Category Archives: Business

My Rapid Development Test

Bootstrap, Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Marketing, MLM, Money,

Let me tell you a quick story about part of my week.  I think this is how true Entrepreneurs operate.

On sunday I was sent a spam email for a service that looked fairly interesting.  For $39.95 per month it was interesting but I am cheap so I did not buy.  I forwarded the link to my business partner, mostly as a joke, saying “Look how easy it is to make money online.”  When he saw the page he thought I was right, and he asked me if we could do the same thing.  I thought about it for a few seconds and figured “Why Not”   So on monday afternoon we told a few others about our idea.  They really liked it.

I then wrote a plan of how to program it, it used some PHP and some other things that were above what I could do, so I wrote a project for it and tried to get a free lancer from Asia to it.  I had many freelancers talk to me about it but it seems that none of them got it, so I started thinking about how I could do it myself.  So all tuesday morning I worked on coding, and by tuedsay afternoon it was done.  I still had a few glitches and by wednesday morning it was totally complete.   We emailed it to a few people and they were loving it.  On wednesday we had our first customer at $20 per month.  Thurday we added a second.  On friday we talked with a guy who is confident that he will help us sell 50 sites.  We gave him a free account.  Now it is friday night, one more person just signed up for $20 a month.   I figure at this rate we should have 50 new people a month or MORE.

So lets recap.   We went from idea to profits in under 72 hours.  We have zero cost other than our time, and have $60 per month coming in already with much more to come.  I will keep you updated and in a few weeks give a total of how many people we have.

Rapid Development is the key to all of this, most people I know would not just jump in, they would hesitate, and then never do the idea at all.  That is what I would normally do, but that is why I have a business partner that likes to get thigs done.

The best way to have a good idea is to have many ideas.

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Investment, Marketing, MLM, Money

idea_bulbI saw this topic on a TV today, was the quote of the day.  I was thinking about it for a while and it is so true.  So many people come up with one idea and they focus on that way too long.  And for most people that idea is to work for some big company.  Once in they are in that job the company gives them a ladder that they start to climb…. work two years then get a bit more power and a bit more money, then do it all over again.  It is just enough to keep people doing it yet never enough to let them do anything else.  This works great for the people who own the company.

See I have never had a day job, I have only had businesses.  I also have make it clear to many people that I am an entrepreneur and I have surrounded myself with people that are also the same way.  This lets me get on the ground floor with some great ideas, it also give me access to many great ideas and from that I can select the best ones and work on them to make them even better.

In the last three months, I have joined an MLM company that helps people do loan modifications, I have started a new company that sells online marketing, I have been developing a concept that lets us help people create instant online stores that sell my products.  And just this week I joined another MLM that has a great marketing idea to get people more web traffic.  I also made adjustments to my main company, Emerald Computers, I have lowered prices and automated things much more. On top of this I have discovered some tools that make my life much better and more profitable, and I have connected with some people who also do the same thing for me.

So all of this means that I am much better positioned to have wealth flow towards me.  With all of these ideas at least one of them should be a home run and make my fortune this year.

A Balanced life or an Integrated Life

Business, Entrepreneurship

In recent times there has always been a lot of talk from people about having a balanced life.  You know the life where you leave work at 6 and focus on your family.  I think that family time is very important, working too much is one of the main reasons that families fall apart. There are books and even software packages that help you lead a more balanced life.  All of this is very good for the people who need this.

For me I have always been an Entrepreneur, and I have never lead what you would call a very balanced life.  I take calls, and meetings at all times of the day, I am almost always on call for my customers.  Sometimes I even felt a bit guilty for this.  But yesterday I was listening to the radio and they had a commercial and during this commercial they talked about having an intregrated life, a life where you multitask and do everything together, and how that life is actually superior to a balanced life.  I was thinking and this is exactly what I have.  My wife has her desk right next to mine, my son plays with me all during the day, and often I bring my wife and son with me as I do tasks during the day.  This is the sort of pleasure that an entrepreneur lifestyle allows me to live.  I am able to pick and choose most of the times that I meet with customers, I decided which meetings to go to, and how to arrange my day.  I could not even imagine how restrictive a normal 9 to 5 day job would be.  I have never had such a job my entire life.

