Financial Samurai

The Bay Area is full of entrepreneurs.  There’s something in the air that creates an almost godly electric spirit that causes people to work hard and innovate.  As 2011 nears, more and more I hear about how small business owners are clamping down in preparation for next year’s tax hikes.  Clamping down is generally not a good term to use if you are a politician who wants to create job growth.

Let’s say you make roughly $3 million in annual gross revenue from your internet business like my friend Zach does.  Not bad, but not exactly big money if you take into account his cost structure.  If his pre-tax operating profit margin is 25% after he pays the salaries of all his employees, the rent, and so on, Zach is left with roughly $750,000 subject to taxes.  If his tax rate goes up from 36% to 39.6%, for every dollar he makes over $375,000, he will pay roughly $25,000 more in taxes a year in 2011.

Well guess what?  My friend is letting go of one of his junior programmers who makes roughly $85,000 to pay for next year’s $25,000-$35,000 tax increase!  My friend feels bad letting his 2006 college graduate employee go, but he has no choice since revenue has declined since 2007, and the government is tightening the screws.  Zach believes that 2011 revenue will be worse next year than this year, and is budgeting a decline.  Thank goodness for 99 weeks of unemployment insurance!  And no, it’s not reasonable for the junior programmer to just go work in fast food after only several weeks of looking.

DON’T LISTEN TO THEIR LIES.  THEY AREN’T IN IT FOR YOU. Read more…

Well, well, well.  Not everyday does a $300 million dollar mega yacht stop by the San Francisco Bay Area!  The creatively named “A” yacht is owned by 38 year old Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko and his lovely supermodel wife Aleksandra!  Andrey made his money in fertilizer, banking, and energy and is worth a reported $4.4 billion dollars.  Interest alone on $4.4 billion at 4% is over $178 million a year!

The “A” looks like something out of a James Bond movie.  Can you imagine all the crazy parties on this bad boy?  Wow!  I rode my bike to the very north end of San Francisco to take a look and boy oh boy is it big.

Some nice mouth watering yacht stats for all you billionaire wannabes out there! Read more…

This is a guest post written by Mike, a financial planner / web entrepreneur who is pursuing his dream of running his online business. You can follow his progress at The Financial Blogger (RSS Feed) and read his other financial blogs at Green Panda Treehouse (RSS Feed) and Intelligent Speculator (RSS Feed).

3 years ago, I was told by many bloggers: “You will never make money blogging. And if you do, $200/month will be your highest peak ever”.

Three year ago, The Financial Blogger was averaging 500 visits per month and I was ecstatic when I made my first deal of $10 for a link.

Three years later, I now run three financial websites, bought 2 of them and flipped a blog within a year. I am now able to work 1 full day per week on my online business (while I still have to keep my “day job” in the meantime). I really like buying and managing finance blogs as I think it is currently one of the best investing opportunities we can find.

When I asked Sam if I could write a guest post for Financial Samurai, he asked me to include more details on how I appraised blogs and how do I decide or not to send $10K over the wire (or more!) simply to buy a “.com”.

Look at Blogs as a Real Estate Investing Opportunity Read more…

The following is a guest post from @NealFrankle of Wealth Pilgrim.  Neal is a Certified Financial Planner, a fellow Yakezie member, and all around good guy.  Hope you guys enjoy!

During strong markets, anyone can make money. During weak markets, everyone gets hurt. For the most part, all ships rise and fall with the tide, financial adviser or not.

So what’s the point of having an adviser?

(I have my own answer to this question and it may surprise you.)

But before we get to my answer, let’s explore the wild and wonderful world of financial advisers and our clients.

1. Financial Advisers are Salespeople. Read more…

If you feel like debating, head over to “The Dark Side Of Early Retirement” and get your fix.  I stand by my main thesis that nobody quits a job they love to do.  Someone who is able to find a fulfilling job is one of the luckiest people on Earth.  We shouldn’t make fun of them for being a “loser” as one commenter put it.  Instead, we should figure out what makes them tick!

Everybody gets bored at something after enough repetition.  That’s why it’s key to have many different interests which straddle both the mental and the physical aspects of your life.  No surprise that interesting people have a plethora of interests.  These people also probably have a higher than normal level of commitment to their activities which make them that much more intriguing.

THE TOP 5 “I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY’RE PAYING ME TO DO THIS!” JOBS Read more…

Samurai Nadal

Before every tennis match, I watch a short video on Youtube of a favorite tennis pro to get inspired.  All that goes through my mind are beautiful strokes and luscious sounding *thwacks* each time the ball leaves my strings.  I prepare my tennis bag with the right equipment: grip, Advil, Gatorade, a change of clothes, flip flops, hat, and sunglasses.  My outfit matches, down to my shoes and I say a little prayer.  Essentially, I go through a routine that any pro would go through, pretending to be one myself,  in order to get ready for battle.

