one part of my biz that i love is that i can openly ask for advice on a site such as this without exposing myself to an acct.lol  so ,if anyone has some advice or economics 101 please share my ears are wide open and know that learning is the best commodity to have along with a few others wink :0
thank you,
from a provider in las vegas that is in the state with the highest rates foreclosures / etc layoffs
thank you hobbyists for not laying off us providers. be kind we to have been hit and those of us on here with reviews are good people etc
lovely lorena aka Lorena of las vegas
i am trying to access the online chat via my new site so any advice on that would be appreciated feel free to pm me

that is rule number one. If you own stock and you don't want to take a loss on it, don't sell it. You are most probably young enough to ride this out. If the government would just not mess with the markets to reward the businesses (and their owners) who should fall by the wayside by the Darwinian law of free markets, we will have a very strong recovery and a market that has better underpinnings in a couple of years. If you have mad money laying around, not a bad idea to pick up some grossly undervalued stock while people are panicking and selling. If you have a lot of mad money, real estate is worth thinking about, but get professional advice.

Otherwise, cash is not a bad position to take right now, unless you want to play on the precious metals markets, which is not for the beginner or faint of heart, but which has served me very very well this year...

Best of luck - Gregory

thank you . I am trying your route  via the real estate market chaos. Mad money? nope . please keep in touch and refer any other advice as we move thru this crisis. the commodities is out of my league .Im going to look into those undervalued stocks .how do i as a provider with not much stock education go about learning etc.
again thank you for the time . when i post it is because i love to understand and grow from a situation
xoxox Lorena las vegas


-- Modified on 10/25/2008 11:16:17 AM

Economics really has to do with your personal choices.  Where you chose to live and how you percieve the things to wants and need.  So if you choose to live in the cities with high prices and fast pace of life...certainly there is more work for the same reward.  That being said, there is usually a client base for business that suits your same lifestyle.  Unless you are near metropolis places such as NYC and Chicago, LA.  Just because you like the fast pace life style does not mean you have to live in IT.

Current economics and ways to handle it by personal choice.  Supply and demand really does drive, but it affects people differently based on quality of product as well as price!

Eample...who is your target market?

Do you want the single client that is traveling through town and is making a once in a lifetime adventure?

Do you want the Business man that needs a break from work on his lunch hour?

Do you want the local guys that will spend regular time with you and build relationships?


In tough times when markets are sluggish you have to cater to your clientel that you have or try to expand and pick up some of the market you have not maketed to in the past.

Lets look at ways to market in bad times towards the different scenarios above.

The one time fantasy...these are usually the ones that will go away first...people tend to put off fantasies first in tough times.  Lowering prices will allow for some to still carry out fantasies for those that were right on the edge.  So, how to stay afloat...time to expand your horizons into the other areas!  Menu chioce changes are very personal and often permanent, I don't reccomend this change unless you have wanted to do it for a while and just never found the right time....then now might be the right time.  Otherwise, stick to what you love and you will be much better off!   Look at one of the other areas and see which describes the one you would most like to expand into.

For the lady that caters to the lunch hour guys.  If you do this because you have a limited time frame...kids in school, SO at work it may mean leaner times or lower prices are you only options.  If you can expand your work hours then maybe look for some clients in the other catagories.  The lunch time crowd can often be repeat clients and offering specials to those loyal clients can only help you and him to keep having fun.  It is always good to reward loayal customers.   Be creative, if they will do once a week affer a 3 week at regular price and 4th week on the house.  Hint...the free one should be the one the guy remembers the most!  Consumers always worry about free service sessions lacking great service because it is free!  If you have the lunch hour guy that is first time...offer him repeat discounts to make him a regular!

