Louis Barajas - Overworked, Overwhelmed, and Underpaid: Simple Steps to Go from Stress to Success

OVERWORKED,
OVERWHELMED
& UNDERPAID

Other Books by Louis Barajas

The Latino Journey to Financial Greatness
Small Business, Big Life

2008 by Louis Barajas

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Editorial Staff: Joel Miller, acquisitions editor; Thom Chittom, managing editor Page Design: Lori Lynch

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The stories in this book are drawn from the experiences of Mr. Barajass clients. Some are composites of several different individuals. In all cases, names and identifying information have been changed.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barajas, Louis, 1961
Overworked, overwhelmed, and underpaid : simple steps to go from stress to success / by Louis Barajas.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Job satisfaction. 2. Quality of work life. 3. Work and family. I. Title.
ISBN 978-1-59555-166-5
HF5549.5.J63B36 2008
650.1dc22

2008031659

Printed in the United States of America
08 09 10 11 12 QW 6 5 4 3 2 1

On a daily basis I meet people who feel overworked, overwhelmed, and under-paid, but who are committed to making the changes they need to create stability, success, and abundance.

I dedicate this book to all of you who have shared your stories with me and told me how you have used my books to change your financial destiny. Your courage and success inspire me to continue my lifes work: to help people use financial success to express their full potential and live their lifes purpose.

Contents

While many of us can get excited by the initials of our dream team alma mater, USC or BYU or UTA, for example, the truth is that the jersey most of us are wearing would read OOU, which stands for Overworked, Overwhelmed, and Underpaid.

In this important, heartfelt, and well-researched work, financial planner and master communicator Louis Barajas lays out a step-by-step system for identifying and then remedying the problems that come with todays complex lifestyle.

I was especially taken by the section addressing the need for simplifying ones life. Recently I took a giant Post-it note and placed it on the wall of my office. I took four different-colored markers and wrote out the name of each project I was working on, or that was working on me. The total number came to thirty-eight. No wonder I, too, was feeling overworked, overwhelmed, and underpaid! So it was with great gusto that I devoured Louiss manuscript, knowing him to be a genius at helping simplify priorities, as well as establishing systems for decision making.

Peter Drucker said the new knowledge worker has it harder than the former assembly-line worker in that assembly-line workers know, or knew, exactly what they were supposed to do. However, todays knowledge workers not only have to execute the work plan but also dream it up. This puts extra pressure on brains that were not designed to multitask at the level we are being driven to do today. I read some-where recently that trying to accomplish more than three things at the same time leads one to the performance level of someone on drugs. We are so driven by our to do lists that we have forgotten our to be lists.

To be, or not to be, that is the question, wrote William Shakespeare. That phrase is now the question for our working society.

I agreed to write this foreword because Louis has demonstrated to me, and to so many others, not only a genius level of performance when it comes to financial planning but more importantly, perhaps, the demonstration of his lifeto his family, his community, and his friends.

Every author pours time, energy, and thought into their work, but what Louis Barajas offers us in his latest book is a gift of wisdom, wonder, and, ultimately, love.

Laurie Beth Jones, author of
Jesus, CEO; The Path; and Jesus, Life Coach
February 14, 2008
San Diego, CA

In 1991, I founded a financial-planning business in the barrio of East Los Angeles. Most of my clients were Latinos who made modest amounts of money but had the same need for good financial planning and education as people with millions in the bank. It was in the barrio that I first saw how stress affected 90 percent of workers. Over and over again I heard people tell me they felt they were working too many hours, there was always too much to do, and they were not adequately compensated for their efforts. Like most financial advisers, I believed that good financial planning and more income would help relieve the financial stress my clients were experiencing.

In 2003, I wrote a book called The Latino Journey to Financial Greatnessa manual for helping Latinos (many of whom had minimal access to information about finances) overcome their limiting cultural beliefs about money and develop a plan to create greater prosperity. The book discussed basic financial-planning components and showed readers how to recognize financial predators in their communities. Knowing that most of my intended readers had limited resources and access to bookstores, my marketing plan was to attract sponsors who were interested in using my book to introduce or build their brands in the Latino community. Soon Fortune 500 companies like Sears, Nationwide Insurance, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and DaimlerChrysler contacted us. With their support, over the last several years I have done hundreds of presentations, workshops, and media interviews throughout the country and talked with thousands of Latinos who had never been exposed to financial planning before.

However, during those tours I noticed that the people behind the scenesmedia personalities, the staffs of the Fortune 500 companies sponsoring me, and the public-relations people representing those companieswould comment that they felt more stressed than the people in my workshops. I heard the same thing from executive directors and the staff of nonprofit organizations that teach financial literacy. It didnt really matter how much people were making, or the jobs they held. In almost every circumstance, economic bracket, marital status, job title, or length of employment, individuals across the United States reported feeling overworked, overwhelmed, and underpaid.

During this time I also became the first member of a minority to be elected to the national board of the Financial Planning Association, which promotes the value of financial planning and advances the financial-planning profession. While on the board, I had discussions with respected financial professionals throughout the country about what I was accomplishing with the working poor. I soon realized that the manner in which my firm practiced was very different from the norm. We offer financial planning with a human focus, one that serves average Americans who are struggling not only with their finances but also with their lives. Rather than fixating on the size of a clients bank balance, investment portfolio, or retirement account, our approach has always been to devise plans that show clients how to live better lives today, tomorrow, and in the future. This humanity-based wealth planning works well for clients whether they are making $50,000 or $500,000 or $5 million, because everyone has similar feelings and desires. The ways we choose to experience those feelings and fulfill those desires will make the difference between feeling successful or stressed.