answering the previous questions, you find there may be another place in the company thats a better fit. Do you have the skills or education to move into that position? If not, what would it take to get those skills?

Once you have the answer to that question, put together a plan to get that education. Most companies nowadays offer assistance to advance your knowledge. Most want to help those who wish to further their careers with their company. Pursue that education and make yourself a better employee.If it turns out that the job you want and the skills you need to get it is outside of your current company, put together a plan to get those skills or that education.

According to the Pew Research study referenced earlier, people in management are much more likely to be satisfied with their jobs. They are salaried employees with excellent benefits as part of the job. People in retail, manual operations have fewer benefits and lower job satisfaction. The survey shows that 59% of people earning $75,000 or more in salary say they are very satisfied with their current job.

Get the additional skills, degree, or certification you need to move into the higher-paying jobs. Work on your income by working on your education and skills.

Finding other sources of income may sound far-fetched if youre miserable in your current job and working long, stressful hours. For a refresher, go back to #2 and check on your mindset. Were going to assume you want to get better and improve your position. Finding financial independence brings options to your life. Having multiple sources of income is one of the best paths to get there.

Sides hustles for busy people are possible. There are numerous ways to make money that dont take a lot of time. Not sure where to start? I get it. If youre one of those people, who say I hate my job and you feel stuck, thinking about side hustles can be difficult. If that describes you, please dont give up hope. Whether youre an introvert, extrovert, or a combination of both (yes, thats possible), there are numerous ways to earn side income. Heres an article that offers the 19 best ways to generate passive income in 2019.

The most successful people who retire comfortably have more than one source of income. It may be from investments in real estate, dividend-paying stocks, businesses, or a simple part-time job. You would be surprised how little money and time it takes to get started in some of these side hustles or investments.

Dont think its impossible because you dont have the time or skills. You have plenty of both. Focusing on a plan to create additional income is a marathon, not a spring. It wont get you out of the job you hate tomorrow.

However, it might make it easier to put up with or feel better about it if you know you have a plan to move away.

I am keenly aware that anyone reading this whos in the I hate my job mindset, might find this oversimplified. Id go so far as to say it might even piss you off. I mean, no one wants to hear about the changes and steps they need to take to improve a difficult job situation. Its much easier to put the onus on another person. Perhaps you put it on the company, the culture, or all of these things.

Heres what I know. There is one and only one thing we can control in these kinds of situations. No, it isnt our boss. Nor is it the companys management (though they may be horrible). It isnt the work environment. It isnt any of those things. You know where Im going with this. The one thing we can control is us. We cant control our circumstances, only how we react and respond to them.

Its our choice. We can stay stuck in the mindset of trying to force change on others. Or we can take matters into our own hands and change the one thing we can control.

Make no mistake. Its easier said than done. I realize that. We will have a much better chance for success when the focus of the change and examination is on ourselves, rather than the one we think is the reason for our misery.

There is a lot more that we could say about this kind of situation. I like to keep things simple. The five items listed here are, at the very least, a starting point to help get you unstuck.

This post originally appeared on Money with a Purpose.

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What Can I Do if I Hate My Job? Here are 5 Things - Thrive Global

Reconsidering the Advice in 3 Popular Personal Finance Books – The New York Times

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In times of economic stress, it is good to know the basics of personal finance.

Many people turn to books for help, so we decided to go back and review three of the most popular finance books of the last 15 years: Suze Ormans The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom (Currency, $16.99); Dave Ramseys The Total Money Makeover (Nelson Books, $26.99); and Robert T. Kiyosakis Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Plata Publishing, $8.99).

They all have something worthwhile to offer, but after rereading them, I found that all had a glaring omission: a lack of substantive advice on investing. You will have to go elsewhere for an in-depth discussion of how to set up a portfolio and choose among stocks, bonds, exchange-traded funds or mutual funds.

What all three books do emphasize is the need to buttress your finances by doing such things as reducing debt and expenses. And they share a constant refrain: You are ultimately responsible for your own financial success.

The authors have different takes on how to succeed, though. Ms. Orman says trust your instincts. Mr. Ramsey says relentlessly eliminate every last shred of debt. And Mr. Kiyosaki says emulate the rich, who have figured out how to have money work for them.

Oddly, for books centered on bolstering wealth, all three advocate contributing to charity. They say this is the right thing to do in itself, but they also say its worth doing on a spiritual level: The more you share with the universe, they contend, the more the universe will share with you.

