Is very important to your business that you understand how customers are looking for a product or a service online.
It is said that you need to rank high on google as a business to be successful, and many companies try and sell you the first page ranking access.
And this is true, but you can also make sure that your business ranks high locally or in the country you want to offer your products or services.
And getting your business to the first page of a google search is goanna cost more money than most small and medium companies can afford.
When you are basing your marketing on so called keywords make sure that you then use the right keywords for your business.
If you have a set marketing budget, then you should use 80% of that on google if you are looking to sell products or services.
There are benefits to marketing on Facebook if you want exposure for your business brand and to communicate with potential customers.
Because Facebook ads are not that expensive to begin with.
But when you use google ad words you have customers online who is looking specially for a service or a product.
Because on Facebook people are more often that not just browsing around and liking things.
Which can come very handy for smaller companies.
google rocks.
But as always when you make a marketing budget you need to know how much you can afford to spend over the year.
Because understanding how much money you have for marketing will be a decider if you can run a short blitz Campaign or if you should grind it over the whole year.
For some companies the blitz strategy Works better because you have only a limited budget to spend so you want a lot bang for your buck so to speak.
If you count that you have 1000 dollars to spend on marketing for the whole year for your business, you have two choices you can make.
So you can spend 3 dollars a day for the full year, or spend 200 dollars per week , five times a year.
So you have to figure out what works for your business, because when you market your company it will be one of the most important things you can ever do to reach success in your field.
So a lot of people wonder how you go about building up a good credit score?.
The reality is that it is a combination of hard work, and being laser focused on not being late with you payments.
Credit card.
So one of the best ways to build up your credit score when you are young and you have a lower paying job, is to use credit cards.
Some financial adviser refuse to accept that this is a really good way of building up your credit score.
But the risk here is that you should not treat the credit card as free money, you should only use it to pay for your normal monthly costs that you would normally pay otherwise cash or with a debit card.
So the way you use credit cards is to apply for 5 different once when you turn 18.
And always do your own research on the different cash back offers from different credit cards companies.
So usually take the cashback offer rather than loyalty points, these points have a tendency to get worth less for each year that goes by.
We usually recommend that you take out between 1000 to 2000 dollars in credit per card.
So a total sum of 5.000- 10.000 dollars, divided up on five different cards.
The important thing is that you have at least two jobs prior to you taking out the credit cards.
Debt.
Taking on debt is always a risk and you should be very careful when entering into debt.
So our recommendation is that you always pay your credit card bill in full each month.
And If you have five different cards use them like one card per month.
So let us say that you normally buy gasoline and grocery’s and other items for 1000 dollars a month, then use one card per month and pay your bills in full every time.
Using credit cards as an emergency fund?.
And When you are young, you have not been able to gather a lot of money into your emergency fund.
So sometimes these credit cards can come in handy if your pet get sick or you have to visit an emergency care clinic for instance.
But be very disciplined when you take out credit cards.
This is not free money, this is money that you need to pay BACK from your own BANK account each month.
So how can we help each other out during a very difficult upcoming year of 2021?.
So one thing that is crystal clear to all of us who are not politicians around the world is that we are on our own.
After a brutal 2020 where we have seen more small business since the great depression of the 1930s go under, we know we are in trouble financially around the world right now.
Many have lost their jobs and are now goanna get evicted starting in the first week of January.
Single mother.
So there are over 15 million Americans risking homelessness when they get their eviction notice the first week of January.
The sheriffs office will have a lot to do, and for some familes they can remain until March in their current homes.
Due to the massive overload in evictions being carried out starting in early January.
One of the things you can do as a fellow American is to try and help the homeless single mothers and fathers who have nowhere to go, when they get evicted come January.
So sharing is carrying, and what we mean by that is very simple, do you have a spare room in your house or apartment?.
Do you have one room you are not using for more than storage?.
Do you still have your job?, can you do something for your fellow man or women.
We know the politicians are not goanna help anybody out in this crisis.
So we have to solve these issue on our own as proud hard working Americans.
American flag.
So it is a personal sacrifice to offer a room to a single parent with kids in your home for a 6-12 month period until they can get back on their feet.
But we have also forgotten the sacrifices former generations have made for us in the past.
And we really need to wake up during 2021 and look each other in the eyes and say you are a human i am a human how can we help each other out going forward.
If you are ready willing and able to make that sacrifice for your fellow man or woman or child, you are then doing a great service to your country.
