Stop Making it Rain & Start Making Change!
Author: Maurice Williams
Today I took the time to listen to Lil Scrappy and his group’s latest effort, “Silence And Secrecy” to my utter disgust. In my opinion there’s only a certain window of time that you can over exhaust a particular subject before it just shouldn’t be mentioned anymore. The subject that has gotten my emotions all in a twist is the sick and ignorant ass practice of “making it rain.”
As I’m sure you’re all aware the talented Adam “Pacman” Jones has basically thrown away his once promising NFL career, because he once felt the need to “make it rain.” You also might have heard about TI’s latest legal situation; guess where it stemmed from. A situation that happened in Cinncinnatti that rooted from TI and a few his associate’s decision to “make it rain” on a crowd of concertgoers.
The real reason I’m speaking on this dumb ass topic is the fact that we are now almost into a brand new decade and hip hop as a culture still has yet to grasp the concept of investing money. Now, most of the time I hear people speak of investments as cars, rims, and jewelry. Contrary to popular myth, these are all prime examples of liabilities.
Like Ludacris once said, “ya’ll need to sit down and learn the difference between assets and liabilities. For starters an asset is something that you invest money in. A liability on the other hand is something you spend money on. Humongous difference people!
Today I have comprised a short and simple list of seven better ways to invest your money rather than “making it rain” just to get some cheap ass.
1. Stocks – even thought the market is an ugly place right now I would bet my bottom dollar that losing money while attempting to obtain more money is a winner any day. And just a little side note, the market is actually looking a little bit better right now, just check out what its done over the past week at msn.com
2. Bonds – though you don’t stand to make much money on shorter termed bonds you still have the sanity of walking away from the situation with more money as opposed to less. I don’t know about you but for me more works about ten times better than none however you cut it.
3. Real Estate – this is another one of those risky areas right now with the declining housing market but you have to understand history to know that this is the one commodity that we can’t go with out. Cars may cease to exist but you better believe that we will always need solid ground to walk on. Instead of throwing your dollars at some stripper throw a few at a real estate agent and claim your piece of the world.
4. Franchises – if you’ve always wanted to own a business but you never wanted to go through the struggle of establishing it then franchising is the answer. For a minimal fee you can operate your own Subway, McDonalds, or whatever the hell you’d like. Keep in mind that minimal doesn’t necessarily mean cheap; it just means pay some now, make a lot later!
5. Domains – this is my particular area of income. Though it might sound foreign to most people there is actually a rather large underground market of domain names. Of course all the good ones are taken but ask yourself this… “what the hell was google before it was google.com?”
6. IRAs – I know we’re all pretty young but we should be at least remotely thinking about what we’re going to do when we can’t, or just don’t have the will to work anymore.
7. Kids – Last but not least, instead of throwing wads of paper at retarded ass strippers you could actually invest some of your bread into the youth. Money could go towards things such as computers, books, and even college tuition.
Filed under: Columns