Why have the books been so popular? The spiritual content may account for some of it. But the powerful media presence of all three authors has certainly helped.

Ms. Orman had a show on CNBC for more than a decade and now makes corporate speeches on personal finance. Mr. Ramsey has a syndicated radio show, and Mr. Kiyosaki appears frequently on television and conducts seminars.

As for quality, Ms. Ormans book is the best of the three for standard financial issues, though each has an undeniable appeal.

The good things about Ms. Ormans book start with her ability to reduce financial planning to its basics, and with her sensible suggestions on how to reach your personal goals.

Unrealistic budget cuts, like unrealistic diets, never work, she writes. Pare back modestly here and there, she says, rather than try to make big trims. And Ms. Orman emphasizes often-overlooked aspects of adult life like writing a proper will and appointing someone who will be able make health care decisions for you, in case, at some point, you cant.

While she doesnt offer detailed financial advice here, Ms. Orman, a former stockbroker, does recommend that you own index funds and diversify your holdings.

Unfortunately, the book is a bit out of date. It was first published in 1997, hasnt been revised since 2012 and contains references to events like the Dow closing at 11,000. That last happened in 2010.

Her tone is supportive and intimate, and it frequently veers into the ethereal.

Most unconventional idea: Money is a living entity and it responds to energy exactly the same way you do. It is drawn to those who welcome it, those who respect it.

Questionable advice: Even if you own just one mutual fund, your money is still quite diversified, because you own a little of everything theyre invested in.

That depends on the fund you own. If your only holding is an actively managed small-cap mutual fund, all you own are parts of small-cap companies preferred by that fund manager. You are far from diversified.

Representative sentence: When it comes to money, freedom starts to happen when what you do, think and say are one.

Mr. Ramsey has one major theme, which he hammers home until you want to scream. To the exclusion of virtually everything, he says, eliminate debt.

The only possible exception he allows is a small mortgage that you can easily afford (even then he urges that you pay that off quickly).

If you have any debt, even if your employer will match the first 3 percent you put into your 401(k) annually, Mr. Ramsey says, you should not take advantage of the match. He says it is better to put that money toward what you owe.

Financially, that makes no sense, unless you are paying interest charges of greater than 100 percent on what you borrowed. If your employer is matching your retirement contribution, you are getting a 100 percent return on what you put in. Yet Mr. Ramsey says that while he understands the math, being debt-free is more important.

I dont agree. Advising people to forgo their companys retirement match is one of the many things I didnt like about the book, which was originally published in 2003 and has been updated several times since. The last revision was in 2013.

Mr. Ramsey seemed to have trouble finding enough to say. On the bottom of every page you will find this line: If you live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.

That epigram would be just fine, if stated once. But the constant repetition seems contrived to fill space, as does the unusually large type. (Yes, it was nice that I did not have to use my reading glasses, but still.) Even with those features, the book is barely over 200 pages, not counting 20 pages of worksheets and an index.

His tone is consistently stern and no-nonsense.

Most unconventional idea: Pay off your smallest debt first, even if the other money you owe has a higher interest rate. The quick wins will help you build momentum.

Questionable advice: You can withdraw 8 percent of your retirement savings annually and not outlive your money.

Most experts say a safe annual withdrawal rate is much lower, no more than about 4 percent or, using careful rules, perhaps 5 percent.

Representative sentence: I was given a calling: to show people the truth about debt and money and to give them the hope and tools necessary to set themselves free financially.

Mr. Kiyosaki reminds me of Ayn Rand. He says you should focus relentlessly on achieving total independence from the crowd financial independence, in Mr. Kiyosakis case.

He presents his financial tenets in a narrative structure that resembles a novel, contrasting what he learned from his biological father (get a secure job, work hard, play it safe) and his other dad, a rich entrepreneur who forged an independent financial path while living below his means.

The book was first published in 1997 and updated, most recently, in 2017. As it unwinds, you see Mr. Kiyosaki, who served in the military, shift from a job as a Xerox salesman to his vocation as an investor, ending up squarely on his rich dads path. He soon buys real estate to minimize his dependence on a paycheck and begins to shelter income and minimize taxes by setting up corporations.

Own things that generate wealth, he says. In addition to income-producing real estate, he says, that includes stocks, bonds and royalty-generating intellectual property (inventions, books and the like).

Despite the brisk narrative, the book has a ponderous tone: It reads like a lecture from an economics professor.

Most unconventional idea: Dont focus on your job or career. Think primarily about building personal wealth.

