Responsible for around 50 of the female tennis players listed by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), Russia is well known for producing some gorgeous ones; and basically if you haven’t heard of them it’s because they aren’t hot enough. We have decided that it’s time to rank the Top 5. Their position in the list was determined by a combination of factors: most importantly Prize Money Earnings, Highest Ranking, WTA Titles, Hotness and last but not least, Loudness of Grunting & Squealing.

Based on these determinations I am sad to say that Nadia Petrova (US$8,447,236), Svetlana Kuznetsova (US$13,961,519) and Dinara Safina (US$9,858,126), despite doing very well in the other 4 categories, were let down by their looks, but still deserve a mention. (Dinara, it doesn’t bode well when your brother is better looking than you)

1. Elena Dementieva – $13,729,105

Affectionately nicknamed “Lena” and with the ability to boast that she’s the only one on this list to have won an Olympic Gold Medal, Elena is currently the highest ranked Russian female tennis player at number 5 in the world. She has been as high as 3 in April 2009 and has earned a fraction more than Sharapova with US$13,729,105 in prize money. With 16 WTA singles titles and 6 WTA doubles titles she clearly ticks all the boxes to get her the top spot on the list.

2. Maria Sharapova – $13,270,000

Surprisingly not in the number 1 spot. Maria first became the number one ranked female player on August 22, 2005, has won 22 WTA titles, and has earned US$13,270,000 in prize money and grunts and squeals like a champion. Measured at 101 decibels, the Russian beauty employs the tactic because it masks the sound of the ball coming off the racquet and basically annoys the other player. She is repeatedly named the hottest athlete in the world and through sponsorship earns around US$26m annually.

3. Anastasia Myskina – $5,606,725

She may not be as stunning as the rest, but as the first Russian female tennis player to win a Grand Slam (French Open in 2004), and subsequently the first to reach the top 3 in the history of rankings (number 2 in the world – Sept 2004) and with career earnings of US$5,606,725; Anastasia is our deserved 3^rd place getter. Plagued by injuries Anastasia doesn’t think she will make a return to the professional tour and has decided to live her life preserving the memory of Boris Yeltsin.

4. Anna Kournikova – $3,584,662

The original Russian glamour girl. Anna’s highest rank was 8^th in singles but 1^st in doubles; and though she never won any singles titles, she won 16 WTA doubles titles and has earned US$3,584,662 in prize money. Anna was never very good at tennis and her career suffered after she made some poor life choices…like dating Enrique Iglesias. Anna’s initials (A.K) have even become a part of Poker culture as it is commonly said that when you hold an Ace and a King in your hand “it looks good, but never wins”. This is exactly what Anna thought of herself, when in a press conference after a loss to Martina Hingis she said “You won, but I’m prettier and more marketable than you.” And even Martina can’t argue with that.

5. Maria Kirilenko – $2,707,539

This Maria may very well be the best looking of the bunch but a highest ranking of 18 in July 2008, 5 WTA titles and US$2,707,539 in career prize money only has her in the 5^th spot. Because of Maria’s talent for tennis at an early age, she had to give up school and look elsewhere for an education. This led to her affair with Mikhail Baryshnikov when he became her private tutor. The pair split when Maria became constantly jealous that the famous ballet dancer “looked better in tights than she did”.
Some other famous Russian tennis players that didn’t make the list were: Marina Canyoumoveova, Sasha Doyuwannastayova, Daniela Ilikeitwhenyoubendova, Alina Imsohungova, Viktoria Throwalegova and Alexandra Hardtogetova. Better luck next time girls. And remember, you read it on the Internet, so it must be true.

Justin writes about personal finance. He provides useful advice on how to choose the best savings accounts

Australian millionaire who died last year left her 3 daughters only 1 dollar and 50 cents each. That is a whopping 4 dollars and 50 cents for all of them combined.

The 81 year old millionaire was convinced that her daughters had something to do with killing her mother and was therefore against leaving them the 3.5 million dollar fortune.

The millionaire lady Valmai Roche also left another 1 dollar and 50 cents to her ex husband John Roche. John is a respected real estate developer and the former major of the city of Adelaide where the penny-pinching millionaire used to live.

Millioanaire Valmai Roche in front of a picture of herself

The deceased millionaire stated on her will that the rest of her 3.5 million dollar fortune must go to the Catholic charity organization Knights of the Southern Cross.

The testament said that each of the daughters will get 30 pieces of silver of the lowest denomination of Australian currency – that is 30 Australian five cents. 30 pieces of silver was also the price for which Judas betrayed Jesus in the Bible.

The millionaires daughters Deborah Hamilton, Fiona Roche ja Shauna Roche say that Valmai was influenced by drugs when writing the will and have taken the matter into court.

An interesting development took place in Cherkassk, Ukraine last year where a commander of a military base sold more than 70 000 helmets as scrap metal.

Instead of selling the helmets as valuable military helmets used in armed combats the commander decided to sell them as scrap metal.

All in all the commander of the base gathered more than 11 tons of helmets and sold them all.

At the same time the commander probably did not know that the going rate for a helmet was 25 times more or $1.28. Had the commander played his cards right he would have got at least 90 000 dollars.

Unfortunately for the head of the military base the scrap metal buyers were a little smarter. Instead of melting the helmets for metal they decided to sell them at half the market price.
This flooded the market with cheap military grade helmets and prompted the police to investigate.

Everyone participating in the fraud is now in prison.
Probably for stupidity.

About a year ago president Obama announced that he will be making a 100 million dollar budget cut from the 3.5 trillion US budget.