America is a disgrace when it comes to universal health care, Europe is 40 years ahead of America this is a fact!.
Affordable healthcare.
So we need to start changing our country to the better, and that starts with everyone who still has a job and a home to ask themselves the difficult question, what can i do to help the less fortunate ones in my community?.
So we have to start and see the real problems in our commnity and start acting and not wait for the governement to fix these issues.
Because the only thing that the government is good at is taxing you and wasting your tax dollars.
Politicians.
So take care out there and take care of each other.
So what can we expect from the world economy in 2021?
We have talked about this a bit in our previous posts and of course things are constantly changing in front our eyes month for month.
There are some real issues with our economies that we need to talk about and we need to come up with solutions that will help everybody not just the people that where well off when the Covid-19 pandemic started back in March 2020.
We have in America roughly 30 million small businesses and and 1/3 over 10 million of them is on the brink of closing for good!.
Small business.
We do not think that governor Gavin Newsome out in California or governor Andrew Cuomo out in New York really understand what small business owners are going true on a daily basis.
More than 40% of the small business owners in the US where not able to pay their commercial rent in November and it is estimated that over 50% of the small business owners will not be able to pay rent in December.
As small business consultants we here and see this everyday in our line of work.
And for us it is more difficult than it has ever been to advise our clients on what step to take to save their small or even sometimes medium sized businesses.
Many around the world is hoping that this past year 2020 was a nightmare that we will wake up from in 2021.
The bad news is that even with different vaccines available on the open market in 2021, it will take at least 8-9 months to vaccinate more than 70% of the population who is willing to take the risk with a new vaccine type.
So we can forget travel for leisure and many business travelers will remain in front of their computers with ZOOM and similar virtual meeting options.
The only ones that will travel for business will be the companies that have to add a new supplier, or having to go and meet a new potential client, that has to be meet in person.
If we look at the numbers from the IRS, we can see that the numbers for withheld federal income tax is down by almost 20% and that is a lot.
This really tells us where the US economy is today, and where it is heading during next year 2021.
Sadness.
The sadness our clients feel this year is right out scary to us, even if we are very experienced business consultants who remember the 70s oil crisis and the 90s unemployment, not to mention the financial meltdown in 2008-2011.
What do you do when you can not make rent as a small business owner?.
You will have to look towards government support which is very hard to come by these days.
The reality is that many companies have kept their doors open by maxing out both corporate and private credit cards and also taken on very expensive business credits and loans.
So what will then happen in 2021 when all these business and private credits will come due?.
The very brutal reality is that we will see a tsunami of bankruptcies both on the commercial and on the private side.
Figuring out the solution to these financial problems is quite easy.
The solution is that governments around the world will have to go in and financially support small business owners with both PPE and PPP loan forgiveness but also setting up loan possibilities for the small business owners at a good rate for the borrower at maximum 5% interest per year.
Because the consequences of governments doing nothing is a nuclear financial meltdown never ever seen around the world before, starting in 2021.
So let us hope that we can together unite as one unit working towards a common goal, and get true 2021 together.
So is 2020 the worst year in human history due to the Covid-19 corona pandemic?.
Maybe it is the worst year in human history, we can not really argue against that claim, since there is not a single country that has not been badly affected by this global pandemic.
Everything has gone wrong in 2020.
So we can see from the amounts of emails we get on a daily basis from our smaller and medium sized clients, that this year has been the worst in almost all of our clients lifes from a financial standpoint.
The 2008-2011 financial crisis does not even come close to the level of pain people and small business owners are feeling today.
We have calculated that 50% of our clients that own restaurants, hotels and brick and mortar stores will not re-open again in 2021.
And these numbers are close to the once that are coming out of New york.
So we have a real tsnuami of bankruptcys coming for small business owners in 2021.
We know that many creditors have held off for the past 9 months time and waited to see if we can wait our this pandemic, but now we have information that court cases opened by creditors will start to go true courts in January after the holidays.
What a lot of people do not know is that almost all small business owners are liable to some extend for their business credits or business loans.
Big banks and big credit firm does not care about the little people what so ever.
Big banks.
The big question will be in 2021 where is the jobs goanna come from when 50% of restaurants, hotels and brick and mortar stores will not re-open again.
And what is really frustrating is that many of the jobs that have been lost for a long time are jobs that people between 20-35 years of age are working in.