Questionable advice: With low interest rates, and an uncertain stock market, the old adages of saving and investing for the long term make no sense.

Saving and investing for the long term are exactly what most experts say you should do.

Representative sentence: The main cause of poverty or financial struggle is fear and ignorance, not the economy, the government or the rich.

While the lack of detail on investing is disappointing and the perspective is often quirky and sometimes questionable, all three books offer sprinklings of solid counsel: Eliminate debt. Live below your means. Look for ways to supplement your income.

Thats always good advice.

As is this, which came from my immigrant grandfather: Dig your well before youre thirsty.

What he meant was prepare for the inevitable while you have time.

These books are flawed, but if they teach people that much, they have real value.

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Reconsidering the Advice in 3 Popular Personal Finance Books - The New York Times

Easy Investing Secrets to an Early Retirement – October 15, 2019 – Yahoo Finance UK

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Building sufficient financial resources to retire early may sound like a dream, but making that dream come true is not as hard as it may sound. The main thing is simply to save more money each month. No big deal, right? Well ...

Usually, advisors advise 15% to 20% of total income saved every month as an objective - yet in the event that you want to retire earlier, you likely need to tighten that number up to 40% or half of your pay. Not a discipline easily practiced when you review or consider that a substantial segment of your paycheck goes to basic, non- negotiable lifestyle needs. But if you are willing to make some serious lifestyle adjustments and trade-offs, it's achievable.

A relatively new movement called Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) has been developed around this "sacrifice and over-save now to retire early" concept. FIRE followers develop strict savings programs (up to 75% of income) and make associated sacrifices like living in small apartments, walking to work every day, restrictive diets, and so on. This path may be too restrictive for many, but the mindset offers some takeaways that might be worth considering.

To start, stick with the essentials of long-term growth investing: Build a diversified portfolio of stocks with exposure to various styles, sizes, sectors, and regions.

To accelerate the retirement investment cycle, you can construct a portfolio designed with more risk - and the potential for higher returns - but it should still be appropriately diversified to protect against larger than average market drawdowns that can be difficult to recover from and ruin any chance to accomplish your early retirement goal. There are numerous ways to diversify a portfolio, and how you do so should depend on your age, your risk tolerance, your growth and income needs, and your long-term goals.

Once you have accelerated your savings and put an ongoing plan in place, invest your savings into your portfolio as soon as possible. Don't try to time the market. Leave your portfolio alone, and let the compounding nature of the markets do its magic to help grow your retirement nest egg exponentially over time.

You may want to look at growth stocks with attributes acceptable for retirement investing like low beta, strong earnings estimates, positive sales growth, and expected future growth.

Story continues

Zacks offers investors useful rankings for lower risk growth stocks for retirement portfolios. The following are a few selections that merit a closer look: Broadcom Inc. (AVGO), American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) and Preferred Apartment Communities (APTS). Earnings and revenue has seen growth of at least 5% or higher over the last five years, with a beta of 1 or lower.

Do You Know the Top 9 Retirement Investing Mistakes?

Whether you're planning to retire early or not, don't let investing mistakes derail your plans.

If you have $500,000 or more to invest and want to learn more, click the link to download our free report, 9 Retirement Mistakes that will Ruin Your Retirement.

This report will help you steer clear of the most common mistakes, like trying to time the market, lack of diversification in your portfolio, and many more. Get Your FREE Guide NowPreferred Apartment Communities, Inc. (APTS) : Free Stock Analysis ReportBroadcom Inc. (AVGO) : Free Stock Analysis ReportAmerican Eagle Outfitters, Inc. (AEO) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research

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Easy Investing Secrets to an Early Retirement - October 15, 2019 - Yahoo Finance UK

Cheap Biglaw Associate Survives On Rice And Beans, Squirrels Away Six Figures To Retire – Above the Law

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Meet Daniel. Hes a 36-year-old Harvard Law graduate who works in New York as an attorney (but lives in New Jersey to avoid NYC taxes). You wouldnt know it from looking at him because his suits are so threadbare that theyre falling apart, but he makes $270,000 a year. Unlike the rest of his colleagues who work in large law firms, Daniel isnt exactly fast and loose with his six-figure salary. He survives on a diet of rice and beans and beats himself up when he splurges on Chipotle. The most expensive pair of work shoes he owns cost $60, and the rest are from thrift shops. He doesnt turn on the heat in winter; he just puts on additional layers of clothing. He doesnt even own a TV.

