• Some people eat when they’re happy, some when they’re sad.
• Some people cope with grief by pigging out.
• Some people have chronic pains that make exercise difficult.
• Some people exercise too much, and then binge on food.

Here are five tips to personally develop your weight loss:

1. Keep a daily list of what you eat for one week. When you have to sit down at the end of that week to see how many donuts, candy bars and pizza slices you’ve eaten, you’ll be extra motivated to get in shape.

2. Leave your debit card at home. Working at an office can mean afternoon trips to the deli to get something sweet. Without any way to pay for it, you’ll save money and calories.

3. Don’t start too hard. Sometimes motivation/shame get the best of us, and our first work out in months makes everything too sore to continue. Keep it simple and build.

4. Stay away from Chuck Norris. Infomercials make their money convincing you that a c-level celeb got totally fit by stepping up for 20 minutes, doing ab work for 8 minutes, taking a magic pill or some other silly idea. Jogging for 30 minutes a day and making one meal entirely fruits and veggies will keep your weight down more than some tonic.

5. Any progress, even slow progress, is progress. Sure, losing 20 lbs in two weeks sounds great but it’s: a. not healthy; b. not sustainable; and c. not realistic. Lose one pound a week for twenty weeks and that weight will be easier to keep off.

Wealth is not defined by how many toys an individual has, rather it is defined by how much control an individual has over his/her economic freedom.  A person could have a great house, great car, take vacations every year, and own a boat, but if they’re mortgaged to the hilt and can’t retired until they’re 130, then they aren’t wealthy.

Here are some basic tips on how to be thrifty with your dollars:

• Find places to save - Why buy underwear at Macy’s when you can buy it at Marshalls?  Why buy cans of soda when drink mixes are available?  Little tricks such as these can save you hundreds of dollars a year.  Think of items that don’t need to be new and shiny, these are the easiest places to cut back spending.
• Restaurants or Fast Food, pick one! - Do you like eating a nice steak at a French restaurant or a hamburger at McDonalds?  Take a three month test and forgo happy meals for fine wine, or vice versa.  Find out which you like more and ignore the other.  This can teach you to choose where and when to spend money.
• Why buy from Pottery Barn? - Label whore is a strong term, but we all have a little label whore in us.  We want labels to show people our status, but status and wealth are often complete opposites.  Status is fleeting, wealth is long term.  If you shop at Ross or Marshalls for dishes or home furnishings, you could save tons.
• Put Down the Latte - $5/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks = 1300.  That means if you buy a latte and a cookie every weekday for a year, you’ll spend $1,300 on shoving around 700 calories down your through.  That makes no sense for your diet or your budget.  Make the latte at home and burn some calories steaming the milk; make yourself a regular cup of coffee at home and eat a piece of toast; or, drink tea.  The idea that five dollar latte’s are normal or a right is false, they are a privilege.  Your are not responsible for making sure Howard Schultz’s stock stays in the black.
• Leave your wallet at home -  Don’t take your debit card with you, it’ll only help you spend extra dollars every day.  Try leaving your debit card in your dresser and give yourself $20 in cash for the week.
• Don’t try cold turkey - Failure can lead us to give up, to quit.  Setting ourselves up to fail is like trying to learn Japanese without a teacher.  Learn bit by bit, start small, make a budget, look for ways to cut back and then move forward.  Trying to end years of learned behavior all at once is foolish, but unlearning it bit by bit will lead you down the right path.

Here are some truths and some tips on bottled water:

• In 2003, Americans spent $7 billion on bottled water.  If you spent $10 a week on bottled water, that’s over $500 a year.  Put that into a high-yield savings account or a 401k and you can save yourself a bundle.
• In a study done on bottled water, it turns out 25% or more of the water in each bottle is actually just tap water.
• In a blind taste test done in New York, 75% of people preferred tap water taste to bottled water.
• In another test of 1,000 bottles of water, 33% of those bottles turned out to be contaminated with bacteria, synthetic organic chemicals and/or inorganic contaminants such as arsenic.
• The plastic bottle your water comes in can actually decompose over time and contaminate your water.  The longer the water has been in the bottle, the greater the risk of decomposition and contamination.

How’s that Aquafina taste now?

1. Follow the Yellow Brick Road - Gold is always a sound investment, if for no other reason than it is a physical element.  Investing in a company, mutual fund or bond is investing in an idea essentially.  Gold exists and in times when economies can go batty, gold is always there.

2. Lions and Tigers and Bears - Oh My! - The market is going to scare you, incredibly, but that doesn’t mean the market should be feared.   It’s unstable, but if you leave your money invested long term, your individual wealth will increase.

3. There’s No Place Like Home - Your house might be your best investment.  Again, it’s a physical thing, not a stock in a company that you can’t see.

1. Confidence - Granted, it’s easy for a team with such historic players as Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson and Alex Rodriguez to be confident, but even in the lean years the Yankees always acted like the first place team was simply keeping it warm for them.

2. Create History - Sometimes children who didn’t know their parents, or who didn’t want to know them, have a hard time being successful because there is no history of success. History begins now, and starting your own legacy will hold you responsible to a cause and a goal.

3. Know When to Spend Money - Whether it’s buying a stock, a new home or signing a big free agent, you have to know when it’s important to spend money and when it’s not.

