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I can sum this up so very simply. The way to make the most money is to get as close to money as possible. Hence why finance is such a lucrative career. We are seeing the obvious flaws of capitalism now that capital is no longer tied to low skill labor for manufacturing.

Want to make a ton of money 1 year from today and have good credit? Spend your days with an MLS subscription finding under-priced homes to flip in a couple weeks. You'll be a millionaire in a year I guarantee it.

Want to help single mothers for the rest of you life? You'll barely get by, I guarantee it.

Why? Because its further from a transaction. Nothing more, nothing less.

EDIT: I'd love it if the person who down voted me would explain why so much money is flowing into blockchains. You don't think that has anything to do with how close it is to the transaction?

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Are you a millionaire real estate speculator? Knowing something about it, your scenario strikes me as neither low-risk nor guaranteed. If it were low-risk and guaranteed, it would be profitably scaled -- capital is available in abundance.

why so much money is flowing into blockchains

It's an asset bubble backed by an extraordinarily sophisticated emergent P2P Internet marketing operation which is a quantum leap improvement over a boiler room. Like many asset bubbles, it is snaring both the rich/savvy and the non-wealthy/non-savvy.

My parents eventually made "millionaire" status on real estate investments.

And you're 100% right.

The reason my parents did well is that:

a) Few people (at the time) knew about tax and bank auctions

b) At the time both kinds of auctions required that you show up and pay in cash equivalent. They had a worker's comp settlement that allowed them to invest in properties where others didn't have the cash. Now banks tend to let you finance REO properties.

c) My dad was a competent home inspector/contractor who could tell (within reasonable margin of error) if a house was a good deal, and could do the work himself to fix it up

d) It was the Right Time to be investing in their geographical area

So yes, it's possible to do something like this, but for the most part you need to have access to a source of properties that is not already being shopped by a ton of competitors, have access to a building inspection skillset (or pay $400+ per property you inspect), have access to inexpensive contractors (or they'll eat up your profit), and to a certain extent, you need to be lucky and invest in the right market at the right time.

So not exactly a "guarantee" that you'll be "a millionaire in a year" then?

Bingo.

Though I have to say that I'm now investing in real estate, based on my own observations of the area I live now, but I'm not taking a buy-and-flip approach. Instead I'm trying buy-and-make-12%-ROI-on-rent. The rental market is extremely tight here. But it's not going to make me a millionaire in a year.

Where I live, many landlords prefer tenants who are on welfare. The state pays their rent, so it's practically guaranteed. So I think single mothers might be a lucrative market. Especially if you can get the foot into the door for some government contract.

Another data point: I think Warren Buffet got rich with Coca Cola and chocolate bars? That's basically selling crap to the poor.

The government being a lucrative market isn't the same as single mothers being a lucrative market.

And yes, you can make money from an underclass by exploiting people's weaknesses for sugar, fast food, gambling, alcohol, drugs etc. But then you're not solving their problems, you're adding to them.

Sure, I wouldn't want that. But it shows you can sell stuff to the poor and make a profit. If you can sell them crap, it seems likely you could also sell them useful things.

The mothers: where I live the single moms are often on welfare (at least the media says so), that's why I thought of the government. Because the government feeds them directly. So if you could convince the government that every mother needs X (I don't know, free baby bottles because research has shown kids teeth deteriorate because poor moms don't buy bottles often enough bla bla bla), you would be on your way to a government contract of sorts.

The point is that if they are a big enough group, and you provide something they need, you can make money (I suppose).

You are still selling things to the government in your example. The final recipient of the product may be the mother, but your pitch is to the government.

> Where I live, many landlords prefer tenants who are on welfare. The state pays their rent, so it's practically guaranteed. So I think single mothers might be a lucrative market.

Doesn't this have a side effect of locking those single mothers into poverty? A place to stay offers stabilization, but that alone doesn't help if trying to find a job means losing benefits and not being able to afford a cheap flat, because suddenly landlords don't like you anymore.

Not just single mothers, everybody who is on welfare. I suppose it is always tricky to set up such a system with minimal side effects. I'm not saying the system is good, but it exists.

There were cases here (Germany) where people had to leave their flat for one with higher rent, because the old flat was too big (welfare recipients being entitled only to so much space). But that was the government forcing them to move, not the landlords.

Not sure if the other thing would happen, landlords throwing out tenants when they don't receive welfare anymore. There are laws to protect tenants once they are in the house, too.

> There were cases here (Germany) where people had to leave their flat for one with higher rent, because the old flat was too big (welfare recipients being entitled only to so much space). But that was the government forcing them to move, not the landlords.

