I’m finally back in the States after a 6 week trip to India, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia and Singapore. It was long and expensive (even more so since it was mostly leave without pay) but it was worth it. Its good to remind yourself why we work so hard during the rest of the year. Here’s a picture of a bottle of BinTang Beer I enjoyed at Tanalot, Bali. It was quite a good pilsner (if you like that sort of thing).

 

Tons of stuff to do in the remaining 11 months of this year. I just got my tax refund for ’05 so I guess the first order of action is to file an extension for ’06!

Also need to work on beefing up my passive income. My goal to reach $5,000/mo in passive income to achieve financial independance. I’m still very far from that goal. Private trust deeds have proven to be pretty good in the past so I’ll pursue that avenue. Prosper is also coming along well. I have $1,500 lent out over 28 loans with an average rate of 18.24% and so far I have had any defaults. I’ll probably put more money into it. However its very very time consuming. You spend 2 hours and lend out $200 and then 4 days later you find you were outbid and you need to restart the process. (Or someone outbid you and is willing to lend to a person with lousy credit at 12%. No thanks, I’m not competing with that)

I also want to invest in a commercial property and a buy a piece of land somewhere. Taking of land, here’s an interesting tidbit.

Collectively, the nation’s ten largest landowners own 10.6 million acres (worth more than 5.5 billion dollars), or one out of every 217 acres in the country.

* Robert E. (Ted) Turner -1,800,000 acres in Colo., Fla., Ga., Kans., Nebr., N.M., Mont., Okla., S.C., S.D.
* Colvin Irving -1,600,000 acres in Me.
* Archie (Red) Emmerson- 1,500,000 acres in Calif.
* Henry Singleton family-1,200,000 acres in Calif., N.M.
* David Pingree heirs- 960,000 acres in Me
* Richard King family heirs- 900,000 acres in Fla., Tex.
* William Reed family- 770,000 acres in Calif., Ore., Wash.
* Allyn Ford-750,000 acres in Calif., Ore.
* Howell Lykes family- 640,000 acres in Fla., Tex.
* Dolph Briscoe Jr.- 560,000 acres in Tex.