Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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I remember moving to Tehachapi in 1989. It was a dream move, going from my 45-minute commute on Highway 101 to a 10-minute drive on Valley Blvd. It wasn't easy at first, I remember working four jobs, selling real estate at Century 21, doing a once-a-week radio show, going out on the speakers tour twice a week with a book I had just written, all while I was trying to get my insurance business up and running. But Tehachapi was great to me. It fit me like a glove. I raised three of my four kids...
Leadership, most people assume you’re born with the traits, but I think it’s more situational than most people might realize. Look at some of our national and international leaders to see what I mean. For decades, Winston Churchill sat on the sidelines when it came to his country’s leadership. Then when World War II started, the country instinctively reached for him and he was there rising to the pinnacle of leadership of the free world with his actions and his speech. He led a nation, but a...
For a lot of people, finance and investing are like watching paint dry. In my finance classes I liked to make it a competitive sport, against yourself and Father Time. I'd talk night one about one of Al Einstein's favorite subjects, the "eighth wonder of the world:" The time value of money! This worked every time. By the break or the next class easily three quarters of the students brought in their plans or asked me about putting one together. I felt like a magician, but the magic was in the num...
Giving back, it’s almost become a generic term, and it’s meaning is probably different for each one of us. For me it meant taking the opportunities I had, finding areas that were important to me and trying to make a difference in my communities. First, you must find your passions. If you’re going to make a difference you need to know what drives you, and where you can make a difference in something that is important to you. For me it was always veterans and kids. I knew for me to give back,...
In 1972, before you needed to be a computer technician to work on a car, I went to Insurance School on S. Figueroa in Downtown Los Angeles. I remember the instructor telling us around the corner was the Coliseum and if you filled it up with 100,000 people, you could pretty much determine the range of time when everyone in the stadium would die. Wars, famine, depressions did not affect the "law of large numbers" which is what insurance is based upon. Insurance companies determine the percentage...
In his classic work "The E-myth" Michael Gerber tells the story of a little old grandma who makes incredible pies. She is constantly told by friends and family to open a pie shop and sell her wares. So, she finally decides it's time and opens up a shop, but now she's taking care of hiring, firing, inventory, marketing and a host of other small business owner chores! Guess what she isn't doing? The thing she loves best and is best at, making pies! It's a great example of what happens to small...
We all have memories from this time of year, of loved ones who we still see and some who have gone before us. For many of us, the memories are cold ones of snowy walks and bundling up in multiple layers of clothing. For some of us the memories are of warmer climates with t-shirts and shorts or at least clothes that don't involve putting on thermal jackets and underwear. Many of us had large family gatherings around the table that involved aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters, but for...
A tradition over the past 12 plus years has been Project D.E.F.T., which sends Christmas cards to Veterans in nursing homes throughout California. Over the years we've had as many as 9,000 cards a year and as few as 2,500, but we've always been able to make sure our Veterans get cards before the Holiday! There are certain requirements which the V.A. has placed on us for the cards. Please, nothing political, nothing religious (keep in mind we don't know the religion of the recipient) and no...
Just about the time I retired earlier this year, a friend of mine sold his brick-and-mortar business. But he started the same business online and absolutely loves it! He says he's doubled his business, doesn't have to contend with the servicing and basically sets the client up with the product and then steps back. I can understand from a business perspective how this might be appealing, but what about the customer service we all grew up with as consumers and as small business owners? I get that...
Clients and students in my finance classes have heard this term from me ceaselessly. I'm a firm believer in the concept of creating "streams of income" and interestingly enough, situations may create different streams for each and every one of us. There are basic opportunities many of us share. You may have a retirement plan or a 401K plan at work. What if you leave that place of employment? You, depending on your situation, may maintain the old account while creating a different stream of...
We've all seen people age differently. Some people at 50 are showing signs of cognitive impairment and some people in their 80s are as alert as ever. There are as many answers to this as there are people, genetics, diets, exercises, recent illnesses or accidents. There are a ton of different explanations. Lately we've seen political figures on both sides of the aisle show signs of aging. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had a deer in the headlights look when he was asked a question about...
Watching the presidential debates the other night I was reminded how much we use little jingles and catch phrases in marketing products and political points of view. We've all done it, I remember when I had my office in Los Angeles using a cartoon caricature of a rolled-up dollar with arms and legs and a scissor in his hands with a caption, "Why pay more? Pay less, call Marty Pay." Some of the campaign ads worked so well that we automatically think of the product when we hear the slogan. Who...
On July 29-30, 1945, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis was traveling to Leyte in the Philippines. Unknown to anyone on board, it had just dropped off components of the first atomic bomb to Tinian Island, where they were to be assembled and eventually dropped on Hiroshima. Meanwhile, in the same area, the Imperial Japanese sub I-58 was looking for a target. Unfortunately, it found the Indianapolis. Six torpedoes were released from the sub and within 15 minutes the Indianapolis, along with 300...
