Having millions of dollars in the bank can make your life easier in
a lot of ways. But it can also add a few complications. Say, when you
buy that new private jet and all your pauper friends on Facebook don’t
have any good recommendations for a Jacuzzi to install.
Now there’s a solution: Netropolitan. The social network provides much of the comfort of Facebook with one huge caveat: You have to be wealthy in order to join.
And to keep things legit, everyone who walks through Netropolitan’s
virtual gates has to pony up $9,000. After the first year, renewing your
membership is an additional $3,000 per year.
That’s a lot of cash, but it ensures that whether you want to
complain about the butler or just chat about the perils of yacht
ownership, everyone on the site is on your level.
Once you’re part of the in crowd you can do things like post a status
message, create groups, and join discussions on the site about
everything from wine to vacation destinations. For the most part all the
same things you can do on Facebook, except without the hassle of less
affluent people cramming up your feed.
Yes, seriously.
Unlike Facebook, however, everything you do on Netropolitan stays
private. The site isn’t indexed by search engines, and the only thing
that outsiders can see is the log-in screen. Transmissions to and from
the site are also encrypted, so you know your hot tips for diamond
shopping are safe.
Netropolitan is also an advertising-free environment. While members
can post ads in the site’s internal classified section, the site won’t
ever display third-party ads.
Important to note: If you’re looking for a service to handle bookings
for your high-dollar lifestyle you’ve come to the wrong place. “Please
understand that Netropolitan is not a concierge service,” reads the
site’s About section. “Our Member Service Associates will not book you a
charter jet, or find you tickets to a sold-out Broadway show. They
exist solely to help members technically navigate and find their way
around the social club.” Adding “Now, if you can find a member to help
you book a charter jet or tickets to a Broadway show, well… that’s
exactly the reason our club exists.”
Oh my God , the Rich will always differentiate themselves.
Forget sports cars, diamonds and yachts.
Today's rich prefer to spend their money on vacations, entertainment and collectibles.
According to a new study from Spectrem Group, Americans worth more
than $25 million think of themselves as frugal but actually live large.
More than half agreed with the statement that "saving and investing my
money gives me greater satisfaction than spending it."
And when asked about how they became wealthy, "frugality" ranked
among the top five factors, below hard work, education, smart investing
and taking risk.
Yet their spending numbers show that they still enjoy the finer things in life—or at least, the finer experiences in life.
Fully 60 percent spend more than $10,000 a year on vacation or
leisure travel, the highest of any category. More than a quarter of
spend more than $25,000 on trips, and 14 percent spend more than
$50,000.
"They work hard, so they like nice vacations," said George Walper,
president of Spectrem Group. "And they take nice vacations because they
can."
By contrast, jewelry, cars and boats weren't as popular. More than
three-quarters of the rich surveyed didn't spend any money on boats.
Only 30 percent spend more than $10,000 on jewelry a year, and fewer
than one in five of them spent more than $50,000 on a car. (Granted, the
few rich who do like cars spend a lot: 10 percent said they spend
$100,000 or more).
"It's not about flashy purchases anymore," Walper said. "Most folks
are toning it down a little in terms of what's in style and what's
ostentatious."
Perhaps the trend toward more private displays of wealth is why
spending on club memberships remains high. The survey found that
two-thirds of the rich spend money on clubs and nearly one in five
spends more than $10,000 a year on arts and entertainment. Fully 60
percent spent money on collectibles, which many prefer to see as an
investment.
The rich also like to spend more on charity than on political
contributions. More than half made political contributions, although
most were under $10,000. Fully 58 percent, however, made donations to
charity of more than $10,000 a year, while 25 percent made donations of
more than $25,000.
Most entrepreneurs have a lot of responsibilities on their plate
from day one of operation. Everything from hiring employees, managing
teams, marketing the brand and dealing with finances can fall under a
founder's responsibilities. Juggling so many tasks can be daunting and
lead to a lot of stress. If you’re an entrepreneur and you want to
become more efficient, productive and successful, take a look at the
list of tools below.
