Instant Wealth

Steve asked me, knowing of my over thirty years experience in Business and in particular Finance, if he won the New York lottery, how should he invest it? I replied, before I launch into the traditional lecture on portfolio management and value investing, there are two common sense areas which need to be considered; Health and Education.

Health starts with the realization that your good fortune now puts you, your family and friends in danger. The more people that know about you winning is the greater the danger. So do not tell. In fact, I would suggest a plan that if followed precisely and if it works would limit the amount of people with direct knowledge of your financial status and limit the risk to family and friends.

Business Dark-Side

The more successful an executive becomes in business is the more dangerous life becomes, for like energy, power cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred from one person to another. These threats are all around both from external sources – Competitors, Politicians and Community Activists (Lobbyists) and from your inner-circle – Employees, Directors and even Family and to a lesser extend Associates. Business school fails to adequately prepare executives for success.

Today Business Plan addresses strategies to deal with external threats. Planning for price wars (the under pricing or dumping of goods and services to win more market share), product improvement (the research and development, branding or combining products to increase customer loyalty), employee pinching (luring key personnel with a proven track record) and protecting business secrets (formulas, copyrights and trademarks) has become second nature, as Competitors expects such tactics. This is respectable and long-established business practices.

Debunking Opinions

Many people get news from various media sources and form an opinion based on this without clearly understanding the difference between journalistic reporting and expert commentary. All news media have been forced to mix reporting the news with entertainment to keep an audience and attract advertising dollars. The balance is difficult to maintain and in most cases cannot be separated.

News, the facts or figures of an event: In most breaking news stories, whether it is on crime, accident, political speech or natural disaster, where the public expects the facts, all news media contracts an expert or analyst to quickly add speculation and personal opinions to the story and present it all as “Breaking News”. In covering planned events, such as, Governments’ or business’ conferences, journalist are presented with media kits of the event, such kits expertly produced contains the presenters’ actual words and quotes from front seat participants and if all goes well, that is all that is needed. In the case of an investigative story, a professional journalist outline sources of statistical data and the methodology used in its collection, questions and test presented information, solicits expert testimony on presented conclusions.

Economic Immigrants

A society without culture is like living in chronic pain. Coming from a village, town, city or country that is popularly known for its music, sport, cooking, night life or landscape gives a comforting and proud feeling. The pain, of having to look into someone eyes while explaining where you are from and why you have left, is made many times worst by them not having any prior knowledge of where or what you are talking about. This is nothing in comparison to coming from a notorious region. Where you must explain your leaders’ policies and hide your true opinions on both your birth place and your new home.

Resource Management

Long before construction and landscaping is completed, commercial property management, security and maintenance companies must be in place. The property owners, having advertised and gone through numerous tender applications, must appoint a firm, by signed contract for a fixed duration, to manage the overall human traffic. This property management company will in-turn sign and monitor contracts with other specialty firms and individuals for security guards and systems, interior cleaning, exterior landscaping and vertical cleaning, locks and safes, lift maintenance, air-condition, electrical and plumbing services. Many commercial property owners try to cut cost by assigning this key management role to differently trained persons or try to do it themselves. Property Management or Resource Management is a specialized field.

Understanding Mortgages

So you are ready to stop renting and buy a home. What is the full price of the residence; the price the seller is asking or willing to accept, the real estate agent’s commission, the cost of the mortgage, the legal fees and, of course, the down-payment. Have you saved enough to cover the down-payment, other borrowing expenses, insurance and home furnishings or do you have to borrow from family, friends or commercial lenders? Any mortgage provider, broker or agent is willing and anxious to help you.

Retiring Young

At a very young age, two people committed to a socioeconomic partnership that would see one party generating a fixed income while, the other tries to build a business (non-fixed income) to off-set inflation and generate investment (non-work) income for the foreseeable future. A retirement plan must start when you are young. 20-30 years old. Youth is wasted on the young. So, many youngsters do not take the advice offer to them. A young couple planning a family is best served by one of them in stable fixed income employment and the other with time prioritized to guide the children, maintain the home and grow a young business, hence one income to pay the family’s current bills and the other willing to be present for the family’s future.

Too Much Money

Money is an economic tool used to measure transactions. Such transactions can involve tangible property (Land, Building, Equipment, Furniture & Fixtures and Inventory Products) or intangible property (Royalties, Intellectual and other legally documented agreements). Put very simply, money measures market forces (supply and demand). If supply is low, plenty money is demanded but if there is a high supply very little money is demanded. If one considers Returns on Investment (ROI), which is a mix of Interest Income, Dividend Income and Gain or Loss on Share and Property Value, as a tradable product such as tomatoes or gold, which is affected by supply and demand pricing, then one understands the value of money.

Business Seasons

Business is a state of mind, a mix of strategies and plans design to meet pre-set objectives and carefully implemented to generate economically driven returns on investment. In recessionary times, with low sales prices and volumes, production is slow sometimes to a dead stop, employees are tensed and stressed awaiting unemployment notices and shareholders are in the sell mode. It is under and in spite of these conditions that the well-trained and experience business mind thrives.

Kitchen Garden

Once these following issues are not adequately addressed the world will always be in a food crisis: The present rate of global population growth; the present economic systems which benefit a few rather than the many; lifestyles successes driven by infrastructural development. And of course, manage responses to climate change. We obviously need an action plan.

I have long argued that the big issues in every society are Health and Education. In this model, Agriculture falls under Health. Feeding people is the only way to build and sustain a healthy society. This further allows for life-long learning and a productive population. Hence, food raw materials or finish goods trade, production, prices and security is an issue high on every Government’s agenda to avoid social unrest.