One of the keys to this lifestyle is my high adoption of technology, I use computers to do most of my tasks, I outsource things I can’t do.  I manage others from afar.  I am able to do my banking online and wherever I go I have my phone with me so that I am always in contact.  I really like this lifestyle, it also gives the added benefit that I can show my son how to be successful, when he goes to school later he will be well ahead of all the others.

Last Day of the Year Discounts

Business, concepts, Money

Today is the last day of the year. Of course there are the parties and such. To me it is much more, it is a time to look back and look forward. But for many people it is just another tick of the clock.

One interesting part about this tick is the way that accounting works, you see by this time in the year all of the spending is done in most companies. But they want to lock in better earnings, so they have every reason to push really hard to get in some last minute sales, even if they sell at or near cost. This happens to a lesser extent on the last day of each quarter and a bit on the last day of each month. Sales people need to reach quotas, managers need to reach their numbers also. Because of all of this it makes this one of the best days to buy something. This works better at places where you negotiate for something. On the last day of the month you can usually get a new or even used car for far below what you can get it for on any other day, and the end of the year is even bigger. It works well for real estate companies; if you need to sign that new lease they are eager to get it in the book for this year. One place I have tried it with great success is with a T1 vendor, for internet access, I called them on the last day of march, and the sales guy was so desperate that he gave me a price only 30% of what I got the week before, and wanted to lock it in for three years, that alone save my client thousands over that time period.

So if you are thinking about buying something, especially a vehicle, then go shopping today, you will save thousands, and maybe even lock in that tax deduction this year.  If you get a Ford or GM they have huge discounts that also expire today.

The tale of the McDouble, and lessons from it.

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Investment, Marketing, Money, , , , , ,

In this age of all the hype about a down economy many people are looking to save money.  One thing that millions have done is turn to dollar menus at fast food restaurants.  I have noticed that chains with good menus are busy and still quite popular, and presumably profitable.  I have also noticed that some chains just don’t seem to be catching up, such as Arby’s, A&W and Long John Silvers.  I often drive by many of these and the parking lot is usually empty, and when I go inside the whole place is empty.  It seems that some companies are watching the trends, they share this data with all the franchise owners and make changes to their system to make it more profitable, others simply sit there and do nothing, watching their empty store.

McDonalds has always provided good value, they are good at making customers think they are getting a great deal and that is because they usually are, as long as you stick to the value menu.  The only burger left on the value menu was the Double Cheeseburger, a fairly good burger and a great value.  In December of 2008 they replaced it with the McDouble.  It is the exact same thing but with one less piece of cheese.  They say it will save them 6 cents each, and I have eaten a few of these already, they still taste just as good and now have less fat.  Of course this was done mostly to save McDonalds money, but the lesson that should be learned is that businesses have pressures that make it hard to stay profitable in this economy, while at the same time they need to offer better deals to keep the customers coming.  Some get it, and have started to change, and others are simply empty and on the road to failure.

It is hard for most small business owners to understand that by charging lower prices they can make more money per day, simply by doing more transactions.  I went to the mall this weekend and there were a few stores going out of business, they even had 50% off sales on most everything.  But even at this price they were STILL more expensive than the local Walmart, it is obvious why they went out of business.  Too many store owners in the US have really gotten away from providing value for their customers.  During my travels in Asia I have noticed that most companies have a very small markup.  I even have talked to many owners that felt that a 10-20% is fair and ethical, and more is not.

In the US for the last few decades it has been all about getting as much as you can, charging all that the market will bear.  But this mentality is not going to work any longer, too many people now are suddenly taking the time to watch their dollars.  The companies that have ran their business on this model and have grown with borrowed money to take all they can have seen their sales dry up, and their bills come due, with out being able to borrow they are going out of business.  Yesterday during my trip to the mall I visited Dillards.  Dillards had a huge sale, all watches were 50% off, Jewelry was the same, and most every section of the store was the same.  The store was packed, it took 15 minutes just to talk to someone to look at a watch, and people were buying all over the store.  Some of the employees were worried because it felt like the store was going out of business, the check out lady said she was there for many years and has never seen this before.  But for me I know that stores like this are still making money at these prices, and it is much better to sell the stuff and make something than to keep it in inventory.  An hour later I walked into Macy’s.  They have a larger store, and almost nothing was on sale, and because of that there were almost no customers in the entire store.  The employees were just sitting there.  Macy’s is a big and old company, maybe they just have deeper pockets, but more likely they just don’t get it yet.  They both are public companies and both are down over 60% in the last year, lets look a year from now to see who does better.  Dillards will be able to report higher sales.  They took a large hit in their stock price with they announced their October and November sales numbers going down 10% from 2007.

