A Key To Making Money

There are thousands of people out there who are beating their heads against the wall trying to come up with the next big business idea.  The key to making money in business is knowing what is going to happen.

It’s a simple idea really.  Every time something happens on our planet there is an opportunity to make money off of it.  The key is to predict what will happen, before it will happen and to put yourself into a position to make money off of it.

The clues of future events are under all of our noses as we speak.  Although this is an easy idea, it can be a very hard thing to do.

Let’s look at some examples:

#1 – If you knew that oil demand would surge and that supply would not keep up, you could have made a killing.  The clues have been here for years.  It was no secret 10 years ago that China and India’s economies were growing quickly and predicted to grow for years to come.

These economies run off of oil.  Therefore demand for oil is going to go up greatly.  OPEC and other oil producing countries love the fact that oil is at $75 a barrel instead of $25.  They make 3 times as much money with the same amount of work.

If you saw this happening 5-10 years ago, you could have put yourself into a position to profit from it.  You could have bought oil stocks or oil on the commodities market.  People who did this have made a ton of money.

#2 – If you knew that most people in America would own a cell phone, you could have made a killing.  The clues were there.  If you take a look at history you would have seen how the telegraph fell victim to the telephone.  Well history repeated itself and the telephone fell victim to the cell phone.

Once again if you knew this was going to happen, you could have invested in the baby cell phone companies, which are now huge players in our economy.

The moral of this story is that instead of beating your head against the wall trying to think of ways to make money in today’s market, you should be trying to figure out what is going to happen next.  What is going to be the next big thing.  Look for the clues.  Study where the market is heading and what has happened in the past.

Most importantly, put yourself into a position to take advantage of where we will be in the future.

Written by admin on August 31st, 2006 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Making Money.

Our First House – You Get What You Pay For

It seems that my fiancée and I may have set our requirements too high for our budget.  Originally we were hoping to get a 2000 sq ft house with .5 acres of land for around $125,000.  There are houses out there that fit the bill, but are issues with these properties.

These big houses are only $125k for a reason.  That reason is that they have issues, major issues.  Here are some of the issues that the 1st house had:

- the unfinished basement was counted as part of the 2000 sq ft
- the house sat 5 feet away from a wet weather creek (in rain became a river)
- the house would likely need expensive flood insurance ($500 -1500 a year)
- there was a huge old ugly mint green barn on the neighboring property
- there was a 15-20 unit mobile home graveyard across the street

None of these issues are good for resale.  And none of the problems were mentioned in the listing.  Here are the issues with the 2nd house:

- the foundation was only 2 inches thick
- there were support beams through the middle of the living and family rooms
- the walls had poorly patched holes (looked like they had been punched out)
- the ceiling in the master bath was extremely low
- the roof had been re-shingled 3 times
- the deck felt like it was going to collapse
- the driveway needed to be repaved
- the house seemed like it had been abused by the owners

The problems with this house are that it needs $10,000 or more of work to be put into it.  Our budget is $125k, so the total cost of the house needs to be that amount.  These two houses are potentially nightmares.

In the first one we would be wondering if we were going to get flooded out every time it rained.  In the second one we would wonder when the foundation was going to crack.  These are not things that I want to have in the back of my mind.

Written by admin on August 30th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Thinking About Money.