Wealth

Adventurer and airplane magnate Sir Richard Branson wants to take you on a pioneering underwater airplane ride. All you need is a swimsuit, an airplane ticket to his private island in the Caribbean, and $138,000.

For the price of a three-bedroom, two-bath home in Omaha, Neb., couples can take Branson's new Necker Nymph aero submarine for a test dive during a seven-day stay at his swanky getaway on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands. The price includes an $88,000 weekly charter fee for Necker Belle, a 105-foot catamaran which will act as the winged sub's launchpad.

Developed by Point Richmond, Calif.-based Hawkes Ocean Technologies, the three-passenger sub glides on the water's surface "like an aeroplane on a runway," according to a statement from Virgin Limited Edition, the luxury arm of Virgin hotels.

Churches provide more than a path to religious fulfillment; for many, they are an important part of social life, and many a happy couple first met during worship. This begs the question, which religion or denomination would give you the best chance to find a mate?

The answer depends on what you seek in a mate. According to a survey of adults by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life:

It's fair to say that Tiger Woods is hugely responsible for Nike's now-handsome share of the golf industry pie.

It signed Woods to a five-year, $100 million endorsement contract in 2002 to help it break into the lucrative golf equipment market. By 2008, it had grown into nearly $725 million business, up 12% from the previous year.

Then came the news that Tiger had been teeing it up in twosomes far from his home course. Now Nike is calling a mulligan by removing Tiger's name from a new line of clubs inspired by Tiger's trademark wearing of red on Sunday.

During his first year in office, President Barack Obama's home has lost 5.1% of its value. No, not his house in Chicago, the White House.

According to a new "Zestimate" by the witty folks at Zillow, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is now worth a measly $292.5 million.

That decline mirrored the 5% drop seen across the country, Zillow reports, but was higher than the 3.6% in the Washington, D.C. area.

Amid a love fest of a Cubs Convention in which he and his sibling-owners got standing ovations and baseball fans chanted "Tommy! Tommy!", new Chicago Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts still got hit right between the eyes with the bottom-line question.

"Will you reconsider your decision to raise ticket prices due to the economy and job losses?" asked one fan during the Ricketts family's question-and-answer session with several thousand fans in the downtown Chicago Hilton and Towers' Grand Ballroom on Jan. 15.

Tahoe. Aspen. Vail. Sounds like locales where if you have to ask how much the homes cost you shouldn't be buying there. But guess what? They're suddenly more affordable ... depending on what you call "affordable."

First, Lake Tahoe. Home to the fabled Heavenly and Squaw Valley ski resorts in California and Nevada's Sierra Nevada mountains, buyers suddenly have snapped-to after a long vacation from purchasing vacation homes. Following drops as steep as Heavenly's 3,500-foot vertical slope, sales of all units in the resort area climbed 22% in 2009 from 2008, according to data released by Chase International, a real estate agency specializing in the Tahoe-Reno market. The median price of a single-family home sank 22% in 2009 to $576,875, from $744,124 the year before.

"It's the first time in over a decade that we're seeing first-time buyers," said Sue Lowe, vice president and corporate broker for Chase International. "We're seeing lots of second-home buyers back now too. They finally can afford to buy."

Real estate auctions began cropping up about four years ago, generally in places overbuilt with cookie-cutter homes. Initially, banks were auctioning off foreclosed properties. Then developers joined the bandwagon, trying to move their unsold inventory.

Bargains galore, right? Well, not exactly. In some cases, buyers got a bargain -- maybe a few grand below the neighborhood cops . But if it was bank-owned, they lost the right to home-seller disclosures, since banks don't have to tell you about property defects, even when they know about them. But in most cases, fear, wariness of the process and the fact that headlines told buyers daily that they were in the driver's seat and needn't rush into anything, kept them on the sidelines.

Shark Tank is back! And right away, as the desperate, money-seeking entrepreneurs step in front of the self-made billionaires, we've already seen our share of controversial characters.

Dorene Humason wanted to get her salad dressing mix onto supermarket shelves, and she needed $50,000 for just a 10% stake. So far, this food buyer and salesperson with 27 years' experience had managed to get into 1,300 stores, which translated to only $41,000 owing to the fact she had to pull her original label design. "My original packaging was offensive," she explained (Daymond John: "It had [Kevin O'Leary's] face on it?"). Because she went for a package that was "very interesting," she had accidentally put a picture of a Japanese prostitute on her Chinese seasoning.

That wasn't the only mistake Humason made. Although she won the Sharks' money in the end (read how she did it, below), now she thinks their business advice was wrong. Where they wanted her to focus on one aspect of her business, she wants to diversify, and now, several months after she made her pitch in the Tank, the deal is in jeopardy. Watch Jason Cochran's video interview of her, in which she's frank about the differences of opinion that threaten to ruin everything she won on Shark Tank.

Abraham Shakespeare, a truck driver's assistant, who lived with his mother, won $30 million in the Florida lottery in 2006. It now appears that his good fortune may have cost his life. According to Associated Press, he vanished months ago and his case is now being investigated as a homicide.

