My Utah properties are a bit more negative monthly but the amount is not something I can’t live with. I originally had hope to hold on to the properties for about 2-3 years and then sell them. However, with the current state of the housing market nationwide, this is looking more and more unlikely if I’m looking to make anything. I may be able to break even and that’s it if I sell the home in a year. The market in Utah hasn’t gone bust yet like in Las Vegas or in Phoenix but has slowed down quite a bit. Most of Texas is still relatively flat in gains, although central Austin, closest to downtown is still experiencing low DOM stats.

Looking back, would I do the same? I would still have invested in the Texas properties (Austin and Fort Worth) since the numbers worked out, but would have passed on the Utah properties. I was about a year too late with Utah.

The problem now, is I’m looking to buy a home for my own personal residence within a year or two and realize it won’t be too easy to unload a home to free up some cash as it would be if I had simply invested in a CD or in the stock market.

So the million dollar question for you average investors, is it time to get out of the market until everything settles down? The market has been down 15% since the all time high reached in October of 2007. Lots of investors have been betting the downward trend will continue.

I don’t think now is the time to be dumping in money into the market all at once thinking we have a bottom. However, if there are good companies out there trading at a huge discount for no reason, it may be wise to start putting in incremental amounts of money into the stock to lower your cost basis. A popular strategy is to buy more when a stock drops 10%. Just be careful you are not trying to catch a falling knife.

So how does an average person profit from all this? Well, if you believe Gold and Oil will continue to rise, the easiest way is to invest in the United States Oil Fun, ticker USO, and the streetTRACKS Gold Shares, ticker GLD. In laymans terms, both of these mirror the price of oil and gold. Some investors have invested in mining companies such as ABX, NEM, AEM and AUY with the expectation that as gold goes up, the mining companies’ profits will rise. This is generally the case, but the price of these stocks also depend on their management. Some would rather bet on the actual commodity than a company’s management team that I know nothing about.

I think oil will average about $95-$105 a barrell this year due to the weakness of the dollar. Gold should continue higher but is definitely due for a small pullback and should stay above $1,000 an ounce for at least a few months in the summer.

I personally have positions in these commodity stocks: AUY, SU, RIO, COP, XTO.

I don’t believe that you have to be the only unique company in the space to make money. Leads are here to stay and as some companies are struggling with high overhead due to the credit crunch, I hope to be in a good position to start making some money.

The key will be to generate the leads. I’m fortunate that I’ve had plenty of experience with SEO and affiliate marketing that I have generated leads before. However, in the past, I would just direct consumers to a 3rd party site and just receive a fee on a per lead basis. However, with my own system and business to distribute the leads, I’ll be able to afford to have spend more per lead and increase volume.

After being expose to the lead industry for a number of years, I’ve found there are a lot of very shady affiliates/lead sellers who will sell you recycle data. As a lead aggregator, one must be careful and avoid these guys like the plague. They will ruin your customers’ experience and your business will get a bad reputation.

Investing in gold and commodities is my current strategy. I’ve been wanting to start investing in foreign currency, specifically the Australian Dollar. I was doing some research and found that one way some people have been playing the currency market is through forex or by opening bank accounts through banks online such as Everbank.

However, the easiest way I’ve come across is to simply invest in Rydex’s ETF funds. The ETF funds seem to match the current currency exchange rates pretty closely. For example, as of right no, the Australian Dollar Trust (Symbol: FXA) is trading about $90.5, which is just about the exhange rate between the American dollar and the Australian dollar. Check out Rydex’s site for their other available ETFs to start hedging against a weak American dollar.

Why did it drop? I think it was a lot of people taking profits off the table along with bad economic news from banks with renewed worries about another credit crunch. What was surprising was that Google (GOOG) reported great profits and still barely gained 1% on the day. I did take the opportunity to buy a Google $640 Nov call.  BIDU and AAPL report next week, so it’ll be interesting to see if good news from those companies can get the market back on track. I do have positions in both of those stocks.

Is the world economy going to slow because of the US? There has been some talk about how vital the US economy is to the world economy. It’s not the center of the world economy as it was a number of years ago but any slowdown would definitely hurt the overall world economy. China exports to the US would slow.

I’m no economist but I’m still bullish on the overall economy. Housing and financials may suffer but overall, our economy should be chugging ahead.  I’m just fortunate that I did not invest or buy a personal residence in California. I still have some holdings in Texas and Utah, which I bought for cash flow. Any appreciation are bonuses for those properties. I do realize the chances of selling those homes right now are slim with the credit crunch so I am stuck with the properties.

I learned that while it is very hard work and long hours, especially with a restaurant, the payoff and ROI is very attractive. She has already made all her money back and it is only her second year. Franchises usually require a start-up fee, which in this case was about 40K, an annual franchise fee based off gross income, and they typically require you to purchase supplies from them. In my friend’s case, she did not have to purchase supplies from them because the franchise is not too large and did not have it’s own supply chain just yet.

To learn more about franchise opportunities in business, check out this site here.

I talked to a few other people who had minor accidents and they said it didn’t really affect their cost at all. So it seems like a myth for your first accident. I was really relieved since I was expecting at least a 10-20% jump in the cost.

I’m actually on the fence about this. I hate to see families lose their homes but as someone who put off buying a primary residence in CA, I feel like the people paying 700k for a 1500 sq ft home in southern California should not be bailed out.

I don’t find pleasure in people going under, but if those people are too stubborn to pay attention to the market value around, they will just keep on dropping their list price after others instead of being the first to do it and their values will just keep dropping not allowing them to get rid of their homes.