You’re used to economic predictors and prognosticators discussing an asset’s return on investment, but Jason Hartman has coined a term that brings a knowing smile to the lips of those already taking full advantage of the situation. We’re talking about your Return On Inflation (ROI) and, if this is the first time you’ve heard of it, pay attention.

We’re not talking about just any old bank. The AIPIS accreditation can put more money into your bank account. This year! For whatever reason, we humans have chosen to mark the passage of time annually. Every time the calendar rolls around to January, our minds pause to ruminate on what we’ve accomplished in our lives and what is yet left to do. Promises are made and often broken: lose weight, quit smoking, get a better job, learn a foreign language, travel, earn more money.

To us, the traditional sales job resume always seemed like kind of a dopey idea, but employers have to use something to winnow the pile of applications down to a manageable number so, by default, the sales resume has been and continues to be that tool. The light bulb over the head moment is when you realize that just because a traditional resume is what every other applicant for the position turns in, it doesn’t mean you have to follow that herd of zombies.

The word “negotiate” creates an image in many minds of hard-bitten lawyers badgering one another across large tables in corporate boardrooms. No wonder the concept seems to have become entwined in the American lexicon with conflict. It doesn’t have to be that way. Real estate and mortgage professionals can expect to be involved in more than a few negotiations over the course of their careers. If it’s going to happen, why not make it a positive experience rather than negative?

Foreclosure investing isn’t always about profit. Sometimes it’s about loss too.

At least that’s what a Pittsburgh area man learned the hard way when he returned from the holidays to discover that a foreclosure property he had purchased, and was renovating to move into, had been demolished by a city crew. Accidentally. This is one of those stories of events gone awry to an almost incomprehensible extent. Like a surgeon amputating the wrong limb or mistaking granny’s ashes for yard waste.

In case you’re not familiar with the particulars of a reverse mortgage, here’s how the scenario works. Often, senior citizens find themselves in the position of being house rich and cash poor, which simply means they have a lot of equity built up in their house but are subsisting on a fixed income, perhaps on Social Security, and with investments that return very little. A reverse mortgage is a financial strategy by which a bank or other financial institution agrees to pay a lump sum or monthly payments to the owners, based on the house’s value and life expectancy. In return, the bank receives the title to the house once both owners have passed away but, until they do, they can continue to live there.

If part of your portfolio is still entwined with stock investing, now might be a good time to begin making concrete plans about how you’re going to divest yourself of that asset, and don’t come crying to us next year when the situation is even worse. Given the nature of this blog, we hope we have a bunch of real estate professionals reading this who have been fired up for a while about the benefits of income property investing and to whom this warning is unnecessary, but there are always a few stragglers.