Simplify Your Life...

Let's face it life doesn't make itself simpler, we have to do that, and so, with the goal in mind of having a simpler life, you can have it without moving to some remote countryside and milking cows.  Here's how:

1. Get up 20 minutes earlier: If you find your morning tight on time, try to go to bed a littler earlier and get up 20-30 minutes before your usual time. You'll be surprised how this little addition of time can start your whole day better. 2. Be 10 minutes early for meetings: It's hard to be late when you're planning to get there early, and it'll let some of the pressure off. You'll also have time to smooth out your thoughts and think about what you'd like to say. 3. One thing at a time: Don't be fooled by those around you who brag they can do it all. Everyone has a problem concentrating on several tasks at once or even paying attention to one while thinking of another. Try to put your entire focus on the most urgent issue. Finish it and then move on to the next. You'll be surprised how much faster and more efficient you are at problem solving when you're solving one problem at a time. 4. Ask yourselves some questions: Stop yourselves from time to time and ask: "Am I making things more complicated?" and "how can I simplify the problem?". Sometimes we miss simple solutions because we don't stop to look around us. 5. Ask yourselves: "Will this still matter in five years?" Most of the time, it won't even matter in 5 months or even 5 weeks. If you find yourselves facing a mountain, maybe check that it's not a molehill. 6. Write down everything: There is no memory that doesn't 'leak' from time to time. The few minutes you spend writing things down will be worth having those things out of your head and memory, resulting in less pressure. 7. Remember that there is something greater than yourselves: We don't know everything, nor are we always right. There are always going to be causes bigger than ourselves. 8. Enjoy the simple things: Sometimes we need to stop, shut our eyes tightly, and then open them again and truly FEEL the moment we're in, the way it looks, the way it sounds, feels, smells and tastes. This is the meaning of living in the moment and enjoying things that are so basic we hardly really pay them attention any more. 9. Drink a glass of water: Water is the essence of life, and sometimes we might be better off drinking than binging on junk food that will just increase our anxious feelings. 10. Kindness is a blessing returned: Be kind to others. One day you may be old, sick and in need of kindness yourself, knowing that you were kind to others and that they want what's best for you is a load off, and will reduce the fear you feel about the future. 11. Simplify your life by simplifying your home: A cluttered house is a cluttered mind, some say. Try and keep a place for everything in your house, keep it clean and tidy. It may seem unrelated, but a clean house makes us feel good about ourselves and helps us concentrate on what's important. 12. Stop and find the roses: Instead of jumping from thing to thing, try taking some extra time with certain tasks, relationships, work and personal projects. That extra time will give you confidence and help you discover things you may miss when you're rushing about. 13. Spend some time with simpler folk: Spending time with those that lead a simple life will help you simplify your own. Their slower pace and calm will leak into your own life, and you'll learn some of their tricks for simpler living.  14. Ask advice from those who have been there: When you encounter a problem, remember that most of them are not new, they have been challenging others as well. Turn to those who have been there, and ask for their advice. Sometimes it takes a village to get through life. 15. Forget about perfection: Don't try to do everything perfectly, you'll probably not succeed. Let go of the illusion of perfection and focus on what you have that is good and true. 16. Take a breath of fresh air a few times a day: Like a smoker on smoke breaks, take breaks to go out and get some fresh air. You'll be surprised how quickly those anxious thoughts can die down while you take a minute to disconnect from anxiety and reconnect with the world around you. 17. Take 30 minutes on the weekend to plan your week: Weekends are a great time to relax and take a little time to plan out what you are going to do this week. Make a list. It will help you remember and you'll feel more calm dealing with the coming week's challenges. 18. Ask people around you more questions: Sometimes, the things that make us anxious could be solved with a simple question. Don't be afraid to get answers you may not want to hear - in the long run, it'll help to know. 19. Take some time to be lazy: If you can simplify your lives a bit, you may find out you have some spare time. Take some of it to relax, you deserve a little laziness. 20. Remember life is longer than you think: You may change your mind a couple of times throughout, you may grow as a person and want different things, love different people. Accept this fact, and you'll see how things won't bother you as much. We promise.

How to Be a Power Google User!

Google is probably the most popular search site on the web, used for finding just about everything we need on the internet. It's quick, easy and simple to use, and most of the time we find what we need in the first one or two result pages. But what if I told you that you are not really using Google as you should? It turns out that Google has a few special tricks that will make your life a whole lot easier.

1. Remove words from your search results: Let's say you are looking for bread recipes but you don't want any with "yeast" as an ingredient. All you need to do is type your desired search terms normally and then add a minus sign (-) followed by the words you want excluded without a space. It should look like this in the search bar: bread recipes -yeast. 2. Look up related words and synonyms: This is a simple way for finding out other ways for saying something if you want to use the same word twice in one sentence, and you don’t want it to sound weird. In the Google search bar put a tilde mark (~, normally located next the 1 key on the top left of the keyboard) in front of the search term you want to find synonyms for. 3. Google can help you define a word: Type "define:" (with both " marks) followed by the word, and Google will take you straight to the definition. Use this to catch anyone trying to cheat on Scrabble and get fast definitions for words you don’t know.

