Make Investing a Game???

[Ibrahim Yamini]

I’m listening to this book; “100 Ways to Create Wealth” and it mentioned something that caught my attention.

 It said, when you’re playing a game, you’re having fun because there’s a challenge or hurdle you’re trying to overcome.  It also states that people become old and boring when they stop playing, but if they keep playing, they remain young at heart.

I don’t know if many of you are, but I’m a gamer, I love games, so why not make games out of everything?   

I had $30K in credit card bills last year and decided enough was enough.  Once I increased the monthly payments exponentially, and to quote Dave Ramsey; “Throw everything including the kitchen sink at it”, I got those balances down to 0.

I made a game of how much I could pay off each month and guessed how many points my credit score would go up.  Now, I’m almost in the 800s.  This was the “Tutorial Phase”.   

Any console gamer knows this is the most annoying part of the game. We hate the tutorial, but know we have to go through it to understand the control and functions properly or we will surely be slain in an unforgiving and merciless death.  Preparation is key in those games as it is in Real Estate.

This phase in Real Estate is very long and can take a few years, but necessary for proper preparations.

One major difficultly during this phase, was convincing my wife not to spend money on Amazon for random things,
 a mini boss to beat if you will.  I kept taking damage to my health bar, which was my bank account and I needed a solution.  It was resolved eventually, it took some time.  Habits are hard to break.

One thing I learned with my wife, is that I have to “sell” ideas to her.  If I can’t make it coherent for myself, she’s not buying.  I I had to make sure I had an answer for every single question. 

The refinance talk was the hardest, this was the main boss battle.  I cannot move forward investing without using my equity or it will take a decade. I was prepared and had data for her to look at, and calculated that we would not only pay off all her expenses, but will easily recover the money in a few months since we aren’t paying those bills anymore and will be more prepared to invest in January.  Once we talked about her relief, it was smooth sailing, but I did have a few financial bruises.

 Compromising is a game too. If you do it correctly, both people walk away with a loss, but with terms that are acceptable to both.  She postponed getting the floors redone and I postponed investing until early next year, but she agreed to the cash out refinance.

This phase also includes gaining knowledge and increasing your credit score.  I decided that spending roughly $200 a annually on Audible is a small price to pay for all the books I’ve listened to in the past year regarding real estate, landlording, tax strategists etc.  In the past year, I’ve increased my intelligence points in this field.  I’m still a beginner, but I understand the language for the most part.

Learning how to use the "Four Square Method" and determining ROIs was a great game bonus. It was impossible to know that a 10% ROI is a decent return for something starting out. Now I understand roughly how much a property will cash flow when I use it in conjunction with rentometer.com, Zillow rent estimates and Craigslist.

Building relationships is an extreme necessary in this tutorial.
This is the most difficult if you’re afraid to talk to people, but something that MUST be overcome if you wish to be successful.  You cannot move forward in real estate without it.  

I personally hate talking on the phone, but it was necessary for me to achieve a particular goal of getting MLS lists from property managers and relators and also building a relationships with realtors OOS. OOS relators are bonuses points and can help you later in the game.

Now, all I have to do is have some capital to buy my first investment property.  This will come from my equity.  This is the most annoying part of the game...the waiting.  The lender has all my paperwork, but waiting on the appraisal info.

Anyway, once I gain everything I need, I’ll be close to ending the tutorial.

In order to reach level 1, I MUST buy the property and it MUST cash flow AND appreciate.  After that, I reach level 1.

I heard on a podcast, Can’t remember if it was BiggerPockets, but the host said that when you start investing, and you want to make an empire, start small. They said get your first property before anything else, and focus only on obtaining only 4 investment properties total.

That will keep your goal achievable and not demoralize you in your pursuit. This strategy has no time limit, just a beginner barrier to reach...Level 2 if you will.

What do you think? Am I being too silly?

Do any of you make RE investing a game?

[Johnny Diaz]

@Ibrahim Yamini

This is completely unrelated to real estate but I browse these forums often for more knowledge and this caught my eye. I was recently employed for a job and there’s something we do on Tuesdays that I don’t particularly enjoy and other things throughout the work week that aren’t crazy fun and rewarding. So I thought that to myself as well, why not make this job a game? See how many things I could do in this time frame/see how fast I can do this/ etc... it’s a really cool way to get the job done without fear, procrastination, etc and time goes by pretty fast. Sorry for the long run on but I just had to comment on this.