For many it is the first real job that they have had, so this is very sad.
There is also another problem with these lock-down messures and that is that we are printing money like never before and we are kicking the can down the road, and our children and grandchildren will have to pay the financial price for our lock downs now in 2020.
So what is the solution to all of this?, we have said from day one that from June the first eveything should have been re-opened and everybody would then we responsible for their own saftey going forward.
Since the COVID-19 was a new virus so to speak, even if the Corona virus has been around for a long time, we can understand some safety messures for 45-60 days back in March , but that should have been it!.
Working from home is a luxuary that 30% of the workforce have had the oppertunity to explore.
Home office.
Many are starting to get feed up with working from home and not having the opportunity to meet co-workers, to go to lunch and even go out with colleges to happy hour now and then.
Our heart breaks for all the small business owners that will not only lose their business/livelihood but also loose their home to their bank/creditors next year 2021 when the courts re-open for cases again.
So when we hear clients say that 2020 has been the worst year ever in their life, it is very difficult to disagree.
It takes years some times decades to build a functioning business, but you can tear it down and lose it all within a years time, this is something we have truly seen during this year 2020.
So buckle down, for a very ruff 2021 , we are almost scared to advise our clients for next year, since we know that there are no easy fixes out there and everything that needs to be done will be very painfull.
So a lot of people have become unemployed world wide during the past 7 months time starting in March 2020.
We feel the pain everyday as a business consulting firm who works with small to medium size cooperation’s and who also does management consulting.
Unemployed
We can see that a large numbers of office workers have been laid off and this also includes a lot of mid level managers.
For many companies the fall has been the big laying off season, many companies kept the staff on during the spring and over the summer, because any half decent manager knows that people is your biggest asset in whatever business you are involved in.
So letting people go is always dangerous because it will always require in the future to hire new staff that is not familiar with your business and that is always a big cost to train people.
But these lock downs have created such a snowball affect that we have never even seen before.
The bad news is that 2021 will be one of the toughest financial years in many peoples life’s.
And we will not start to see the light at the end of the tunnel until maybe early 2022 or even later than that.
Some businesses will handle this crisis that we are living in better than others, but we are living true harsh times right now.
We know that a lot of our clients will lose their homes and cars, there is no doubt about that, these are the times we are living in right now.
The problem is that many companies are not hiring right now if we look away from Amazon and Walmart type of businesses.
Because most companies are trying to wait this crisis out.
So for many former employed people , now is the time to start your own business if you can not find employment inside 3 months from being let go.
Now here comes the kicker in this article!, you do not own your former employer any loyalty what so ever.
You sold your time for money to your employer, (this is what employment is).
And bigger cooperation’s does not care about you as an employee at all.
Your are always expandable to them.
So let us give you an example here so you understand what we are talking about, when we talk about starting your own business and not feeling any loyalty to your former employer.
You where employed in an office selling something as inside sales.
You know the margins the company had on these products.
If you can find a similar product and source it yourself and sell to companies for a lower price, then here you have a vital business to support yourself and your family.
But BE VERY CLEAR ON THIS!, you will have to work very hard maybe even 90h a week to launch this new business, so do not do it unless you feel 100% sure that you are ready willing and able to do it!.
Depression.
Depression usually starts to set in with many people that are unemployed longer than 3 monnths at a time.
You are looking for jobs, but no luck!, and then the self doubt comes into play.
One way to fight off depression is to keep your body moving on a daily basis.
Get a paper route, or whatever even if it only pays 10 dollars an hour, just so you do something while you are either getting your own company off the ground, or you get re-hired by your former employer or you simply find a new job.
Because sitting in front of your computer or watching tv all days is not goanna help you out with feeling depressed.
One mistake many families often do, is to try and hold on to property and cars for too long.
You are deeply into debt and you are unemployed borrowing money to stay a float for another 6months can come back and bite you hard!.
Usually giving up possessions is usually a good way to downsize in your life at the earlier stage.
We have a major problemen in our way of living today, and that is access to easy credit and we are spending to much money and not saving enough from our paychecks.
In the past you saved up for a year to buy something in cash, now you are buying on credit and sometimes paying 23% a year in interest on that purchase.
Pride is a very big word, and it is something that you should always have, but sometimes you need to swallow your pride and even if you where an engineer in your past job, you might have to take on another type of job for a a few years or so.
The thing you never give up on is your family and your pets.
