I didn’t post yesterday not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I had TOO MUCH to say and couldn’t focus.  That’s a common issue for me, though.  I think it has something to do with being a big QuickStart.  **If you haven’t taken your Kolbe test yet, I really recommend it.  Everyone in my family has and everyone who works with us has.  It helps to understand how we work when under stress.

For me, I’m a 6-3-8-2, which means out of 10, I’m a mid-range fact finder, a low range follow through, an insistent quickstart and a pathetic implementor.    My husband is the oil on the troubled seas - mid range - 6-6-4-5.  David is 3-5-7-7.   The combination of Quickstart and Implementor indicates that you will be a model builder.  I’m an idea person, who backs it up with research.  (Which is why I love tax strategies so much.  What would you like the answer to be?  THEN we’ll go figure out how to do it)  And my husband is able to talk to anyone and just smooths out the rough edges.  For those of you who struggle with focus as well, it could very well be that you have a high Quickstart and low followthrough like I do.

The tax world is going through major changes.  There are tax law changes, new acts from Congress with unintended results and the IRS is on the attack.  I’ve been a real estate investor and real estate investment fan for years, but I’m not as convinced about it for a wealth-building strategy these days.  Can you make money at it?  Sure.  But I always watch the tax loopholes.  And the real estate investors are losing them right and left.  In fact, the best way to make money and KEEP IT these days is if you are a real estate dealer  In other words, you have a business and it just happens that your commodity is real estate.

It seems that the government continues to find ways to tax any venture that a middle-class W-2 employee could be involved in.  They largely took away all the investment expense deductions for the stock investors and now they’re taking away the real estate loopholes.  And it looks like personal income taxes are going to really jump up while corporate tax rates are going to really drop.  The secret is to have a business.

My other random topic is regarding my son David.  David is now 17 1/2.  We homeschooled him, largely because of his circumstances when we adopted him 3 1/2 years ago.  He had only had 2 1/2 years of school, English was his second language and we felt he needed to understand what a family was like as much as he could.  He was enrolled in an online high school and last month, took his final exams and graduated!  That’s actually a year earlier than if he had been in a traditional high school.  But, now what? One thing we knew about older adoptive kids when we got them is that they are very reluctant to leave home.  Our local paper had the story of a family that is challenging the Arizona adoption laws to allow them to adopt the girl who has been with them for 2 years.  She’s now 18, but she wants a family and they want her.  The part that struck me was that she said she was never leaving home.  David says the same thing.  

So, now he’s planning the next chapter in his life.  He is taking a software course (pretty technical video editing) and just got a sales job at a high end kitchen store.  They have 3 days of sales training starting next week.  Some of the other new hires were complaining that they have to attend the training and are not being paid for it.  I got a kick out of David. He came home and said he got to go to the 3 days of training and it wasn’t going to cost him a dime!  I’m sure he’s not going to work at this place forever.  But, I’m so proud that he understands that getting 3 days of sales training IS a gift.  And it’s cool that he doesn’t have to pay for it.  Forget being paid to be there.  The knowledge and training is something that will help him the rest of his life.  How much is that worth?

And just in general about life - I’ve never seen an economy like this.  Some told me it was a “Starbucks” slowdown.  We have record number of foreclosures and that is definitely impacting a lot of people.  Other than that, the biggest challenge is consumer confidence, or rather the lack of it.  Our economy is based on spending and people aren’t spending as much.  That’s rippling everywhere.  But the problem isn’t really tangible, it’s psychological.  

This is the time when leaders are born.  For me personally, I can’t let the negative forecasts get to me.  I want to be the person I want my son to become.  And that means stepping up everyday, taking responsibility and creating a vision of the future that is better than it is today.