I know personally of a family in a similar situation in Poland. A single mother living with with three children; the moment the eldest will leave house to live on his own, the family will have to sell the flat and move to a smaller one, because with one less person living there, the flat will be considered a little too big and suddenly, all benefits related to it will evaporate.

> Not sure if the other thing would happen, landlords throwing out tenants when they don't receive welfare anymore. There are laws to protect tenants once they are in the house, too.

It doesn't necessarily have to be throwing out, it might just be "renegotiating the contract". Also the person who just switched from welfare to a job might not have a very stable income at the beginning. Unfortunately, welfare trap is a real thing.

I think Warren Buffet got rich with Coca Cola

Coca-cola is where he parks excess cash. He got the cash using insurance cash-flows (get cash now, pay out later) to fund utility building (needs cash up-front, pays out cash reliably for a long time)

When it comes to victimizing the poor, I would look at the bh acquisition and running of rent-a-center before Coke or Candy..

Hmmm- there is perhaps some merit to your theory but I doubt its as easy buying an MLS subscription and flipping homes.

Some of what you are saying is applicable to Advertising as well. See Chris Dixon's posts on why Google is so profitable because its closest to the transaction.

http://cdixon.org/2010/02/19/a-massive-misallocation-of-onli...

http://cdixon.org/2009/09/29/why-content-sites-are-getting-r...

===From Chris Dixon's Posts===

For example, an average camera buyer takes 30 days and clicks on approximately 3 sponsored links from the beginning of researching cameras to actually purchasing one. Yet in most cases only the last click gets credit, by which I mean: 1) if it’s an affiliate (CPA) deal, it is literally usually the case that only the last affiliate (the site that drops the last cookie) gets paid, 2) if it’s a CPC or CPM deal, most advertisers don’t properly track the users across multiple site visits so simply attribute conversion to the most recent click, causing them to over-allocate to end-of-funnel links 3) if it’s a non-sponsored link (like Google natural search links) the advertiser might over-credit SEO when in fact the natural search click was just the final navigational step in a long process that involved sponsored links along the way.

What this means is there are two huge misallocations of advertising dollars online: the first from intent generators to intent harvesters; the second from intent harvesters that are at the beginning or middle of the purchasing process to those at the end of the purchasing process. This is not just a problem for internet advertisers and businesses – it affects all internet users. Where advertising dollars flow, money gets invested. It is well known that content sites are suffering, many are even on their way to dying. Additionally, product/service sites that started off focusing on research are forced to move more and more toward end-of-funnel activities.

I used to be a real estate agent. As I recall, pretty much every home shopper was looking for something underpriced. You'll face a lot of competition on that route.

>Want to make a ton of money 1 year from today and have good credit? Spend your days with an MLS subscription finding under-priced homes to flip in a couple weeks. You'll be a millionaire in a year I guarantee it.

Considering only 3% of Americans are millionaires, and assuming >3% of Americans would like to be millionaires, in order for your statement to be valid is if whatever you wrote was some sort of never before thought of revelation.

The problem is capital. It takes a lot of capital to flip homes. Most of the people I know are in a pretty good spot financially, but almost none of them could afford to flip homes unless they got a really good deal on a teardown and they did all the renovation manually (and you're certainly not going to become a millionaire in one year at that pace).

How about the skill and risk involved in being able to determine what is "under-priced"? The way I'm reading these posts, it seems as if all it takes to make money is money (at least in flipping homes).

Perhaps I'm thinking of a different notion of flipping homes. I might be the one confused here.

I was thinking of buying old homes, possibly teardowns, in a rapidly up-and-coming area, renovating them, and then reselling them at a much higher price. I feel like there's less risk involved here as long as you have strong data showing the area is becoming popular and you can act quickly (i.e., before the boom ends).

If you want to simply isolate an underpriced house, buy it, sit on it doing nothing, and then sell it a few months later for twice what you paid, then I agree -- a considerable amount of skill would be needed.

So basically, by "I guarantee it" you meant "you could be fucked and lose all your money"?

No.

I suggest you keep up with the thread. You don't even know who you're responding to. I didn't even write the phrase "I guarantee it" anywhere.

As for what I meant, I meant what I wrote. There's a reason I wrote more than one pithy little phrase.

If it's that easy why don't you crank up the leverage and become a billionaire? Hey, it's guaranteed.

Absolutely right. Find opportunities to either facilitate for pay or to tax transactions between other actors. Try to convert facilitation situations in which you have to be the lowest bidder into taxing situations where you only accept the highest bidders.

The only way to come across these opportunities is to socialize with the wealthy.

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