Pretending you have arrived, so you can become is a way for us to get in the right frame of mind so we can tackle many of your challenges with full vigor.  If you are not mentally tough on the court, you will defeat yourself before even giving your opponent a chance to defeat you!  In essence, you are your own worst enemy if not properly trained.

Some may think that if you are a pretender, you have a risk of becoming delusional.  There’s no doubt we often over estimate our own abilities, however, I encourage all of us to increase the belief in ourselves.  If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will.

PRO BLOGGER Read more…

Author: Robert Pagliarini, author of The Six-Day Financial Makeover and president of Pacifica Wealth Advisors.  You may have seen him on Dr. Phil or 20/20.

Publisher & Book Info: St. Martin’s Press, hard cover, 301 pages, $25.99.

Review: The main premise for Rob’s book is that everybody’s day is split into three eight hour parts: work, sleep, and everything else.  Rob’s hope is to get you motivated to do more during the everything else portion to maximize your own potential.  First of all, I don’t know anybody who only works 8 hours a day.  10 hours of work a day seems more realistic.  Second, who gets to sleep 8 hours a night?  Sounds like elusive bliss to me.   Let’s assume 6 hours of nightly sleep instead, which ironically leaves the same 8 hours of time for everything else!

The Other 8 Hours is an enjoyable read because each chapter contains not only practical advice, but real life inspirational stories to help motivate readers to action.  Too many times we just come home, plop on the sofa, and do nothing.  That’s no way to live.  Below are Rob’s top 10 things he recommends doing with your spare time to help increase wealth and purpose.

Top 10 Creator Channels: Read more…

This is a guest article by one of the community’s most well regarded bloggers, Flexo from Consumerism Commentary. Flexo is currently on a ten-day, ten-venue tour.  You can follow him on Twitter @Flexo.  Please enjoy and share your thoughts!

Three of my friends experienced difficulties in their lives around the same time, about ten years ago. I’ll call them Alex, Brian, and Chris. Each had their own problems to deal with, but they chose to ignore their difficulties and search for easy answers that focused on short-term solutions rather than long-term success. Before long, their lives erupted in chaos. That chaos helped them make positive changes, but the outcomes would have been predictable to anyone paying attention.

Alex worked for a non-profit organization since the day he graduated college. It was a great job and he loved his work. He could have chosen any career with his wide variety of talents and his strong aptitude. Alex had the potential to earn signficiantly more money than he would while working for that organization, but he knew since high school he wanted to move his life in this direction. Living with this job was difficult, however.

Alex chose to remain in an apartment near his friends so he commuted three hours total every day. For his meager salary, he worked 80 hours a week including weekends. Even if he wanted to earn extra income on the side, he had no time because his life was completely consumed by his job. And it continued to affect him financially, unable to afford rent, food, and basic necessities.

After a late night at the office, Alex returned to his apartment and found all of his belongings removed from the bedroom and piled in the living room. He hadn’t paid his rent for a few months, nor did he communicate his problems, so the unofficial landlord kicked him out. Read more…

The Yakezie Challenge

There’s a fun hypothesis saying that you are the average of the closest five people around you.  I believe this to be true, do you?  What’s interesting about the blogosphere community is that anybody with enough intention can start a website.  Some are interesting, some are not, but regardless we can all compete with the ProBloggers and the Huffington Posts of the web in our own niche way!

Alexa is a dynamic website ranking and information company owned by Amazon, which has over 40 million users world wide.  The tool bar is free, and easy to download.  The Yakezie Alexa Ranking Challenge is straight forward.  If you’re outside of the top 200,000, get in the top 200,000 within 6 months.  I can’t even name 100 sites, let alone 199,999 sites.  Can you?  If you’re already in the top 200,000, get in the top 100,000.  And if you’re already in the top 100,000, get in the top 50,000.

There are some who poo poo the Alexa ranking system, and I recognize their two main arguments:  1) The system only tracks visitors who have the Alexa Toolbar installed, and 2) There are cases where some websites with bazillions of users have a worse ranking than sites with less users.  We don’t know why, because we don’t fully know what goes into the calculations.  It may be because readers don’t visit and just read off their RSS.  That said, the Alexa ranking system continues to grow, and is the best system we got.  At least 40 million webmasters around the world think so, and there has to be something to it if Google, Facebook, Yahoo and YouTube are ranked #1, #2, #3, and #4, respectively.

Since starting this site, I’ve been rejected as a guest poster, didn’t even get responded to, let alone make it as one of the 7 finalists for one site’s staff writer tryouts, denied admission to a personal finance blog network, and even got my first carnival submission rejected.  But through all the rejections, I took comfort in my friend, Alexa, who is always by my side motivating me to keep going.  I’m sure many of you have been rejected as well.  Here’s your chance to create our own network of powerful friends by joining in on the challenge!

BENEFITS OF BEING IN THE TOP 200,000 Read more…

The S&P showed five consecutive days of gains in the first week of 2010 to close up 2.68%.  Meanwhile, The Samurai Fund (TSF) outperformed by 200 basis points to close up 4.77%! For an actual fund of 17 positions, this is absolutely huge!  We are up almost $80,000,000 this week, and if we keep this up, the team is going to get paid like rock stars come year-end!