For those that work on repeat clients you have the most options from my perspective.  You can lower rates or offer specials to those clients.  Maybe saying you get 90 minutes for the regular 60 minute price or 3 hours for the two hour price.  Lower rate entirely for the struggling time for your regulars...KEEP them getting new clients is MUCH harder in tough times!  A flat rate drop for repeat clients works well.  Making that a prudent offer to all can help bring new clients to you from others.  For those ladies that are multitalented...I know one lady that has standing room only now because of a new offer.  She offers a one hour lunch or dinner add on to her regular hour for 100 and here is the reason it is standing room only.  She will provide the home cooked meal!  Now this is for repeat clients only and one cancel and you are out of line and new person takes his place.

One last way for a possible increased clientel is if you only offer incall or outcall presently....get together with someone that offers both and expand your client base to both options!  Learn to be SAFE from someone that offers it first...then expand!

I hope this helps...play safe...we all apprciate what you do!  Have fun!

First rule of thumb. Make sure you have an emergency fund to have your monthly expenses covered for at least 1 year.

2nd. If you start investing stick with index mutual funds and dollar cost average (invest a little every month).

Before you get into doing individual stocks make sure you learn how to read a companies financialstatement and invest no more than 4% of your wealth in any 1 stock.

with more specificity than I had intended to communicate, but quite correct in my view.  
Cheers - Gregory.

buy low and sell high.

So my advice right now is, if you have the money, buy!

As for what to buy, there are several financial columnists you can find on the various home websites availiable on the net.

My favorite is a guy named Jim Jubak who appears daily on MSNBC.  He is understandable and has an excellent track record.  His latest picks, by the way, are commodites, especially oil (It's cheap right now.) and metals such as copper and aluminum and of course, gold.

Be an active investor and know what you are getting then watch it carefully.

Also, for what it's worth, women make much better investors, overall, than men do.  Some psychologists believe that is because they are willing to admit mistakes and change direction much more than men are.

It is nice that you want to LEARN first!

Real estate - The market is good now if your credit is proper...and I don't mean perfect.

SImple principles to follow to keep from putting yourself in harms way.

Your house payment including your PMI, Taxes, HO Ins, and Prin., should not exceed 33% of your NET pay.

Put 10% down or MORE if possible.

Try to do the shortest mortgage term possible, I sually reccomend 20yrs at the most, since people rarely stay in them you want to build equity.

Investing in the stock market is about research and monitoring along with stop loss and margin gains.  TRUST NOBODY!  Always keep and eye on things to make sure they fall within YOUR safe zone!

What was mentioned above is great advice...learn about financial sheets of potential invetment opportunities.

What to look for...
What is making the company grow?  -  Is it cuts in staff, downsizing realestate, pay cuts, cutting benefits, growth in sales,  gaining market share, new marketing strategies.  Who is running the company, are they new and what is their history of success!


Good luck...knowledge is POWER!

to start a business or buy one!!

However, you can't and should not do it with borrowed money.  

If you have the cash or can raise the cash NOW is the time to start your entrepreneurial dreams.  

This is a ONCE IN A LIFETIME opportunity.

My business has been very good so far.  But I started it four years ago.  Everything I need to buy is dirt cheap.  When things pick up business should be even better!!!!!

Pick up a copy of the FORBES 500.  The only real wealth created in America is by those that have started their own businesses.  It's the American way.

I have been out of all equities since last January.  If you have cash, there is a real opportunity to invest it for a good return.  The trick is finding the bottom and buying good funds or stocks.  Not easy.  An examination of past history (P:E ratios throughout history and during real down swings) suggests the Dow can hit around 5000 as a bottom.  One sign will be a final panic selling.  No one can give you good advice here.  I have done the following: I have a money manager who is watching for what seems like a bottom; I have preselected with her the stocks or funds we will buy when the time comes and at what rate.  Also, gold and other commodities are good hedges against inflation and should be good again but I am not buying them now since we are in a depression which will worsen before it recovers. For now, I am in cash (though stuck with two apartments which are producing income so no rush to sell) and waiting to get into four good small cap funds that have been good at picking value and will concentrate on US value under priced equities. I have been lucky with my strategies so far, but that is no guarantee that my current stratgey is any good.  I am a doc not a professional,

Don't think that it can't go to 5 CENTS.

Anyone that claims to know where the bottom is or is going to be is either lying or is a fool.

