LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE INCOME

The Wall Street Journal had an article advising homeowners who were upside down on their mortgage to just throw in the towel and walk away from their mortgage. Here’s the abridged version:

Millions of Americans are now deeply underwater on their mortgage. If you’re among them, you need to stop living in a dream world and give serious thought to walking away from the debt.

No, you shouldn’t feel bad about it, and you shouldn’t feel guilty. The lenders would do the same to you—in a heartbeat. You need to put yourself and your family’s finances first.

If you are reluctant to give up on “your” home, realize that it isn’t “yours.” If you are in negative equity, it’s the bank’s home. You’re just renting it. And right now you may be paying way above market rates. You need to be ruthless about your cash flow.  Read more... (589 words, 8 images, estimated 2:21 mins reading time)

Just read this news article from the Associated Press:

Tue Feb 23, 8:17 am ET

MOSCOW, Ohio – An Ohio man says he bulldozed his $350,000 home to keep a bank from foreclosing on it.

Terry Hoskins says he has struggled with the RiverHills Bank over his home in Moscow for years and had problems with the Internal Revenue Service. He says the IRS placed liens on his carpet store and commercial property and the bank claimed his house as collateral.

Hoskins says he owes $160,000 on the house. He says he spent a lot of money on attorneys and finally had enough. About two weeks ago he bulldozed the home 25 miles southeast of Cincinnati.  Read more... (229 words, 9 images, estimated 55 secs reading time)

Bob Parsons is the multi-millionaire founder of Godaddy, probably the world’s largest domain registrar company. Here’s an interesting video about the top 5 rules for starting a business that they don’t teach you in business school.

#5. Start small

Don’t go all in when first starting a business. Get a proof of concept first and make sure you have a fallback plan. Parsons worked at a day job for 3 yrs while he started his first business, which he subsequently sold for $64 million.

#4. The best business partner is no partner

As opposed to conventional wisdom, two heads are not better than one. Having a partner or investor usually ends badly. You too much time discussing and negotiating than doing anything productive.

#3. Solve your own problems  Read more... (333 words, 9 images, estimated 1:20 mins reading time)

Regular readers know I’m currently pursuing an MBA. What they don’t know is that I’m currently taking 6 classes plus an Applied Management Research project which is almost twice the usual workload. I’m a third of the way through the quarter and I’m already feeling burnt out.

To help take my mind off things, I decided to look at vacation packages. Once my quarter gets over, I might travel for a week.  I’ve been dying to visit South America or the West Indies for quite a while. Several packages look pretty good. And by  good, I mean from the aspect of being good value for money. Yes, I like to travel cheap, or as I like to emphasize, I’m a price-conscious consumer. Some of the places that had good deals were Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and Mazatlan. Argentina also looked enticing, but the flights were slightly more expensive. One of the things I noticed was that my Discover Card was offering 5% cashback on travel booking until the end March 2010.  Read more... (483 words, 9 images, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

One of my favorite authors, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, was recently quoted on Bloomberg advising every single human being to short the US Treasury bonds. While this news is about a week old, I thought I’d still comment on it given the fact that it’s a pretty strong statement and that I recently exited a similar paired-trade.

Taleb said investors should bet on a rise in long-term U.S. Treasury yields, which move inversely to prices, as long as Bernanke and White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers are in office, without being more specific. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the credit crisis, also said at the conference that the U.S. dollar will weaken against Asian and “commodity” currencies such as the Brazilian real over the next two or three years.  Read more... (547 words, 9 images, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Almost exactly a year ago, I mentioned a paired-trade between the long-term Bond ETF (TLT) and short-term corporate/sovereign bond ETF (AWF).  I went long AWF and shorted an equal dollar amount of TLT. Last week, I closed the position after holding it for just over a year.

When I entered the trade, AWF was trading for $8.29 and had a yield of 13.4%, while my short position in TLT was trading at $112.10 and had a yield of 3.5%.  When I close out my position a year later, AWF had a price of $13.10 and a yield of 8.6%, while TLT was going for $91.65 and yielding 3.9%.

I made about 63% on the long AWF position and 18% on the short TLT position. Coupled with the 9.9% net dividend yield, that trade made me ~91%. Not a bad return for a year and 4 days.  Bond yields don’t usually move 500 basis points in a year. No point being greedy. Time to bank some profit!  Read more... (237 words, 9 images, estimated 57 secs reading time)