Four major tips to becoming financially successful!!!

Financial success is not always easy but if we can be dedicated in doing some few things, then it’s going to be easy for us. Below are four major tips we need to know and practice if we’re to become financially successful.

Save a lot of your monthly income: it might be really impossible to do but if you try as much as possible to save a major part of your monthly income then you’ll just keep doing so because of the results you’ll see in doing so. I know so because I’ve also given it a try and even had some friends do the same and their responses were impressive.

Study and take advantage of Tax:   a major step in becoming financially successful is being wise and strategic with your money. You need to educated yourself and you need to really invest your time into understanding your options within the US tax systems, then take the steps necessary to take advantage of every tax deduction or credit that you are legally entitled to…the IRS is not going to do that for you!  If you don’t educate yourself, and take advantage of good things like Electric Vehicle Tax Credits, or Energy Efficiency tax savings, you'll have yourself to blame for the outcome.

Try as much as possible to live a debt free live: this is very important for us if we’re to be successful in our entire endeavor to become financially successful. Because the more you get yourself into debt, the more impossible it becomes for you to have any savings at all.

Work hard: most of the people who have become financially successful did so through hard work. It may not be easy but we have to be disciplined and hard working if we’re to become financially successful.

Tax Codes - Capital Gains Tax Rates

Contributed-By: Rich Carreiro (rlcarr at animato.arlington.ma.us), Chris Lott (contact me)

While reading misc.invest.*, you may have seen people talking about "long-term gains" or "short-term losses." Despite what it sounds like, they are not talking about investment strategies, but rather a potentially important part of the United States tax code. All this matters because the IRS taxes short-term and long-term gains differently.
The "holding period" is the amount of time you held some security before you sold it. For reasons explained later, the IRS cares about how long you have held capital assets that you have sold. The nominal start of the holding period clock is the day after the trade date, not the settlement date. (I say nominal because there are various IRS rules that will change the holding period in certain circumstances.) For example, if your trade date is March 18, then you start counting the holding period on March 19. Then, you compute the length of the holding period using the day of the month (not the number of days). Continuing the example, on April 18, your holding period is one month, on April 19 your holding period is more than one month, and so on.

With holding period defined, we can say that a short-term gain or short-term loss is a gain or loss on a capital asset that had a holding period of twelve months or less. Similarly, a long-term gain or long-term loss is a gain or loss on a capital asset that had a holding period of more than twelve months.
Note that a short-sale is considered short-term regardless of how long the position is held open. This actually makes a kind of sense, since the only time you actually held the stock was between when you bought the stock to cover the position and when you actually delivered that stock to actually close the position out. This length of time is somewhere from minutes to a few days.
Net capital gains and losses are fully part of adjusted gross income (AGI), with the exception that if your net capital loss exceeds $3,000, you can only take $3,000 of the loss in a tax year and must carry the remainder forward. Carried-over losses are used to reduce capital gains in a future year, and can be carried over until all used up. If you die with carried-over losses, they are lost. Short-term and long-term loss carryovers retain their short or long-term character when they are carried over.
Discussions from this point on talk about the various tax rates on capital gains. It is important to note that these rates are only the nominal rates. Because capital gains are part of AGI, if your AGI is such that you are subject to phaseouts and floors on your itemized deductions, personal exemptions, and other deductions and credits, your actual marginal tax rate on the gains will exceed the nominal tax rate.
Short-term gains are taxed as ordinary income. Therefore, the nominal tax rate will be whatever tax bracket you are in. More explicitly, it will be taxed at the federal tax rate (bracket) as determined by your taxable (not gross) income line on your federal tax return.
The tax treatment of long-term gains is somewhat more complicated, and depends on your income. Long-term gains are taxed at 5% if you are in the 10% or 15% federal tax brackets (for tax year 2004, up to about $58K for married filing jointly, and less for others). Long-term gains are taxed at 15% if you are fall in one of the higher income-tax brackets (e.g., 25%, 28%, and so on). The long-term gains are included when figuring out your bracket. However, the 5%/15% rate doesn't apply to all long-term gains. Long-term gains on collectibles, some types of restricted stock, and certain other assets are instead subject to a different rate, which may be as high as 28%. And certain kinds of real estate depreciation recapture are taxed no higher than 25%.
Just to keep up with the history, in 2001 and 2002 the tax man offered low rates on sales of assets held 5 or more years. Those rates were 8% and 18% depending on the taxpayer's income-tax bracket. Those so-called "ultra-long-term gains" were swept away by tax-law changes of 2003.
Here's a summary table:
 

Tax bracket	Short-term rate	Long-term rate
10%	10%	5%
15%	15%	5%
25%	25%	15%
28%	28%	15%
33%	33%	15%
35%	35%	15%

 As you can see, there are some large differences among these rates. While you should never let the income tax "tail" wag the prudent investing "dog," the long/short term distinction is something to keep in mind if you are considering selling at a gain and are getting close to one of the holding period boundaries, especially if you are close to qualifying for long-term treatment.
Now what happens if you have both short-term capital gains and losses, as well as long-term gains and losses? Do short-term losses have to offset short-term gains? Do long-term losses have to offset long-term gains? Well, the rules for computing your net gain or loss are as follows.

