Ask the entrepreneurs advice
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I used a 60 monthly level payment annuity for my estimate.
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My current plan for passive income involves buying a second apartment and finding a non-punk to rent it...
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finding a non-punk to rent it
Land lord shouldn't really count as passive should it? There are too many things you are still responsible for doing (though having someone else manage it for a cut could then count I guess).
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Land lord shouldn't really count as passive should it? There are too many things you are still responsible for doing (though having someone else manage it for a cut could then count I guess).
Yes, it would. Passive does not mean that you don't do anything. Rental property is passive income, even though you still have to do billing, vet tenants, collect payment, maybe occasionally unstop a toilet, etc. The idea behind passive income is that it will bring in money without necessarily having to work a job.
If you look up definitions for "passive income", rental properties are usually towards to top of the short list.
Passive Income: What It Is and Ideas for 2024
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Passive income is earnings from a rental property, limited partnership, or other enterprise in which a person is not actively involved.
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bring in money without necessarily having to work a job.
Land lording is a job. That is why there are management companies. But for a couple properties I could see the workload being low enough to not count, just seems like a pretty flexible boundary.
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Land lording is a job.
Yes, there is no doubt about that. And, in defense of your argument, one that I would not want to do because it can be a total PITA. But, owning rental properties also has the benefit of you having the ability to build wealth through the increase of the value of the property, which would definitely be passive as it is ancillary to being a landlord of your own property.
But for a couple properties I could see the workload being low enough to not count, just seems like a pretty flexible boundary.
There ya go, and once you get to the point where it starts to feel like a job, you should in theory have enough of them to hire a management company. Which, in my dealings with them, they are the worst of the worst. Total slum lords.
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because it can be a total PITA.
I think it's entirely down to finding non-punk tenants. Although it is amazing the number of normal-looking people who will actually want to drill through load-bearing walls or smear faeces on the ceiling, (or more seriously, change the locks and refuse to pay rent, because that's totally the landlord/tenant agreement right there).
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My current plan for passive income involves buying a second apartment and finding a non-punk to rent it...
You'll regret that.
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My books are literally paying the rent now. I tried out Google Adwords again, and my conversion rates are pretty good (incredible, actually). Something like 1 out of 5 people who click buy a book. Next stop, $1000 a month profit.
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my conversion rates are pretty good (incredible, actually). Something like 1 out of 5 people who click buy a book.
Holy crap, that is phenomenal.
Of course, very few people are likely to enter a search that leads to your book that is not a very likely candidate for being a customer. One of the huge benefits of having a small, selective, very well-defined, market.
Good for you man.
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My books are literally paying the rent now.
Now there's nothing standing between you and the spoon.
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A good read on the subject.
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- “I could have”
See also: “I should have,” “I might have been able to”
Regret is the worst feeling an individual can face, to keep revisiting times when they “could have” done something, the situation was out of hand or else they “would have,” now realizing that they “should have.” Successful individuals do not give themselves the opportunity to regret.
Really? It sounds to me like that article is advocating never giving yourself the opportunity to learn from mistakes.
I don't necessarily experience crippling regret when I say "In hindsight, I should have carved out dedicated time to work on my novel last winter before things got busy. Now that they're calming down again, I think I'll do just that."
- “I could have”
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I did not read it that way. I read it more as "learn from your mistakes, but then move on and don't dwell on them".
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I mean, that's charitable, but how do you learn from them without ever saying or thinking "I could/should/might have done X"?
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I concur.
Have you ever had a conversation like this, after say a near-miss car collision:
<spacer> > Yeah, thankfully I stopped in time. <spacer> > But look at how close that was, you could have hit me! <spacer> > I know, I'm really sorry about it. <spacer> > But you could have hit me! I could be in an ambulance right now! <spacer> > Well, yeah, but that didn't hap-- <spacer> > I can't believe how close you came to hitting me! <spacer> > You didn't get hit. You're fine. <spacer> > Inches and I'd have been in an ambulance with a medic over me! <spacer> > Look there's not even a dent. <spacer> > I can't believe how close you got to hitting me! <spacer> > Ok I'm going to just leave now. <spacer> > But look, you almost hit me!You could have hit me!