Daniels frugal life may sound incredibly boring and, well, awful, but heres a little secret about him: Hes saved 70 percent of his salary over the years, his IRA has been maxed out for almost 20 years, and hes got more than $400,000 ready for the future.

Daniel plans to retire in the next three years.

How did he save so much money? According to a profile piece in the New York Post, Daniel subscribes to the financial independence, retire early movement (FI/RE):

The money philosophy essentially, save fast and early so you can quit working young is gaining traction among millennials who have had a taste of office drudgery and want nothing to do with it. Followers combine investment hacks with old-fashioned penny pinching to build up enough savings to quit their 9-to-5, well before their 60s. Theyre also committed to a monastic existence, even amid NYCs many social temptations drinks with co-workers, workout classes and even the odd fast-casual Friday lunch.

Daniels stingy lifestyle has been quite detrimental to his social life or complete lack thereof). Hes single (My previous ex-girlfriend never really got on board. Her concept of what I was doing was being cheap, and depriving myself and her.) and has trouble relating to his coworkers (They talk all the time about the fancy restaurants, bars and Broadway shows theyre going to.). At least soon hell be able to leave the Biglaw life behind and trade his long working hours for more leisurely pursuits.

But for now, the all-consuming FI/RE life is what what keeps him going: Im trying to get to a point where nothing besides death can stop me. Best of luck, Daniel.

Inside the strange, secretive lives of rich millennial cheapskates [New York Post]

Staci Zaretskyis a senior editor at Above the Law, where shes worked since 2011. Shed love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Cheap Biglaw Associate Survives On Rice And Beans, Squirrels Away Six Figures To Retire - Above the Law

America ReFramed To Premiere Intelligent Lives On Oct. 22, 8 P.M. E.T. on WORLD Channel – Blackfilm

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This October, America ReFramed, the award-winning series from WORLD Channel and American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc), takes viewers into the lives of three young people living with an intellectual disability who challenge perceptions of intelligence as they navigate high school, college and the workforce. Directed and produced by award-winning filmmaker Dan Habib and narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Chris Cooper, Intelligent Lives premieres on Tuesday, October 22, at 8 p.m. ET (7 p.m. CT/ 9 p.m. PT) on WORLD Channel and WorldChannel.org, in celebration of National Disability Employment Awareness Month.

The documentary follows three Americans living with an intellectual disability, each striving to overcome stereotypes and misconceptions as they work to create more independent lives for themselves, with the support of family, friends, educators and colleagues. Viewers see 17-year-old Naieer Shaheeds journey through a Boston public school and his desire for a career in visual arts; 32-year-old Micah Fialka-Feldmans life as a student and assistant teacher at Syracuse University as he enters the dating scene; and 25-year-old Naomie Monplaisirs attempt to secure work at a Providence, Rhode Island beauty school to gain financial independence.

Coopers narration begins with the emotional, personal story of his late son, Jesse, whose talent and intelligence helped him prove naysayers wrong and show that an IQ score should not determine a persons worth or potential. Cooper contextualizes the lives of these central characters as he explains the evolution of intelligence testing and disability rights in the U.S.

As Habibs film demonstrates, while many strides have been made to make American culture more accepting of diversity, people with intellectual disability are perhaps the most marginalized group of Americans. Only 15% of those living with intellectual disability are employed, and a mere 17% are included in regular education classrooms.

This film is a catalyst to transform the label of intellectual disability from a life sentence of isolation into a life of possibility, said Habib.

Intelligent Lives is executive produced by Chris Cooper, actress/author Marianne Leone Cooper and actress Amy Brenneman.

Intelligent Lives offers audiences a window into the lives of incredible people making huge strides to effect change in America, said Chris Hastings, executive producer and editorial manager for WORLD Channel at WGBH Boston. Dan Habibs film is a great encapsulation of how America and its people are continually evolving, which really echoes what we strive to do with each film featured on America ReFramed.

Through the stories of Naieer, Micah, Naomie and Jesse, Intelligent Lives demonstrates the incredible impact every individual can have on society, said Justine Nagan, executive producer and executive director of American Documentary.

Intelligent Lives will stream on worldchannel.org, amdoc.org and all station-branded PBS platforms including PBS.org, and on PBS apps for iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Chromecast.

