Geldpress

Today I attended the Seattle area Get Motivated seminar.  According to their website:

This motivational mega-show packs more inspirational firepower than a stick of dynamite!

The Seattle seminar was held at Key Arena, and nearly all of the 17,500 seats were filled.  In any given year, more than 300,000 people attend.  Upcoming additional cities (Asheville, Tulsa, Nashville) for this all day motivational seminar are only $4.95 per person, or $19 for an entire office.  The list of speakers for the event varies, but past speakers included United States presidents and other World leader, famous entertainers and musicians, business leaders, astronauts, and sports legends.  Today’s event in Seattle included General Colin Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, Suze Orman, Zig Ziglar, Terry Bradshaw, Phil Town and others.

Each of the speakers captivated, motivated, educated and entertained the enormous crowd.  There were numerous giant screen displays spread throughout the arena for those sitting far from the stage. At several points throughout the day, there were short bursts of entertainment (Santana), free prize raffles, and even an audience dance contest.

For such a low admission charge, you would be correct to assume there is also a fair amount of up selling included.  My particular event in Seattle included three speakers that marketed their additional training.  But the crowd saw the value in each of the deeply discounted offers, as I witnessed what must have been at least 60% of the arena crowd sign up.  Most people seemed to sign up for all three opportunities, including:

1. Success Magazine Investor Workshop - two day intensive plus investor toolbox access for only $99
2. Financial Success 2008 - three day real estate workshop for only $49
3. Store Online - one day workshop and Internet store creation software access for only $29

A few notable moments from today’s event:

• General Colin Powell was both entertaining and informative.  He stated what he missed most from his days in office - the private plane.
• Giuliani recounting 911 and the aftermath
• Suze Orman announcing the government has recently hired her to redesign the FDIC program and website.
• Zig Ziglar did a unique co-presentation with his daughter in a question and answer format.
• Earl Mindell, author of over 50 nutrition books, energized the audience with information on how to live an optimum healthy life.

At the conclusion of the day, a final drawing was held for $10,000, and final door prizes (Zig Ziglar motivational DVD and CD set) were given out to everyone as they left the stadium.

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• United States ranks 51 in Nationmaster debt to GDP
• Government bailout reading list for Fraudy and Phony

Congratulations, you beat the casinos at their own game. And it was so easy, anyone could do it. But you didn’t beat them at Blackjack, Roulette, Craps or slot machines. How did you do it? By not going.

That’s right, you Won! Casinos, and shares of casino related companies are suffering in 2008 because you stayed home. Marketwatch reported last week that:

It’s now clear that fewer people are going to Las Vegas — and the ones who do are staying for shorter periods and spending less. In June, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, volume was off 3.1%, an accelerated slip that finally dragged the year-to-date figure into negative territory, down 0.5% to 19.5 million.

Hotel occupancy was off 2.5% for the month, but it took a lot of discounting to keep the drop that modest as average daily room rates, or ADRs, plunged 16% in June.

Commuting to an office job can be expensive for both the employees struggling with gas prices, and the employer struggling with energy costs and sky high commercial real estate lease costs. The good news for those wanting to cut out the commute is that telecommuting jobs do exist. The bad news is that they can be hard to come by, and the search can be littered with scams and low paying jobs.

Here are a few resources to help you on your quest to the perfect at home job.

• Monster or hotjobs: Try doing a keyword search for “telecommute” or “home”, and narrow your search by geographic location and occupation.
• You can try a similar search at your local newspaper online want ads, or the craigslist job search.
• Negotiate for telecommuting rights. If you spend much of your work day working independently, or on conference calls, negotiate for your rights to work one or more days at home.
• Freelancing: If you have in demand skills, you may have luck searching for freelance assignments at oDesk or Elance.
• If you don’t mind customer service, try some home call center work through West Corp, LiveOps or AlpineAccess
• For the entrepreneurs in the audience, you can try your luck at opening one or more on line stores. Stores online offers all in one packages to get you started including training, hosting and easy to use ready made website templates. Hint: They often travel around the country giving free seminars that include deep discounts to the startup offers you will find directly from their site.
• Become a “virtual assistant”. Either search for the term directly on the job boards already mentioned, or go to a site specializing in it at Team Double-Click.