On a side note the company report from dillards says this…

During the four weeks ended November 29, 2008, sales were significantly above the average company trend in the men’s apparel and accessories and shoe categories and significantly below trend in the juniors’ and children’s apparel and home and furniture categories.

I have been told before that when the job market gets tough people tend to dress much nicer, they need nicer clothes to go to that interview or to simply look better on their current job so that they won’t be fired.  People are willing to skimp in other areas.  I just find it great when you find hard data like this to confirm everything you have been taught.

Thanks for reading, I would really like to hear from you about what you think, please leave a comment.

Market Share of FireFox

Business, Computers, Internet, , , , , , , ,

firefox-logoI was an early user of FireFox, but FireFox version 1 would simply not render many sites that I used.  So I waited.  In the summer of 2007 I decided to try Ubuntu as the only OS on my main computer for a while, and for 6 months I only could use FireFox, by this time they were on version 2 and it worked as well as IE did on my laptop, so I installed FireFox on the laptop also.  It was great.  When I moved back to the US I had left my computer behind so I was back to XP, and then Vista but I still installed FireFox right away.  Then in the third quarter of 2008 they came out with version 3, and my gosh, it is now far BETTER than IE by every measure I tested it with.  I now use it about 95% of the time, there are still a few banks that will not allow FireFox to log in, and of course some Microsoft Sites.

So after all of this I decided to see how many people use FireFox as a percent of the whole.  First I looked at my sites, a very biased view of the world.  On my Treasure Page, a page that existing customers go to the number is 58% for FireFox and 40% for IE.  This number is interesting because we install FireFox on all of the computers we sell, we put both of the icons next to each other, so this means that if given the choice most people choose FireFox.    On our main page for selling computers recent numbers show that 37% use FireFox and 57%  use IE, this is much more like a random sample of the public.

So I decided to look around, and I found that the Global Market Share of FireFox is a bit over 20%.  There is a good company that tracks all of this here.  They have found something interesting also, that on weekends and on holidays the FireFox market share is MUCH higher than on weekdays.  This is mostly due to the fact that most people are forced to only use IE when they are at work, they usually don’t have the ability to install new browsers, and most companies don’t use firefox.  So the numbers for residential usage is probably much closer to 30-35% while the number for corporate usage of FireFox is probably in the single digits.  I hope the good people at FireFox will notice this and try to focus their efforts on fixing it.  It is obvious that people who have the choice choose FireFox, and at least 30% of the public cares enough about the added benefit of FireFox to install it and use it.  I figure at least 50% of the web surfing public can not figure out how to install it or does not even know that it exists.  FireFox then should also work with the OEM Computer Companies to get them to install it.

The only thing I really miss is that in IE I could hit Control-N and it would open a new window with the current window and its history intact, in FireFox it simply opens a new window with your home page.  I have heard other techie people talk about this also, but still there is no option for this.  The best fix I have found is an Add-On program called Duplicate Tab, it basically does this and a few other things.

Tell me what you think, reply down below.

One Simple Change that will rock your world.

Bootstrap, Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Investment, MLM, Money, real estate, The World, , , , , ,

I am sure that you have noticed that the media, and what people talk about has really become a bummer recently.  I mean all that I hear is doom and gloom.  It is a fact that the economy is slowing down and things ARE going to be much different in many different areas in the future.  Two main areas will be the availability of credit and the profit margins that companies have.   Many companies simply are too inefficient to stay afloat in this time.  Many companies will close and make all their employees go home, others will cut costs by eliminating employees, both of these factors will result in much higher unemployment.    Bills will go unpaid, people will be evicted, and the masses will feel generally negative.

So what can you do about all of this, for yourself and for your business?  Well the truth is that you must change the way you think about all of this.  Here is the real situation, there has been a shift happening for a while in the way business is done, the way money is made.  Knowledge is the key, creating a better system to do something and then implementing that system is the road to wealth in America now.  It has been so for a long time but the majority still can not see it.  In a time of change, like the one we are going through, there is unprecedented opportunity everywhere.  The larger the crisis the larger the opportunity.  And we are in a huge crisis, it is most likely that the opportunity will never be larger in your lifetime to make serious money, have serious success or to change the world.