Safe or guaranteed cash or bonds are a good place to be, at least for a while, unless it's money that you can afford to lose.

-- Modified on 10/25/2008 2:26:46 PM

I hope I didn't suggest that I or anyone I know can pick a bottom with any sort of confidence.  One way to play it safe is to start buying when the market seems near the bottom by examining historic trends and watching for the big irrational panic, but buy slowly at a rate you and your adviser can agree upon. It is obviously riskier but with a bigger potential for a gain to jumping in with both feet when you think the time is right.  It is safer, but with less upside potential to do it slowly.  If I knew how to find a bottom when it happened, I would be practicing how to say "Thank you, King Gustav, for my Nobel prize in economics" in Swedish.

A lot of experts will tell you it's the best time to invest but nobody is sure how far the market will actually bottom out. Just look at what happened in the dot-com bubble of 2000-2001.

Savings accounts, CD(Certificate of deposit), and government insured bonds are good ways to invest your money right now. The yield is more conservative but your money will be safe.

One more thing Lorena, don't spend too much time in the casinos in Las Vegas, the house usually wins.

A rather simple concept, when times are tough, like they are now.

Lets look at this another way for you Lorena.

Obviously I am ignorant of your financial situation but if you have some money put away & have the ability to add to your savings you may want to consider buying your own place sometime mid next yr.

I am making the assumption you do not own your own place. If you do presently own then hold on to your cash. IMHO we are gonna be in this thing for a little while. THis is much more sever than the Technology Meltdown reflected in the Nasdaq in 2000. The technology implosion was very sector concentrated . This thing is broad based. Oil was less than $70/barrel this week. This is a Global Slowdown.

So to repeat for you Lorena, if you own your own place very good. If you dont & you have some $$ in savings the opportunity to buy your own place is very close at hand. Ofcourse you will have to show financial stability in order to get a lender to sell you $$..Anyway thats my .02 cents for you to consider.

please keep it coming no pun intended!! feel free to pm me or to just post info advice . It is all very needed and warranted. My kindest regards and appreciation.being pretty only gets you so far in life and unfortunately ,I am educated but needed to put to a halt. I mean i love what i do ,etc, and im proud yet, as a young girl i thought i would be ie :pallin/hillary clinton
so with that said..keep it flowing im digesting all advice and utilizing what is applicable and setting aside what needs to be
much love across the united states!!
lovely lorena of las vegas

"If you want to make money in the stock market, be very patient.  If you want to lose money in the stock market, be very active."

My feeling is that ten or twenty years from now we will all look back and say we witnessed the best opportunity to create wealth that has been seen in this country in the last 70 years during the years of 2007 - 2009.  

The people who will come out of this with the largest growth of wealth are those who are accumulating assets right now for pennies on the dollar while everyone else is trying to dump theirs.

Cash has always been best, and it's the only way to go!
Jay

The strategies are appearing to basically come down to this for me personally.Do I go with a brokerage firm? do i stick with wellsfargo? as a provider I cater alot to regulars to vegas? I love them ..I have met a few locals ? and am going to contemplate te incall strategy. i am prequalified and have offers on short sales. the problem is my patience .. So ,i told my realtor these are the houses and he has a lot of paperwork to do.lol im tired of paying rent. i a have been stupid at times with cash but yet,now i have really decided as a provider to jump in with both feet..lol i mean obviously my record indicates i am of value. im not on here selling myself to be quite honest. i ve set this time to become more proactive in my computer knowledge ,incorporated my providership as a model and "iam" i m trying to get my a game and also educated in oter areas as there is only so long I can provide and leave with grace and dignity. plus I have a young child ad I am able to travel etc.I want her to see me more as a 9-5 rather than are "u  working tonite,mommy?" im not looking for pity im just saying there is going to come a time when the "Casino host"lol has to look at the situation at hand and move on or atleast not focus on "do i look good?" thats not exactly the first thing i want for my lil girl to be concerned with. that having been said maybe ive shed light on to my personal situation and someone/or all of you can help to implement
my goals and make this a year of prosperity rather than make shallow decisions . Having said that . I again want to thank all of you whomever you are with all your advice.Im starting to travel yet,vegas has been kind to me and i would prefer to focus on close proximity since hobbyists are here .. yet,i have gorgeous friends that cant succeed in vegas and ofcourse are planted here yet, have to travel to make it. Ofcourse they hit meto areas and are more seasoned then me . yet, they are stressed by the travel .it maybe fun here and there .yet,i personally moved from san diego in 06' selling out prior to the real estate crisis. San diego is well,gorgeous but also expensive and the providerhip rates are quite low!! ok im done for now ,i have to go get beautified!!
trust me ill be checking in in te morning . thank you,thank you and again thank you all!!

