Lifestyles Unlimited, Inc vs. Biggerpockets - Which is the best bang for your buck

[Donald Hendricks]

I got this screenshot from an email that I got today.

For those of you that don't know, Lifestyles Unlimited is an investor "mentoring" group out of Texas that boast of worldwide membership.  The also have a daily hour long "radio show", which is actually a paid advertisement, on numerous radio stations and can be heard in podcast format as well.  They have three levels of membership that they constantly are trying to upgrade you to in a series of sales pitches.   The lowest level, the Financial Freedom Membership is $500 for the first 2 years (can't buy 1 year) and $250 each year after.  The other 2 membership levels are below.  The Challenge is for single family investors and the Preferred is for multi-family.  They prohibit challenge members from participating in any multi-family group deals, even if only as a passive investor.

If you don't know what BiggerPockets is, uhhh... Well, you are here,, take a look around and join in, it is FREE!!!  If you care to upgrade to take advantage of some of the extras, the PLUS membership is $90.00 a year and the PRO membership is $290.00 a year.

Lets compare:

$8000.00  vs. $90.00 a year = 88.888888 years of BiggerPockets PLUS membership

$18000.00 vs. $290.00 a year = 62.086 years of BiggerPockets PRO membership

Lifestyles Unlimited is open 8-5 mon-fri with limited staff to assist you to answer your questions.

BiggerPockets is open 24/7/365 with over 200,000 members available to answer your questions.

You decide.

[Lee Reeves]

@Nick B., did you not invite me to respond to your request for more information, and that you were considering joining LU?  Was that true, or were you just looking for a target to attack?  (That's the way it feels, buddy.)

I can't speak for any patterns you see in other people's posts on BP.  Can only speak for myself - feels odd to say, but since the implication was made regarding my post, yes I'm a real person, a real investor, don't have all the answers (but am getting more of them every day), a member of LU (but nothing more), etc.  Unlike you, Nick, my profile is available to anyone to see and my whole name is posted.  You can look me up on LinkedIn, Facebook or anything else.  

Happy to share my experience, which is all I was trying to do.  Since you noted a pattern you saw, I'll note one too:  whenever someone who is a member of LU is invited to share their experience or success and they do, they get attacked.  I've seen it in other forums and I was on the receiving end here.  

It's like some folks see an either/or here:  you are either a member of LU -or- a member of BP.  Well, I don't think they're mutually exclusive.  I think BP is a cool website and I sometimes read the articles and posts and get good ideas.  But the truth is - and this may be why LU members don't often post here - I don't need BP since I get answers to all of my questions through LU mentors or the folks I have met through LU.  (And with the latter, I'm at least assured of not being attacked.)  If other folks want to be members of BP and attend the free workshops and case studies at LU, fine by me - at least they've availed themselves of the information.  I'm more comfortable being a member of LU and a free member of BP.

That's a long lead in to saying that I'm not sure I want to subject the details of my deals to your scrutiny.  For what?  So you can pick them apart?  That said, I'm happy to talk about what I've done privately to anyone who is interested.  I did present the details of both deals about a month ago to members of LU.  And I send a comprehensive report of the financials to my investors each month, who are very happy about how we're proceeding.  Both are hybrid-value plays (some cash on cash return during the hold period, larger return on a sale or refi due to increase of value) and both are being stabilized currently.  As they are 14 and 26 units respectively, I do not support my family from the distributions or management fee.  I expect to be able to do so with larger acquisitions in the future, having gained experience acquiring, rehabbing and operating both of these.

Fire away.