The Cruelest Tax of All

Every Sunday starts pretty much the same.  I sleep in until about 6:00 AM, have a coffee or two, drop my daughter off at the barn, go to 8:00 AM Mass, then read the Saturday Wall Street Journal.  Today was not different, but the Heard On The Street caught my eye.

The article was entitled, “How to Avoid the ‘Cruelest Tax’ – Inflation can do funny things to a portfolio, most of them bad. In this era of record budget deficits and minuscule interest rates, here are the places a savvy investor can hide” and while a strong opinion with recommendations was avoided, one paragraph caught my eye.  The authors stated,

Sellers of consumable goods such as grocery stores Kroger and Albertsons, big box retailers like Walmart and Target and even dollar stores are likely to fare well not matter what the unemployment levels are because they sell essentials. The same goes for auto parts and home improvement retailers: Broken cars and homes need to be fixed, even if doing so becomes more expensive.

Not for a minute am I qualified to offer stock advice, but the advice given supports one of the premises we at The You Network have been operating on since late February – Essential franchise business models are a smart place to invest your time, talent and equity.  They are not sexy like a spa or hot yoga franchise and it is pretty hard to get excited about a business that repairs, replaces or cleans.  But at the end of the day, the purpose of purchasing a franchise is to create wealth and the highest form of wealth is to be able to wake up every morning and say to anyone who will listen, “I can do whatever I want today.”

So, say you are out of work, furloughed or just tired of the Zoom meetings and want to explore a franchise business model that will work for you and your family.  What are you going to look at? A restaurant? That does not make a ton of sense to me because even before January, the restaurant was known for low margins and a high failure rate.  I know you have always wanted to own one, but now you will be beholden to your state government to decide how many customers you can serve.

No I think you want to focus your attention on two factors initially, to find the right business for today, they are: 1) What business/products are always in demand and 2) What am I good at.  Need some help, that is what we are here for.