Tips for work at home seekers to avoid scams:

• If your dream telecommute job requires a sizeable up front investment, it may be a scam
• Do a google search on the company name to see if anyone has written about any scams related to the “job”
• You can also search FTC website to see if any scams were reported.
• Lastly, make sure you are prepared to deal with the at home distractions of working at home!

If you have spent any time on the Internet, you probably have seen plenty of ads for free seminars - Real Estate seminars, stock market investing seminars, Internet marketing seminars, Ebay store seminars, and many more. Most people that are exposed to those ads just ignore them. But I’ve got news for you. The people who click on those ads and go to the free seminars do find plenty of value in the form of learning something new or receiving a little inspiration and motivation. And most attendees even subscribe to additional services at the events.

I’ve been to several free seminars over the last few years, including:

• Robert Kiyosaki real estate
• Robert Kiyosaki stock investing
• Investools seminar
• Donald Trump real estate
• Get rich and stay rich seminar
• Stores online

The seminars, despite their differenes, are very similar in nature. A typical seminar will be 2 hours long and offered at several convenient times and places in a city near you. After being greeted and signing in, you are given a name tag and pointed to your seat. If you have arrived early the conference room projector is already on, and displaying several motivational, and yet slightly subliminal messages designed to secretly motivate you to sign up later: “If you always go where you have always gone, you will always get where you always got.”

When its time to begin, there are the customary reminders to turn off cell phones and hold all questions until the end. Then you are treated to a very entertaining, informative, and interactive session on the topic at hand. The interactive portion usually involves the “How many here…” type questions where the applicable audience members raise their hands. The seminar holders must use the same comedian as their humor consultants, because at the end of a series of questions there is always the “how many here are not going to raise their hands no matter what I ask” question, at which point the audience laughs. Beyond the interaction, there is a healthy mix of effective marketing, more motivational quotes and statistics, and a few humorous jokes. The actual meat of the free seminar - what you signed up for - probably only lasts for 25% percent of the 2 hour period, but the audience stays alert and engaged the whole time, and I have never seen anyone walk out early.

Of course the real intention of the companies to host these free seminars is as you expected, to sell you something related to the topic you came for. What starts out as a free 2 hour seminar gradually turns into a sales pitch for a weekend intensive course. I’ve seen the intensive classes sold for as little as $50 (stores online) to as high as $3000. But $500-$1500 is a good range you can expect for the weekend classes they attempt to sell you. I’ve rarely seen any pushy sales tactics, but nonetheless, their conversion rates are truly amazing. Anyone studying business should attend these free seminars just to see the power of an effective marketing campaign. I’ve personally witnessed up to 80 percent of a free seminar audience sign on to the fee based intensive weekend seminars.

If you do sign on to the weekend courses, you can expect additional up sell attempts beyond that. I’ve only been to one intensive weekend seminar so far with Investools. The Investools “graduate” programs were selling from a few thousand to as high as $25,000. But don’t let any of these costs scare you. There was never any high pressure sales tactics. People made their choices based on the perceived value of the program. And they must have done a good job presenting that value, because plenty of people signed up for more.

For all the bad press you hear and all the bad movies you see about the IRS, those government agents can actually be your friend. They are trained tax professionals, just like the ones at H&R Block and other fee based tax services. The difference, of course, is that the IRS is a tax payer funded service, and you are entitled to FREE help with your taxes. Here is a snapshot of the IRS website:

When friends ask me for tax advice, I generally refer them directly to the IRS for help. Nothing against my other CPA friends, but I hate paying for things twice, just as I hate double taxation. Paying an accountant for tax advice which is given for free from the IRS is akin to double taxation! Here are some helpful tips for contacting the IRS for tax help:

1. Be friendly and courteous to the agents.
2. Don’t call on April 14th. Start your taxes EARLY. If you have trouble, keep a list of everything you have questions on. Call right away with your questions (January or February), even if you don’t intend to fill out the forms until later.
3. Know what to expect when calling the IRS. The first person you talk to just needs to know how to direct your call - self employment tax questions, corporate taxes, capital gains, etc. In my experience you will be connected within a few short minutes to the first IRS resource. Getting a live specialist may take a little longer - 10-15 minutes in my experience.
4. Be legitimate. Don’t waste your time calling the IRS to ask for advice on tax evasion!
5. Have a “Do it yourself” attitude. If you are are the type to outsource your taxes, just hand things over to your accountant and forget the IRS. But if you really want to take things into your own hands, the IRS can and will help you.
6. Call well in advance of tax status changes. If you are considering starting a new business, for example, but want to understand the tax ramifications before doing so, call the IRS to discuss. They can easily give you a high level summary, and then likely will refer you to additional reading material on the IRS web site. Calling outside of tax season for these types of questions will get you a quicker response.
7. Do your homework. When the IRS agent refers you to specific IRS publication numbers, spend the time to read them, marking areas which are applicable and unclear. Call back later for clarification after you have read them.
8. For state or local tax questions, contact your state or local tax office and follow the same helpful tips above.

