Month: April 2007

Sometimes when you are running a successful real estate business, you are having so much fun doing deals that time just gets away from you. Personally, I don’t much like fast food, so I have developed some recipes of my own that are quick meals that still taste good and are nutritious. I thought this week I would share some of those recipes with you. The first is a breakfast or dinner recipe I like to call Kathy’s Mess. This means you can add almost anything to it-

4 eggs
¼ cup milk
1/3 cup shred cheese
1/3 cup crumbled bacon or sausage
1 can diced potatoes (or you can use small Orida tator tots)
¼ cup diced onion
pepper and paprika to taste
Margarine

Break eggs in a bowl, add milk, cheese and bacon or sausage and whip until mixed. Set aside. In a skillet, melt margarine and add one can of diced potatoes without liquid or 1 ½ cups small tator tots. Add onions. Cook until lightly browned. Then add contents of bowl and cook until eggs are done. This makes two-three servings.

I learned this next recipe from a bachelor friend of mine. This one is also really good. It’s called Tator Tot Supreme.

1 LB Lean Chop meat
1 Package Onion Soup mix
1 can Cream or Mushroom soup
1 package tator tots

Pack bottom of an 8 in. x 8 in. casserole dish with chop meat. On top of meat sprinkle contents of envelope of onion soup mix. Place tator tots in rows on top of meat and onion soup mix until top of meat is covered. On top add can of cream of mushroom soup. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Serves 3-4 people.

This next recipe is a favorite of family and friends alike. It is called Sour Cream Chicken.

6 boneless skinless chicken breast
1 can Cream of Mushroom Soup
½ cup sherry wine (cooking sherry works well)
1 cup Sour Cream
Paprika

Arrange chicken in a shallow casserole dish. Do not overlap. Combine soup, sherry, and sour cream in a bowl until well blended. Pour over chicken until covered. Dust with paprika. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 350 for 1 ½ hours. Serve with white or yellow rice.

I will share one of my favorite dessert recipes with you to finish off this article. It is called Kathy Kennebrook’s Spiller Brownies. I discovered this recipe while at my vacation home and they are wonderful!

3 oz unsweetened chocolate ( I like using the squeeze packs, much quicker)
6 Tablespoons butter or margarine melted
1 ½ cups of sugar
3 eggs
¼ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp vanilla
¾ cup of flour

Break eggs into bowl and whip. Add unsweetened chocolate, margarine and vanilla. In a separate dish combine dry ingredients-sugar, flour and salt. Add dry ingredients to chocolate mixture and mix well. Spray an 8 in x 8 in baking dish with pam or liquid margarine. Pour brownie mix into baking dish. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. Let brownies cool and slice.

Watch for future articles with even more recipes. Upcoming recipes will have 4 ingredients or less for even quicker meals for the real estate investor.

For more information on tools for your real estate business, visit our website at marketingmagiclady.com

Throughout your life, no matter who you are or how you earn your living, you need to be concerned about protecting your assets. Your assets may include your home, vehicles, jewelry, boats, artwork and whatever other assets you accumulate along the way. After all, you work hard for what you have and there are always going to be people out there who want something for nothing. The more money you have the greater a target you become, and you’ll want to protect yourself from frivolous lawsuits.

In the real estate business this is especially true. The real estate business is one of those where you will be piling up assets quickly. If you are holding properties and you have tenants or tenant/buyers in your properties, this can make you an even bigger target for possible lawsuits. For this reason alone you want to be holding your assets in another entity, such as a land trust in order to keep your name off of public record. The main aspect to purchasing properties in land trusts is anonymity. If everything you own is in your own name, it makes it easy for someone who wants to sue you to find out what you have. If a plaintiff’s attorney looks on public record and it appears that you have nothing, you are much less likely to be sued.

If you are holding properties in land trusts, this prevents your name from showing up on public records; making it appear that you don’t own anything; and that is the whole idea. You want to hide your assets from creditors and predators. There are a lot of people out there who want what you have, but they don’t want to work to get it.

As you begin to grow your real estate business, you need to begin thinking about protecting yourself and your assets along the way. Make sure you begin working with a reliable real estate attorney who can help you grow and protect your business. Make sure they understand the importance of purchasing properties in land trusts. If they don’t want to do things your way, find someone who will. In addition, you want to be thinking about placing other items of value that you own, such as bank accounts, jewelry, vehicles, boats or artwork in property trusts. This will protect these assets from showing up should you be sued for any reason.

You also need to be working with reliable a financial planner and a CPA in your business in order to protect you assets by investing them well. Your CPA will help you to hold on to your assets by finding ways for you to legally pay fewer taxes on the income from your business. The real estate business is one of those where there are a lot of great tax deductions for you if you structure your business correctly.

In addition, your CPA and your financial planner can help you structure your assets so that if something happens to you, your assets will be distributed to children, grandchildren or whomever you choose in the way you want them to be distributed. This way there is no question as to how the distribution of your assets will be handle if something were to happen to you and this can save your family a lot of hassles later on.

Protecting your assets while you are still around to enjoy them is going to be very important to securing a future for you and your family. For more information on asset protection, visit my website at marketingmagiclady.com.