My Wealth Journey

Wow is all I can say from the new home sales for April. New home sales jumped 16.2 percent last month. After reading a little further in the news article, all of the sales increased came from one region; the northeast which saw home sales jumped 43.1 percent. I know a lot of housing bulls (a.k.a realtors) will jump on this and say the housing market has bottomed already and start promoting the hell out of this number. Sales were down in every other part of the country and median new home prices dropped over 11 percent. Prices are definitely coming down on new homes.

I still plan on waiting this out before buying a home in California to live in. The prices haven’t dropped that much yet as there are still people trying to sell homes at 2005 prices.

Yahoo New Homes Sales News Article

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So a few friends of a friend have got into MLM recently. I don’t know if they fully understood MLM or the business they got into but if you are familiar with quixtar then you’ll know what this is about. Quixtar is your basic MLM scheme. I will be quick to point out that I don’t believe they are legally scamming anyone that I’m aware of, just misleading and doing a good job of convincing its new members to sign up based on promises that are never fulfilled.

What is a friend to do? Do you tell them they are buying into false hopes and dreams of riches? These are the people who fully believe in their ‘new business’. One of them was passing out business cards about their new business. I went to one of the websites and I could not figure out what was being sold, just a bunch of promo and sales pitch to earn money.

People do make money with multiple level marketing. No question about it. If you can convince other people of the same dream you bought into, you would definitely start making money from their fees. You are essentially just passing the bag to the next person and they will continue to pass the bag. This is what makes MLM work.

As you can see, making money with MLM is possible but at the expense of the next person. I truly believe most cases, the people who join MLM programs really believe they are showing you a way to make money. For those wanting to learn a little more about MLM, the forums at Rich Dad have lots of people who know they are part of a MLM and do not mind at all.

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Yahoo stock jumped up to over $33 at the time of this posting over news that Microsoft may buy the company. Is it really a good idea for Microsoft? Yahoo’s stock jumped close to 20% already just over the news that it will be bought out. So the purchase price would probably be close to $40 or so a share. Additionally, Yahoo’s P/E earnings is already higher than Google, even though investors are making a big stink about Panama.

I don’t think its a good idea for Microsoft to buy the company outright, maybe setup some kind of partnership instead. The deal would be great for Yahoo investors.

I do wonder what kind of affect this would have on SEO. MSN’s search engine results are more spammy and are a lot easier to get into which does benefit me. It’d be nice to keep their separate algorithm and to keep their brands different.

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The mortgage subprime fall out has created a smaller pool of buyers and people who can refinance and has hit my former company. I learned that a few weeks ago half of a department (8 people) was let go. Although you can argue most saw the writing on the wall with the subprime mess, this shows the importance of having multiple streams of income.

I know most of these folks have families and some of them don’t have a working spouse because they stay home and take care of the kids. A job cut like that will definitely hurt them.  If they had other streams of income, (which I hope they do), the cut will give them a little bit of time and save them from financial stress of figuring out where to go next.

Since I’m in IT, I would naturally say, make money online. These folks were from non-IT jobs, but that does not mean they can’t start making money online. A simple blog about a topic they are knowledgeable would be a start for them. They would at the least be able to eventually sell text links and put up affiliate links (even if its just for friends and family).

Popularity: 32% [?]