Buffer is a great platform and app to find and schedule content on
all social media platforms. You can also view analytics, shorten links,
create schedules and reshare messages that have already been shared
before. This makes building up your brand and company on social media
extremely easy.
Asana is a free project-management tool that allows teams to
communicate without email, in one central location. Because many
entrepreneurs work with virtual teams, this is a great tool to stay in
touch. Related: The 5 Tools for Entrepreneurs on the Go
Most people already know about this tool, but Chromebooks and ability
to convert and edit Microsoft Office documents make Google Drive (and
accompanying Docs and Sheets) a great way to collaborate and share
documents with your clients, freelancers or employees.
Translate online content -- like news and blog posts -- into an audio
file. This allows you to “read” any content that can help you with your
business -- including articles on productivity, sales and branding
-- on the go.
If you are seeking funding for you business, AngelList is a great
social network that can help you seek funding and make connections with
those in your community.
If you need a logo, social-media cover photo, podcast intro, website
content and more, be sure to check out Fiverr. Sure, the gigs start at
$5 but that doesn’t mean they are sub par. Look at reviews and actual
Fiverr gig samples before deciding on a contractor.
If you need a freelancer for a long-term project or something more
extensive, try Elance, a platform that allows you to post projects and
find freelancers that have what you are looking for.
Original websites are always a good thing, but if that is lacking in
your budgets, Wix is a pretty and simple website builder that has modern
templates that almost anyone can edit.
If you need an office or just a place to work for the day, try
ShareDesk or DeskTime to find a co-working office or open desk that
allows you to have office space without paying for an entire office.
If you are an Android user, connect your Google account to your phone
and take advantage of Google Now, which can tell you when to leave for
appointments that are on your calendar, whether or not your flight is
delayed or even new articles from websites you frequent often. This
“virtual personal assistant of sorts” can help you stay organized and on
track, even if you have a lot of balls in the air, as most
entrepreneurs do.
If you fly or travel to a lot for conferences, meeting with investors
or clients, or other events, TripIt Pro (there’s also a free, less
robust, version) can help you stay on top of flight changes, frequent
flyer numbers and more.
Startup NerdWallet offers an array of airline credit cards, which can
help you accrue points to fly where ever you need to build your
business. Put all your business expenses on a single card -- from
Dropbox subscriptions to office supplies -- and watch the points stack
up.
Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited plan and Audible (also part of
Amazon) allow you to listen and read several books from its service each
month. Just like SoundGecko, it’s another way to stay up-to-date with
business, self improvement and more.
One great way to build a good business is to meet other entrepreneurs
and industry colleagues through conferences. There are several
conference search engines available, but some work better in certain
industries (and areas) than others. Make sure you check out a variety to
see which one fits your needs.
If you are looking to drum up business within your local community,
try Meetup to find networking groups, industry meetings and speakers. EventBrite is also a great place to find tickets to smaller, local events as well.
Surprisingly, Pinterest can be a great place to find inspiration for
new products and upcoming trends (so you can use them in your own
projects), as well as a place to share your products and inspirations as
a company. Power personal blender Nutribullet is a good example of a growing company that capitalizes on its audience’s interest in healthy living on Pinterest.
Once LinkedIn accepts your request to join its long-form content
publishing platform, you have free reign to contribute content as much
as you want. While the jury is still out among marketers
whether or not Google will flag republished posts as duplicate content,
it’s probably best to only post original content on LinkedIn. Because
LinkedIn is already such a large platform, its content will get indexed
faster and could potentially give you more visibility than your
company’s blog.
LinkedIn content is just one way to build your brand through content.
You should also set up profiles for your employees on Contently, which
automatically creates a writing portfolio for them based on the websites
they say they write for.
Think of Talkwalker as Google Alerts, but better. It offers more
comprehensive results and more options that allow you to check for
mentions of your company online. This helps with public relations and
the chance to interact with people who are discussing your brand online.
