Investments

I am way too dumb to have taken advantage of the Dot.com market, so I missed out on all the fun.

I am not a stock broker, so I know nothing about stocks. I am simple. If that other business is doing so great, why do they need my money? I have my own companies and I don't need their money. I have never taken one dime of other people's money for any investment and I have never invested in someone else's ideas. I think its a bad idea to let someone else have control of your money. If anyone disagrees, send me your money and I will take care of it and I will really try to do the best I can with it, but you MUST KNOW AND ACKNOWLEDGE that I am not responsible if your money gets lost. If I make money on one project and lose money on another, it will probably be your money that was lost. Okay? I kid, I kid, don't send me your money.

Sorry about the sarcasim, but I hate seeing people get ripped off by investment swiddles.

Two words, REAL ESTATE. More money is made in real estate than by any other means, when you are talking about regular investors.

Start small, leverage your money by putting down only what you need to in order to be able to rent the place out to make the mortgage payment. Then let someone else make the payments on your property that is also going up in value every year. D'uh! You write off every expense you put into it.

If you live somewhere that you can buy a house for under a hundred thousand, you will wind up haaving a mortgage payment of less than your current rent, in most cases.

Buy a freaking house and live in it, as soon as you can and its very easy to buy a house today. Stop throwing money away on rent. If you can't afford a big house, buy a tiny one. Fix it up. Make it pretty and sell it for a profit. Invest that into a bigger place and so on.

One thing that's great about real estate is it takes a bit to pull your money out and it makes you think before you casually spend your savings.

Yes, the housing market does go down, but never forever. You simply wait it out and it ALWAYS comes back up. ALWAYS.

Remember, you do not make money when you sell your property. You make money when you buy it.

Another thing is go buy the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and study some basic principles of money if you want to have some.

You will either learn to control your money and make it work for you, or it will make you work for it and it will control your life. The choice is yours.

Yes! Start saving for a downpayment. I don't think you should compete with what are known as the Forty Theives. You need to learn how to buy, but not at foreclosure sales. Tell ya what. At CHUDWEST I will spend a few minutes with you and show you where and how to look. You just need a computer and some very basic understand of what to look for and WHERE to look. Being 20 is fine. I wish I had started at twenty. Then I would have been really rich. My own jet, kind of rich. Forget the nothing down kits on TV and the how to buy foreclosures at sale hype, because that is what it is. I know a place where you could get first shot at some bargin real estate and so do you, if you think about it. What the heck, it the program exists for people in your special catagory, then go ahead and take advantage of what is being offered. If that doesn't make sense to you, I will explain it when we meet in ONE MONTH!

Don't forget the simple interest. It won't amount to too much.

Remember this weird piece of advice. A house is NOT an asset, it is a liability. It takes money away from you, it doesn't put money in your pocket. Then again, rent is a bigger liability, so what do you do? Buy a duplex and rent one out for enough to cover the mortgage on both places, or at least seriously reduce how much you have to pay each month. Now THAT'S an assest. Then buy more real estate that you can rent for more than the monthly payment. Buy one piece a year or every two and try and figure out how much you'd be worth by the time you are forty. Rental property also produces income for you, which also gives you major tax deductions and means you wind up with more money to invest in more property or to cover your living expenses. If you work for a studio, that could be your work, but real estate would be your "BUSINESS." Your business gives you the all hated (around here) tax write offs from the income your business producers and covers many of your expenses, then you take less income because if the business covers most of your needs you need less. You pay taxes on less money, so you pay little in taxes and you wind up with more of what you earned. That's BETTER than working, paying taxes on what you make and taking the little you have left and trying to pay your living expenses and bills and maybe someday buy a place so that you can owe payments, which you will try and make with after tax dollars.

One way makes you comfortable, the other way makes you poor. You will have earned the same amount of money from your job either way, but how and what you do with it determines if you will be rich or poor.

Try having your money work for you rather than you working for it. Let the money be your slave, not the other way around.