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America ReFramed To Premiere Intelligent Lives On Oct. 22, 8 P.M. E.T. on WORLD Channel - Blackfilm

Living on rice and beans while earning $250,000 just to retire early is the wrong way to live – iNews

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OpinionIt sounds like a depressing existence to me - wishing your life away, denying yourself even the simplest pleasures

Wednesday, 16th October 2019, 14:25 pm

Do you work to live or live to work? New York lawyer Daniel does neither. Or rather, he works to live, just not yet. The 36-year-old, who earns a salary of $270,000 a year, lives on rice and beans, owns one worn-out suit and refuses to turn the heating on in winter. His plan? To save 70 per cent of his salary so that he can retire before he turns 40.

Daniel told the New York Post that he is one of a number of six-figure earners who ascribe to the FIRE - Financial Independence, Retire Early - philosophy, made popular in the 2008 book Your Money or Your Life. Its almost the opposite of the survivalist movement - while they stockpile kerosene and tinned beans, Daniel has the beans now, and hoards the cash instead.

It sounds like a depressing existence to me - wishing your life away, denying yourself even the simplest pleasures, all to escape the rat race. Dont get me wrong, I dont exactly bounce out of bed every morning, birds trilling and sun beaming, before slinging my laptop bag over my shoulder. Hi ho, hi ho, its off to work I go

No, I fantasise about that huge lottery win or that I might lock eyes with a Monegasque prince in my local Tesco Metro (a girl can dream). I could jack in this journalism lark and spend my days as a lady of leisure, idling over long lunches, drifting around art galleries, pursuing all those hobbies I never had time for and napping whenever I damn well felt like it. But would I be happy?

Work is, for most of us, an inescapable part of life. Its not always fulfilling or rewarding - how many of us could honestly say we would do it for free? For many of us, the motivating factor for getting out of bed in the morning is the fact that the bills wont pay themselves.

But when I was diagnosed with a chronic illness seven years ago, and a friend asked if I planned to quit my job, the thought filled me with horror. Whatever would I do with my time if I wasnt working?

In his book Why We Work, psychology professor Barry Schwartz points out that the majority of us are not engaged or motivated by our work. A 2013 Gallup report, drawing on data on 25 million people in 189 countries, found that only 13 per cent of workers feel engaged by their jobs. We are checked out, sleepwalking through our days, putting little energy into our work, he writes.

So it makes sense that people would want to escape it. But we can also change the way we work, albeit in a small way. A happy worker, Schwartz explains, feels they are given the opportunity to do their best and learn, feels appreciated by colleagues and feels that what they do matters. And as the retirement age inches ever higher, it has never been more important for employers to be aware of these needs.

The working day can be a chance to connect with people, to grow and learn, to overcome a challenge and feel a certain sense of (albeit weary) satisfaction at the end of it. If you hate your job, perhaps you should look at changing your job rather than waiting for the day you can stop working.

Besides, most of us are not going anywhere for a while. Daniel may have the self-control to save his pennies, but I fritter much of my salary away on coffee and cake, clothes and travel. But Im ok with that - my nest egg is far from golden, and I may be working until the day I die, but then again (not to get too Alanis Morissette about the whole thing) so might he. Ill take the simple pleasures now, while I can enjoy them, because you never know whats around the corner.

Ultimately, work is a reason to get out of bed in the morning. An aimless life would suit me just fine, for a while, but without a purpose, something to drive me, I imagine even the long lunches and galleries would become dull.

Still, good luck to Daniel - I hope his magic beans bring him everything he hoped for.

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Living on rice and beans while earning $250,000 just to retire early is the wrong way to live - iNews

You really should try these retirement calculators – The Globe and Mail

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The ultimate retirement planning question is not how much have you saved its how much income you can expect every year once youve left the workforce. Of course, you also want to know how long the money will last.

I encourage you to consult a financial planner to test your retirement readiness, but its not easy to find someone who will crunch numbers and offer an opinion without also trying to sell you products and services. Ill have more to say about this in an upcoming column. For now, take a look at a few free online retirement calculators:

1.) The Personal Enhanced Retirement Calculator (PERC): Built by Fred Vettese, a now-retired actuary who has written a book called Retirement Income For Life: Getting More Without Saving More. PERC is meant for people aged 50 and older and designed to work in tandem with the book, but you can easily use it on its own. Answer questions about your financial situation and retirement savings and PERC will show you how much you can spend in retirement, and how you can improve this amount by taking measures like starting your Canada Pension Plan retirement benefits at age 70 instead of the usual 65 or earlier. Another good feature is that you can include your spouse.

