The way I see it, there are three ways you can go about dealing with money you earn.

1. Live above your means.
2. Live within your means.
3. Live below your means.

Breakdown of #1

Spend all the money I’ve got; spend a lot of money I don’t got and worry about it later.

Breakdown of #2

Spend all the money I’ve got; don’t spend any money I don’t got.

Breakdown of #3

Spend some of the money I’ve got; don’t spend any money I don’t got; invest and save the rest for the future.

If you answered #3 you win a gold star! If you said, “Number 3 is best but I’m really a 2 or 2 and a half,” then you get a silver star for knowing which is best.

If you answered #1 is how I live and I see nothing wrong with it, what do you think my answer would be?

Know your options! Image by thinkpanama

Real estate investors have a saying: “You make your money when you buy.”

If that’s true, you better know which options you have to buy under.

Buying a property using the correct method for your needs can reduce the amount of risk involved.

This is an important idea to remember that most people, not even Realtors, ever fully realize.

Buying under good terms often times outweigh buying at a reduced price.

That will probably be my opening line when it comes time to write that post.

In general, the greater the risk, the better your reward should be. But this doesn’t always have to be the case if you buy correctly.

Example How Buying Real Estate Correctly Reduces Risk

Let’s say you want to flip a property. You buy the house for $200,000 with terms of the seller will pay half your closing costs and you obtained 100% financing - so you don’t have to put any money down.

Found a great website for hacking up your WordPress blog.

I found it by doing a search on how to separate my trackbacks from user comments in my comment section.

Nothing sucks more than trying to read what other users have to say in comment sections (especially on popular articles) and I have to skip through all the trackbacks. It really interrupts the conversation - but, we still all love those incoming links.

Unfortunately, there are no plugins yet that do this automatically for you, or at least none that I have seen. You will actually have to get into your blog’s php code and add a few lines. It’s super easy. Just follow the step-by-step instructions shown on the site.

My suggestion is to make sure you back up your comments.php file by copying and pasting the original code into a text file. Then if you do something wrong, simply paste that old code back into the file.

1. Cost of leads = your marketing costs / the number of leads
2. Gross margin = revenue - cost of goods
3. Rate of return = profits / investment

Ok, so I cheated, they’re not sentences. But they are good to know.

Questions? Post’em in the comment section.

Like the Confucius way of learning? Subscribe to my blog.

Gas. Most of us need it. Some of us have it. Not everyone can afford it.

Hey, focus - this is a business blog, not a gastrointestinal blog. I’m talk’n the liquid stuff our cars run on

Seriously though, lately every community here in the states have been experiencing rising gas prices which in turn causes the price of products to rise. Trust me, truckers aren’t going to take all the hit. If it costs $1000 more to get that product to your local grocery store, the freight company is going to pass that cost to the store who will in turn pass that cost on to you, the consumer.

But do increases in your paycheck work the same?

Uh no, they most certainly do not.

This means you make the same amount of money but have to spend a whole hell of a lot more to drive, eat, drink, and well, live.

An interesting thing happens here.

First - know what not to buy! Image by superciliousness

Real estate investors use many methods to finding investment properties.

They network with lawyers, bankers, accountants, subscribe to legal publications, and so on to discover investment properties and possible motivated (flexible) sellers.

As a normal homebuyer though, you probably won’t contact lawyers and accountants or subscribe to legal forms to investigate who’s going through a divorce or getting ready to file for bankruptcy.

Let’s then take a look at a few practices and insights investors use to locate a property that typical homebuyers can learn from and use.

What You Should Avoid

Ever see the show, What Not To Wear?

In short, the two hosts are fashion experts who find people who dress out of style and give them a wardrobe makeover that will turn heads and make a person feel in style.

1. Be positive and believe in yourself, it’ll rub off and others will in turn believe in you - don’t make excuses.
2. Sometimes you can speed up the success of your business by joining forces with other companies.
3. If you own a business, set up a business structure.