Some people just get into that "mode" where they can't just get the fuck over it and walk away.
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I mean, that's charitable, but how do you learn from them without ever saying or thinking "I could/should/might have done X"?
I think you read it wrong...or maybe I am just being charitable because I agree with it as I read it. Confirmation bias and all of that.
Regret is the worst feeling an individual can face, to keep revisiting times when they “could have” done something, the situation was out of hand or else they “would have,” now realizing that they “should have.”
I highlighted the relevant bit for me. Don't dwell on it. I have fucked up before. Early on in my business I took on a project that, looking back, I should have passed on. I got burned on it. I paid for materials and labor and never got paid for it. In one day, I lost ~$1,000 plus the opportunity cost of the money that I could have made on a project that would have actually paid me.
It pissed me off. I spent time chasing that money where I lost more to opportunity cost. Now, we have a simple rule that we do not take on any subcontracted jobs or third-party billing. End of story. We are primary, or we don't touch it, because it severely limits our methods of recourse if we do not get paid.
Successful individuals do not give themselves the opportunity to regret.
Once again, it is framed in terms of regret. Not in not learning. Yeah, you can learn from regret. But, it does not mean that you have to regret in order to learn. Nor is that the most productive way to learn. Not in my experience.
I try to take the position of, "I fucked up, but here is what we will do differently next time." Regretting it would possibly cause more mistakes. Move on quickly.
This is due to two reasons: either they take the opportunity, no matter the odds, and turn the tables around; or they move on and find another opportunity that awaits. Regret is never going to serve anyone.
More of the same, by my reading.
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7 sentences successful people never say
- Let's mail a tortoise to the head of HR.
- I farted in your cubicle.
- I never check my email after 2pm, or on Fridays.
- Oh, you sent me that assignment because you wanted me to do it?
- That PC was on fire already when I found it.
- I think I got the shredder confused with the fax machine.
- Yeah, I'm basically just pretending to work here at this point.
Filed under: this is fun!
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Let's mail a tortoise to the head of HR.
I farted in your cubicle.
I never check my email after 2pm, or on Fridays.
Oh, you sent me that assignment because you wanted me to do it?That PC was on fire already when I found it.
I think I got the shredder confused with the fax machine.
Yeah, I'm basically just pretending to work here at this point.
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Some people just get into that "mode" where they can't just get the fuck over it and walk away.
I have a surprisingly large number of clients who go through life like that, obsessing about shit.
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Some people just get into that "mode" where they can't just get the fuck over it and walk away.
To be fair, if someone's going quite so much like that then it's so tempting to say:
Well yes, but if you don't stop this I'll definitely hit you because I'll be smacking you upside the head for being a dumbass.
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@tar said:
1. Let's mail a tortoise head to
the head ofHR.Imagine that, the head of HR wakes up in the morning to find a tortoise head in the bed beside him…
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Has anyone here ever sold wholesale?
I just got an email from a procurement manager looking to buy in large quantities. I'm thinking of selling them 500+ of my worst selling books at $40 each. I don't want to sell them the best sellers, since they'd just be my competition at the retail level.
Or am I thinking about this wrong? Should I sell the best sellers and just take a cut in my retail sales?
It comes down to money. I'm asking what I get out on royalties when I sell retail. That means I'm taking a $4-5 cut, due to costs and such. Worth it, just to get sales out.
Maybe I'll lower the price on my worst sellers, and hope he gets sparkle-eyed by the high MSRP. That way I get a big sale and no competition on my biggest sellers.
Maybe it's just BS. I hope not.
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What are the terms? Are you paid upon delivery, or do they sell for you and you get paid as they sell?
If they pay upon delivery, then go for it. You are only talking about a few bucks per book. Would you spend $2500 to make $20K? I would. Every day of the week.
If they will only pay out as they sell them, then it depends...
If you have to deliver them to them, have that sunk cost, and then only get paid if they sell any, that is a fool's wager. Fuck that deal.
