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Co-founder of Apple Computers, Steve Jobs passed away yesterday after losing his ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer.

I have always loved his revolutionary products and have been an advocate for Apple for many years. He has forever changed the way we consume information and embrace technology. We often discuss marketing, branding and product launches; Steve Jobs has set a bar that we can only hope to aspire too.

In his own words he expresses his philosophy of death elegantly:

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

The world has lost one of the great visionaries in history. Yet he continues on as in inspiration to all of us that seek innovation, perfection and success. Our condolences to his family and the folks at Apple Corporation, and all who admired him.

Raymond Aaron

Today’s economy presents many financial opportunities. Many people will disagree with that statement, but to the trained eye, a recession is a virtual gold mine. Finding a financial coach or a mentor can be a way to double your income.

Let’s use your children as an example. If your daughter was interested in gymnastics, you would go out and find a gymnastics program in which she could get the best training available. She would be coached and mentored in a way that would foster her abilities and shape her gymnastics career.

What if your son was a blossoming baseball player? You would certainly find the best baseball coach in your area, and give your son an opportunity to learn and grow as a baseball player. If both of your children had a high aptitude for math, you would find a tutor, or a math magnet program that would nurture their abilities in math.

The point is, no matter what activity your child chooses, you feel obligated to find an expert in that field to work with your child and give them the opportunity to excel at it. You inherently want the best for your children, and recognize the need to give them an environment that provides the best opportunities in whatever they enjoy doing.

Now let’s talk about you and your desires for a moment. Most of us have a career or profession. We all like to consider ourselves to be good at what we do for a living. What we chose as a career many moons ago is a part of who we are in some ways. So what about the areas of our lives in which we are not experts? What do we do for ourselves in those areas?

Take finance for instance. When we have questions about a mortgage, or an investment, most of us will do some research and make the financial decisions that make sense to us. We may seek casual advice from our banker, or a neighbor who knows a little about what we are asking, but for the most part, we make decisions on our own.

When we buy a car, we will research the model of the car we want, shop prices at different dealers, and so on, until we make a decision on what we believe is the best deal, and then we buy the car. Again, we choose to make decisions in areas that we are not experts in based on limited knowledge of the industry we are dealing in.

This is a common contradiction that all of us share. We make financial decisions, buying decisions, career choices and so on, based on information that makes sense to us. Unfortunately, if we do not happen to be experts in any of those areas, we often make decisions that have adverse affects on our financial health.

In other words, we could and should seek out power mentors to coach us through life decisions that can affect our financial well being. These mentors can be found almost anywhere. They can be neighbors, family members or friends who have expertise in the areas that we do not.

By choosing this method of collective decision making, we are positioning ourselves to double our income.

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Have you ever looked at the person in the car next to yours at a stop light, noticed how nice their car was and wondered to yourself what that person has that you don’t? Not counting money perhaps, that person may know a few wealth secrets that you do not.

There are not many classes or seminars that you can pay for and attend that lay out wealth secrets. There are few secret black books that spills the beans on how to accumulate wealth. There are some tips that are available to everyone who is willing to learn and apply to their own lives that can help add to the bottom line.

There are plenty of resources on the Internet or in print that teach goal setting as a way to build net worth. Yes, something as simple as setting goals has warranted hundreds of thousands of books, articles and blogs to be written that support the concept. Goal setting is something that can help, but using that tool alone is focusing in the wrong area.

If you enjoy fishing as a sport, you would have some idea of the things you need to actually go fishing. You know that in most places, you need licenses or permits to fish in some waterways. You know that you need all sorts of gear to go fishing, most importantly a rod and reel. You also have some idea of the best time of day to go fishing, and the best places to go.

Knowing all of those things about fishing would get you to the watering hole of your choice at the right time, with the best equipment you could afford. So would you go through all of that just for the enjoyment of casting a line? No! You may enjoy some or all of the preparatory aspects of fishing, but the whole point of going fishing is to catch fish, right?

Goal setting as a stand alone practice is like planning a fishing trip with no intention to catch any fish at all. Goal Accomplishment is the key facet of goal setting, which is in turn a practice that many wealthy people have mastered. They have become experts at setting goals, and masters at getting them done.

Often, that is the chief difference between you and the guy you saw at the stop light. That is the little known wealth secret that we seem to miss on a regular basis. Anyone can set goals, but few people master the art of accomplishing those goals on a consistent basis.

Goal setting and goal accomplishment go hand in hand. Learning how to set good goals, learning how to define different types of goals, and most importantly, how to accomplish the goals you set, is a process that does not take years to learn. Understand that goal accomplishment is a wealth secret that does not require any special skill to master. It takes a simple systematic approach, and you will be well on your way to financial freedom.

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There are many reasons that most of us have debt. Some debts are unavoidable, like your home mortgage, or car payment. What is common are some attitudes we have about debt, and what is acceptable. Changing the way we think about carrying debt can ultimately help us get out of debt.

One of the most common myths about money and personal finance is that we can or should buy something because we deserve it. We have this false sense of entitlement in regards to our spending that causes us to create debt problems. We think that since we work really hard for something, we deserve to buy it regardless of cost.

This myth can be particularly challenging for those of us who have a tight financial balance. If you are someone who has difficulty saving but generally manages the rest of their finances well, you may buy things on credit and create unnecessary debt.

Let’s say you have been in the market for a home computer for a while. One day you notice an ad in the local paper that talks about a weekend sale on home computers. Naturally, you rush down to the store that placed the ad to check out the possible deals.

When you get to the store, you quickly see all of the great specials on home computers. You are also able to quickly identify a model that is well within your price range. This model has most of the features you want, and has all of the must-haves.

Not far away from the reasonably priced model, you spot the grand pooh-bah of home computers. This model has everything you want and need in a home computer, plus many features that you only dreamed and heard about. This computer is more than you have saved and budgeted for.

You know it costs more than you intended to spend, but since you can get it on a store credit card, you buy it anyway. Hey, you work hard; you provide for your family and acknowledged that you would need the more expensive model to accommodate your family’s usage.

You work hard, your family needs it, and therefore, you deserve this more expensive computer right? Wrong! You deserve a computer that works for your needs and that works for your budget. By getting the more expensive computer, you created more debt for yourself. You also put unnecessary pressure on yourself to work harder in order to pay for the added expense.

By convincing yourself that the more expensive unit is worth the added burden of paying for it, you have endorsed the theory that you deserve the best money can buy. What has really happened is that you allowed your desire for a new computer outweigh your sense of practical and normal spending habits

The way we should look at scenarios like this one is to recognize that any form of debt, no matter how big or small, is bad. We should also note that while we had enough money saved to buy an adequate computer, we chose to burden ourselves with the more expensive model.

We can overcome this set-back by being willing to limit our purchases on things we want and focusing on buying only what we need. By limiting our spending to things we need from those we want, we will be able to save more, which means we can eventually get out of debt.

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