So, while your dollars are staying the same, apparently safe in your FDIC-insured savings account, prices will be going up. That means a loss of spending power for you and your family. At the same time, real estate and stocks may feel a little too risky for you right now. I understand.



Fortunately, there are some great investments still available to you. You can never lose by investing in yourself. Whether its by investing in your business or in personal development courses or coaching, an investment in yourself will always pay the highest returns across the board. The investment in your own growth will pay returns not only for yourself, but for your family as well and for multiple generations. There's one thing you'll want to look for before making any investments, whether it be in home improvements, your business, personal development or anything else. Will the investment you are making improve the state of the world, whether its your world or the greater global world around you? How do you know if it will? I recently read an article on my Kindle that gave me a great litmus test for determining whether to make an investment or not.

I'm sharing it with you here so you can evaluate investments for yourself.

Side note: If you don't know about the Kindle, this is a MUST HAVE item in my book. It absolutely meets the criteria for a great investment for me. Now, I don't have to lug around the 3-5 books I'm reading at any given time. I can load up to 200 on my Kindle! And, they just came out with version 2.0, which Ive heard is far superior!

One of the things I love about my Kindle is the Daily Post, which is put together by the Amazon.com editors and often shares exclusive interviews with really smart people. Last week, Amazon interviewed one of the most widely read financial and economic writers today, senior editor at Newsweek and the author of the e-book Dumb Money, Daniel Gross.

In his interview, Gross was asked what do you think Americans can invest in during this period. His answer: In a word: efficiency. That's something we can invest in monetarily, culturally, and socially. The Dumb Money period was one in which we could afford to be dumb about the use of assets credit, cash, energy. Now we've entered an era in which we have to make smarter use of everything.

So, before you make your next investment of time, money or anything else, ask yourself whether the investment is a good idea from this perspective first and foremost. A few examples: Investing in a big screen TVs is a dumb money purchase. A big screen TV wont make you more efficient at anything, nor will it improve the world in some way. In contrast, investing in an energy-efficient heating system or new windows that reduce energy consumption would be a great investment. Buying an on-site computer network for your small business, probably not the best investment. Multiple computers, a server that needs to be configured, on-site maintenance. All of that is a drag. Today, it would be a lot more efficient for you to invest in the services of an outsourced centralized server system that you can lease and is maintained for you remotely by an expert systems administrator.

Creating your own estate planning documents, which requires you to invest time and energy in learning the law, not a good investment. Engaging the services of a Personal Family Lawyer who can guide you through a lifetime of great legal and financial decisions, far more efficient!

Reinventing the wheel and figuring it out yourself, never the best use of your time and money. Finding someone who has done what you want to do in the way you want to do it and learning from them, a much smarter investment