Archive View (June 2008)

A sixth-grade teacher in Seattle was suspended for refusing to give his students a federally-mandated standardized test. Science teacher Carl Chew said for years he watched his students suffer with test anxiety. Some, he said, got physically sick and others actually cried. He said the test created an atmosphere he called “rife with fear,” so he just decided not to give it. This didn’t sit well with his principal who suspended him for nine days without pay for insubordination. The teacher’s actions made him a hero for a lot of parents who sent him letters from as far away as Hawaii and Canada. A more...

Have you ever walked into a builder’s model home and after some small talk with a sales representative and a preview of some of the floor plans, been told about the thousands you can save by going thru the “preferred lender” and “preferred title company” when you are looking to buy an investment property? My guess is that if you have visited a builder, then your answer is “YES”.  The program typically works like this...  The builder is offering $5,000-$10k in free upgrades if you use “ABC Lending” and will only pay for your title policy if you use “XYZ Title Company”.   They know more...

HR Bill 6049 could be another great incentive to get into investing in real estate! While “the bill” as proposed, takes a multi-pronged approach to help stimulate a variety of industry sectors, today I want to address how the bill particularly could impact both the residential and commercial real estate markets.  One of the most exciting line items in the bill allows for investors to get a bit of instant gratification for improvements made to their properties being leased. Traditionally, capital improvements have had to be straight-line depreciated over a 15 year period. In the proposed bill, a investor can take an investment property write more...

I’m all for divorce if a marriage becomes unbearable. But I also believe that a couple should at least try to see if their relationship is salvageable instead of immediately heading to court at the first sign of trouble. Apparently it’s not just a personal thing; it’s a financial burden on the entire country. According to a new study, divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing cost U.S. taxpayers more than $112 billion each year. That’s based on the assumption that households headed by single women unfortunately have high poverty rates which mean higher spending on welfare, health care, criminal justice, and eventually education for children more...

Does your job make you think too much? Even though sometimes it may not seem like it, that’s a good thing. Mentally demanding jobs come with an extra big perk: they keep you mentally sharp even as you age. Day-to-day work that requires negotiation, analysis, and decision-making builds up something called your “cognitive reserve” which is a level of mental function that helps you avoid mental decline. So while you’re solving problems and planning, organizing and strategizing with tough clients, you might feel like your brain is going to explode. In reality, however, you’re warding off dementia. That’s not to say that all complex, more...

Another golf analogy... I have a few buddies on the national long-drive circuit and recently went to watch an event when they came to town. As a golfer, I can’t help but be amazed at how unbelievably far these guys can hit it. They are extremely strong and surprisingly flexible. While I can’t compete with them in this arena, I can usually beat them in the root derivative of this game called golf. It seems that there is more to golf than just beating the ball as far as possible and hoping one stays on the course.  The same can be said for every business along with more...

I am a huge golf fan and enthusiast. I play to a 5 handicap and DVR most of the PGA tournaments to watch in my down time. Since this week is US Open week and which in my opinion, the biggest tournament stage in the world. I thought about how the US Open relates to business in our current economy and here is what I have come up with. The US Open is a tournament which anyone with a 1 handicap or better can register to play in qualifier tournaments being held around the country. In other words, it’s OPEN to amateurs and pro’s alike and more...

Would you like to know how much money your co-workers make? If you could sneak a look at their paychecks, I bet you would.  There was a lot of outrage in Italy recently after the government published every citizen’s income on the Internet. The tax authority’s website was swamped with people snooping to see how much their neighbors and co-workers and celebrities earned. Within hours of the site going up, it was so overwhelmed that it was nearly impossible to access. But the site stayed up for nearly 24 hours until it was suspended after a formal complaint was filed. Although critics complained more...

All we keep hearing about these days is gloom and doom due to the record number of foreclosures in this country. Ever wonder if anyone is making money during these trying times? The answer is a resounding YES! I know guys who predicted these days were coming and made hundreds of millions “shorting” the market with the hedge funds they run. If you know anything about the dice game called craps, then you are familiar with the “don’t pass” line on the table. It’s an unpopular bet at the gaming tables because you win when everyone else loses. You must be visibly pulling for the table’s good more...

Sunday is Father’s Day which, of course, always makes me think of my dad, Fred C. Trump. I learned a lot from my father, especially about business. Probably the best advice I ever had came from him. He had a four-step formula for getting things done:  Get in. Get it done. Get it done right. And Get out. Simple, concise, and it works. The other thing my father told me was to “know everything you can about what you’re doing.” I’ve followed that advice too, and I think it’s apparent that it works. I’m very thorough, as he was, and it can save you more...

I am trying to learn how to be more energy efficient these days and along with hybrid cars being all the rage and solar panels being used as a renewable energy source for residential and commercial investment properties should be evaluated. The best I can tell, there would be about a $25,000 cost to install 100 sq ft. of solar panels on my southerly facing rooftop. If I consider that the system has an economic life of at least 25 years, then the math is pretty simple. It will cost me about $1000/ year to own the solar panel system. I can expect a 40-60% more...

I am always trying to think outside “the box” in an effort to distinguish myself and services from everyone else’s in this 2 million-horse town. It requires some serious disposable time in order to be able to accomplish this and with three kids under the age of six and it is not something I have a lot of. An area I think we should all be focusing on is how we can have progress in both our personal and professional lives while being mindful of the environment. It sounds cliché, but since going “green” is the “IN” thing, there has never been more financial more...

With today’s terrible economy, job news is miserable everywhere. It’s no surprise that over the past few years, college graduates each June haven’t been very lucky once they’ve picked up their diplomas and headed out into the real world. They’ve been faced with a tough job market, low salaries and lots of frustration. Surprisingly, however, the Class of 2008 is stepping out into a great job situation. This is the healthiest job market in three years, with employers planning to hire 16 percent more new college graduates this year than they did last year. Hiring projections for new graduates are strong across the more...

Sure, the economy is bad and I definitely believe we’re in a recession, but I’m convinced we shouldn’t really start panicking. That’s why I was a little surprised to read a recent column in the Wall Street Journal by Brett Arends. He suggested that maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food. His reason is that food prices are rising much faster than the returns you are likely to get by keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. He said that if you keep standby cash in a money-market fund, you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5 percent interest rate more...

A rather hot topic these days aside from the economy is the new operating system being force-fed consumers by computer software giant, Microsoft. I was recently tasked with the assignment of purchasing a new laptop after having dropped mine and damaging the power supply. These days, it costs about the same to repair a laptop as it does to buy a new one ($400 plus shipping).  So, I get my new machine back to the office and discover the new Vista program had been installed. I was willing to give it a go and began installing my peripherals and software one by one. I tried and more...

I have been in the lending business for 17 years now and am truly amazed at either how well the lending community has disguised the real estate finance process or how many consumers don’t care learn what they need to know before proceeding with borrowing money. It may be a combination of both, though, and lenders are counting on these uninformed or under-informed consumers to get their phones to ring. On one hand, many finance companies are attracting business thru bait and switch tactics and I am fed up with it. They run “adv-enticements” for “No closing cost” mortgage loans and/or artificially low rates more...

Did you receive a tax rebate check yet? The U.S. Treasury began mailing out the checks earlier than expected. Many people had them by late April, but everyone should have them by the end of June. The purpose of the rebates is to pump more than $100 billion dollars into the U.S. economy. That is, if people spend the money when they get it. So, if you’re eligible for a check and receive that unexpected windfall of anywhere from $600 to $1,200 or more, what will you do with it. Spend it or save it? For the economic stimulus plan to work, people must spend more...