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2.) The Retirement Cash Flow Calculator: This one is offered by on GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca, an educational website run by the Ontario Securities Commission. Add personal details about your expenses in retirement and savings and find out the estimated value of your investments at retirement, and how long your money will last.

3.) The Canadian Retirement Income Calculator: The federal government offers this detailed calculator, which does something particularly useful in advising users to gather certain information in advance. Set a goal for your retirement income and then see if youre close. If not, see what changes can be made to get you where you need to be.

4.) MoneyPages SmartPlanner: Offers a detailed look at your retirement finances, and you can add your spouse as well. See how well your retirement plan could withstand a stock market crash.

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Robs personal finance reading list

10 things you should know about Air Canada

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The Travel Hacking For Canadians website tells you some insider stuff about Air Canada, some of it potentially useful in saving on travel costs.

She put herself on an adult allowance

Determined to afford travel, this millennial put herself on a daily budget that forced her to evaluate every cent of spending. Her conclusion is that a daily allowance is the way to go if you want to control your finances.

Fix your broken china with milk

Ten weird and wacky non-food uses for household food items. Apparently, a bath of hot milk will repair cracked china. Now for some popular snack foods you no longer need to buy.

Why they ditched the F.I.R.E. movement

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F.I.R.E. stands for financial independence, retire early. It means saving hard so you can pull back from full-time work or retire completely well before age 65. I wrote about my recent visit to a retreat held for F.I.R.E. followers. Here, a blogger writes about why she and her spouse decided F.I.R.E. wasnt for them.

Ask Rob

Q: My father set up joint brokerage accounts for me and one for each of my siblings. I have long since taken over managing my account, but my sister doesnt want anything to do with managing hers. My father isnt getting any younger and he and I have been talking about what to do with the account when he isnt here to manage it for her. She will likely use it for retirement income in about 10 years. Do you have any recommendations for constructing a couch potato-like portfolio for retirement income?

A: Heres a thought help your sister transfer the account to a robo-adviser. Shed get a couch potato portfolio (built with low-cost exchange-traded funds), with a reasonable extra cost for building and managing the portfolio over time.

Do you have a question for me? Send it my way. Sorry I cant answer every one personally. Questions and answers are edited for length and clarity.

Todays financial tool

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A handy rundown on the annual contribution limits for tax-free savings accounts, with details on how to find your own personal contribution details.

Podcast of the week

I talk to Bruce Sellery on his Moolala podcast about why teenagers should have credit cards.

What Ive been writing about

More Carrick and money coverage For more money stories, follow me on Instagram and Twitter, and join the discussion on my Facebook page. Millennial readers, join our Gen Y Money Facebook group. Send us an e-mail to let us know what you think of my newsletter. Want to subscribe? Click here to sign up.

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You really should try these retirement calculators - The Globe and Mail

Dont put off starting a business, waiting for the perfect time. That time is now – The Guardian

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At the recent launch of the Indigenous Business Month, its co-founder, Michelle Evans, spoke about ingenuity in the Indigenous business sector and the many forms it takes.

For me ingenuity in the Indigenous business space is not an intellectual or abstract concept related to technology and only operating in the sexy start-up space. As Evans noted, Indigenous businesses do this every day. We identify a market need or demand and are original in our solutions.

Over the past few years I have worked with hundreds of Indigenous businesses and in every one I have seen this at play. Ingenuity is a natural part of Indigenous business because often we start from a base of nothing in terms of capital.

The vast majority dont have intergenerational wealth, investment properties or even homes to leverage business loans to enable them to start a business, let alone start a business big and pretty. I have seen the inventive ways Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the country have bootstrapped the ideas they are passionate about to start their businesses.

While some players in the space have been lucky enough to develop relationships and then manage to leverage the buying power of established capacity partners, I am actually more interested in the bootstrappers. There is just something you have to admire about their achievements, even if those achievements are just managing to get something off the ground from the aunty who was happy to sit at the picnic table in the park to test her idea that there was an interest in cultural tourism in her small town, to the brother who created a business to employ family when no one else would.

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.

This is one of the key messages that gets repeated over and over in my workshops. This message by Arthur Ashe gives you permission to just start. We all have that cousin who has been waiting years to start his business. And every Christmas for the last decade and a half, he has told you about that one great idea that he is waiting to start one day. Waiting. For. The. Perfect. Time.

That time is now.

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can reminds us that we have tradable skills and knowledge that can form the foundations of a successful business. It means you dont need to start a business in debt. Do what is comfortable and practical for you and your family. Its also a great way to start a business, and you dont have the pressures of huge loan repayments hanging over you.