I’ve put up a permanent tab to track our names to facilitate accountability.  If you are one of the 17 contributors, please provide periodic updates in the page to keep this as realistic as possible.  There will be a review of the bottom performers end of the quarter, to potentially make room for 3 new entrants.  Nobody is safe in this meritocracy!

INCOME POLL: There’s a new poll on the south-right side bar, asking how much money you made in 2009.  The poll is totally anonymous, so feel free to contribute.  It’ll be interesting to see the income distribution of our community, to help me help you discuss more pertinent things. Read more…

Searching For Fortune On The Fund's Yacht

With great pleasure, I announce the launch of The Samurai Fund!

Thesis: Through random selection based solely off permutations of reader’s names (personal or site title), we are able to create a long-only mutual fund that will outperform the S&P 500 index!

Fund Details: $1,672,003 billion launch, $100/share NAV, with 17 positions equally weighted.  Concentrated multi-strategy portfolio with defensive names in the alcohol and utility space, as well as higher beta names in technology and health sciences.  Small caps and large cap names included.  S&P 500 start value 1,115 benchmark.

Investment Outlook 2010: The stock market continues to rebound, but at a slower pace.  Inflation and interest rates remain benign, leading to a re-emergence of consumer spending.  Housing stabilizes with 30-year mortgage rates staying below 6.5%.  The government maintains record spending to stimulate the economy and the unemployment rate begins to fall in the second half of the year.  The S&P 500 increases by 10-15% with a blue-sky target of 1,322.

Duration & Rules: One year.  The bottom 3 performers will be up for review every quarter. To stay in the fund, one must write a convincing argument as to why we should not cut our losses.  Picks down more than 20% also will be re-evaluated.

Goals: To have fun, learn something about the stock markets, prove a theory that luck plays a big part in performance, and to build better relationships with the community.

Contributors: Please retweet and spread the word to any of the social media sharing sites below.  We need all the support we can get to outperform the professionals!  Contributors are encouraged to provide updates and commentary as the months progress.  If anybody wants to do a portfolio analysis below, please feel free to do so!

*** STOCK PICKS SUMMARY WITH CONTRIBUTORS *** Read more…

I’m always searching for new ways to make money and regular reader, Joel (aka CreditCardChaser) provides some very unique insights on a new asset class, domain names!  I remember back in 2000, Korea.com was sold for $5 million bucks to the government and I thought gosh dang!  After reading this article, hopefully we’ll all have our own success in something so potentially lucrative. Enjoy!  Sam-urai

Chances are that when you read the term “domain name investing” you immediately have the following questions pop up:

1. Umm [insert embarrassed pause here], what exactly is a domain name anyway? Do you mean like a website? (No)
2. What in the world is domain name investing and why should I care?
3. How would I go about investing in domain names in the first place?

My goals for this article are to show you that: A) Domain names have inherent value B) Domain names can potentially be a great asset class to invest in and C) Give you some practical guidance on how the domain name investing process works.

Domain Name Definition Read more…

I thoroughly dislike watching CNBC for investing purposes due to all the noise.  When the markets are up, they bring on every single pundit to talk about how the market is going higher.  When the markets are down, they bring on all the bearish pundits to tell you why the world is coming to an end.  I remember when the S&P hit the ominous 666 level earlier this year, they brought in a “famed” technical analyst who said to expect S&P 200 by year-end.   What was her name again? I forget.  Watch CNBC for entertainment purposes mainly, and a little bit of learning.  Don’t watch CNBC to get rich.

Sometimes though, CNBC puts together something great.  And that great feat was bringing Warren Buffet (Columbia B-School Alum) and Bill Gates together in a town hall with all their business school students to ask them questions.

Here are some of the most memorable lines paraphrased from the show: Read more…

A Brazen Breed of Gin

I’m pleased to highlight a new series of articles focused on understanding the thoughts of successful entrepreneurs.   For our inaugural series, entitled, “The Samurai Mask,” I speak with the CEO and Founder of BULLDOG Gin, Mr. Anshuman Vohra, 31.  “Shu” was once a JP Morgan Banker who gave up his lucrative career to start BULLDOG Gin three years ago.  I was very inspired after watching his story about overcoming rejection on Donny Deutsche’s “The Big Idea” and I’m pleased he’s here with us today.  This is his story about finding entrepreneurial success, and going against the odds.

INTRODUCTION

FS: Shu, thanks for taking the time to speak.  First of all, tell us about Bulldog Gin, and why it is such a hot product?

Shu: It’s good to speak to you and it’s an honor to be the inaugural interviewee for your new series.  BULLDOG Gin is a quadruple distilled, ultra premium gin with dragon eye and other distinctive botanicals.  This is not your old folks gin, but a younger, brazen breed of  gin that you can imagine Steve McQueen and James Bond drinking. Read more…