4. Search for the exact order of words: If you are looking for the origin of a quote or a song you can only remember one line from, this is the just what you need to find what you are looking for. Simply put your search phrase inside quotation marks and search. 5. Search for items in a specific price range: If you are looking for something to buy but you don't want Google to show you all the price options, simply use this handy little trick. First type in your term, let's say phone, and after that type the lowest and highest prices you're willing to pay with two periods (..). The end result should look like this: Phone 100$..200$. The more accurate the item you are looking for will be, the better results you will get. 6. Limit your search to a website: If you once read a good article on a site and you can't remember its name and how you got there, it's very easy to find it again. Type "site:" followed by the URL of the website you'd like to search. A URL of a site looks like this: www.ba-bamail.com. After the site name type the rest of your terms, for example: "site:"www.baba-mail.com dog. 7. Search for a GIF: A GIF is a type on animated picture file looping over and over like a very short (mostly poor quality) video. Finding GIFs is as easy as using the Google images search. Go to Google Images, type what you are looking for, click "Search tools" and "Type". A small drop down list will appear, select "Animated" and search. The results you'll get might look like normal pictures at first, but press on any of them and you will see their animation. 8. Setting a timer: Not really a search option, but still a very useful feature if you want to remind yourself to take a break or to take something out of the oven. Type "set timer for" into the search bar and you will see the Google timer as your first result. Enter the time you want in hours, minutes or seconds, and start the timer. Google will start beeping when the time runs out.

9. Do math: This one is really straight forward, type in an equation in the search bar and Google will give you the answer on its calculator. If possible, you can copy-paste the equation to the search bar to make your life easier. 10. Search for a file type and not just a website: If you are looking for a Word file, a PowerPoint presentation or something similar this will make your search faster and much more accurate. Enter your search terms followed by "filetype:PPT". PPT is the file type for PowerPoint, DOC is for most Word files and if you are looking for other kinds of files, just Google their file type initials. 11. Convert currency: Much like doing math for you, Google can also tell the value of different currencies and help you prepare for that trip abroad. Type the name of the currency you own, add "to" and type the name of the currency you want to get in return. Keep in mind that many places trading with foreign coin take a commission and Google can't calculate that.      12. Search for something you forgot: If a part of your search is unknown or forgotten, you can use Google to fill in the blanks. Enter your search terms using asterisks (*) as stand-ins for the unknowns. It can also be used to answer simple question such as searching for: When you are in Rome be sure to visit *.

Does the Chinese stock market crash motivate foreign investors?

The recent crash of the Chinese stock market will likely show some effect on the U.S. real estate market, as Chinese investors look internationally for safe harbors to store their wealth.

About 50% of Chinese investors surveyed are considering a purchase of U.S. real estate, according to East-West Property Advisors, a corporation connecting Chinese buyers with U.S. real estate professionals.

Foreign investments in California properties

California has received considerable interest from Chinese investors in recent years, particularly in larger metropolitan areas. 34% of Chinese buyers looking for U.S. real estate were interested in purchasing property in San Francisco, followed by 17% interested in Los Angeles property and 13% interested in San Diego property, according to a survey by East-West Property Advisors.

International investors paid on average $490,000 per transaction in 2014, according to the California Association of Realtors’ International Buyers Survey. Of these investors, 66% paid in cash for their houses.

Chinese buyers’ preference for cash payments and newer, single family residences (SFRs) may sound ideal to agents, especially since 36% of foreign investors in California real estate in 2014 were Chinese, according to the International Buyers Survey. However, anticipating a massive influx of Chinese buyers generated by their stock market crash is unrealistic.

The Chinese stock market represents a considerably smaller portion of China’s economy than the U.S. market represents of its own – roughly 3% of China’s gross domestic product (GDP). Chinese citizens who invested in the stock market are wealthy, and thus their loss of value in stocks does little to alter China’s economy. Further, their stock market is unrelated to the fundamentals of their economy, a true casino selling positions to others, if they can find buyers other than China’s government.

The extensive number of citizens who didn’t have money in their stock market are the ones who may seek investments in American assets, like real estate. This may briefly support prices in California real estate, but the false inflation will be short-lived – once the Chinese and global economy recover, investors will be free to move their “hot money” elsewhere, and they will.

Will the stock market crash delay the Fed’s rate hike?

A more hotly debated topic is how the Chinese stock market crash will indirectly affect domestic home sales, by way of interest rates. Steady increases in foreign investments indicate instability in international markets. Thus, some worry that the Chinese stock market crash and resulting economic challenges will jar the global economy. In turn, the China stock market crash gives the Fed the opportunity to consider a delay in their interest rate hike until global markets stabilize.

All this Fed calculus adds to Wall Street’s consternation over its long-demanded rentier push for the Fed to move off the status quo. The Fed does not much listen to Wall Street talk or the media that represents them.

Thus, these concerns are unfounded. The Fed’s interest rate hike is dependent oninflation, wages and employment. As far as a Fed rate hike goes, the Fed’s engine is primed – core inflation is near the 2% goal, and employment (though not wage growth) is also on target. The Fed will move, but only when the indicators tell them it is time to control the flow of money.

But as this article indicates, the short-term Fed rate isn’t where China’s economic struggles will manifest in the California (and the U.S.) mortgage market.

Instead, China’s economic turmoil – and that of other countries, like Greece and Brazil – will reflect in 10-year Treasury Note (T-Note) rates. Under stable economic circumstances, investment in 10-year T-Notes declines when the Fed raises interest rates, since T-Note rates tend to rise proportionally due to perceived consumer inflation. However, the instability of the world’s markets and the stable inflation outlook is likely to cause foreign investors to retain 10-year T-Note investments long past when they usually seek investment opportunities elsewhere. 10-year T-Note rates are likely to remain low while foreign investors consider them the best investment opportunity.

In parallel investment mentality, California will witness continuing inflated property prices, but only so long as foreign investors (and U.S. speculators vested in real estate) consider U.S. assets their best deal. When the global market recovers – likely around the time Generation Y begins buying first homes in earnest and Baby Boomers begin moving out, finally able to retire – investors will pull their speculative cash from the U.S. and return to investments elsewhere. If the timing is concurrent, then the real estate market will remain stable.