The Federal Reserve decided to raise rates again by .25%, which is nudging rates to the highest level in over 20 years. With this increase federal funds will increase to 5.25-5.5%. Unfortunately, the Feds did not give anyone the impression that the spicket would be turned off. Money managers are now starting to take into consideration the possibility of one more rate hike later this year. But at what point will increases become counterproductive. Inflation is starting to come down and perhaps...
Anybody who has done any traveling in this post COVID and 9/11 world has experienced the rush of having your luggage in one zip code while you're in another. The only other equal rush is watching your bag go left instead of right on the turnstile which means you get to wait for a customs officer to go through your bag with a fine-tooth comb (as long as it's regulation length). Murphy's Law being what it is, this event will always happen when you've got only a few minutes to make a flight due to...
Home builder sentiment is up again, and there is talk of the start of another Bull Market. All the while some prognosticators are telling us a recession is waiting in the wings by the end of the year! Where is my crystal ball to help me wade through the morass of conflicting reports from so many so-called experts? What would my crystal ball tell me? Would it tell me that 5-7 stocks are leading this Bull Market? Would it tell me I should be worried about the rise in artificial intelligence? Is th...
Very few days of the year have the kind of coincidences with respect to our founding fathers attached to them like our national birthday on July 4. The two men most responsible for the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were both in George Washington's original Cabinet. John Adams as vice president, Thomas Jefferson as secretary of state. The men were friends but had a huge political rivalry with insinuations and innuendo going back and forth during a vicious...
YouTuber Mark Dice takes his microphone and camera to places like college campuses or the beach and asks questions like, "who did the U.S. fight in the Revolutionary War?" Or "what century was WWII in?" The answers are hilarious and show a total lack of knowledge of American History. But a few years ago, he asked a question that unfortunately was more sad than funny! He and his camera went to a local beach and asked people on the street, "what were we celebrating on Memorial Day?" The answers we...
Many of us who were city dwellers before we moved to Tehachapi took a few wrong turns before we became adjusted to our new lives in a small town. Every time I drive down Valley Blvd., I look over and smile at one of mine. My newly built house, upon arriving to Tehachapi in 1990, needed landscaping. So, my new landscaper and I purchased a bunch of 3-foot trees from the Forest Service, I believe. Not thinking about the obvious, we planted the trees over the septic system. Now, 34 years later,...
Life is full of transitions. We all have them and for the most part they are pretty much the same. Some are good and some not so good and some just come with the passage of time. The feeling one gets watching their first child being born, that's a great transition. The joy of falling in love or the experience of your first promotion or standing up to get your degree or being recognized for an achievement. These are all examples of great transitions, many of us get to experience. Some...
I remember a few years ago interviewing my former State Senator Barry Goldwater, Jr. He had some great stories regarding his dad, Senator Barry Goldwater and his friend President John F. Kennedy. They both had similar back problems and shared the same doctor. Goldwater would come by the White House late at night and the two would see the doctor and then sip a little Whiskey and discuss the upcoming Presidential Race. They knew they would be facing each other in 1964 and decided they were going t...
I remember for years making my customary drive from my home in Thousand Oaks to my office on Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks by way of the Ventura Fwy. The drive was always a guessing game. You didn't know if it would take 45 minutes or an hour and 45 minutes. You just got in one lane, turned on music or an audio book and like a zombie just kept edging along the road. This was life and you did not know there was an alternative. One day I came up to Tehachapi to visit my old friend Bob Stewart who...
Hard to believe it's been just short of a hundred years since the Great Depression with its run on the banks. Great-grandma hid her money under the mattress rather than exposing it to a rapidly collapsing economy. I do not think this is an issue today, but a better question would be do I put my money in the Stock Market or in a bank with its current high interest rates. A good argument could be made for either strategy. A lot of investors are suggesting now is the time to invest long-term in...
I got hooked on concerts when I was young. I remember seeing the band Cream on Sunset and a Coke cost more than I made an hour. Over the years I've seen a lot of great concerts. I've seen Sinatra at Universal, Willie Nelson at the Fox, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder at the Bowl, Paul McCartney in Fresno, Elton John and the Eagles at Dodger Stadium, George Strait and Lionel Richie in Vegas. When Laurie and I travel we always check out the location to see if there is a good concert going on, it's j...
Elon Musk has repeatedly stated, "One of the biggest risks to the future of civilization is A.I. But AI is both positive or negative, it has great promise, great capability but also, with that comes great danger." Last week Microsoft released the new Bing which is powered by software from OpenAI, a company originally started with the help of Elon Musk. OpenAI is the maker of the new chatbot, ChatGPT, and it's having its share of problems. Last week the New York Times, a test user of the...
