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How bad are things, actually? Economist Arthur Okun, advisor to President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, created the Misery Index. It is basically the unemployment rate added to the inflation rate.

Unemployment rate (5%) + Inflation rate (3.94%) = Current U.S. Misery Index (8.94%)

Under President Carter in 1980 our country experienced a Misery Index of 20.76, contrasted to the good old days under Eisenhower when the index stood at 3.74 in 1953. A quick look at the Misery Index from 1948 to the present shows that our current Misery Index is no where close to setting off alarm bells. But the real question is: can we trust the government’s numbers?

Keep in mind that if people aren’t looking for work, they aren’t counted in the unemployment numbers. My grandma isn’t counted because my grandma isn’t looking for a job, for example. What about people who tire of looking for a job and give up? They aren’t counted. If you want a job but decide instead to go back to school to get your masters because you can’t find a good job, you aren’t counted in the unemployment numbers even though you would really rather be working.

The best thing that could happen to the unemployment rate would be for millions of people to give up looking for a job and decide instead to live with their parents, take up a life of crime, go back to school, or do anything — so long as they give up looking for a job. The point I am making is that the numbers don’t truly reflect reality. The unemployment numbers also fail to include part-time workers who would actually like to be employed full-time. If you want a full-time job but are forced to settle for a part-time job, you are still employed, so you are factored out of the unemployment rate. The way the government calculates inflation is fishy too.

What, then, is the real misery index? When too many people are unable to afford a middle class lifestyle, we will reach a critical point. Something will have to give. Will the people revolt? I don’t know. What I do know is that the cost of groceries, gas and everything keeps going up. Every day it takes a little more money to maintain the same lifestyle.

A service economy is a dangerous game in which the same paper money is moved around in an effort to make everyone feel prosperous. People have forgotten that wealth is not stocks, cash or equity in your home. Wealth is only that which you can hold in your hand — gold, silver, oil, diamonds, water, etc. The real estate debacle has taught us that home equity isn’t wealth. Your paycheck isn’t wealth either. That too can evaporate.

The Misery Index looks tame because of how the numbers are calculated. To find the real misery index, you have to do it the old fashioned way. Talk to people. I know someone who took their dream job in their dream city, but they might have to go back to the job they hated because their house won’t sell. I have a friend who runs the news for a local TV station. He and his wife and child are living with his folks. Yes, he could afford his own place, but it makes more sense when he evaluates his income and situation. I know a couple in their 50s who lost everything because of an expensive investment property on which they had to do a short sale. They get to start saving for retirement in their mid-50s from square one — and these are intelligent people.

Here is what I know. The real misery index can only be determined by talking to people in the real world. Government numbers cannot be trusted. And most of us were snookered into accepting a false definition of wealth. We all suffer from only having adult experiences to reflect upon that are 1-50 years in length. My own adult experiences are only two decades in total. If we all lived to be 900 years old, we would have people around us with references for things being very different, and we ourselves would have lived through various economic times, teaching us not to fall for the scams that have created the financial mess we are in today. I am still an optimist, however. You just never know what fantastic thing could be right around the corner. We might be a short while away from a newspaper headline that reads, “Free Energy — No More Oil!” Whatever the future holds, I will move forward as a pragmatic optimist.

If you read blogs, you probably engage in blog conversations by commenting. There are three ways that I know of to stay up with Internet conversations. First, you can revisit the website, which is cumbersome, of course. Next, you can usually click a box that allows you to subscribe to the thread. The major downside of this is that you probably already get too many emails. The other flaw with this system is that you have to drop what you’re doing to check ten different conversations at ten separate times. Perhaps the best way to track Internet conversations is to use co.mments.com.

Co.mments.com is free, and it allows you to track all of your Internet conversations in one place. That means a lot less stopping and starting because you can stay up with your Internet conversations by going to your tracking page once a day or even once a week instead of every time an email hits your inbox. And you don’t miss anything because it’s all being tracked for you.

All you do is sign up for a free account. Then you simply copy and paste the URL for the conversation you want to follow into your tracking page. You can view all comments from all conversations on this one page. You can clear comments that you’ve read, delete conversations altogether and even see how many people are participating in the dialogue — all from one page. The name of the blog is shown, and the date of the last comment is displayed, allowing you to easily judge if a conversation has come to an end.

Wade Young is a Denver mortgage broker.

I’m embarrassed to say that I never finished Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. I did make it much of the way through, however, and Mr. Smith taught me an important lesson about efficiency. Making a wagon, for example, is far less efficient if you construct it from start to finish in the traditional craftsman style. It’s better to make nothing but wagon wheels on Monday, nothing but wagon seats on Tuesday, only wagon beds on Wednesday, etc. By specializing on one task at a time, you can make ten times the wagons in the same amount of time.

This is a basic business lesson that most of us know but fail to practice. It’s not that we don’t know how to be successful — it’s that we don’t do what we know. Our tendency is to place our concentration on whatever task is put in front of us, until another grabs our attention. We jump from email to voice mail to cell phone to MS Word to talking to someone who pokes their head in our office. At the end of the week, we’ve made only one wagon instead of ten.

It is important to bundle tasks together, controlling your attention on tasks instead of the tasks controlling you. Rather than jumping from this to that, I try to focus on one thing at a time. I devote a segment of time each week to sending out thank you notes and postcards as part of my regular follow-up campaign, for example. The other way to do follow-up is to tackle it whenever that particular person crosses your mind — which is far less efficient because it requires you to drop something, do the follow-up and then resume the original task.

The time you waste each day is time that could be spent prospecting for new business. I challenge you to find ways to make ten wagons in the same time another person can only make one.

Wade Young is a Denver mortgage broker.

The tax man cometh, and it seems like he wants more every year. Fortunately, there is an easy way to pay less taxes this year than you paid last year — file a property tax appeal. According to the National Taxpayers Association, approximately 60% of taxable property in the U.S. is over-assessed. That’s the majority, folks! The majority of you — and the majority of your clients — are paying too much in property taxes. The good news is that filing an appeal is relatively easy, and 33% of appeals are successful. I just gave you a good reason to touch base with your clients.

Even though most people are overpaying when it comes to property taxes, almost no one is willing to go through the appeal process — even though it’s relatively easy. Simply contact your local county assessor’s office, and obtain the paperwork. Make sure to ask them what formula they use to do their calculation. This is important because many counties use a percentage of market value. That means that you could still be paying too much in property taxes even if your assessment is already below current market value. Also make sure to ask for a copy of your property card so that you can check it for errors. You want to make sure that the number of rooms and square footage are correct, for example.

When my wife was a young girl, she followed her father and an appraiser around the new home that her father had just built for their family. Her father is a funny guy, so he kept the appraiser amused. The appraiser allowed him to hold the opposite end of the tape measure, so he pulled it out past the edge of the house in an effort to inflate the square footage of the home. Because the appraiser was so far away, he couldn’t tell that he was being duped. This is a good example of why it’s important to check your property card for errors. Needless to say, my father-in-law isn’t totally honest. I find it sort of ironic that my father-in-law is also one of the only people I have ever known who faithfully files property tax appeals.

You may also be able to find comps in your neighborhood to support your case, although that will take a bit of digging into the public records. Also realize that one of the best times to appeal is when you have just gotten a mortgage — the reason being that you have a fresh appraisal in your hands. A lot of counties will allow you to use a recent appraisal as evidence in disputing your assessed value.

Wade Young is a Colorado mortgage broker.