Even if you have to live in a camper with 2 dogs , 2 cats, and 3 kids , you make it work, you stick together and everybody pitches in.
Children and pets are more resilient then you might think, so stay together fight together as a family, one unit.
Family.Pet
So take care of each other out there, and hopefully we get past this next 14-18 months together as a united world.
We are so integrated as a world business wise, that we really need to get the wheels rolling again everywhere and rather sooner than later.
So you are under water with your commercial lease in a big city, what to do?.
We had a very intersting conversation with a NYC friend and business owner this morning and what happened to her at her store last week!.
She has an exotic candy store and she also sells some other product there also.
She has a very small store, but in a very good foot traffic location (normally) now with the Covid-19 pandemic her foot traffic customer base is off by 90%.
She is sitting with a 2 year lease with 8 months left on the lease for 14.500 USD each month.
Her landlords is a Co-op with 10 apartments valued between 3.5-6.5 million dollars each.
Her business has been able to pay roughly half the rent for April-Sep 2020, and she is behind with almost 40.000 dollars.
Now the director of the Co-op board came into her store mid day last week, when she had some customers there and started yelling at her for being a scam artist and a con-lady, now she is 5.4 and weighs 110 lbs, and the guy that came in and started yelling at her to show her books was 6.3 and according to her weighed 240 lbs.
She panicked after he left and emailed us at Mrlifeadvise and this is what we told her to do.
Call your real estate lawyer and call your CPA.
So after calling her CPA he told her not to hand over the books.
And her real estate lawyer who helped her with the lease told her not to worry , she can not get evicted at the moment without the case going to court two to three years from now.
The New york commercial and privat leases are more than 70% under water right now meaning (people and companies are not paying anything on them at all or very little)
So her making at least half the payment is a good show of intent to pay for her stores lease.
Now the Covid-19 pandemic is a force majeure not like nothing seen before in the NYC and other bigger cities real estate market.
So her lease is signed for heavy foot traffic, and now she only has 5% left of that foot traffic.
So our advise to her was this, she will end up in court on this lease, 3 years from now anyway.
So we told her what we would do in her shoes and that would be to stop paying here lease all together and keep her store open for as long as she has the lease.
And then look for a better priced location.
And we have also told her to give out her real estate lawyers card the next time somebody from the Co-op board shows up in the store, and also call the police if she feels threaten in any way shape or form.
So the reason she should stop paying her lease is that she does not get anything close to market value for her lease, and by no fault of her own.
This is commercial real estate for you and for.
And this reason we tell most of our clients that do not get into commercial real estate unless you have a boat load of money and you are very experienced in commercial real estate or you have start out very small.
You can make a lot of money in the commercial real estate sector but you can also lose a lot of money if something big happens in the market.
So as long as you do not pay full rent cost on your commercial lease, you will most likely end up in civil count anyway, so in most of these cases it is better under these current circumstances if you can not re-negotiate your lease NOW TODAY then maybe you are better off not paying it at all!.
DISCLAIMER:
Every situation is different so you have to make this decision for your self, we can only advise on what we would do in your shoes, but you are the business owner and we are a small business consulting company, so we can only advise form our end what we would do in your shoes.
But you are in charge of your own life and the future of your own business.
So a lot of people have asked us , are real estate agents lying when they say that the US real estate market is heating up in the fall of 2020?.
So the answer to this question is more complex that you might think.
Here is the full explanation to this question that a lot of people have asked mrlifeavdvise about in the last few week.
Soho.
So Manhattan real estate is dead period!, there has never been a renters market like it is right now, and the political decisions being made at a city level as we speak are completely crushing the real estate market in New York and mainly the little island of Manhattan.
So as an renter you can offer 2500-3000 Dollar for an apartment that was listed for 5000-6000 dollars in January 2020.
Because many landlords holds mortgages and they need to pay anywhere from 2500-3000 dollars a month in carrying costs for an apartment that they rent out.
So it is much better to have some money coming in than no money coming in.
Many landlords have not been willing to discount more than 10-20%, but those apartments will be sitting on the market for years to come.
The enlighten landlords have understood that this is a force majeure situation and you have to as a landlord make sure that you lose as little money as possible for the next upcoming years.
So as a renter it has never been a better time to rent than right now in the New York city.
The down side is that it is not the same New York as it was 6 months ago safety wise, because once you lower the police presence in a mega city you will get a huge spike in crimes, and we are closing in on 1980s levels if nothing changes within a years time.