So here is the basic change that you need to make.  Every time you hear someone say “Challenge” or “Crisis” or “Recession” or any of the other negative things you hear every day, constantly think “OPPORTUNITY”. Think about how the change has displaced old players and has make openings for you and your business to move forward.  When you hear about how someone can’t get a new car because of the credit mess, think about how money can be made keeping their old car looking like new.  When people talk about going out of business or they are clearing out their inventory to make payroll think about what a good deal you can get, and how you can buy more than you need and then mark it up to others once the sale is over.  (I do this on Laptops, buy at the clearance sales, and sell after the sale is over, or online to those that don’t know about it.)  When a company goes out of business you can look at the strong companies in the same industry and you have just found a good investment.  Best Buy is going to do great in 2009 when Circuit City is gone, that was the thorn in their side and it is gone.  And what about all those people who are out of work?  Well MLM sign-ups are at record levels, everyone is looking for an opportunity to own their own business, and people are putting much more effort into building those business.  Because of this so many new MLM companies have popped up, but many of them are not very good, please read about what makes a good MLM here.  When you see the real estate market just think about the fact that in the long run housing always goes up, and many cities have already started to show signs of recovery.  You can easily find houses that are great deals, get a tenant in there, and have much larger positive cash flow than has been possible for over two decades.  I know people buying houses with 20% down for under $120k and having payments less than $600 a month, then they rent it out for $1,200 a month.  Rental prices have not seen the drop that ownership has had.

So in every area that I can think of there is huge opportunity for the person and company that can see what if going to happen, figure out the correct change to make and implement that change quickly.  During this time you will need to break some ties with your old cash cow that has been paying your bills for the last few years, and focus on what is going to make you money in the future.  Many people will never be able to do this.  I know a very rich and successful guy who has not changed the way he has done business in years, his company has recently had to move out of two of their buildings, fire half the people and make some other huge changes, but they did not change the core of their business, and their business focuses on Luxury Construction supplies in Arizona, and I fear that this is not a market that will come back before this company is out of business.

So look for the opportunity in every crisis, embrace change and reap the rewards.

A change is coming.

blogs, Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, how to, Inspiration, Money

For a while now I have not been blogging very, much.  The main reason for this was my leg injury which really limited the amount of time that I could sit at my computer.  I used the laptop but the letter O was missing until I just got a new keyboard for it.  This made my time on the computer much more limited and work took the highest priority.

I now know that another main reason for that was because of the feeling I had that my blog was restricting me.  Basically i started this as a business blog, but recently my thoughts have not been too much about business, it still all comes from a business perspective.  I feel that I have a lot of good things to say that people are interested in.  I am often wrong, and I also often come up with new ideas, and follow them to see where they go. I also felt that often other people did a much better job than I ever could do and they covered the topic I want to talk about better than I ever would so I then decide not to post on that topic, I will change that and just point out their brilliance, and tell my readers to read their articles.

I have noticed that the blogs entries that I liked they most, and the ones that were the most popular are the ones where I tried to explain or simplify a complex topic.  By far my blog entry on “How to buy a laptop” is the number one entry, followed by “How to Buy a Computer Monitor” and “The Mortgage Crisis in Plain English“.   So I have decided that I will post many more entries where I simply take a complex subject, analyze it, and put my opinion.  In some areas I am an expert but in most I am not, but one thing will stay true, I will try to focus on every topic from the perspective of an Entrepreneur.

So from this day forward I will strive to post on this blog much more often.  My leg is feeling better now, and I also now have the keyboard so I can post from the laptop also.  This will make it much easier.  With the new topic I feel that I will have much more to say, in fact I have a huge backlog of topics I want to write about.

The Auto Bailout…….my idea

Business, Government, Money, Politics, , , , ,

Well they have been talking for a while about trying to save the auto industry.  The problem is that people just stopped buying cars for obvious reasons, no money/no credit/focus on more important things.

The car companies are very far in debt, this is from loosing money for decades, mostly due to high legacy cost.  This means that they are paying billions each year to pay for health insurance and give money to people who no longer even work for the company.  They also pay more for the ones that work there.  All of this make is very hard for them to compete

Basically it all came down to the Unions, and they know that if they wait they will not need to give up nearly as much.  The car companies will be more desperate and they will have more friends in Washington come January.

