THE BLOG

02
Sep

Payday Loans – Greed, Profit, Spirirual Maturity and Intent

'Conservative Christianity' photo (c) 2011, Byzantine_K - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/A heart surgeon receives $240K for a 3 hour heart operation. Did she really get paid $80K/hour? No. She was paid $240K for the 20+ years of school and study that enabled her to enter the operating room and stand over your open chest! Greedy heart surgeon?

Dave Ramsey receives millions of dollars annually to perform on radio and TV. How much preparation did this take? Dave is in his fifties. He “works” 48 weeks/yr averaging 15 hours/week. Last year he made roughly $5M. That equates to $7,000 per hour. He spent the last 20+ years preparing himself through work and study. Greedy Dave Ramsey?

Look at the value of a product or service in the marketplace. What will the market pay? What it costs to provide the service vs what is charged is not relative.

“Margin” – also called gross profit margin or gross profit rate – on sales is the difference between the selling price and cost.

The uninformed decide a certain “margin” = GREED

See CRL http://www.responsiblelending.org/ for an example.

Greed is a state of attitude. You can earn a 35% margin and be greedy. You can earn a 300% margin and be greedy. Who decides?

Is it bad business to charge double what a product or service cost you?

“They” decide a certain margin or price = greed. Why should “they” get to decide?

*Your Customer Found Your Store on Their Phone. How does your web site look on your customer’s phone?
http://www.EZMobileToday.com Mobile phone friendly web sites

“Margin” provides us with the incentive to continue offering the service or product. A positive margin enables us to profit and continue to go to work, to provide jobs, to pay taxes…

Inexperienced people having never run a business, lack spiritual maturity. They think they know what is in our hearts. They think they know what we are thinking. They think they can make judgements about our greed, motivation and intent.

So… who gets to decide the heart surgeon, Dave Ramsey, Kobe Bryant or a payday loan company makes too much money?

What do YOU think? Let me know: Jer@PaydayManual.com (This rant conceived after listening to Dave Ramsey Radio on the way to the airport.)

24
Aug

Businesses-Mobile Phone Friendly Web Sites or DIE

Before and After Mobile Phone Friendly Web Site

Before and After Mobile Phone Friendly Web Site

If you have a business in need of more customers (who doesn’t) you need a mobile phone friendly web site to survive! Here’s a link to a really excellent Article with before and after examples. The author is extremely knowledgeable and worth your time. (I should know, I’m Jer, the author and co-founder of EZMobileToday.com :o)

22
Aug

Texas Credit Access Business – Credit Services Organization

Michael Brown over at CreditAccessBusiness.com is offering insight, consulting, compliance, and a host of other services for Texas CSO’s and CAB’s. He maintains a Blog that’s focused on related issues. Worth a look… signup for his free monthly Newsletter if this is an area of interest to you.

20
Aug

Car Title Loans Businesses Return to New Hampshire

'Atlanta Title Loans' photo (c) 2010, Ken Teegardin - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/The car title loan business is returning to New Hampshire. Legislators had hoped banks and credit unions would enter the market and fill the void when payday loan and car title loans were reduced to 36% APR’s by the regulators in 2009. This never happened. Instead, New Hampshire residents were simply deprived of another choice for navigating temporary financial challenges.

When state lawmakers capped the interest rates on payday loans at 36 percent in 2009 payday loan and car title loan lenders left New Hampshire in droves.

In 2012, the New Hampshire Legislature reversed the interest rate cap on title loans, overriding a governor’s veto to do it. Now, lenders can charge a monthly interest rate of 25 percent, the equivalent of nearly 300 percent over 12 months.

A car title loan is secured by a signature and a vehicle title. There is no credit check or verification of a borrower’s income, and a borrower can get access their funds immediately.

Under the New Hampshire  car title loan law, lenders can loan a person up to $10,000 and no more than 35% of their total gross income. The New Hampshire title loan law allows lenders to renew the initial 30-day loan for 10 months. The title loan lender can charge 25 percent interest each month. A borrower must pay at least 10 percent of the loan’s original principal each month.

If the borrower fails to pay-off the principal, the lender can find them in default and take the car, motorcycle, recreational vehicle, or boat. Rather than a repossession, a better strategy is for a car title loan lender to reduce the loan principal on which they charge interest and create a win-win for both the borrower and the lender. We don’t want the vehicle.

An example:
A loan principal of $1,000 loan; the lender might charge 25 percent interest the first month on the entire $1,000. If the loan is unpaid after one month, and and the borrower renews it, the title loan lender might charge interest on $900. The following month, the might charge interest on $800, etc.

If the title loan lender eventually repossess  a borrowers’ car for nonpayment because the borrower refuses to contact and make any attempt to work with the lender, the lender could sell the vehicle and keep what they are owed. Any additional monies remaining after the sale must be returned to the borrower.

Visit http://www.AutomobilePawn.com for training and strategies for starting a car title loan business.

04
Aug

Tribes Fight Over Off-Reservation Gaming – The Future is Online Businesses

An interesting New York Times article regarding tribe gaming and current thoughts on tribal off-reservation gaming and strategies for tribe Internet enterprises:

“… still, he was worried that the good times would not last. With the state eager to get a greater share of gambling revenues, Mr. Hoffman said he believed that other forms of non-Indian gambling, particularly online operations, could become legal. “I don’t think the tribes 20 years from now will still have an oligopoly on gaming,” he said.

More from the NY Times piece, “Since Indian gambling was legalized in the United States in 1988, only five tribes have gotten final clearance to build casinos off their reservations. The intense campaign against Enterprise and the other applicant, the North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians, comes as the gambling market has grown crowded, especially here in California.

Opposing tribes accuse the newcomers of encroaching on areas to which they have no historical ties. “We have other tribes out there doing what we call reservation shopping,” said Brenda Adams, the treasurer of United Auburn. “We played by the rules. We had to stay on our historical lands. They call it equal footing, but is it? We’d like to have a casino in downtown San Francisco, but that’s not our territory.”

“The tribe, which used to oppose the off-reservation casinos but is now publicly neutral, has felt the need to diversity beyond gambling. “Too many eggs in one basket is probably not a good thing,” said Marshall McKay, the tribal chairman.”

Personally, I wonder why should tribes have to wait for a state governor to give them permission to participate in revenue generating businesses that benefit tribe members. Who needs off-reservation enterprises when the Internet can be employed? These businesses could be focused on a multitude of niches including financial services, education, insurance, online poker, buying and selling bulk commodity chemicals, polymers and fuel products…

The game for the tribes is on! It’s time to implement whatever current business advantages they can identify before the game changes again.

Here is the link to the original New York Times Article. Lucrative Gambling Pits Tribe Against Tribe.