People are leaving in droves and they are not coming back any time soon at least.
It is still to early to count out New York city due to its very favorable location on the East coast, but we do not see the city coming back anywhere close to what it was before Covid-19, in the next 20 years at least.
What many are forgetting is that the spike in people and mainly younger people leaving the city started already in 2018 so way before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the city hard.
Also you need to keep in mind that the commercial real estate will take an even bigger hit in the upcoming years compared to the private real estate side.
It is estimated that over 60% of the brick and mortar stores and restaurant and coffee shops who are now currently closed will not re-open.
So then some analyst say, but hey they got a lease for another 24 months time, yes this is very true but we do not expect more than maybe 20% of those lease holders to pay, so it means that there will be an 80% default rate on those commercial leases.
So you will probably as a young professional have an easier time finding work in New York city if you stay and your rent will be half of what it was, if you change apartments, but the big down side will be that the city will be very unsafe both during day and specially during the night time.
The big losers are the two professionals who have made the real estate journey in the past 15-20 years time and who are now living in a 5 million dollar apartment and they are carrying a 3 million dollar mortgage, when there are no buyers for these apartments any longer, the foreign buyers have complete dried up, so the nest egg that had accumulated in their real estate journey is almost gone entirely.
So today their apartment is worth 3 million if they can find a buyer.
So they can not leave and they are then forced to stay as prioners to there apartment, of course they can try and rent it out, like 40.000 others are trying to do right now.
Then we have not even mentioned yet the previously built unsold luxury apartments that are thousand on there own, that was built for foreign buyers in mind during 2017-2018.
These are almost completely empty apartment buildings, just sitting there collecting dust.
So the real estate outlook look for New York city is really looking grim in the the next upcoming years.
For Los Angeles the outlook is pretty much the same as for New York, and the real estate market has been much colder in the past two years. Mainly because Chinese and Asian buyers have not invested their money into the LA real estate market.
So the house prices have take a big hit also during the Covid-19 , with a few suburban exceptions.
LA skyline.
So the renters market is also looking really good for the next few years to come.
Regarding safety, LA has not been anywhere as safe as New York has been since Rudy Giuliani started the cleaning up process of the NYC in the 90s.
So this safety factor is not the thing driving people out of California, but more it is the very high taxes as much as 54% that are seeing people leaving in droves.
It does not help that the state of California is pretty much broke anyway you slice it.
So the new thing is San Francisco SF, who are now seeing a mass exodus of young taxpayers leaving towards Colorado,Arizona,Texas and other places, and in are moving more homeless people into the city to take their place but on the streets. And instead of bringing in tax revenue they are costing the remaining taxpayers big time.
The homeless problem is something that we are not really blaming on the homeless, its a massive systematic failure on the state,city and at a federal level. And it needs to be fixed A.S.A.P. and prisons and Jails are is not the solution, but rather rehab and mental health care.
The silicon valley build out in the past 15 years time, has been the driving force behind the most expensive real estate prices outside of Hong-Kong.
So you where paying 5000 dollars for a 250 SQFT studio, now you will be able to rent it for half off in the upcoming years.
SF.
So what the Covid-19 has shown is that you can work remotely and it does not lower the production for companies.
So many companies will make the decision to cut wages/benefit packages by 25% , but in return you can sit is Waco Texas in a beautiful 300.000 dollar home with a big back yard that you will pay off in 5 years compared to you renting in the Silicon valley/Bay area, it is the same money.
So the companies will save money on salaries and commercial real estate costs.
So this is not good news for the Bay area and for the Bay area real estate.
Golden gate.
So this area together with the LA area has a huge homeless population and that makes it even more difficult to see a re-surge in the real estate market in California in the upcoming 10 years time, because the homeless situation will take a decade at least to fix.
Then let us flip the coin towards Florida and Texas real estatemarkets.
Here we see a hot market, hotter than maybe ever before.
People are buying homes unseen, or just a walk true on the real estate agents phone.
And these buyers are mainly coming from these 3 major cities New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
And when you can find a Florida home for 400.000 dollars, you buy it sight unseen because if you dont, someone else will have pulled the trigger on the property before you are able to go and see the house for yourself in person.
Florida.
So the benefits for a buyer in the Florida real estate are huge compared to the three big cities we just talked about, so the Florida real estate market will stay hot for at least another one to two years time.
