At Empowered Investor Network (PPIN), we don’t make it a habit to hold hands with the doom-and-gloomers who are perpetually prepared to hurl themselves off the nearest cliff. At the same time we have to be realists about the world around us. One of PPIN’s primary missions is to educate people on how to create wealth in today’s economy. Toward that end, we believe it would be absolutely unethical of us to not illustrate the scam game that the stock market continues to prove itself to be on an almost daily basis.
Let’s talk about unemployment numbers and the dizzying drop in the service industry. The U.S. Department of Labor recently reported the national unemployment rate had climbed to 8.5%. It’s been a quarter of a century since we’ve seen a number like that. There’s been a net loss of 5.1 million jobs since December 2007, almost two-thirds of them in the past five months. As the numbers have gotten steadily worse, our lack of faith in the Obama Job Creation Hope Train has become more clearly justified.
Item number two on our list of reasons to avoid the stock market like it has the Bubonic Plague is the coming commercial real estate problem. At PPIN we’re investors in residential real estate because, no matter how bad it gets, people still need a place to live. The natural consequence of the high unemployment rate is the effect on commercial real estate rentals. Companies cutting jobs are also trying to cut costs wherever they can. We see this reflected in the U.S office vacancy rate which rose to 15.2% this quarter and is expected to surge near 20% next year.
The point of this article is not to make you turn everything into cash and bury it in the back yard. That’s the last thing you should do. In inflationary times, savings in cash is going to get hit hard as the dollar continues to devalue. Does it all seem hopeless to get ahead? It’s not. The secret to future financial success is to understand debt and how to leverage it prudently to buy property with very little money down, then pay it off over time with future dollars of ever-decreasing value.
You don’t have to understand how this works all at once. We have expert investment counselors willing to help you with the concept at Empowered Investor Network. Call us any time at 714-820-4200 to jump start your free real estate investment education.
But surely this to will pass and all will be well with the stock market again says the unrepentant traditional investor. Let’s look to history for the answer to that. The Japanese Nikkei Index set an all-time high of 38,915 on December 29, 1989. A recent market day concluded at 8,750. That’s a 77% decline and it’s been nearly twenty years.
Who has two decades to wait for their investment to come off life support? We don’t and neither do you. Please visit our information-packed website at https://www.jasonhartman.com to learn how to tap into the best investment ever created – real estate.