Our businesses have natural problem-solving skills and ingenuity because this is how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people adapted, sustainably managed and flourished on this continent for over 60,000 years.

Our businesses need the advice and tools to navigate the complex business systems and processes that have been put in place. Many businesses just need to be given a chance and they will flourish.

In 2016 I was given an opportunity to develop and deliver a business accelerator program in the lead-up to the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. The program included workshops and one-on-one mentoring. Overwhelmingly respondents reported improved knowledge and skills needed to tender successfully, an increased sense of community and connection to other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses, and increased achievable opportunities and greater confidence to do business. As a result of the program, those 15 businesses reported over $2m in revenue generated. They continue to be an inspiration to their communities and the communities they operate in.

Our businesses are constantly under-estimated and being told what they want to achieve is just not possible (for a person like you?). So many business leaders I work with didnt take no for an answer, even when they were on the receiving end of significant unconscious bias, policies of low to no expectations or just outright racism.

Theres a saying that Ive heard a lot over the past few years: if you can see it, you can be it. This is especially true for Indigenous business. Where a decade ago there were just a few Indigenous businesses in specific industries leading the charge, there are now an estimated 12,000 to 20,000 of them operating across Australia.

This Indigenous Business Month we celebrate every single one of these businesses. As Evans said: Our ingenuity is seen in the many Indigenous businesses right around the country from urban, regional and remote locations. It is seen in each and every business owner, working hard to build financial independence. We must showcase our talent and our success.

Palawa woman Emma Kerslake is owner of Yolla Consulting. She is a former international lawyer and diplomat, now small business trainer and advisor. She is an active member of the South East Queensland Indigenous Chamber of Commerce, the Gold Coast coordinator for Black Coffee and provides pro-bono support to businesses and organisations across South-East Queensland

Guardian Australia is proud to partner with IndigenousX to showcase the diversity of Indigenous peoples and opinions from around the country

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Dont put off starting a business, waiting for the perfect time. That time is now - The Guardian

How graduates in the UAE can start their careers on the right financial footing – The National

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Top financial tips for graduates

Araminta Robertson, of the Financially Mint blog, shares her financial advice for university leavers:

1. Build digital or technical skills:After graduation, people canfind it extremely hard to find jobs. From programming to digital marketing, your early twenties are for building skills. Future employers will want people with tech skills.

2. Side hustle: At 16, I lived in a village and started teaching online, as well as doing work as a virtual assistant and marketer. There are six skills you can use online: translation; teaching; programming; digital marketing; design and writing. If you master two, youll always be able to make money.

3. Networking: Knowing how to make connections is extremely useful. UseLinkedIntofind people who have the job you want, connect and ask to meet for coffee. Ask how they did it and if they know anyone who can help you. I securedquite a few clients this way.

4. Pay yourself first: The minute you receive any income, put about 15 per cent aside into a savings account you wont touch, to go towards your emergency fund or to start investing. I do 20 per cent. It helped me start saving immediately.

It's that time of year when fresh graduates are knuckling down to the job hunt after a summer celebrating the end of university.

But competition for early-career roles is fierce in the UAE, and graduates must work hard to ensure they start their working life on a firm financial footing to avoid falling into debt.

UAE resident Saad Saeed, 21, from Pakistan, recently graduated with a chemical engineering degree and dubs himself a Ninja No Income, No Job, no Assets.

I realised that if I understood how money works and how to manage it properly, Id be set for life.

Araminta Robertson, Financially Mint

The pressure is on for him to find work as although he was born in the UAE and lives with family in Ruwais in Abu Dhabi he only has a year, post-graduation, on his residence visa and must then find a company to sponsor him or leave the UAE. Its a worrisome, ticking deadline, he admits.

Mr Saeed says that, while he has no debt and pays no rent to stay with his parents, he is at a neutral point financially, although he has made some money investing in crypto-currency.

Araminta Robertson, 20, turned her lack of financial knowledge into a career, starting her Financially Mint blog about personal finance for the young when she went to university two years ago.

I realised there was a huge lack of financial education in universities and the education system in general, she says. And I realised that if I understood how money works and how to manage it properly, Id be set for life.

Two years on, the Scot who grew up in Spain has used her newfound knowledge to become a financial copywriter for FinTech start-ups in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, having dropped out of her accounting degree after three months. She also co-hosts a podcast on financial independence.