1. You combine short-term loss and short-term gain to arrive at net short-term gain (loss). This happens on Sched D, Part I.
2. You combine long-term loss and long-term gain to arrive at net long-term gain (loss). This happens on Sched D, Part II.
3. You combine net short-term gain (loss) and net long-term gain (loss) to arrive at net gain (loss). This happens on Sched D, Part III.
   • If you have both a short-term loss and a long-term loss, your net loss will have both short-term and long-term components. This matters if you have a loss carryover (see below).
   • If you have both a short-term gain and a long-term gain, your net gain will have both short-term and long-term components. This matters because only the long-term piece gets the special capital gains tax rate treatment.
   • If you have a gain in one category and a loss in another, but have a gain overall, that overall gain will be the same category as the category that had the gain. If you have a loss overall, that overall loss will be the same category as the category that had the loss.
4. If you have a net loss and it is less than $3,000 ($1,500 if married filing separately) you get to take the whole loss against your other income. If the loss is more than $3,000, you only get to take $3,000 of it against other income and must carry the rest forward to next year. When taking the $3,000 loss, you must take it first from the short-term portion (if any) of your loss. The Capital Loss Carryover Worksheet in the Sched D instructions takes you through this.
5. If you have a net gain, the smaller of the net gain or the net long-term gain will get the special tax rate. This happens on Sched D, Part IV.

The Macadamia Nut (Native Delicacy From Australia)

The nuts are a valuable food crop. Only two of the species, Macadamia integrifolia and Macadamia tetraphylla, are of commercial importance. The remainder of the genus possess poisonous and/or inedible nuts, such as M. whelanii and M. ternifolia; the toxicity is due to the presence of cyanogenic glycosides.

Botanist Walter Hill watched his young assistant in horror. The boy had just eaten nuts from a newly discovered species of tree growing in the subtropical rain forests of southeast Queensland, Australia. Hill had heard that the nuts were poisonous. But the lad neither became ill nor dropped dead. Instead, he found himself agreed. Soon thereafter he began distributing macadamia seedlings to friends and botanists around the world.

Today, some 150 years later, macadamia nuts are popular worldwide – and for good reason. The journal Chronica Horticulturae explains: “The macadamia is considered one of the world’s finest gourmet nuts because of its unique, delicate flavor, its fine crunchy texture, and rich creamy colour.” Little wonder that macadamia nuts are Australia’s most successful indigenous food crop!

Macadamia trees flourish along the subtropical coast of Australia. Among nine of the species, only two produce edible nuts, which consists of a fibrous outer husk; a tan, spherical shell, and a marble-size, cream-colored kernel.

The shell is however really tough to crack and is also used for making excellent industrial abrasive. The Aborigines used rocks. Pioneer orchardist John Waldron used a hammer and anvil to open about some eight million nuts over a period of 50 years. Machines were also used to crack open the nuts but they damaged the kernel which were not acceptable and soon better designs were made with more effective results.

The macadamia tree also had a problem of reproduction. When planted, nuts from good trees produced poor quality offspring. And all efforts at grafting failed. And faced with this difficulty, cultivation for commercial use stopped almost came to a stop until the Hawaiians found a way to solve the problem. They made the needed breakthroughs. And soon enough were supplying about 90(%) percent of the world’s macadamia nuts. And later on the nuts soon came to be known as Hawaiian nuts.

Later on, Australian growers in the 1960’s took the macadamia nut as a commercial crop, using the methods the Hawaiian people, and soon enough the local industry yielded in growth which then increased Australia’s production to about 50(%) percent of the world’s macadamia nuts. These nuts also grow in Central America, Asia, and Africa.

Are macadamia nuts healthful and healthy? A government fact sheet on macadamia-nut culture says “that the oil content of the nut which is (largely monounsaturated oil, or good oil) exceeds 72%, which is makes it the highest of any oil-giving nut.” Actually a modest consumption of the nuts can reduce harmful low-density cholesterol and lower high blood pressure.

Macadamia nuts is a a very good food source for everyone, some people prefer macadamia nuts simply straight from the shell, roasted, or salted. And some people just prefer it in chocolate candy, premium ice cream, and gourmet cookie.

CHECKOUT THE PEACOCK MANTIS SHRIMP’S EYES (Odontodactylus scyllarus) !!!