So the same thing that goes for Florida goes for Texas, Texas has never seen this kind of red hot real estate market that it is in right now.
Texas farmhouse.
The lower taxes the lower home prices, but still being sunny weather states, is a huge selling point for newcomers from New York where the weather is okay for only 6 months out of the year for instance.
And with the high taxes in California and New York the Texas real estate will keep going up, there is also a lot of land to build on in Texas and this is a good selling point also.
The Austin real estate is overvalued right now compared to the Dallas Forth worth area for instance, but Dallas home prices are also going up every month.
So a good advice from us would be to look beyond the bigger cities in Texas and maybe you will find your dream home, dream area in a smaller Texas town.
The one final note we want to leave you with is that 20 years ago the internet speed was very low and it would not have been possible to work remotely, in 2020 we can work almost anywhere in the world with the fast broadband and internet speeds we have access to these days.
So here you go, here is the real explanation when realtors are talking about surging markets, they are for sure surging markets in some states but not others.
If you are a first time home buyer, check out our to do list to cover your bases as much as possible, you find the link here below to our shop.
Hi,guys a client who bought NEGA our gambling treatment program wanted to reach out to us and tell his story so it might help somebody-else who is thinking of giving up on gambling and getting healthier lifestyle in the process.
So here is his story.
Hello everybody my name is Tom and i was born in Huntington beach Los Angeles in 1980.
I had a really good childhood with two loving parents and a 2 year older sister in Jen.
In 1995 my parent divorced and it was a mutual decision between my parents and they handled it well.
My sister wanted to stay with my father in LA since she was gonna attend UCLA .
My mother who is a chef got a job out in Las Vegas at one of the big casinos and i moved with here out there in 1996.
Vegas was much smaller than it is today, but we both liked it and i got along well in my new high school and my mother liked her new job.
I spent a lot of time in the casino where my mother worked, but of course i was not aloud to gamble since i was under aged at the time.
Press forward a few years and in 2001 i turn 21 and this is the first time i try and gamble a bit.
I play with the sports book and NFL and NHL mainly, but i also play the slots machines, the card games really never spoke to me.
Not a lot happens for me when it comes to gambling between me turning 21 and me turning 30, i play every week some slots and some sportsbook but it is for under 2000 dollars a week and it is pretty much break even during these 9 years time.
But my life has also changed a lot during this time period, where i have gone from a young man to a business owner.
I have started my own plumbing business at the age of 24 after going as an apprentice for several years with an older gentlemen that i really liked called Sal, he is sadly no longer with us, but he thought me the ins and outs of the plumbing world and i did and still do both commercial and private contracts for plumbing work.
The amount of houses being built in Las Vegas in the years of 2000-2008 was extreme, and i had in 2006 , five employees in my plumbing business.
By the time of the financial crisis in 2009 that changed everything in Vegas i had accumulated two 5 bedroom houses one that i lived in and one that i rented out.
They where value to 2 million dollars in 2008 and in 2010 they where valued to 1.4 million dollars.
And i had some other assets also like stocks and bonds.
All of this had come from my some what successful plumbing business.
When the subprime mortgage crisis hit in late 2007-2008 we started to lose all of our jobs, then we had several larger builders that went out of business and we had big invoices that where outstanding towards us, that we where never able to collect anything on.
So in a period of around 6 months everything changed, i closed my LLC and had to let all my employees go and then i started a new LLC and worked alone with more basic plumbing stuff in the Vegas and Henderson area.
I had no private debt and i had my houses and some other assets.
I But i had much more free time on my hands in 2010 so i started to hang more and more at the casinos both with the slots and in the sport book section, and BOY was this a mistake to say the least.
Looking back slowly i was getting sucked into the world of day time gambling and i started slowly to increase my gambling limits.
I had always had always kept my limit the same and it was 1000 dollars a week as a maximum loss that was acceptable for me at the time.
So in 5 years from 2010 to 2015 i manged to lose 723.000 dollars during that time frame.
So i had to sell my rental property to pay of my debts, half of this sum was on sports book and half was on the slot machines.
So here in 2015 i know that i need to quit and quit quickly, with my gambling.
But i am already so addicted that i am simply not able to quit on my own, i try different things but nothing works.
Fast forward another 5 years and i we are in early 2020 and i have now lost my house that i lived in and all my saving stocks/bonds and other savings.
But not only that, i have also taken on a 200.000 dollars 12%interest a years loan
And my family knows nothing about by gambling losses.