So what is my idea.  Well the problem is not enough sales, so lets just fix that problem.   Give people “down-payment” assistance from the government.  Say $4,000 if you, your company or your local government buys a new car from the big three by the end of March or so.   And also get the government to buy cars, lots of them.  They could use them for police work, give them to cities that need them and give them to charities that need them.   If you put $4 billion, into the first plan that would move 1 million vehicles, resulting in about 30 billion of sales for the industry, reducing inventory and solving their main problem.  If the government purchased another $10 billion in vehicles, of course only from the big three, and divided up by 2007 market share, it would basically solve their crisis for the time being.  There would not be any messy loan that would not be repaid, and the government would solve this problem while getting something of value out of it.

The next step to help cut costs is to have the government make labor come to the table and renegotiate terms so that they are more like Toyota, Nissan or Honda, so that our big three can compete.  If we could to that and cut these costs we could save this thing.

Tell me what you think…please comment.

The SOLUTION to the mortgage mess!

Business, concepts, Government, Money, Politics, real estate, , , , , ,

The other day I was watching the nightly local news like I usually do and they said that the city I work in was just given over 6.5 million dollars from the Federal Government that is earmarked to help stop foreclosure in the city.  This is a city of 400,000 and is in Arizona, the state with the third most foreclosures.  I figure the city of Glendale has had a bit under 1000 foreclosures this year.   (Yes we were the city that hosted the Super Bowl this year, if you were wondering.)  The thing that made this meeting pop out to the local media was the fact that the city council had NO idea what to do with the money so they were asking the General public to think of ideas and to go to the council meeting on Nov 25 to present their ideas.

For me this was a challenge.  I have been thinking about this for a long time, now there is a forum where I can actually be heard.  Very cool.  So I have been thinking about it for a week or so now, I will write down in this blog all of my ideas.
econdev_slideshow7

The federal government has mostly been focusing on the banks and helping them by buying bad loans or doing other things that really have not worked much so far.  For all this effort they have spent billions and the rate of foreclosure is still going up.  Some banks have stopped putting many clients info foreclosure simply because they can not afford the write downs.  The best hope of stopping it is really focusing on the people who are going into foreclosure.

Foreclosure happens for two main reasons.  The first reason is that a house is too far upside down, and the owner simply makes a business decision and walks away, willing to let the bank take the loss because then he does not have to. Many of the houses that fit into this reason are owned by investors who simply are making a business decision that is hurting all of us. There is little we can do in these cases, for these people it is simply a numbers game.  The best thing we can do is find a way to help this person sell this house through a short sale.  The best buyer may be the tenant that is currently living in the house.  As a city we could help these tenants with their down payment and get the bank to lower the amount of the loan enough so that their new payment will be the same or lower than what they have been paying in rent.

The second main reason for foreclosure is because the payments are more than the home owner can afford, this is either because the payments went up or the income went down.  There has been a lot of focus on loans that have “Adjusted” and spiked to a much higher payment amount, but only about half of foreclosures are this type.  In many cases the home owner has had a change in income from a business failure or job loss and can not afford the payments at this time.  Remember it only takes 90 days of missed payments to be put into foreclosure but it takes much longer to replace a job or a business.

So what is the solution?  It is in everyone’s best interest to avoid the foreclosure process and banks are very willing to work with customers that ask for help.  The best way to help people is to help them take action and to give them the tools to help themselves out of the situation.  I would propose that some of the money would be set aside to create an office where people can come to and help writing a hardship letter to their lender, this office would also give advise.  There would also be a city website where this information could be accessed.  This office could also hold seminars for the public and market these events.  All of this should cost well less than $250k per year to run.  Once a hardship letter is written most banks will apply 3 months of payments to the account and simply move them to the end of the term.  Also many banks are also willing to lower interest rates, reduce payment amounts and even reduce the total outstanding balance.  By writing these letters alone it could stop as much as 50% of the foreclosure in the city.

But then we need to go a step farther, I would propose that once the hardship letter is submitted that the city would help would help these people get a loan.  Most of these home owners are good hard working people and they will find a way out of their situation soon by either starting a new business, getting a job, or solving their problem another way.  By the time people pay late on their house they usually have already paid late on everything else and in our current system that means they can not get a loan to save their house.  Miss a few credit card payments, or a car payment, then get a bit behind on your mortgage the only loan you can get it either a short term payday loan or a credit card for $500 at 24% interest, and both of these help little to stop foreclosure.  The loan that these people need would be a line of credit that is easy to qualify for, has good terms and is long term so that they don’t need to worry much about it until after they have fixed their problems.  In most cases a loan in the amount of 10-15k would be enough to ensure that that household would not go into foreclosure.