The Peacock mantis shrimp Odontodactylus scyllarus has, like many other invertebrates, a compound eye composed of visual units called ommatidia. What makes this wonderful sea animal's eyes unusual is that they have ten different types of photoreceptors, as researchers Thomas Cronin of the University of Maryland and Justin Marshall of the University of Sussex in England reported in May. Humans manage with just three kinds of receptors for color vision; while some species have four or five, none comes close to this shrimp's variety of receptors, most of which are found in a band of ommatidia across the middle of its circular eye. No one is sure what the adaptive advantage of this system is, but it may allow mantis shrimp, which have brightly colored and varied markings, to recognize each other.

The peacock mantis shrimp is found on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, equipped with the most complex eyesight in the animal kingdom. Dr. Nicholas Roberts says “It is really exceptional, outperforming anything we humans have so far been able to create.”

The peacock mantis shrimp can perceive polarized light and process it in ways that we humans cannot. Polarized light waves can travel along a straight line or rotate in a corkscrew motion. Unlike other creatures, the mantis shrimp cannot only see polarized light in its straight-line or corkscrew forms but is also able to convert the light from the one form to the other. This gives the shrimp enhanced vision.

DVD players work in a similar way. To process information, DVD player must convert polarized light aimed at a disc into a corkscrew motion and then change it back to a straight-line format. But the peacock mantis shrimp goes a step further. While a standard DVD player only converts red light-or in higher-resolution players, blue light-the shrimp’s eye can convert light in all colors of the visible spectrum.

Researchers believe that using the peacock mantis shrimp’s eye as a model, engineers could develop a DVD player that plays discs with far more information than today’s DVDs. Dr. Roberts says “What makes it particularly exciting is how beautifully simple this sea animal's eyes is, and that it also works much, much better than any attempts that humans have made to construct a device.”

ENERGY FOR YOUR HOME: NATURAL GAS

NATURAL GAS supplies more than 20% of the world’s total energy requirements. What is the source of natural gas? How clean is it? And how much is left?

Many scientists believe that eons ago natural gas was formed from the decay of plant and animal remains, including plankton. According to this theory, over long periods of time, microbes, together with pressure from the accumulating sediment above and heat from deep in the earth below, converted the organic debris into fossil fuels – coal, gas, and petroleum. In time, much of the gas found its way into porous rocks, sometimes forming vast reservoirs, or gas fields, that were sealed beneath a layer of impermeable rock. Some gas fields are huge, containing trillions of cubic meters of gas. How are gas deposits found?

Remote sensing satellites, global positioning systems, reflection seismology, and computers have taken some of the guesswork out of gas exploration.  Reflection seismology is based on the principle that sound reflects from layers of rock within the earth, thus giving scientists an acoustic picture of what lies below. The sound sources are man-made, usually involving small explosives or vibrators fitted to special trucks. The resulting shock waves travel into the earth’s crust and are reflected back to waiting instruments, which help scientists generate three-dimensional computer models of rock formations. These models in turn, may indicate potential gas deposits.

In offshore exploration, sound waves are made by special guns that shoot compressed air, steam, or water into the sea. The resulting pressure waves penetrate the seabed and reflect back to hydrophones attached to a long cable towed behind the survey ship. Here, too, researchers use the signals to form computer models for analysis.

To justify the cost of extraction, a field must have sufficient gas. Hence, geologists have to ascertain both the pressure and the volume of a reservoir. The pressure can be measured quite accurately with gauges. The precise volume, however, is harder to determine. One method involves reading the initial pressure, releasing a measured amount of gas, and then taking another pressure reading. A small drop in pressure indicates a large reservoir; a large drop, a small reservoir.

After being extracted, natural gas is piped to refineries for the removal of unwanted chemicals, such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur dioxide, as well as water vapor, which can corrode pipelines. Natural gas is then distilled at very low temperatures to remove incombustible nitrogen and to recover valuable helium, butane, ethane, and propane. The final product is essentially pure methane, which is colorless, odorless, and highly combustible. Because the methane is a natural product, it is also called natural gas.

To make natural gas safe for domestic use, manufacturers add tiny amounts of pungent sulfur-containing compounds so that leaks can be readily detected and safely stopped before an explosion occurs. Nevertheless, natural gas is a much cleaner fuel than other fossil fuels, such as coal and oil.

To facilitate transport, some natural gas is chilled to very low temperatures and converted into liquefied natural gas. Butane and propane often end up as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which is well-known to those who like to cook on gas barbecues with bottled gas. LPG is also commonly used as fuel for buses, tractors, trucks, and other vehicles. On the chemical front, butane and propane have found their way into plastic, solvents, synthetic fibers, and other organic products.

Like all other fossil fuels, natural gas is also a finite resource. According to estimates, about 45% of the world’s recoverable gas remains to be found. If the estimate is correct, with the present rate of usage, the supply may last about 60 years. But in many land, energy consumption is increasing, so present predictions may be highly inaccurate.

To be sure, the almost frenetic rate of industrialization in some lands could lead people to believe that the earth’s resources are infinite. Granted there is also nuclear power as well as renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power. But will these meet the growing energy needs? And will they prove to be environmentally clean and safe? Only time will tell.