Money

[Animal]

I've been learning about the stock market and reading books like "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" in an effort to learn how to think about money. Right now, I'm broke. I was already broke, but after Covid I've encountered new levels of broke.

So I'm developing better strategies. I'm a money 'noob.' I've never thought about money in the past because, well, I'm a creative type. I like thinking about feelings, passions, how to bring my projects to fruition. I have had periods where I made a lot of money singing, but then I lost my voice to an illness. During other periods I've made good and bad decisions with money, but nothing to write home about.

Now, I intend to get rich.

So I figured I'd start a thread so we can all get rich together. What's your strategy? Have you seen any good videos on money? Let's get this thing going and help each other get out of the covid rut.

[Animal]

I've got a few creative plans as always.
- I'm looking into publishing the first book of my fantasy series - which is done, but I'm not sure if it's "ready." So I'm getting advice.
- I'm figuring out how to make my website more "store-like." I have my old CD to sell.
- I'm compiling some old pictures and paintings to release more books. For example I have my storybook with pictures that went along with my first album.
- I'm finishing up some old music videos with the help of my beautiful and badass husband Daeva .

But that's artist stuff. That's not going to get me rich.

So, the past week I've been reading about stocks. I'm especially interested in the Oxford Club, but I'm taking advice wherever I can get it.

I don't want to get a fulltime job. In my case, a full-time job would prevent me from making money. I have a chronic illness, so working all those hours will make me sick, which will only lead to having to quit and be unemployed again. I know this from experience. Also, it takes hours away from working on the projects that have a better chance of success, like my creative portfolio. It's better to be slightly more broke now, but have a few major assets going which might or might not catch on in the future. I also would prefer to find a way to get rich without having to slave away all the time. I'm not afraid of hard work, especially when the project or job is something I care about. The nitty gritty, difficult, tiring processes and details do not scare me. Bring it on. But I want a lifestyle where my assets work for me in the background while I'm doing other things. If I have books and albums for instance, and they make money, that can happen while I'm simultaneously writing new ones. This is a better long-term strategy and frees up more of my time, both to make money, learn about money, and make more assets.

So I'm not desperately job hunting. If I were doing that, I'd have a job by now, but that's not what I'm looking for. I'll pick up some part-time local gig just to get by. But the kind of advice and thoughts I'm looking for is how to make real investments. Assets. Etc.

[PleasureToBurn]

I call it the sphere of money, where you have money coming in from all sorts of different things, and that's what I'm in the process of setting up.

For your art/music stuff, I'd say start an LLC. It allows you to write stuff off which is going to save you money long term. Editor, marketing, website, ect.

As for stocks, are you looking to just invest long term or actually trade on a shorter time frame? For investing, a few strategies would be to pick some good ones from all the major indexes. Open up a self directed Roth IRA. There's also a great investment strategy called Dogs of the Dow Jones. You can read more about it at dogsofthedow.com But basically you take the top 10 highest yielding stocks of the Dow, buy in equal amounts on the first day of the year, sell them on the last day of the year, and historically you make about 17% ROI. They've been tracking it since the 70s. Simple and effective.

For trading stocks, I'd look into options trading. Essentially what options trading is is you're trading the option or the right to buy/sell a stock at a certain price over a certain period of time. It's less risky than actual stocks because if the market doesn't go your way, you're only out the price you paid for the option. Kind of hard to explain, but look up some videos on it and message me if you have any questions.

Now, trading the market is all good, but you're limited when you can trade. This is why once you're good with the stock market, you can move on to trading the Forex. The Forex is where you're trading currencies. USD against British Pound, ect. There's a few main benefits to this. For one, you can trade on margin, which is more risky, but allows you to make bigger trades. Secondly, you can trade essentially 24/7 365. Because once the market closes in the US, there's Asian markets opening, when they're closing, European markets are open, when they close, US market is open, ect. so there's very little dead zone space.

For both, technical analysis is essential. Start off with learning how to read a stock chart. Then study Japanese candle stick patterns. There's places where you can trade with fake money for practice too, to test your knowledge. I know TD Ameritrade has one, and there's probably more out there too.

The other thing you can invest in is commodities like Gold, Silver, Platinum, ect. I'd go with Silver. It's ALOT cheaper than gold, but follows the price of gold pretty close. Plus, unlike gold, it's not just a precious metal as it's used heavily in the tech sector. And in the next 20 to 30 years, it's going to be in even higher demand as technology continues to advance.