Shakespeare, 43, took a lump-sum payment of $16.9 million instead of annual installments and bought a Nissan Altima, a Rolex from a pawn shop, and a $1 million home in a gated community. He insisted that the money "would not change" him, but it seemed to quickly cause him problems.

Barbara Corcoran is a born salesperson. The self-made millionaire became a household name selling real estate, perhaps the biggest-ticket thing a person can buy. But now, instead of being the one doing the hustling, would-be businesspeople come begging to her week after week on ABC's tense venture capitalism pitchfest, Shark Tank.

While he was visiting Corcoran to get the dish on the upcoming season of the popular ABC show (click here for that video), WalletPop's Jason Cochran got the dish on her rival Sharks who try to horn in on her deals. Maybe she's a little sore from being back-stabbed too many times, because she has a choice anecdote about the time Kevin O'Leary asked her to dinner -- and then stiffed her with the check. "That guy's got billions. I've got millions. Is that fair? No."



Jason also asked her what makes for a successful salesperson. If you want to succeed, do you have to be a born salesperson? Do you have to do months of expensive market research and have every I dotted and every T crossed? Or does it take something else? Corcoran lays it out there: You don't have to be buttoned-up to make money. But you do need something else.

Take her advice and next season, you could be standing in front of her on Shark Tank.

Tonight, Jan. 8, the much-loved venture capital competition show Shark Tank returns to the ABC lineup. We've been chronicling the tense Mark Burnett production, in which everyday people try to convince a panel of five real-world moguls to invest money in their ideas, through our in-depth AfterShark series (www.walletpop.com/after-shark-tank).

Since Shark Tank is back helping people make money fast, so is AfterShark. WalletPop's Jason Cochran was invited to Barbara Corcoran's offices in Manhattan to find out what's been happening with her big investments from the last batch of episodes. Corcoran tells which product landed a big deal at CVS, who's selling on Whole Food shelves, and who got enough money to mass produce thanks to Shark Tank bucks.

She also hints, with a trace of venom, at some nasty backstabbing between the Sharks in the episodes to come -- could it be that she's about to get sliced out of some juicy deals?



Jason also got some extra advice from Corcoran about what makes for a successful entrepreneur. Click here for Part Two of our video interview with the Lipstick Shark, in which she dishes about the other Sharks and their sneaky methods.

Koss Headphones, a small publicly-traded company based in Milwaukee, said last week it has fired Sujata "Sue" Sachdeva, the executive VP recently accused of embezzlement. Sachdeva, who is accused of spending millions on expensive clothing and jewelry, including more than $1.3 million over two years at a single Mequon boutique, told FBI agents that she directed her assistant to make fraudulent wire transfers -- paying down her credit card balances out of Koss' bank account, according to the complaint.

Further investigation by the company indicates that the total embezzlement may be closer to $20 million rather than the $4.5 million originally estimated. If $20 million has been stolen from Koss over the last four fiscal years, it would exceed the company's reported earnings -- $18.4 million -- during the same period. Big headaches for a small company.

I don't get it. It's not like the Sachdevas' didn't earn a nice living. Sachdeva's compensation from Koss Corp. totaled $173,000 in fiscal 2009 and $206,000 the previous year. Her husband, Ramesh, a pediatrician, is vice president for quality and outcomes at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. He also holds a law degree and is an adjunct professor at Marquette University Law School. Together they probably brought in well over $500,000 per year.

Why do this? How exactly did Sachdeva come into work each day and look President and CEO, Michael Koss, in the eye without blinking? How much did her husband know as she rented a 1,000 square foot room in the Third Ward to house some of her purchases? Didn't he notice that over the last two years, her purchases included more than $1.3 million at Valentina in Mequon, $670,000 at Au Courant in Glendale and $649,000 at Zita in Whitefish Bay. That's a lot of stuff.

The profitable industry of saving souls has apparently hit a speed bump. Pastor Rick Warren of the megachurch, Saddleback, sent out an urgent letter this week to all of the 22,000 members that $900,000 was needed to balance the budget. Citing lower contributions due to the economy, he has requested that the shortfall be addressed this weekend and reportedly the members have lined up to help.

Saddleback isn't the only megachurch able to raise money. Featuring huge stages, rock bands, jumbotron screens, buckets of and oodles of money, as well as the enormity of other facilities, pastor personalities and income -- over $8.5 billion a year all told -- these churches are impressive forces flourishing at staggering rates.

Experts say starting the new year on solid financial footing is essential to long- and short-term prosperity. But it's hard to know what to do -- beyond setting a budget and freezing your credit cards.

When it comes to the economy, there's no silver bullet. However, if you're trying to formulate a plan to bring your personal finances out of a recession, experts say you've got to do some number crunching.

Tracking certain economic indicators can help you decide the most opportune time to buy or sell a home, expect a raise, or how to distribute your 401(k). With hundreds of indicators fighting to garner your attention it can be confusing to know which ones mean the most to you.