Lifestyle Design - What is it and how does it impact you?

[J. Martin]

@Ali Boone , @Charles McNelly, and others have talked about lifestyle design, and how it fits into their real estate investing - or should I say, how their real estate investing fits into their lifestyle design. I've always had the goal to have my real estate income on my "fix and holds" provide enough TOTALLY PASSIVE income for me to not wake up before 11AM and always be able to wear flip flops, from anywhere in the world :) More recently, I read some of Ali's blog posts, and it's a much more explicit and targeted form of something that has been less explicit in my own goals, investments, and work flow..

For now, I've been outsourcing whatever I can. My handyman takes tenant calls from tenants and does repairs, and shares a google doc with his hours and materials costs. I have a Virtual Assistant in the Philippines for a lot of administrative tasks. I do some of the lease-up and supervise rehab when the purchases are done on my investments (about 1-2 per year). So I spend some time on RE, but have been decreasing that time as my portfolio has grown. (Almost $1MM in gross RE assets, $100K+ in gross rents, 7 units, managing a few more on JV deals). And for now, a full time-ish job. (Although not working for the month of June ;)

It's been going smoothly enough that I was able to take a month and a half off late last year to travel Europe, without any problems - and used the money I didn't pay a property manager that year, to do it.. But I would probably hire a PM if I trusted them to do as good a job as myself (I have local investments). 

Ali, Charles, 

Care to share with others about what lifestyle design is to you, how your investment style fits into it, any tips for others, and any tips for my situation? 

Thanks in advance!

[Ali Boone]

Yayy, I love talking about lifestyle design! Way more than I like talking about real estate actually, but everyone on BP seems to only care about real estate so I just go with it.

I mean, here's the thing. And unfortunately a lot of people in this world will never fully understand this. You can design your life to be whatever you want it to be. I don't care what excuses you come up with, you rule your life. It may be quite tricky to fully develop your life how you want it to be (because you do still have to pay bills and you will always have people nay-saying you and it is almost a job in itself to figure out what kind of life you really do want) but developing that is part of the journey it itself. One of the best phrases a mentor of mine ever taught me is, "Never ask if you can do something, ask HOW to do it." If you want something, you can get it. Just figure out how to do it. Chances are you won't have a lot of people in your corner supporting your idea so be strategic in who you ask for advice.

So my "lifestyle design" in a nutshell- I started my own company that I work on whenever I want. I choose my hours and I choose how much work I do on it. More importantly (for me), all I need is the internet to work, therefore I can work from wherever I want as long as I have internet. To date (in only a year and a half of being in business), I have worked from home in Venice Beach (a block from the ocean), in Nicaraguan hostels between ziplining, surfing, and volcano boarding adventures as well as from high-end Nicaraguan hotels while drinking wine or margaritas (yes, while I work), throughout countries in Europe between sight-seeing, outdoor adventures and on airplanes to and from, in Colorado from a mountain house I holed myself up in for 2 weeks during an amazing snowstorm (and between snowboarding excursions), from Atlanta hanging out with my parents and friends for as long as I want to (weeks), and I've even worked on cross-country road trips.

I wanted a 'job' that was this flexible for a few reasons. One, to do everything I just mentioned above. Two, my real passion is flight instructing and god bless the job but it doesn't pay well, but now I flight instruct on the side whenever I want because I have income coming from somewhere else. And then three, I wanted to always be free to join someone for lunch or go to the gym when I wanted or take vacation without asking 'permission'.

Before I started my company, I was working a 9-5 (or more) corporate job. I had to wear business casual clothes, I felt like I contributed basically nothing to such a big company, I did enjoy my every-Friday paycheck but who cares about that if you don't have time to do anything fun with the money? I didn't have time to flight instruct, I only saw my friends and dogs at night or on the weekends, and anytime I traveled I had to request vacation time. I couldn't live at the beach because the commute was too far and I could only go to the gym in the evenings when it's so crowded there are no machines available. Weekend trips had to be kept short and I might as well have not even owned a bicycle because I hardly ever got out to ride (or hike or surf or whatever fun) just because weekends were the only time to do it and by then I was exhausted from working all week. Oh, and snowboarding cost tons more because I always had to by weekend lift tickets (way more expensive than weekday) and fight the crowds.

There are several paths to lifestyle design. Not everyone wants an adventure-filled busy traveling life like I do (I still plan to buy a VW bus in the future to become truly mobile with). Maybe you actually enjoy your 9-5 job and that is fine as well. Whatever it is you enjoy, that's what you should do. We only get one life and the whole idea of making it your own has been so far suppressed in society, people don't even know it's possible. But once you realize it is, you can start forming everything you do around designing it how you want it. It won't happen overnight. I was stuck in my corporate job for 5 years before I jumped out (and that was an intensive 5 years of researching and learning and experimenting and educating myself just to be able to do it). But if you figure out what path you want to go down, you can make it happen.

Currently, I live a block from the water in Venice Beach. I was sleeping in as late as I wanted every day (and therefore staying up as late as I wanted) until I picked up a flight student who flies in the mornings. But even that isn't until 9am, so I'm still not up that early. The rest of my day outside of flying is totally free. I either work, go to the gym, take the dogs to the beach, ride my bike, meet friends for lunch or tv marathons, talk on the phone, whatever I want to do. Except for Thursdays, I spend my afternoon writing my weekly BP blog :) Literally, that's my only deadline in life- my BP blogs. I do not watch the news because it's incredibly negative, I don't listen to or read negative things, as far as I know there is no bad in the world and everyone is really nice. I'm currently looking at plane tickets to go hang out in Atlanta sometime this summer and I can literally search fares for an entire month for the cheapest because it doesn't matter when I go or how long I stay. I'm going on an Alaskan cruise in late August and I didn't have to ask anyone for time off.

Longest post I've ever written, but you hit my favorite topic ;)

Oh, and since this is a real estate forum, I can address the real estate side real fast. I own rental properties and I use a property manager so that the properties in no way impede on any part of my life mentioned above. I don't have time or desire to deal with stress, so I leave landlording out of the equation. Very much the minority here on BP in that department, but I wouldn't change it for the world!

Here's to lifestyle design! I dare someone to tell me I'm doing something wrong :)