Using Your Cashflow to Live

[Justin Hertzog]

Since I've started investing in properties I have never used the cashflow to pay myself for anything.  This is mainly since investing isn't my full time job and I don't need that income to survive.  I would just let the property build up a little bit of reserves and then also put more towards possibly paying it off faster.

However, I'm switching gears and trying to become more of an investor full time, gain financial freedom, and start using that income to live.  Do a lot of you do this?  Obviously when we buy deals we analyze the cashflows based on everything we can think of.  I'm just curious for those of you that are living off of your rental income, what type of things I should be thinking about before switching over to this.  For example, how much do you typically save for reserves, any rules of thumb you consider for how much to take from the property?  I know this may seem like some dumb questions since we all buy and hold properties to have that financial freedom at some point, but it's a total change up from what I've been doing, so I'm just trying to wrap my mind around it.