Assuming it's in bank that is federally insured institution then your money is backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. The same U.S. that backs the cash in your mattress, but your mattress doesn't pay at least a modest amount of interest and is susceptible to burglars. Do keep in mind the federal limits on each account’s insurance limit. If your bank does go under you may be inconvenienced for a day or two.

I was simply reminding everyone of the dangers ALWAYS present. The only way to really recognize a bottom is by looking back in time well after it's happened.

thats actually not true.

As was pointed out, banks are federally insured up to 100,000 dollars. However, just because you have cash doesn't mean that youre safe. Inflation, a drastic and calamatis upheavel.. there are quite a lot of things that could happen to devalue that cash or make it completely worthless. Its happened many, many times in the past.

For my part, if I were wanting to become rock solid, as completely secure as I could, I would probably buy gold and silver. That's not to say that gold and silver can't go up and down, but it's not actually gold and silver that fluctuate, its the dollar's purchasing power of them. Gold and silver will always have a purchasing power on their own, whatever the dollar may or may not do.

However, I would personally keep my money in play. For me that does not mean in play in the stock market though. Hoarding money does nothing for the economy. Using it wisely does a great deal collectively.

The mattress may be susceptible to burglars, but it isn't susceptible to the outrageous and sometimes covert regime of fees and charges that many banks apply. In all honesty, I think people are far more likely to experience (at least some of) these than the burglars.

Even the $1.75 fee usually charged for taking your own money out of any cash machine other than the ones provided by your own bank, which is close to unavoidable even for those of us who do make every effort not to pay it on principle, adds up over the course of a year. For those unlucky enough to have cash flow problems, the banks basically have a license to fleece them with outrageous fees for going overdrawn. While I realize that banking is a business, imposing a $25 charge on someone who has gone overdrawn by 0.7c for 24 hours before they realized and corrected the problem is nothing short of criminal in my opinion.

While this is unlikely to be a problem for the majority of people who post on these boards, there must be countless ways to better invest your money than by keeping it in the bank, especially in this country. Having recently moved here from the UK, I can't believe how low the interest rates are on many current and savings accounts (banks at home are not much better on the fees and charges front, though they have been forced to lower or eliminate some fees as a result of consumer action). I've read that the low interest rates on savings in this country is partly because it is much cheaper to borrow here than at home but surely in a recession it would be better to encourage people to save than to borrow. It's no wonder the middle class is disappearing.

Find an adviser you feel you can trust with a good track record and clients with whom you can check.  Make sure he/she can act both quickly in case of an immediate opportunity for a quick profit using a small amount of your funds and the ability to track and follow trends.  Choose your willingness to take risk.  High risk would mean you would buy back in rapidly when he/she feels the market bottom has been reached or passed; lower risk would be a slower buy back.  Choose either some good funds with good track records to buy into or pick some stocks that are good value.  Understand that it is hard to tell (example, Cisco Systems is a great company; its stock has been in the doldrums for years.)  No one here can give you any better specific advice since things needs to be tailored and flexible.  Those are some of the principles that have served me well and allowed me to set my five kids up comfortably. Also, get someone who understands the Las Vegas real estate market as there may be some real opportunities there after some time, though I won't touch that for quite a while as that market, like some others, seems to have been over heated and needs to have much more of the heat taken out of it before one would want to buy to invest.  I know very little about that however so don't pay any attention to what I have said about that except to find someone who --unlike me-- understands that particular market.

is my rule of thumb. Oh, and of course living expenses includes walking around money and "hobby" (shudder - I detest that term) money. In addition to this cash, internationally negotiable securities and a bit of real money (gold) allows me to feel secure enough, in good times or bad.