If they will sell for you, and you get to keep and manage your inventory that you can also sell through other avenues, and only fulfill as they sell...then I would probably do it. You really have no risk and you have another seller working for you.
Or am I thinking about this wrong? Should I sell the best sellers and just take a cut in my retail sales?
Maybe. Look at the above. The same answer applies.
Maybe it's just BS. I hope not.
Also a possibility. Just manage your risk, and carefully go over the terms of the deal. If you want, you are always welcome to PM or email me the terms and I would be happy to go over them and give an honest opinion.
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It was a phishing scam. Either way, I'm seeing up am account with lightningsource, printers who can ship everywhere in the world, wholesale.
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That seems very narrowly focused for a phishing scam.
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Yeah, but they emailed my business account, asked for terms for my product, and then asked me to visit their page (http://m.hunterpoink-catalog.page.tl/), which asked for my work email and password.
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Ahhhhhh. Gotcha.
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There are no stupid questions. Only stupid people.
There are some people who are very good at asking questions that make you think that they are really stupid.
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Fuck yeah, Christmas!
Monthly sales are up 28%
They've gone up every month, since I keep reinvesting profit into ads. But this was a huge month, and I have plenty to reinvest. Let's see if I can turn a great month into a great year.
Also, 80% of my student loans were discharged by the department of education. I had refinanced them and asked for an income based repayment plan. I got denied. They would have got 100% back if they had just let me pay in my own time.
So anyway, my net worth is at about 90% of my peak net worth, in 2009, and now I have a better work ethic.
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Where is my share.
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End of year always makes businesses do foolish things. Right now is a great time for us as an IT service provider, and sales on the second service-based business have been amazing here at the end of the year, but it is all a result of goofy shit that business owners do.
There is this notion that you have to spend a lot of money at the end of the year in order to reduce your tax liability. While that sort of works, you are just kicking the can down the road. As a for instance, one of our clients just put in an expansion to their parking lot because "It is the end of the year, might as well spend the money now so we don't have to pay taxes on it". Yeah, you reduce your tax liability for this year. You just kicked the can down the road to next year though.
Now, the parking lot project is something that needed to be done, but they actually moved it up solely because of tax reasons. Never make a decision solely for tax reasons. It is foolish. The most you can ever do with taxes is kick the can. They reduced their income that they are taxed on by ~$20K for 2015. But, if they had done it next year they would have done the same for 2016. They saved nothing, they just put that liability off to next year.
On the flip side, I spend the end of the year trying to bring in as much money as possible because all of these people are trying to reduce their tax liability. I keep concentrating on making money. Spending money just to reduce tax liability is stupid. You are spending $10 to save yourself $4. You are still down $6. Let Uncle Sam have that $4 and keep the $6 for yourself.
Sorry, just a random rant. Spending money at the end of the year is one of the few things in the business world that is dumber than annual budgets.
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Never make a decision solely for tax reasons. It is foolish.
Unless you are a major bank it seems. But even then, it's just postponing things until the chickens come home to roost with a vengeance.
Perhaps the right thing to do would be to reduce the level of public guarantee on banks to a fixed multiple of taxes paid, averaged over a 5 year period. That would mean that banks that fiddle their taxes will gradually get the rug pulled out from under their ability to borrow cheaply, which would be rather poetic justice…
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I don't know the specifics because I don't even know all of the specifics of US tax laws. The subject is too large to even attempt to figure out another country's issues. But, part of the story seems to lie in this:
Low tax bills for banks are in large part a legacy of huge losses reported in the years since the banking crash of 2008. Those losses created an unprecedented stockpile of tax credits, which banks have been using to offset against taxable income as they have moved back into profit.
In the USA, you can roll over losses from year to year. 2008 was really bad for banking. If they had a lot of their liquidity lost in order to stay afloat, those losses will be written off for a while, and that is not necessarily a corrupt thing to do.
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Are they paying back that bailout?
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BTW, I was 100% against the bailouts here in the USA. Let economic Darwinism take care of all of it. Survival of the fittest. Let them fail, maybe they will learn. Bail them out and they learn nothing.
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Are they paying back that bailout?