Stop gambling, Make Money!

There appears to be some common personality traits between gamblers, poker players and the stock, options, and day trader types, so the Geldpress team decided to do some coverage on poker to mix things up a bit.

The interesting thing about poker is that every player I have ever met and talked to claims to hate the game. Yet despite their hatred toward the game, they can still spend countless hours playing. Why do they hate the game? There are a myriad of reasons including suck outs, bad beats, river cards, other bad players, bad dealers, cracked aces, impatience, and many more. But even if those horrible cards and dealers don’t get you, and you manage to come out ahead, the IRS will certainly come knocking at your door to take what little you have left!

Let’s say you are fortunate enough to win a moderately sized poker tournament in the amount of $5,000. With the new IRS poker tournament rules, the house is required to issue a 1099-Misc to any tournament player who is paid out more then $600. Before you start thinking that the 1099 doesn’t matter, and that you can easily write off the win, consider this:

• You can only write off poker or other gambling losses up to your total winnings, and not a penny more.
• You can not carry over your losses from year to year.
• You must itemize your deductions to qualify for the write off. For those apartment dwellers who were smart enough to avoid the housing bubble, you will likely not be itemizing, which means you will pay taxes on the full amount of any reported winnings, regardless of any losses you incur!
• You can not easily hide behind the shroud of “Professional gambler status” with the IRS. To do so, you must prove to obtain the majority of your income from gambling, and you also can never show a loss in your business. It is the only business the IRS places such a restriction on.
• Poker dealers expect tips, and the rule of thumb is 5-10% of wins from poker tournaments or bad beat jackpots. Your 1099 will show the FULL AMOUNT of the payout, regardless of how much you tip the dealer! The 1099 will also NOT subtract out any entry fees. How is that for double taxation!

Compare those rules to the IRS rules for the stock market:

• The stock market is a long term positive sum game, so you are expected to WIN!
• All stock transactions can and must be recorded to the IRS - WINS and LOSSES. You only pay tax on the net sum of the two, compared to gamblers
• If you do incur losses, 100% of them are deductible, and can be carried over from year to year if you max out the IRS limit for yearly losses.
• You DO NOT have to itemize to claim investment losses. They are recorded on the 1040 schedule D, and is utilized regardless of whether you itemize the rest of your taxes.
• The tax rates that apply to net capital gain are generally lower than the tax rates that apply to other income and are called the maximum capital gains rates. For 2007, the maximum capital gains rates are 5%, 15%, 25% or 28%.
• Dividends from investments are taxed at only 15%, but is of course subject to change based on IRS rules.
• It is much easier to convince the IRS of your professional trader status then it is for professional gambler status. Professional traders can deduct all legitimate expenses used for their trading business - computers, phone lines, investment newsletters and adviser fees, travel expenses (Investment expositions), etc. Note: Still a few hurdles to IRS trader status, but certainly less so then professional gambler status. IRS Publication 550 has the detailed special rules for traders in securities, starting on page 72.

And if that is not enough to convince you to STOP GAMBLING, and MAKE MONEY, consider the fact that there are plenty of hands off investment styles such as mutual funds and ETF index funds. For those wanting to try and out smart the morons of wall street (does “BUY BUY BUY” ring a bell?), I’d recommend a lot of homework (Ugh, I sound like Cramer!!) as you progress down your path to investment wealth. And for the poker players in the audience, the good news is that good poker players will easily pick up the skills to do well in the options market. But you will need to learn how options work first. So go check out the Geldpress bookstore and BUY BUY BUY!

Get Rich With Options: Four Winning Strategies Straight from the Exchange Floor (Agora Series) by Lee Lowell

Other Tax Artciles:

• The IRS can be your friend