In Feb 2020 i have just lost 19.000 dollars in slots during an all nighter at the casino and i am so tired and feed up and i just want to go home and sleep,but i have a full days of work in front of me.
on my lunch break i see an add at Facebook for a gambling treatment program called NEGA (never ever gamble again), which i think is quite funny.
I say to myself what to i have to lose, the program was around 50 dollars and i am actually thinking at that moment do i want to spend 50 dollars today, remember i just blow 19.000 dollars in one night and now i am sitting and contemplating do i want to spend this 50 dollars online today, talk about an addicted brain.
But i buy the program and i download the file and then i dont read it for two days, come Saturday and i have no money for gambling so i start to read the manual the treatment program Nega and first i am scared when i read that i need to hand over my finances completely to a family member or a good friend and also that i need to tell everybody that i am an compulsive gambler so they can help me get clean and healthy.
So i sit and think about this during the whole weekend and on Monday evening i call my Sister in Malibu and i tell here everything that i have lost almost 2 million dollars gambling in the past 10 years.
To my surprise she kind of already had a sense that i was gambling way beyond my means for many years, but she did not want to get involved.
I love my sister very much but we only see each other twice a year, but we have always had a good adult relationship.
So she calls my father and mother, and we have a sit down in Los Angeles the upcoming Saturday, my mother has moved back to LA in 2009, which probably also made me gamble much more since i felt more lonely compared to when my mother was also living in Vegas even if we had not been living together for 9 years when she had moved.
So when i drove out to LA i felt a bit nervous but i had sent my family the pdf-file on Nega and they had all read it very carefully and we decided to give it a go, this was in March, then came the COVID-19 so, i decided to move back to LA and i moved in with my mother.
So the way this works now is that my mother handles all my finances true a power of attorney.
So i when i get paid, she handles all my bills including rent to her, when i now live with her full-time.
I was also lucky enough to have a family that could pay of my 12% a year interest loan of 200.000 dollars, and i will be paying them back over a period of 3 years time.
So i will be 43 years old when i have paid of my debts and at that time i do not have any assets to my name besides by work-truck.
So who has my life changed since i started with Nega?, simply put i have no access to money, so i can not play even if i wanted to, i have 10 dollars each day in my pocket for lunch and a coffee and that is all the money i will have access to during at least a 5 year period.
I do not miss the gambling one bit actually, i feel free when i can not gamble, and i dont have to think about weekly losses any-longer.
Me and my mother have also adopted from the shelter a brown pitbull girl called Lea, and i take here to the beach every day in the evening for 2 hours and i just enjoy spending time with here, if i was not getting clean i would have been stuck in Vegas trying to find funds to go and gamble again and lose again and the cycle would have kept on going.
I am grateful that i am lucky enough to have a strong family that is involved in my treatment and that i will be debt free in 3 years time.
I know several people in Vegas that will never be so lucky they will be in debt for the rest of their lives.
The thing i now really like about Nega is that it forces you to come clean to your family and friends and now they are watching your behaviour up close and this in combination not having access to any money/funds for gambling makes the treatment process easier for all parties.
I also do attend as recommended GA (gamblers anonymous) once week to remind me that i will have to live with this disease for the rest of my life.
And i have also come to terms that maybe i should never have access to more than 1000 dollars in my life, and let others safeguard my future assets.
You have to do the work yourself, but the program tells you how you have to do the work.
So i am truly grateful for the second chance that i have been given for a gambling free life.
I have also accepted that dating will be though when i have to live with my mother for 3 years time to get debt free, but i enjoy all the simple things in life, like walking and playing at the beach with my dog LEA and having a good home cooked meal.
I was not happy gambling and i doubt that many people are who are compulsive gamblers.
So join me in a gambling free life, but buying the Nega PROGRAM on this site.
Take care everybody.
Best wishes.
Tom from Huntington beach.
Mrlifeadvise final words.
We are truly happy for Tom that he has been able to use our treatment program to take the fight with gambling addiction.
The sad truth is that compulsive gamblers brains are altered for over and you can not alter them back to the stage the brain was in prior to the gambler becoming an compulsive gambler.
So this is something people needs to learn to live with for the rest of their lives.
The most important thing is to work on yourself every day and make sure that you do not slip up, and start gambling again.
Nothing good can ever come out of gambling.
Thank you for reading.
Mrlifeadvise.
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