My Wealth Journey

Have you ever wonder how much money franchises like Cold Stone, Jamba Juice, McDonalds, or other non-food related franchises made? Well, the answer is when done properly, it can provide a very nice lifestyle. Yesterday, I ran into an old friend who got into the franchise business with a restaurant a few years ago and we started chatting a bit about her business.

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.

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

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.

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).

It is never too early to start planning for the 2007 taxes. The max 401k contribution for 2007 will be increased by $500 to $15,500 while 2008’s limit should be close to $16,000 and 2009’s limit be around $16,500. 2008 and 2009’s limit are not set in stone yet and are determined by the cost of living increase. I doubt the cost of living, according to the IRS will be more than the 3% figure they have been using.

401k contribution is all done pretax so take advantage of reducing your taxable income, especially if you are in the higher bracket and even more so if your employer matches part of your contribution.

The job report came out this past Friday and the economy added about 180,000 which drops unemployment to 4.4%! That matches the lowest in 5 years! What this means? Well, it means the chances of a decrease in interest rates will be a lot slimmer now with the bond prices rising because of this.

I expect the market to fall 1 to 1.5 points on Monday because of the decrease chances of a lower interest rate.

Residential construction jobs dropped but a lot of those workers/contractors probably went into commercial.

I know that it is definitely a good market for IT jobs in Southern California. It took me 2 days for 2 interviews and 2 job offers.

So after a bit more than 4 years, I decided that I needed a job change. Our company recently underwent a change in management and I was told my duties would start to include a little higher level rather than just straight programming. Close to 3 months later, nothing has changed, I’m not really included when they talk about the business even though I’ve been one of the employees that have been there for a while in comparison with the others.

I plan on giving my 2 weeks early next week. I expect them to offer me something in return to stay but I doubt I would take it. I need a new place and new environment.

I have a number of websites that I run where I go with the cheap under $5 a month hosting plans. Most of the time, these hosting companies are small one or two man shops. I’ve had two sets of sites be down for over 5 days because I kept on believing they would eventually fix the issue with their servers. Fortunately, these sites weren’t real money makers for me but they were still profitable so I was losing money in the end.

I finally signed up with another host and moved the sites off the servers that were down. When you choose to go with cheap hosting companies, you do need to check in on your sites every now and then to ensure they are up, especially if you have a pump and dump site as many of you affiliate marketers may have.

You get what you pay for.

What do you guys do about people hot linking images off your site? I just noticed that one of my affiliate sites that hardly gets traffic has had its bandwidth used up a little more than normal because of someone from myspace hotlinking the image. I bandwidth is very minimal so I’m not concerned about that.