Interviewing many people in their thirties aiming to reach financial independence and to retire early (a goal known as FIRE), Ms Robertson advises students and new graduates not to focus on making as much money as possible early on but instead on figuring out the right career. I call this career testing, she says. Take a year figuring out what you want to do. A career is something you build.

The real money comes at the peak of your career when youre 40 or 50 and, if youre trying to become financially independent in your thirties, you wont reach that. Rather than hoarding to retire early, it makes more sense to me to find something you enjoy doing, right from the start, and stick with it. Then you dont feel you have to quit.

The most important things to focus on financially in the early career years, Ms Robertson says, are to build your skills, your portfolio and a six-month emergency fund.

As part of his degree Mr Saeed undertook a six-week internship at an oil and gas contractor, earning Dh2,000, but he says he is open to any role related to the engineering field. Competition is cut-throat, he adds, with many older candidates from overseas with four or five years experience competing with fresh, local graduates.

He is considering continuing his studies for now and going abroad to get a masters degree instead. It definitely feels a little discouraging, he says.

While new graduates may not have much money, its worth investing in getting your CV and LinkedIn profile professionally created, says Dubai human resources director Caroline Finch, as you need to stand out from the crowd to get the best-paying jobs.

Employers are looking for behaviours and values aligned to their business as well as experience, she says. Time spent on projects, including voluntary ones, that benefit others or the environment are a must to mention.

She also advises new graduates to ensure their social media accounts are up to scrutiny. This check is common practice and often overlooked, she warns.

Experts also say it is worth looking at internships to enhance your resume, even if they are unpaid. Gareth El Mettouri, associate director at recruiter Robert Half UAE, says students and recent graduates should use their professional network or approach businesses which are connected to their university.

Paul Stock, an education consultant at the Hale Education Group, agrees, saying internships offer invaluable networking and mentorship opportunities" and can be found through university career service offices, which tend to be sorely underutilised by students.

An increasing number of universities like Mr Saeeds offer co-operative education programmes, Mr Stock says, giving their students credits for taking internships, which are correlated with high postgraduate employment rates.

Ambroz Neil, managing principal at London-based career consultancy Alexander Partners, dubs internships the long interview. Students, if sensible, he says, will also use an internship as an extended interview to ensure a good fit with a company. While he believes internships should be paid and last no more than three months, he says many do offer only lunch and travel expenses.

When it comes to salary, he says it is the last thing to talk about in negotiations firstly, decide if you want to work there and if the company wants you. Once an offer is made, its time to play hardball as the employer will already have a range that they can operate within. Benchmarking is best done by talking to people in the industry, asking recruitment companies and attending graduate fairs, he advises.

Robert Half UAE also offers a salary guide and says analyst, developer and finance manager are the most in-demand roles in the country.

For those who have not even started university and are yet to choose a degree course, short-term UK loan provider Satsuma Loans has reviewed UK government data to determine that medicine and dentistry are the careers paying the most in years one to five post-graduation.

Graduates average a starting salary of 36,600 (Dh166,688 per annum or Dh10,790 per month after tax), 47,100 in year five and 53,300, a 45 per cent hike, 10 years after graduation.

Medicine is followed by economics, engineering, mathematical sciences and pharmacology in terms of highest average wages.

At the bottom end of the scale are graduates of creative arts and design (earning 14,900 or Dh67,862 as fresh graduates and rising to 23,300 or Dh106,113 Dh7,355 after tax per month after a decade), then agriculture, humanities and liberal arts, health and social care and sociology.

Updated: October 16, 2019 02:42 PM

Araminta Robertson, of the Financially Mint blog, shares her financial advice for university leavers:

1. Build digital or technical skills:After graduation, people canfind it extremely hard to find jobs. From programming to digital marketing, your early twenties are for building skills. Future employers will want people with tech skills.

2. Side hustle: At 16, I lived in a village and started teaching online, as well as doing work as a virtual assistant and marketer. There are six skills you can use online: translation; teaching; programming; digital marketing; design and writing. If you master two, youll always be able to make money.

3. Networking: Knowing how to make connections is extremely useful. UseLinkedIntofind people who have the job you want, connect and ask to meet for coffee. Ask how they did it and if they know anyone who can help you. I securedquite a few clients this way.

4. Pay yourself first: The minute you receive any income, put about 15 per cent aside into a savings account you wont touch, to go towards your emergency fund or to start investing. I do 20 per cent. It helped me start saving immediately.

Read more:

How graduates in the UAE can start their careers on the right financial footing - The National