Deal 2 - What?

[Waylon Smith]

Someone asked about whether or not they should hire a coach or mentor from a different thread in the "Starting Out" forum. @henryclark was nice enough to offer free assistance. I jumped on the offer immediately because I am just getting started. He laid out the instructions in my post titled "Deal 1 - Why?" I am going to be open, follow his advice on putting together this plan and share my goals. So here goes!

Action:

1. Discuss what your Goals are for your First Deal and long term. Obviously, I am geared towards certain types of investments, but that is due to our Risk/reward, REI experience, stage in life. We want ones that fit your family. Don't pick one yet.

Little about myself. I am 44 years old. I am married to my wife of 18 years and we have two daughters. I am an entrepreneur. Sold my first business in 2013 and now a partner in the second small business. We have a dog named Duke and he is glued to my side! My wife is a stay at home and works part time for FCA. Together we love to visit wineries, go on road trips and date night. My oldest daughter does track and cross country. She is in 9th grade. My youngest daughter is into dance and she is in 6th grade. I am close with both of them. I love to hunt, fish, mountain bike, grill and work in the yard. 

My goal is to invest in our first real estate deal within the next 4-6 months. Short term, I am literally just getting started. I planned to start 2.5 years ago. However Covid happened. I am in retail and the supply chain went absolutely crazy. My partner and I had to focus 100% of our time on the business. So now I am ready get back to my original plan of real estate investing. Since I am just getting started I am trying to wrap my head around what I want to invest in within the next 6 months. I truly have not thought about long enough to know. I just know I want to get started as quickly as possible. Being 44, I know I am late to the game. For some reason, I am drawn to short term rentals and commercial. Long term, I know my goal is to have more freedom. I am very chained down in my business and it requires a lot of time away from my family. It is very demanding / stressful. My dream would be to sell my share of the business within 5 years and replace my income with my real estate portfolio.

2. Determine your cash/asset collateralization at 65% and your finance type. This will determine your deal size. Even if you can do a deal of say $100,000; we might still only do a $10,000 deal for your first deal. We have to take other non financial attributes into consideration, Knowledge, risk, time available, etc. 

This is where I wish I could go back and do things a little different. I have never really leveraged debt. We did the Dave Ramsey plan for a long time. I worked in my businesses and just planned to take the normal route of working hard every day and retiring when I was 65. We have pumped a lot of our money into our house. We do not owe very much and we have a lot of equity. Other than that I have invested a lot of money into 401k. We have $10k in an emergency fund (although I would be comfortable with holding $5k in the emergency fund) and we have $15k in savings. Also I have a $100k HELOC that has no balance. I got it a couple of years ago before Covid started so it would be available for my real estate investments.