Help a Reporter Out is an email that goes out multiple times per day,
with requests from reporters for sources for their stories. This can
turn into free publicity for your company. Be sure to respond ASAP,
as some requests can get competitive.
These are legally binding digital document signing services that
allow you to get contracts, agreements, W2s and more signed quickly and
over email. Be sure to check your state’s regulation on these documents,
but they usually stand as legal in the majority of states.
Going back to working with a distributed workforce, Join.Me allows
you to share your screen with another user quickly, for free. All you
need is the free software, and the other user can see your screen from
their browser. If both of you have the software, however, you can also
cede control of your mouse to the other user, allow tutorials, customer
service and how-to demonstrations easier than ever.
Jing is a free screencast (screen recording) and screenshot software
that makes it easy to record product demos, illustrative how-tos for
virtual assistants or screenshots for blog posts and product description
pages.
If you are looking to reach out to journalists to cover your company,
product launch or other news, these directories allow you to search for
journalists by beat, industry or region.
Like PressPass and JustReachOut but for bloggers, BlogDash allows you
to connect with bloggers in your specific niche to review products,
sponsor blog giveaways or build relationships. Bloggers have a
significant audience base and impact on trends, product sales and more,
so it’s important to have a great relationship with them.
I wish I had a hot key on my computer that would type ‘low-fee index funds’,
because I write those four words an astonishing number of times. Or
maybe every time I pressed CTRL-$, it could type out “Don’t do [X]; buy
low-fee index funds instead!” and I could replace [X] with whichever
complicated, faddish investment strategy is in vogue that week.
Then I’d make a hot key to a sentence about dollar-cost averaging,
and another for getting my company’s 401(k) match. Finally, CTRL-% will
type out a sentence urging people to save at least 20% of their income.
With these keys set up, I could be writing finance articles like I’m
assembling IKEA furniture, and my productivity would soar. I could
probably outsource the work to a writing robot, but on the whole, the
advice in them would be sound.
I’d use these auto-generated articles to fight a creeping trend of
risk and complexity I’ve noticed in financial writing. As the recession
slowly recedes, sound advice becomes staid and boring, investors chase
yield, and more complex ideas filter into the mainstream — colorful
boats on the slow, gray water of passive investing.
The other day, halfway through an article about rolling a regular IRA
into a Self-Directed IRA and using the funds to speculate on real
estate, I raised my arms skyward to the gods of finance and yelled
“Why??!?” This kind of advice provokes the worst kind of failure for all
but the most sophisticated investors.
Rather than run these articles on the newest investing trends,
magazines would be better off leaving the page blank save for a short
note: Article redacted for readers’ own good. We should be
clipping these ideas off at their roots. For 99% of casual investors,
the simplest plan has the greatest chance of success.
There’s a parallel between finance writing and financial planning.
Both involve taking simple principles and applying them consistently,
either in writing or in action. In action, this means saving 20% of
income and spreading it between a 401(k), a Roth IRA, and a taxable
account that invests in low-fee index funds (there it is again).
In writing, it means convincing people of these facts without boring
them to death. I realize how unintuitive this sounds. Imagine if Wine Spectator
crowned a $12 Chianti its favorite wine year after year. Often, a
higher cost leads to a better product. It’s taken as a signal of
quality, and usually implies greater complexity as well.
But in finance, the rewards of complexity are illusory. Fortunately for us, simpler is actually better. Boring is profound, a panacea. So, please bear with me as I publish my latest article, written with my new hot keys:
[X] These days, everyone is doing Self Directed IRAs. Don’t do Self Directed IRAs!
Instead, invest in low-fee index funds that track broad market indices.
Be sure to fund your 401(k), at least enough to earn the employer
match. low-fee index funds. Be sure to set up automatic investments so
that you can dollar-cost average. % Try to save 20% of your income and
live on 80%. This will ensure that you can retire on time, even with a
few unforeseen emergencies. Spend less than you earn. Invest the rest.
low fee index funds
