• Columnists

Carmen Wu, CRPC®, Financial Adviser, Egan Berger & Weiner LLC

COLUMN = RETIREMENT

Carmen Wu, CRPC®, partnered with Egan, Berger & Weiner, LLC in August 2007. She brings 25 years of experience in the financial industry, and has served as financial adviser, branch manager, regional manager, chief operations officer and vice president of a regional banking institution.

A graduate of the University of Southern California, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science/International Relations, Martinez is an active member of the Rotary Club of McLean, a community service organization, and has served on the board of directors for five years.

She is also an active member of the Financial Planning Association and the Financial Services Institute, and is currently enrolled in the College for Financial Planning.

Raised in California, Martinez moved to the east coast in 1987 and now resides in Alexandria, VA. The oldest of nine children, she enjoys spending time with her 19 nephews and nieces. In her spare time she pursues one of her lifelong passions for art by drawing and painting portraits, landscapes and still life.

For more information, visit www.ebwfinancialnews.com. And send her an email at: cmartinez@ebwllc.com.

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

– Albert Einstein

A person who learns to juggle six balls will be more skilled than the person who never tries to juggle more than three.”

– Marilyn vos Savant

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”

– Bruce Lee

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

– Brian Tracy

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what nurtures creative thinking.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.”

– Voltaire

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

– William Butler Yeats

Ripeness is all.”

– William Shakespeare

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

– Joseph Campbell

Do you believe it is important to give back some portion of your wealth to support charitable causes?”

– Steven Schussler

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow.”

– Langston Hughes

Education is an admirable thing to have, but it is well to remember that nothing worth knowing can be taught.”

– Oscar Wilde

A people who mean to be their Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

– James Madison

Do not say, ‘why were the former days better than these,’ for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”

– Ecclesiastes, 7:10

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leon Joseph Suenens

Tolerance and patience should not be read as signs of weakness. They are signs of strength.”

– The Dalai Lama

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.”

– Anthony Trollope

Many people prefer to play it safe when it comes to business matters. Are you willing to take risks in the pursuit of entrepreneurial success?”

– Steven Schussler

What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?”

– Jim Butcher, White Night

I’m not afraid of storms,
for I’m learning to sail my ship.”

– Louisa May Alcott

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

Don’t follow your dreams. Chase them.”

– Richard Dumb

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

– Steve Jobs

Remember that it’s okay to ask for help when you’re stumped, because sometimes you really can’t be expected to handle everything alone.”

– Martha Beck

Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.”

– Corita Kent

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

– Bob Dylan

If you do not tell the truth about yourself
, you cannot tell it about other people.”

– Virginia Woolf

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

– J. Robert Oppenheimer

Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert

If you would create something,
 you must be something.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We never know how high we are
 till we are called to rise;
 And then, if we are true to plan,
 Our statures touch the skies.”

– Emily Dickinson

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

– Leonard Cohen

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

Don’t wait for someone else to lead you to your right life; that privilege—and responsibility—is yours alone.”

– Martha Beck

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

– Robert Frost

The awakening to the mystery of life is a revolutionary event; in it an old world is destroyed so that a new and better one may take its place.”

– J.J. Van Der Leeuw, The Conquest of Illusion

Letting go of expectations is a ticket to peace. It allows us to ride over every crisis—small or large—like a beach ball on water.”

– Martha Beck

If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”

– Jesse Jackson

Who cares if my glass is half empty or half full; I still have something to drink.”

– Optimism rules

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

– General Omar Bradley

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it”

– Andrew Carnegie

An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.“


– Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries

There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…”

– John Lennon

The only dream worth having is to live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead.”

– Arundhati Roy

The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of inkandescent terror.”

– T.S. Eliott