Just an idea, dunno the world you live in. Is Kiddy-Ride's something worth considering as well? Only energy and some maintenance, and by rotating them amoung your points you can keep their attraction-value per point up. The take for the premises is higher of course.
Gaming machines (video games) cost more but generate quite some income, in some cases they cause small cults. Near-addiction generates money.
Stay away from gambling machines, the paying kind, because (also when legal) you automatically will compete with the underworld, and will loose. A friend of mine is doing this, but he ended up buying the entire licenced premises which he now lets - adding to his income of course, but his layout has been substantial. The rent is contributing, but the revenue from the machines only make it very worthwhile.
I know that any person who received education in Russia or Ukraine, has to prove his education in foreign countries. A very good, famous here doctor, had to pass an exam to be able to safe a person's life in Spain...
Nas, you hit it right in the center of its forehead: "education is statistically irrelevant", there is absolutely no connection between education and success as the latter is measured in monetary terms in our world. You obtain more useful knowledge by experiencing a subject, talking with and working with successful people than you learn from professors who derived their knowledge from books not from real life.
I have a friend who owns several leveraged rental properties (in addition to his day job) and has made very good money and also managed to reduce his taxes substantially the last years of the real estate boom (just like you said). I don't know anything about vending machines, sounds very interesting though and will investigate.
I've traded the market for many years, not only stocks, but corporate bonds and treasuries, foreign currency and in my early career commodities as well. The last several years I traded the stock market mainly with options and made money every year during the bull and the bear. Last year was the first year I lost money and am currently out with no interest to participate currently.
I have tried to play the swings in the past, but have not always been successful in spotting a top or a bottom. I'm much better with the trends and currently I see no trend since February 2004. My take on the market is that the pattern that we are going through is similar to the one experienced in the 70's, an expanding triangle trading zone that throws higher peaks and lower bottoms that can be deceivingly perceived as the beginning of a trend only to result in disastrous whipsaws fro the medium term trader. This is the technical trading theory talking. Economists describe the same pattern with the term stagflation, which means higher inflation, lower growth that result in stagnation, which on the charts shows as a trading zone, things are not moving overall, there is little volatility. It's also a prolonged period of confusion where economic indicators have conflicting messaging, where things are not good, but are not bad either. None knows how long this pattern can last, but I think we're in the beginning with the first bottom being the 1750 on the NAS last summer. Mutual funds are not good investments because they take long-term positions that are going nowhere in the sideways zone. Hedge funds are something to look at because they can trade and be on the long and the short side and can blend and play commodities and FX, but you have to know which to pick and many of the good ones are closed or require big pockets. If I were a regular investor with a 401K, I would stay out of the stock market and out of bonds with long term maturities as well. The bond market has become unpredictable and only fitted for the very sophisticated players. Many of the big bond houses lost money last year when betted heavily on the short side and got killed on the repeated rallies. All that being said, I will start looking at buying selectively sectors of the market if the NAS breaks below last summer's low and finds support at around 1500-1600 (to honor my theory).
Good luck!
P.S. Don't throw stones if I'm wrong, the interpretation of the market is identical to the interpretation of human behavior, ie. it is not an exact science.
"Your past performance is not an indication of future results"
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
The young lady I visited in Hartford in January had the same problem. Although she had a degree and worked in a bank back home, companies were leery of hiring her because of the lack of a "US education".
From my perspective, here was someone who natively spoke Russian, worked in the banking community there, and was (somewhat) familiar with the financial infrastructure of Russia. What an asset to a bank's international division! But then, I'm just a computer geek, and way too logical. . .