Brian Gosur

Advice and Strategies That Will Take You Out of This World

Tag Archives: United First Financial

How Much Do You Need?

If you could name how much money you would need to live a comfortable life today, how much do you need? Would a  half million dollars a year be enough? How about a million a year or a million a month, maybe that would be enough to give you a comfortable life to live. Really,… how much would you need?

I’m not talking about wishes and dreams, I am talking about just giving you a comfortable living. No frills, just comfortable. Nice car, not luxury. Nice house, no swimming pools. Vacations, yes, and hobbies are part of a healthy comfortable life. Comfortable, not luxury is what we are talking about. How much do you need?

Say you could live this comfortable life on about 50,000 dollars a year, but you made 100,000 a year. What would you do with the excess? Pay your mortgage off? You could do that with the Money Merge Account program from United First Financial. Pay that mortgage off in one third to one half the time, and do it without refinancing, and without changing your monthly payment. Or you could help out those poor guys at AIG, who have to give all their bonus’ back.aig

But, all kidding aside, what if you gave the rest of your money away? Gave the other 50,000 dollars to charities, or maybe to someone that you know is struggling  financially, or you could find someone who is unemployed and can’t make their mortgage payment, and might loose their home. Make a couple of payments for them, buy some groceries, pay their utilities. If we, who are doing better than those others, all chipped in, we could make a difference. Just think of the tax deduction you could have, and the nice check you would probably get back at tax time.

This is what makes America great. This is what makes us different from the fat cats in Washington, or the ones on Wall Street, or in Hollywood. They don’t know nor can they remember where they came from. I heard it said, ” know where your going, and plan for the future, but never forget where you came from. It’s not all the big stuff, it’s the little stuff, bit by bit, one piece at a time, that you put all together, makes America great.

America is built and runs on the backs of the little guys at the bottom. The small businesses, the home based businesses, the little guys that are keeping the oil burning. Sure, we need someone at the top making the calls and getting the orders, but the chasm between you and me and them is so wide, we live in two totally different worlds.

I think it is time, for those who can, to reach back and give a helping hand to the one behind you. It doesn’t take a lot. Just a little bit can go a long way.

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I heard the stories from my parents and grand parents about the days of the great depression. How everybody chipped in to do their part. People helping people. Don’t wait for the government to help you. They will take your wallet out from your back pocket, take that ten dollar bill you had in there, and give two dollars back.

There is some of this starting to happen now. There is an Apartment Lease Company that is offering, two months of rent free, to anyone who is laid off. Hoping this gives you time to get back on your feet and you stay with them, but if you don’t, you walk away with no obligation to pay anything back. It is their way of reaching out to help those who are hurting right now. This is a perfect example to what I am talking about. Helping those who we can help. This is something that we must all learn to survive.

Jesus said;

Luk 6:38 ” give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”

Mat 25:45 ” Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

God bless us to make the right decisions.

United First Financial Opens Bizpack

Bizpack, from United First Financial,  is the first of it’s kind, to put into one package, all the tools that any business from home needs to operate smooth and in order, like a finely tuned machine.

What the Bizpack package includes:

  1. Online Content Manager
  2. Web Meeting
  3. Marketing  System
  4. Personal and Business Development
  5. uDeduct

To find out more about this ground breaking new tool for any small business entrepreneur, which opens March 16, 2009, click on the link.

https://www.mybizpack.com/bgosur

Cleaning Up After The Cat

My Father-in-law passed away about six weeks ago. About eighteen months before that, my mother-in-law passed away. It has been a rough road that my wife has been on for the last two years.

The estate trust is still not completely settled yet, but my wife and her brother have come to one conclusion. He does not want the house, and my wife does. So my wife has been going through all of their belongings, sorting, cleaning, and that is no easy task. My mother-in-law was a pack rat. She saved everything, as most people from the depression era, did. You never know when someone will need what you are about to throw out. A little of that has rubbed off on my wife, and needless to say, we have accumulated are own arsenal of goods, that my wife insists has some sort of value, weather monetarily or practically. This is a project that could go on for years. I have tried to be as supportive as I can. My philosophy is, if you haven’t used it in the last year, throw it away or give it to someone who can make good use out of it. But that’s another whole blog post.

Bob and Janice, ( my father-in-law and mother-in-law ), have a cat. Boots was twenty years old. He was losing his eye sight. He was losing his hearing. He was struggling to walk. His one leg was so bad that he didn’t even sit down all the way on it, and he had a kidney infection also. He was hurting.

We talked to the veterinarian that they used and he said that he talked to Bob about putting Boots down awhile ago, but to Bob, that was Janice’s’ cat, and he was not going to put him away for nothing. He would keep him alive as long as he could, no matter what the cost.

Boots was treated like royalty. He was given distilled water, and he always had a hearty appetite. Special pillows and blankets that belonged just for his use were placed where he liked them. When ever he wanted to take a nap on the bed or the couch, he would stand by it till someone would come rushing over to lift him up on it, and then they have to cover him with his blankets and put his pillows in place.

Because of Boots age or kidneys or a combination of both, he would sometimes go and relieve himself in the corners of a couple of the rooms. Needless to say, ooooh that smell was awful. I was over there trying to power scrub and clean those corners, but Boots would just go back and do it again and again. No one would ever do anything about it and no one would ever dare make the suggestion that Boots was ready to go to kitty cat heaven.boots

This is the home that we inherited, and this is the home that we are going to be moving into and paying off in a couple of years with the Money Merge Account program from United First Financial.

I said all that to say this.

The first thing that had to happen, was the carpet had to be removed. All of it, and we even thought about replacing all the sub flooring also. But we learned that this might not be necessary.

We tried to soak the stained sub flooring with a strong, 10 to 1 ratio of bleach and water. Ten parts bleach to one part water. I would suggest a mask to wear over your nose and mouth and lots of ventilation. If the cat smell didn’t kill you, the bleach would. It was very strong. We left it to dry for a couple of days.

It did work to some degree, but there still was a faint smell of urine in the air. We were also told that in the hot muggy days of summer, the smell might return. This was not going to work. Something else had to work.

Next, we got some advice from a builder friend of ours and a friend who buys rental properties. He has come across this problem before, and they both recommended a sealer primer called Kilz. Not the latex brand, but the oil based one. We applied this to all of the rooms, and we put on a very heavy two coats. surgical-mask

Again, I suggest a mask and lots of ventilation, as the Kilz has a very strong oder itself. Also you want to use a heavy nap roller so that you can get into all the cracks and crevasses with the sealer.paint-roller-and-tray

A couple of days drying and the smell was gone. We were amazed. We invited lots of friends in to test their noses…. and no smell.

We continued are remodeling with some fresh paint on the walls and some rooms got the ceiling done as well. The carpet was laid and we don’t have any smell. No hint that a cat was even there at all. Nothing but new paint and carpet.

The real test will come when we bring our cat over to the new home. He is about five years old and has never been anywhere but in out house. He has never seen another cat. He is a male, and I know that they are very territorial. We hope that the smell of Boots will not be present, but we know that he is going to smell him in that house somewhere.  Boots lived there for all of the  twenty years of his life. We aren’t going to be able to get rid of all of his presence. We just hope that our cat won’t care and just go back to doing what he does best. That’s sleeping.

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