Lifestyle Investing, Vision Boards, and Maximizing ROF

[Shiloh Lundahl]

Four of five years ago I created a vision board as I was following the advice of several motivational speakers and authors. On the vision board I included a cabin in the woods by a lake and a house in the mountains of Costa Rica.

Today I am excited to share that this summer we purchased the cabin in the woods and I just went under contract to purchase the house in Costa Rica. 

So what did I mean in the title - maximizing ROF? Does anyone else use the term ROF, or Return on Fun, when considering potential investments? I personally think it would be a waste to wait until some future date to get the things on my vision board if I am able to use some creativity now and I can get those things now especially if I can minimizing my initial investment.

Let me explain in more details. This summer when I bought the cabin I had been looking for cabins for about a year so when I saw this 6 bedroom, 4 bathroom cabin come on the market for only 499k, I knew it was under market value.  Here was the Zillow listing on the property when I bought it: https://www.zillow.com/homedet... I purchased it for 450k with a hard money lender and a private money lender who would pay for the portion of the down payment that the hard money lender wouldn’t cover and the costs of the repairs. Then, after we finished the rehab, we would use it as an Airbnb when we weren’t using it. Here is the Airbnb listing: https://abnb.me/aYHi8MyZylb After the refinance I didn't have any of my own money left into the deal because the down payment is split between the initial investor and one of my companies.  Yet I will be able to use it as payment for all the hard work we put into it.

Now for the Costa Rica property. Here are some of the pictures of my Costa Rica property that I am under contract to purchase:

This property was originally listed for 1.25 million. But it sat on the market because it was listed too high and we were in the middle of a pandemic and tourism to Costa Rica had lowered quite a bit. So after negotiations, we are under contract to purchase it at 680k. The way we are going to purchase the property is we are going to have 8 investors come into the deal with 100k each. They will all be able to use the main house for 1 week a year and the guest house for another week every year. The cash on cash return is estimated to be around 10% and the 5-year IRR is estimated to be around 20%. These 2 pictures don't really do it justice so for anyone who wants to see a more in-depth video about it, I posted it to my Improve Channel on Real Estate Investing.

Anyway, I am super excited about realizing these two important goals on my vision board and I encourage each of you to create your own vision boards and to go after realizing your goals.

I'd love to hear from others who have realized their vision board goals.  So if you have brought into existence something that you have on your vision board, please share it with us.