What do I do if I just have $25.00? I would like to say I save it for a rainy day, but this past weekend I didn’t. I got so excited that there was an organic grocery store around here now, and I wandered around the store aimlessly. Well, I wasn’t so aimless, I was on a mission to find the very special food products that I have been missing. I bought a bunch of Jamaican Brew Ginger Ale that has real ginger in it, not all that high fructose corn syrup and “flavorings.” I admit, I also bought quite a few Newman’s Own Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups. Everywhere I went, they only had the mint ones, so I sort of am embarrassed to say that I acted like I was buying canned goods and water before a hurricane. They may be the LAST ONES that any store carries and I had to stock up because you just never know!
I read something interesting that made me feel like a total glutton. With $25.00 I could do something to help my country, and get a little return on my investment. Suddenly, I was transported back intime to my high school economics class, where we ran a little business to teach us how corporations worked. We sold stock in the “company” for $1 each to students, parents and friends. We used the money to print T Shirts, and returned their initial investment plus a small profit to those that participated. The project was a big success, and even a skeptical uncle thought he got a better return than the stock market.
When I was in my early twenties, I learned that you can’t get that much bang for your buck on $1.00 stocks. Since that was a LOOOONG time ago, $1.00 in high school money in 1992 equals $25.00 of adult money in 2008. That’s not really true, but it might as well be. The prices in snack machines have more than doubled since then.
An investment company has come up with an idea for anyone who can spare $25.00 to be able to invest in something that will not only possibly return an investment, but expresses it as a patriotic act to rebuild America. Rebuilding of America pools everyone’s investment and uses them to fund projects that rebuild homes. A twenty unit property that was started before Katrina will be rebuilt. Another project is a senuor housing unit in Kansas City which lies incomplete due to builder bankruptcy. The goal is to purchase the property to both prevent blight and to creates a worthwhile and profitable property.
Of the $25.00 an individual invests, $5.00 is collected as a fee, and $20.00 is deposited in an FDIC Certificate of Deposit that is used to back the purchase, revitalization, and sale of the properties. In give years, the original $20.00 is returned to the investor, plus a return on the investment. The projects creates jobs, impact the families who will be living in the properties, and also allows individuals to invest no matter their income level.
This is a very interesting concept. It definitely matches my philosophy that few people may have a large amount of money to give to charity or to invest, but if everyone does just a little bit, it adds up to something big. I will do more investiagation, of course, but this project is very intriguing and I will be following it. Before I spend $40.00 on ingredients just to make three cups of salsa and then have ancho chiles in my cupboard until the next ice age, I will consider something more meaningful like this, although homemade salsa has its charm. So does chocolate, but I can buy more chocolate later versus buying just a little bit now and someone may benefit in the process.
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