4. Collect Monuments - In Yankee Stadium there are monuments of the great Yankees of the past, and that helps the new guys know what is expected of them. Keep pictures, sayings and other monuments of great people around you to keep in your memory what it takes to be successful.

5. Dress for Success - The Yankees invented pinstripes in Major League Baseball. You’ve got to invent a successful you, so ditch the sweat pants and dirty t-shirts and start to look successful. Don’t break the bank, but remember that image is vital.

If becoming your own boss is your goal, or even the next step in your life, here are some tips that’ll help you both get off the ground and to keep in mind, given by a small business owner:

A. Don’t have a business partner

It’s easy to think that having a partner can minimize risk and bring a variety of ideas, but it can also bring headaches, failure and lawsuits. Ownership is a tricky issue, parents often butt heads about how to raise kids, and they’re in love. Imagine owning a store with someone you violently disagree with?

B. Get payment before delivery

Trust is a tricky thing. It’s important to trust your customers, but you can only trust them so far. Everyone has their priorities, and no one’s priority is to make sure you get your money. If a client has needs at home, or if their business is going under, they probably aren’t going to make sure you get paid. Keep that in mind as you deal with individuals.

C. Don’t be afraid to fire clients

Desperate times make for desperate people. Whether you’re a web designer with a large client or a t-shirt maker with a few small clients, even the most annoying and obnoxious client can look attractive when the checks roll in. However, headaches, stomach aches, lack of sleep and more aren’t worth one idiot’s money. My father actually had a client call on Christmas Eve to complain about something, something that could have waited two days. He was too desperate to fire the client, but he should have cut the chord right then and there.

D. Word of mouth is king

Buying marketing materials, advertising space and web designers is all fine, well and good, but when it comes down to it, a suggestion from a friend outweighs them all. Whether you’re starting your own medical practice or law firm, relationships are vital and referals are the mother’s milk of a successful business.

Well, in developing yourself personally, finances play a big part, and analyzing your goals and your current situation is vital. Here’s a quick look and which bank might be right for you:

1. Bank of America

No bank has had more complaints about it than BofA. Poor customer service, hidden fees and more profligate the comments section of blogs and websites set up to discuss this bank. There are quite a few branches, and it is the largest bank in America, but the availability simply doesn’t seem worth the hassle to let them watch your money. In a survey of poor customer services, this MSN article highlighted BofA specifically as one of the worst customer service providers in the nation.

2. Wells Fargo

This is a regional bank with most of their branches on the West Coast. They seem to be better than Bank of America, and having banked there I can say they aren’t that bad. The challenges however are many. Despite being a West Coast bank, their computers switch over after 3:00 or 4:00 pm EST and all deposits made after that aren’t cleared until the next day. This is extremely frustrating. They were ranked as the number one online bank by one survey, and I can attest to their prowess in online services.

3. Citibank

If BofA is the Devil, then Citibank is the anti-Christ. I’ve had my money with Citibank since my wife and I started saving for our wedding, it’s been about 2 years now. I haven’t really had a problem with them, but we’ve made sure never to let our account get close to zero or god-forbid, overdraft anything. Everyone I’ve ever spoken to though has nothing positive to say about them, except that they are everywhere. Opening an account in Los Angeles was very frustrating as their bank people are morons for the most part. Between spelling my wife’s name wrong on her debit card and then not shipping the card at all, they scored major idiot points with us.

4. Washington Mutual

I banked with them for a while, but WaMu plays themselves off as the anti-bank, the bank that has free checking, that cares about its customers and so on. However, as shown here, that’s not always true. Reality is, they’re a business just like everyone else. Their free checking isn’t necessarily free, they used to offer a program that would allow customers a $500 negative balance on their account (complete with fees of course) and other items that seem great but turn out to be very dangerous. Washington Mutual does offer a favorable savings account interest rate however, but unlike HSBC you need to have a checking account lined to your savings account. Otherwise it’s no good.

5. Wachovia

Beyond the fact that this bank’s name is unpronounceable, its 50/50. Not everyone is happy with them, and their branch and ATM locations are spotty, but they seem to get the job done and at least they aren’t BofA. I recently opened a Wachovia checking account to link with my Paypal account so I can transfer money. We’ll see how easy they are to work with. I hate their website, but opening the account was easy enough.

6. JP Morgan Chase

On a recent Marketwatch.com survey, Chase was second only to BofA in complaints. Their lack of responsiveness is terrible, and although I’ve heard some good things about their savings account interest rates, they don’t satisfy their customers at all.

7. HSBC

We have a savings account with this bank, which we started online. There’s no checking account necessary, and while they don’t pretend to be the friendliest bank, they seem to have the online banking thing mastered. Their complaint rate seems to be the middle of the road, and everyone who looks into their online savings account seems really enthusiastic about it.

Here are some basic banking tips:

1. Banks are a business

They aren’t going to take care of you, they not only want to hold onto your money, but they want to take it for their own. Be prepared to fight with them and get everything from them that you can.

2. Large Banks Suck

Whether it’s WaMu, BofA or whatever, they’re terrible. They outsource customer service overseas, they are impossible to talk to, they mismanage your accounts and in the end the guys who run the bank only care about stock prices and dividends, not your happiness.

There’s a wonderful episode of the show “The Office” where two characters (Dwight and Jim) show a business owner how bad the big company’s customer service is. That being said, credit unions are local and are limited in their abilities. Keep all that in mind when banking with them.