What does this mean? How much is a 100 million dollars compared to 3.5 trillion? If you are like most of us you’ll probably think that both of them are enormous sums of money… That’s because people tend to have a problem with big numbers.
To see how big the budget cut really is compared to the whole budget, check out this video below:

Recently, a picture made by the famous artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijni (don’t worry you are not the only person who doesn’t know his last name) was sold by 32.4 million dollars in the Christie’s auction house. The painting is from 1658 and depicts a gentleman standing with his arm on his hip.

While this is the largest sum a Rembrandt has ever sold for, it is by no means the most expensive painting in the world.

The Most Expensive Painting In The World

The most expensive painting in the world is called No. 5, 1948. As you might have guessed from the name it is a rather modern painting -  from the year 1948. The author of this expensive painting is painter Jackson Pollock – an American painter known for his contributions in the abstract expressionist movement.

The costly painting was done on an 8′ x 4′ sheet of fiberboard, with thick amounts of brown and yellow paint drizzled on top of it, forming a nest-like appearance.

In 2006 The New York Times wrote that the painting No. 5, 1948 had been sold at a Sotheby’s auction house for 140 million dollars. This makes the No. 5, 1948 the most expensive painting ever sold, exceeding the sale of Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by about 5 million dollars. It seems that art is the only investment that doesn’t go down in value.

Wonder what a 140 million dollar masterpiece looks liks? Look no further, this is an actual picture of the painting:

Yes, I am not kidding – this is the picture of the worlds most expensive picture that costs 140 million dollars.

I am no art expert but I am pretty sure I made pictures like that in the kindergarten

What do you think – how much would you pay for this painting?

A huge marketing campaign started across Europe today with the goal to save fuel, money and the environment.

Over 40 oil companies, 45 000 gas stations and 29 countries are taking part.

Here are 10 things the marketing campaign is recommending people to do.

1. Service your car and check the oil level regularly
2. Check tire pressure once a month
3. Take everything that you don’t need out of the trunk and from your back seat.
4. Close your car windows when you are driving fast
5. Only use the air conditioner when it’s absolutely necessary
6. Start driving soon after starting the engine and stop the motor if the car is not driving for more than 1 minute.
7. Drive with a reasonable speed and smoothly
8. When accelerating shift to a faster car as soon as possible (Most cars in Europe use the “stick”)
9. Try to sense what is going to happen in the traffic before it happens
10. Share your car with others.

If you ask me, these recommendations are quite simple and can even seem somewhat stupid to a person who knows a little about saving gas.

I have a feeling that Europe needs this campaign badly – the average gas price is about 8 to 9 dollars per gallon.

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If you are fed up with tips about how to save fuel you should check out this post

10 countries with cheapest gas prices in the world

While being a door-to-door salesman I learned what could perhaps be the most valuable lesson in my entire life:

Control the controllables

Focus on what you can control

Only focus on the things you can directly influence. For us, selling books, it meant 3 things – hours, demos, attitude.

I could control how many hours of work I did. The more hours I worked the more people I could show my books to. The more people I showed them to, the more people bought them. Simple!

I could control the number of sales presentations I made every day. I knew that the amount of money I made was directly influenced by the number of sale presentations I made. In order to make more money I had to show my stuff do more people. To do that I could work longer hours or do shorter presentations. Shortening my presentation time just 1 minute meant that I could do 2 more demonstrations each day. Now keep in mind that I worked for 72 days – that means 144 more sales presentations and 15 to 20 more customers during a summer. That’s a difference of a few thousand dollars. So next time you waste a minute think about that!

The last thing I could directly control was my attitude. I could not control if people who opened the door would swear at me, call the cops on me, or try to shoot me (yes, it happens) – the only thing I could do, was to control the way I reacted to whatever happened to me. When someone gives you the F word and slams the door on you for the first time in your life, it’s easy to stay positive. When it happens 30 times in a row, its a a lot more difficult. When you knock on the door you can never know what happens next – maybe someone just lost their job or a loved one and because of that pours his entire frustration on you. You can’t control that. The only thing you can control is how you react to it when that actually happens. You can let it get your mood down or you can decide to be happy – whatever it takes. It’s difficult at first but soon enough you start to take things impersonally. „This guy wasn’t screaming at me – he was probably screaming because he had a lousy day at work”.
So, in selling you can really only control 3 things – the hours you work, the sales presentations you make and the attitude you have. You can’t control whether someone buys your product – you can only influence it with your demonstration. When you do a superb presentation there is a bigger chance that the prospect will buy, but there is always a chance that he doesn’t need what you are selling.

Same principles work in all fields of life

When Michael Johnson ran the 200 meter world record – 19.32 seconds – he could not control whether he would win the race or not. The only thing he could do was to run as fast as he could and hope that he is faster than his competitors.

When Barack Obama runs for president, he can not control whether or not people vote for him. He can only control the way he gives speeches, talks to people and appears to the public. By doing these things superbly he influences people to vote for him, but he never directly controls them. He can only control himself.

Why FinancialJesus.com will be successful

When I started this blog 10 days ago I thought about the same thing I just wrote about – the things that make ordinary people failures and successes – the things that we control. I would really want this blog to succeed, have a lot of readers and eventually become my main source of income, but these are not the things I can directly control – I can only influence them through my actions.

Instead, I came up with a promise I can directly control – I will write 3 posts every workday until September 1st 2008. This is something I can truly control and it is my belief that having a lot of content is the best thing I could do for this blog in the long run!

What to remember

Whatever you do, control the controllables and you will be successful. There is no point to complain about the things you can’t change. Instead – change the things you can!

PS! Thanks to Adam Primero for a great idea to give yourself promises instead of setting goals. It feels a lot more powerful!

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