Other great things outside of stocks are real estate and tax liens/tax deeds.

For real estate, you can go either residential or commercial. One great commercial one which is pretty low maintenance is billboards. You buy the billboard or the plot that it's on, and all you pay are the property tax and to have people change out the signage. It sits there and brings you money month in and month out and you don't have to deal with tenants, contractors, ect. so a lot less headache.

For tax liens/tax deeds, essentially what that is is dealing with foreclosed homes. Kind of difficult to explain, but like the options or forex thing, look into it and message me if you have any questions.

Another thing that's getting big and will only get bigger is business loan brokers/merchant cash advance. You essentially work as an independent contractor and work with one or two lending firms and get loans for businesses then receive a commission. This might be hard for you with your voice since it involves talking on the phone with business owners, but it's a hot market.

As for more music/art related stuff, there's always licensing out your stuff. Commercials, book covers, album covers, corporate logos/artwork, ect.



I think that covered most of it, but again, if you have any questions, just message me.

[Animal]

Wow! This post is full of great advice. I will say more as I go through it more carefully and look some things up. Thank you!

[Quindary]

Thank you for sharing. I'm interested in a lot of this stuff too, lately.

[PleasureToBurn]

More about the LLC stuff. So this is essentially what I'm working towards, but basically you can start an umbrella LLC with other LLCs under it. So Erica Xenne Productions or something, or EX Productions, whatever you wanna call it. Then have one LLC dedicated for your music, another for writing, and so forth. So like for mine, once they're all set up, under Pleasure To Burn music or whatever I wanna call it, anything that goes towards making it profitable is a tax write off. Equipment, insurance, repairs, new guitar, new pedals, studio time, marketing costs, merchandising costs, travel expenses, website, if I hire an independent contractor to do album artwork, set up the website, do t shirt design, any "business lunch/dinners" I have with people relating to it, all of that tax write off.

For the book: Editor, cover design, fees for amazon or whatever I go through for self publishing, marketing, renting space for a book launch, travel, writers retreats, books or programs on how to get better at writing, website, professional headshots, advertising, website hosting, email subscription services like money chimp, all of that tax write off.

For my artwork: canvas, paints, brushes, website hosting, marketing, shipping costs, mediums, traveling costs and fees for any art shows, advertising.

So you can see how all that adds up, might as well get some of it back. This also protects you from any lawsuits. Someone tries to sue you over something, copywright infringement or whatever, worst case scenario is they sue the LLC, but the other ones aren't affected by it, and most importantly, you personally aren't affected by it.

To go further on this point, once you have a lot of different assets and LLCs going, it's good to put it all into a separate trust. Again, if anyone tries to sue you, they can't go after your assets. Let's say I try to sue Erica Xenne, who's net worth is half a million in assets, but all those are tied up in a separate trust. Those are untouchable since I'm suing Erica and not Erica Xenne Media. So on paper you might be technically broke, but it's because you're smart enough to put all your assets into a separate trust. And once they see that there's no money in it, they'll drop the lawsuit 9 out of 10 times because they'll go bankrupt trying to fight it over the course of years. (Another great way to fuck someone over and bankrupt them, make them defend themselves in multiple lawsuits, but that's a different conversation.)

[Animal]

Awesome!!!!

[PleasureToBurn]

Also, for anythign stock market related, this is the golden rule: ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS HAVE A STOP LOSS. Ideally, have a trailing stop loss. Let's say stocks at $70, you think it's going to $100, so you get in at 70 and it's nearing 80, then something happens and it falls down to 35. If you had a stop loss say at 65 or 60, it'd take you out of the market once it hit that, so you'd only take a 5 or 10 dollar loss instead of a 35 dollar loss. Trailing stop loss is the same thing, but it moves as the stock moves up. So Let's say the stock hits 100, but it's still hot so you wanna keep going, you can move the stop loss up to 80 or 90 as the stock moves up. So if it goes to $200, instead of it being at 60, it's now at 180. It just means that if the market turns against you, you still retain most of what you gained with minimal loss.


Also, it's good to have a conservative approach and an aggressive approach. Also good to know how to make money in a bear or sideways market, not just a bull market. And to never let fear or greed guide you. Emotions are not your friend here. Just look at the technical analysis and make sure that the fundamentals of the stock are strong.

[PleasureToBurn]

[SnatchYourWeave]

[PleasureToBurn]

Caterpillar, or anything like that are good too because military equipment isn't going anywhere anytime soon.