Even if a bank fails, and even though the full faith and credit of the US today only means that taxpayers bail out the real owners of this country, who have recently lost money doing shoddy, bordering on illegal "business", I don't believe that a "bank holiday" would last very long.....  Cheers - Gregory

thank you ,im still listening and reading
the mattress idea is not my personal favorite. i can understand why one would do that lol yet, i personally would want to keep some cash handy yes yet, overall in the long run i want to allow money to work for itself after ive placed in fed insured acct. im still not understanding do i go to bank rep and open investment acct/or where i would locate a brokerage ..local house?
thank you
lorena

Money is always fun, when things get tough a person would like to do something about it!

Example of how the market has affected people...

If you can read...the best thing you can do with your money is take control of it by learning how the market works.  The market has dropped 42% in the last 2 months, if you lost 80K you should have had about 3.3 Million in a diversified potfolio.  In that case...you are doing ok, but should be realocating!  If you had substantialy less money in the market than the 3.3 Million...you had better take a look at whom you have in charge of your portfolio!  I am going to take a stab in the dark and say that you lost 80K and had less that 300K to start with. If a person looses an equal amount as the market, the manager is NOT doing his/her job correctly!

This tells me that your broker is spending more time playing golf than watching his clients money.  Fredddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG, Lehman , Merril Lynch, CitiCorp, and numerous others have been in a bad way for well over 6 months!

Now is not the time to pull your money out and put it under your mattress, but it is time to put it in a more stable place!  Anyone right now with more than 200K in the market should be in a holding pattern at worst.    Somewhere between a -5% and +5% unless you are buying real estate  (you should have more than 750K to be doing this), then you will be spending with the promise of greater gains 75-100+% returns in the next 6-12 months providing you are buying the right properties.

A few rules of thumb to go by with your kind of investment dollars.

1) Only pay your broker based on GAINS in your account!

2) Find a manager/Broker that is A rated in both a bull and bear market.(in this computer age he/she could be anywhere in the country)

3) Always have automatic stop loss on EVERYTHING!

4) If you are paying brokerage commissions base on a per trade basis, by stock that are cost effective.(example of you have $12,000 to allocate and you buy a $300/per shareyou buy 40 shares, where buying $10/per nets you 1200 shares).   Keep in mind there was no fee/commission in this example so both share anmounts would be reduced proportionately.

5) Investors with small amounts of money should be looking for mid length investment terms to avoid fees eating up all thier profits.

6) If your money is not a pre tax account and you wish to move it to a savings account make choices based on your investment straegies.  If you will want to utilize the market on a quick response basis, the DO NOT put your moneies in CD's and have to wait for terms to be met.  If you are ok with waiting for a specific term no matter what the market does so you can get a higher rate of return for now...go ahead.  If you simply want a place that earns SOMETHING while you get ready to pounce on an opportunity, then use a saving vehicle that will get you more than a standard bank(.0075-.0125%) there are ways of getting .02-.04% on your money without paying fees, go look for them!  Hint: Most of them are online, but some banks rae scarbbling to make the same offers now!

Good luck...and watch your money BEFORE you lose it all!


-- Modified on 10/26/2008 10:27:24 AM

Fees and user charges are above board and "knowable" by consumers/customers, although they may be in the small print. They aren't some unknown over which you have no control, that could mysteriously absorb your money. You can avoid these charges by shoping around and controling how you interact with your bank.

Better rates of return? Of course but at what risk? You may see better rates in other countries but then you should also compare inflation rates.

cash will never go out of style and it's the only way i fly..thank you very much! LOL
Jay

That makes life easier for us rich fuckers with too much cash and not enough banks.