Category: Personal Finance (Page 6 of 8)

Mark Brunell’s financial nightmare

November 1, 2011 / Staff

We post stories about athletes and their financial problems as a warning to everyone that capital preservation is the first thing you should be thinking about when you are investing. You want a return on your investments, but you need to avoid risking all of your savings.

Pro athletes often make a ton of money. With most of it, they should be focused on ultra-safe investments that give them a decent return. They should not be risking it in new businesses. Same goes for anyone else who makes a lot of money.

Mark Brunell made a ton of mistakes:

Action News Jacksonville reports the current Jets backup and former Jaguars hero has managed to run through $50 million as an active player and will have to start a 9-to-5 job as soon as his NFL career is over.
And that will be soon. Brunell plans to retire from the Jets after this season and, because of his financial misfortunes, will have to become a regular working stiff. Bankruptcy filings show Brunell has a job lined up to work as a medical sales representative after he’s done holding a clipboard in New York.
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Brunell, 40, blew all his money with lousy investments into nine businesses — more than half of which are already closed. His most ponderous financial disaster was in Champion LLC, a company that invested in high-end real estate properties. That may have worked out great had the housing market not soured over the course of Brunell’s NFL career. He also invested in a Whataburger fast-food franchise, and ended up losing every penny he invested and even more according to financial documents. Brunell attempted to cover the loans with his own cash.
If that’s not harsh enough, the three-time Pro Bowl quarterback is facing six lawsuits. Brunell is on the hook for a whopping $24.7 million, according to the litigation.

Don’t make the same mistakes. Even on a smaller scale, you need to make sure you protect what you have already earned. Work with a financial planner to construct a balanced portfolio of investments. Diversification helps to mitigate financial risk.

Personal Finance

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Fast and easy for entrepreneurs

October 28, 2011 / Staff

It’s becoming easier for individuals to become entrepreneurs, and now is as good a time as any to try out a home business given the terrible state of our economy.

One of the advantages here is that your financial future is not tied to the economic fortunes of a company you don’t control. With your own business, you control your financial future.

Of course this isn’t for everyone. But the idea of working for yourself and working out of your own home is appealing to many people. Some are intrigued but are intimidated by the prospect.

If you’re going to consider it, keep two things in mind. First, avoid all of the get-rich schemes out there. Anyone who is selling you a system that will make you rich is just getting rich themselves by selling you this pipe dream. Focus instead on programs and coaches that will teach you specific skills, like how to market online, how to match your skills or product to customers, and how to save money by sourcing supplies and contractors online.

Next, if you have an idea, start budgeting what various aspects will cost. If you need printing services, see what options are out there. You’ll be surprised how much you can save online versus traditional options in your area. If you’re going to need a staff or people helping you with specific tasks like copyrighting or web design, check out services like Craig’s List and Guru.com to see the type of assistance that’s available.

Don’t dream about doing this. Start surfing and researching!

Personal Finance

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Mitt Romney says we should speed up forclosures

October 18, 2011 / Staff

The foreclosure crisis has been a huge drag on the economy since the economic collapse of 2008. Warren Buffett has explained that we won’t have an economic recovery until we have a housing recovery.

One of the controversies, however, involves bad practices by the banks, and whether consumers should get a break in the face of this misconduct.

Mitt Romney apparently doesn’t think so, as he is arguing in Las Vegas that foreclosures should speed up.

“Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom,” Romney said when asked by the Las Vegas Review-Journal what he would do to jump-start the floundering housing market. “Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up.”
The administration, Romney said, “has slow walked the foreclosure process … that has long existed and as a result we still have a foreclosure overhang.” Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto sued Bank of America in August, accusing it of foreclosing on homes without proper authority. Nevada is beset by economic turmoil and foreclosures. Last year, one in nine Las Vegas homes received a foreclosure notice.

On pure economic terms he has a point, but he seems to ignore how millions of American were screwed over by the banks. Yes, many home buyers made mistakes, yet it’s clear that the banks were jamming through mortgages just to rack up fees.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Personal Finance, Real Estate

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Bad investments plague many athletes

October 9, 2011 / Staff

We’ve been hearing these stories for years. Professional athletes make millions of dollars, and then they end up broke and/or bankrupt. These are cautionary tales even for the average investor.

Here’s an interesting article that details bad investments by athletes. One of the recurring themes involves investing in businesses. Investing in the business of another person is usually not the way to invest your money. Many businesses fail, and if that happens you lose all of your investment.

Also, if you’ve made a lot of money, you should be more interested in preserving what you’ve earned. Don’t get greedy on risky get rich ideas – you’re already rich!

Few people think about what they can lose when they make these kinds of investments. Read the article and you’ll get an idea of what types of investments you should avoid.

Budgeting, Investing, Personal Finance

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Using prepaid credit cards

September 4, 2011 / Staff

Fortune has an interesting article about the entrepreneur who created prepaid credit cards.

When the card was rolled out, kids didn’t show much interest but adults who couldn’t get checking accounts or credit bought the cards in droves, using them for such prosaic tasks as paying household bills. “I thought, ‘We have the right product, just the wrong target market,’ so we retooled,” Streit recalls.
Streit rechristened the company Green Dot (GDOT), got backing from Silicon Valley venture firm Sequoia Capital, and now is the largest provider of prepaid debit cards to the “underbanked” in America, a class estimated at 73 million people. Green Dot went public in 2010: Sequoia’s original $5.8 million stake is now worth around $270 million.
Its breakthrough came in 2005 when Wal-Mart (WMT) partnered with it for the Walmart MoneyCard, which customers load with money when they cash a paycheck or tax refund at a Wal-Mart. The retailer now accounts for 60% of Green Dot’s revenue, which hit $117 million in 2011’s first quarter, up 26% over 2010. With 4.3 million cards outstanding, it is far ahead of its closest rival, netSpend (NTSP), with 2.3 million. Wal-Mart was so impressed that it bought 9% of the company last year. Even the U.S. Treasury has started a pilot program to issue tax refunds on Green Dot cards.

It’s interesting how the card was created for students and then became popular with people who couldn’t get credit cards.

Budgeting, Personal Finance

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