That's what taxes are for. And why doing shenanigans with avoiding taxes really gets up the public's nose.
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This is a big "it depends."
If interest rates are high, you can be better off investing now to finance the liability later.
The problem is spending "just" to avoid a tax liability. Whatever you spend on has to be useful to the business, or else it's just waste, like you said.
Also: interest rates are stupid low right now.
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They already paid the bailout loans back. I don't remember details, but "most" of them have. There might be one or two stragglers.
I was for the bailouts. Darwinism is nice, but the liquidity crush the crisis caused was going to be an extinction level event, not survival of the fittest. A comet plunging onto Manhattan and London, versus slightly tighter resource allocations.
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That's what taxes are for.
That is a misuse of taxes. Either you give them the money because you don't want the economy to collapse and forget about it, or set up a repayment schedule. Making it arbitrarily about increasing or maintaining tax revenues is wrong because then the obligation becomes very subjective and there will always be someone who is not happy.
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If interest rates are high, you can be better off investing now to finance the liability later.
That is putting a lot of risk on your shoulders. Unless you are putting in in munis or a CD, there will be liability and if you are going to put it in those investments why even bother?
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They already paid the bailout loans back. I don't remember details, but "most" of them have. There might be one or two stragglers.
Are you sure about that in the UK?
I was for the bailouts. Darwinism is nice, but the liquidity crush the crisis caused was going to be an extinction level event, not survival of the fittest. A comet plunging onto Manhattan and London, versus slightly tighter resource allocations.
Meh, I doubt it would have been that bad. You sound like the climate change people now.
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It's the same risk you take for any investment, and should be measured the same way.
You're right that earning the risk-free rate to finance a tax liability is pretty pointless, though.
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I doubt it would have been that bad.
A complete collapse of all confidence in all banks would have been Very Bad, as it would have triggered everyone who was a creditor of the banks to seek to get their money out as fast as possible. Guess what? Banking is precisely predicated on that never ever happening; when it does, it kills the bank. Killing many banks at once (as looked a distinct possibility when Lehmans collapsed) would have been utterly disastrous, threatening lots of national economies all at once, because each failure would make further failures more likely.
The bailouts were necessary. But the banks should never have tried treating that as free money with no strings attached.
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Are you sure about that in the UK?
I don't know. I know RBS will never pay it back.
Meh, I doubt it would have been that bad. You sound like the climate change people now.
It already was that bad, until the government stepped in to make sure the debts got paid.
So here's the thing: there was a giant ball of debts to untangle/unwind. A huge one. The problem wasn't the size, though. It was that the debts were all "tangled". Nobody really knew who owed what to who. So the financial system would have shut down for weeks or months while the banks figured it all out. Meanwhile, people would have taken money out of the banks and investors would have tried to hide money while they still could (and then declare bankruptcy, leaving the banks stiffed). Bad news. Really, really bad news.
Darwinism works great when markets are efficient -- the better companies become more efficient and out-compete the slightly worse ones. But Darwinism sucks when events wipe out the entire ecosystem.
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Bad news. Really, really bad news.
To put it in context, the crash of 2008 was the worst since 1929. Finance-centric bubbles are the worst when they burst. The contagion level was definitely worse this time, as everything was far more intertwingled now — I was in Singapore when the ventilator/excrement event struck, and the level of panic there over events in the US was really worrying — but the governmental response was better than the laissez-faire tactics adopted in the late 1920s/early 1930s. There's been a lot of analysis since then, and it's clear that the world really dodged a bullet this time.
The Fed did pretty well, despite Congress; it's possible to pick things it could have done better, but it steered a fairly good course. The Bank of England also seems to have mostly done OK, but it's hindered by banking and finance being a much larger proportion of the economy it is responsible for, and the comparative weakness of UK industrial policy over the preceding few decades. The ECB has not done a great job at all, partially because it felt it necessary to do what was best for just some of the Eurozone economies rather than what was best for all.
Main Street USA gave all the impression of having no idea just was a lot of shit was going down. Still gives that impression even now.
Darwinism sucks when events wipe out the entire ecosystem.
This.
7 sentences successful people never say