Of course the City is not in the business of giving loans to its citizens.  But financial institutions are not willing to give loans to these people who need them the most because of lack of credit or income.  The solution is a guarantee by the city to pay these loans.  I think that the best idea would be to select one financial institution, that already has at least two offices in our city.  I would also go a step further and look for a locally owned institution.  It should also be a credit union because these non-profits give back to the community more than out of state banks do.  You then deposit $5,000,000 of the funds into a CD at the financial institution and make that the guarantee for the loans.  With long term, loans that are fairly easy to pay back the defaults could be quite low, well under 20%, and the financial institution could loan out 15 or even 25 million dollars and still not loose a penny on these loans because the first losses will be taken from the $5,000,000.  The financial institution also stands to gain because they will only have to pay 1-2% interest on the $5,000,000 but will receive 9% interest on the loans.  This interest will allow them to pay for the marketing and administration of the program while making a fair profit.  You should select the financial institution based upon the criteria above but mostly on how much they are willing to lend out to Glendale citizens once this $5 million security is in place. Most any financial institution would be willing to write 20 million or more in loans based on a government guarantee of covering the first 5 million in losses.

econdev_slideshow51
So who should qualify for a loan? If we give out loans to the wrong people it will not be as effective.  Well the plan is to stop foreclosure in Glendale so they first would need to be a homeowner of a house located in Glendale.  Next they should actually live in the house, investors should simply do a short sell and give the house to the tenants.  Next they should be people who are at risk of default, people who are at least 60 days past due on their mortgage.  They also should be people who can not afford their payments, people with payments more than 40% of their household income.  Right now there are probably less than 2000 home owners in the city who meet all of these requirements, and if they all received loans for $10,000 it would total only $20 million.  There should be no check of credit history or income sources.  A credit check could be done but only used to establish that they are using a valid SSN and that they live in Glendale.

So what should the rules regarding this loan be? We should create a system that helps people stay in their house so this is what I suggest.  The loan can only be used for making mortgage payments, homeowners insurance payments, property tax payments, and to cover electrical bills and city service bills.  When the loan is originated the homeowner would provide a list of these companies.  Money can only be withdrawn by going to the financial institution and getting a cashiers check directly payable the company, or by using the financial institutions bill pay service.  The loan would be a line of credit with a set limit.  People could choose to pay down the loan at any time and even pay it off.   For the first 3 months there would be no payments required.  After that and for the first 3 years a payment of only 2% (Or $25, whatever is more) would be required.  After that the customer must pay 4% (Or $50 whatever is more) each month until it is paid off.  The homeowner would only be able to withdrawal for the first 2 years under this program.  Using this system all loans that are paid on time will be paid off in under 8 years from the date withdraws stop.  These loans would also have a clause that if the house is sold or refinanced some time in the future these loans would be paid off in full from that sale.  If a payment is made late there will only be a late payment fee equal to 10% of the missed payment amount or $10 whatever is more.  The customer would then have to make up this payment by paying extra on the next two months.  In the case of the first mortgage still going into foreclosure in the future this loan would be paid by the security (The $5,000,000).  If there are any clients who are more than 90 days past due then the minimum payments for these accounts will be paid for by the security until the homeowner starts paying again or until the loan is paid off.   The security would still retain the right to collect funds from any future refinance or sale of the property.  An added benefit for the homeowner would be the reporting of this larger loan on their credit reports, for most of them this could be the largest non mortgage they have and if they pay on time could give them a needed boost.

With such a system it will be easy for the financial institution to manage, easy for the client to get a remedy to their problem and it would be the best use of the governments money to help as many people as possible avoid foreclosure.  After 10 years the program will be over and there is a very good chance that the city will still have much of the $5 million left, allowing other programs to be done at that time.  This system will help between 1,500 and 2,500 household, a number higher than the amount of foreclosures in the past year, putting a stop to most avoidable foreclosures.  This is a total win win situation, the city win, the home owners win and even the financial institutions win with lower foreclosure rates and for our partner institution new customers and income from the loans.  We also must act fast because every day the situation is getting worse and our fix should not be kept on hold.

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