Planning a new year

I have been all over the place on my investments in 2009. For 2010 I will get focused back to real estate investments and my online sales business. At Patiostore.com I have cut staff and will run lean as I can. Looking to make a profit for 2010 and to make back the 17% of sales that we lost last year.

We completed the new web sites we started last spring and will update the look on our old web sites. After that, we plan to focus on sales and marketing. Our new break even sale volume is $90K month down from $120K month. That should alow for a profit of $100K plus for 2010.

Real estate: My goal is to focus my investing on Real estate. I am looking into partnerships because at my age I want someone else to deal with the day to day activities and that means a larger scale operation. With partnerships or a real estate syndicate company I can do larger or more accumulative deals.

If I was forty years old my goal would be to make a million dollars (been there, done that). At age 60 I want monthly cash flow and there are many ways to do that. The problem today is the banks are super cautious at a time when the real estate deals are very good and numerous. So even if you are a good credit risk and if you can scrape up the down payment, you still might not get financing. ( I have more then a million in net worth, a credit score over 700 and got turned down) Partnering gets me access to more cash and thus gives me more flexibility. I will also need to work on my existing property's cash flow and raise more cash myself. That will make me more attractive as a borrower to the bankers.

I will update this site on my progress

Happy new year.