Deporte Mundial

The bad economy is finally hitting American corporations. First, the individuals. Then the small business owners. Now, big business.DH and I fit in all of the above.We just lost our biggest, corporate, publicly-owned client today.This client was a Fortune 500 American corporation whose stock just dropped over 30% in the last quarter. All bets are off. And all work orders are on a cease-and-desist status till further notice. The company dealt in apparel for the 15-24 age group and it’s dismal back-to-school sales plummeted the corporation into doom and gloom.This is not the first time DH and I took an economic hit due to the stock market, a recession or a bad economy. It’s the third. We both lost our business in 1987 when the stock market crashed. ALL our clients at that time were publicly held corporations. Our office phone didn’t ring for a month before we threw in the towel. Second time was in 2000-2001 when the dot com disaster struck. We had just sold our computer business for an outrageous sum of money. Our employees were notified of the transition. I even packed up my office and was dreaming of lounging around the islands of the tropics when the phone call came. The new prospective buyers had just gone up in front of their Board to get final approval when their CFO informed them that their stock had dropped over 50% and the company had just suffered a $2 million dollar loss. Gulp. All mergers and acquisitions were off.DH and I got caught holding the bag a second time. Our financial ruin was quick and fast. It was over for us in a matter of days. February 8, 2001. I will never, ever forget that date. Ever.And so, ladies and gentlemen, here are DH and I again. Will three times be a charm? Have DH and I learned anything over these past decades? Will we be left holding the financial bag again? Will we be facing financial ruin once again?I am pleased and proud to say: ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!We have absolutely no debt of any kind and finally, finally money in the bank (FDIC insured). No mortgage payments to fret about. No car loans. No credit card payments to worry about. No HELOC or refinancing debt. No student loans. NOTHING. We just have to worry about ourselves, utilities and basic maintenance and upkeep.DH and I sat around the kitchen table these past few days and gave our lives some serious, serious thought. Do we try, at this age (57 & 51) to get back into the rat race or do we sit back and if we calculate it correctly, have our assets work for us and carry us through till our end of days. We chose the latter.First thing we did was call our real estate broker and put the beach house on winter rental alert. We Fed Ex’d the keys to our broker and already the property has been listed at $1200 per month for the next 10 months. That will earn us $12,000 for the year and we still have next July, August and possibly next September to enjoy our summer life. Should the rental be a good experience, we may possibly consider continuing to summer rentals and we can earn $1000 A WEEK over the summer months. If so, we can still vacation in our sail boat, which is really a weekender and has a kitchen and bathroom and sleeps four. We can shower at the marina facilities. If all goes really, really well and we earn a lot of money, we would consider trading in our 22 foot sailboat for a 30 foot model and spend the summer sailing to Block Island, Cape Cod and the Hamptons. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?Our main New York property has a recently erected steel-built, brand new barn that we also specifically built to be rented out as a studio. It still needs some fine tuning (like electricity and heating) but now, since we have the time and money, we can complete the structure and rent it out for $500 a month. That’s an additional $6000 for the year. If all goes well, there is a good possibility that DH and I can pull in $18,000 a year minimum. We need $24,000 a year to maintain our lifestyle and carry all the properties. So, we only need to bring in $6,000 a year either from our savings or take on extra side work. That amounts to only $500 a month or $115 a week.Have we learned from our past mistakes?You bet we have.And so it goes.____________________________________________________________________Paid Sponsor: Are you lost in a mortgage maze? Thrifty Mortgages has thousands mortgages on offer and can offer free and easy advice

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