“I’m not a very productive person, but I recently finished the internet.   When you do, a picture of Bill Gates appears, and you get to enter your initials.”   Traveling between appointments and listening to the radio recently, I heard comedian David O’Doherty share this little tidbit that made me laugh.   As he went on to observe how ironic it was that a bald man was making fun of his hair, I thought more about his internet comment and concluded that this should be the subject of this week’s edition of our award-winning publication.   If you’re scratching your head and wondering where I’m going with this, then you’re probably new to our weekly missive.   For those of you who are veterans, you’re probably just saying, “Get on with it!   I have a flan in the oven and don’t have time for this twaddle!”   To the newbies, welcom e!   To the veterans, please don’t invite me over for dessert! With inventories reaching historic lows in the real...

Contrary to what we learned as kids, the idea that the Earth was flat back in the 15 th Century was not really the prevailing belief among the scientific community – the theory that the Earth was round had been postulated and accepted LONG before Christopher Columbus came along.   Chris wasn’t fighting against the intelligentsia for support of his idea that the world was round; he was, without much scientific proof, trying to convince anyone (with money) who would listen that his proposed path to the Orient was shorter and faster – and he was dead wrong.   Alas, a little land mass that stretches practically from the North to the South Poles called the Americas is stubbornly in the way.   Columbus’ miscalculations started the ball rolling in developing the New World and leading to the creation of such life-enriching things like college football and deep-fried Twinkies.   So, being wrong (and admitting it) opens up a lot of possibilities.   Let me shar...

“I woke up this morning and couldn't find my socks, so I called information.   She said they were behind the couch.   She was right.”   Reading the words of comedian Stephen Wright isn’t quite the same as actually hearing them with his deadpan delivery, but they’re still funny.   The same can be said for timeless wisdom: whether you hear it coming directly from the lips of a wizened old sage or you read it in a little missive such as this, it’s still wisdom, right?   They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, so you’re about to get 2,000 words’ worth right here: I’m going to show you two graphs that are going to speak volumes about buying power and interest rates – far more than I could convey if I tried to write over 2,000 words (and probably put you to sleep).   Obviously, this first graph shows how even a slight change in interest rates can affect someone’s buying power in the real estate market.   There’s a fairly big sw...

    Once, many years ago, a very wise person shared with me a small but very powerful insight that has helped me in practically every aspect of my life – it’s easy to remember, too: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.   Whenever I rush headlong into any situation with the goal to be understood first, I hit resistance or find my argument to have more holes in it than I had thought possible.   Just the opposite: whenever I pause to ask questions and digest the answers, I find it so much easier to reach my goal(s) because I’ve either found a way to build a bridge without the need to take a leap or that my original goal needed to be adjusted because it had holes in it.   There’s a great line from the novel (and movie) To Kill a Mockingbird that sums it up:   “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb in his skin and walk around in it. ”   (I chose not to open th...