I’m not a fortune teller, soothsayer, or any other predictor of the future. The economy  is what it is, and shall be for at least several months from now. People have lost their jobs at an alarming rate. We read it in the paper, the web, and see and hear on radio and TV. The housing market controls the economy, they say, but I believe the economy drives the housing market. The job lost, down turn in retail sales / manufacturing, and with companies  going out of business have led some of us to a place we have never been before.-Unable to afford the home we so longed to have. If you find yourself in this situation, you are definitely not alone!  Sometimes the loss of the house  is unavoidable due to financial concerns. It is hard to face this fact. The reality is you have some options.

Most people with a 401K can take money out without penalty  to  get the mortgage current or to save it from foreclosure. I didn’t know if you knew this.

Give the house back to the bank “in lieu of foreclosure” You can contact your bank and discuss this with them. This will not count as a foreclosure against you and the credit hit is not as severe. This is easier when the house is in good shape. The stays on your credit report for about 3-4 years as a rule.

Stay in the house until the dreaded forced “foreclosure” when you are actually forced out. I would say this is the most challenging and damaging to your credit. Foreclosures usually stay on your credit report for 10 years and is hard to run from. Banks do not like this to happen, because of all the legal issues that accompany it. The banks tend to be more forgiving to your credit in a short sale or just giving the house back.

The “short sale” in most cases is the best scenario. The term short sale simply means the fair market value for the house is less than the mortgage. Several things have to happen to allow this. The bank will ask for the financial information from the sellers to make sure they can not pay the full amount. In this day and age that is not hard to do. You will need a realtor to do a competitive market analysis to show the bank  the true value. Then it is just a matter of marketing the house at a selling price that satisfies the buyers and the bank. The difference of the amount owed and the sold price is the short sale amount. This will hit your credit, but it is the least damaging.  Credit hit is 2-3 years as a rule.

Contact a realtor and ask questions concerning your options.

Bank owned properties and short sales are the things driving down the value in the housing market. It will be this way for awhile.  So, if you need to give it back or short sale it, you are not alone. Do what you need to do to help you and your family.

Who hasn’t been lured into a Home-Based Business, Network Marketing Business, Multi-Level Business or even a Direct Sales Business by the idea of working part-time hours to create full-time revenue? The problem with this line of thinking for the vast majority of people is, they are not business people they are employees. There is a tremendous mind-set change that has to take place when you stop being the worker and start being the owner. What most workers don’t realize is that the owner of the business didn’t get paid for quite awhile after they started that business and may not even be getting paid right now even though they have employees. There needs to be a willingness on the part of every new business owner to do some work, maybe even a lot of work for a significant period of time before they get paid.

The amount of time you are willing to contribute to your new venture is directly proportional to when you can expect to start getting paid. If you are jumping in to your new business full-time, your return is going to come much sooner than if you are working part-time. Most people start a Home-Based, or Network Marketing business because they don’t want to take the risk of jumping into something full time, but they know the value of owning your own business, so they agree to start out part-time.

The part-timers are torn on two fronts. First, the financial reward is much, much slower and even more sporadic. The wise entrepreneur sets up a separate bank account and commits to reinvesting all of the income into the business for marketing tools, supplies, training etc. However, more often than not this money is mingled with their general expense money and even though the earnings may be substantial, it never seems to launch the part-timer over the hump to become a full-timer. Second, the part-timer is constantly staring into the future and watching the lifestyles of the full-timers. This pull coupled with the drive from the full-time “up line” creates a conundrum of motivation to succeed and frustration that part-time efforts are not creating full-time results.

If success doesn’t come relatively quickly, i.e. the part-timer is able to jump to being a full-timer, one of two things happens. Either the part-timer will jump to full-time status prematurely, with a “sink-or-swim” attitude, or they become discouraged and drop off of their regular routine. The spare-timer is that unique person that still believes in the product, the company, and the opportunity but they just can’t seem to justify making the commitment to time and activity to expand their business. They may be in a place where revenue needs dictate that they stay primarily committed to their J-O-B and as opportunity presents itself they will make a sale or recruit a new business associate. All it would really take for the spare-timer to once again become a part-timer, or maybe even make the jump to being a full-timer is one or two quality recruits.

If a spare-timer lingers too long, however, they may become a some-timer. These are the folks that for whatever reason have kept their status active with the company, but they are not actively engaged in the daily activity necessary to be productive in growing their business. The pitfalls of becoming a some-timer are first of all developing a romance with “sometime I’m going to be able to do this, or sometime I’m going to hit it big, or sometime I’ll get back into that thing”. The romance aspect of business keeps us from ever making the commitment to become successful, or from making the commitment to just quit. Most all networking marketing businesses, in fact most all businesses have some degree of success built in to them. The one finality to any business is quitting. As is stated in an ancient Hebrew proverb, “Better a live dog than a dead lion, for while there is life there is yet hope”.

Maybe today is the day you’ll pull out that old list of names you made when you were new, plan to attend your company’s next opportunity meeting, and take some action to affect your destiny. Your next big sale or next great recruit may be a phone call away. One of my mentors likes to say, “Don’t let the reason you didn’t make the sale be you didn’t make the call.

Who knows, with a little effort you could become a “Just-In-Timer”.

Gary Russell
503-519-3592
www.DefendMyLife.com