Cementing a Loving Legacy with Real Estate Investment

“I've got some terrible news.”

When that is the first thing your mom’s doctor tells you as he calls from the hospital you know you are in for a life changing phone call.

You see my mom had had trouble breathing that morning, so she texted my brother and I that she was going to the hospital. I made it to her house in time to see the EMTs take her away and at the hospital they found blood clots in her lungs. The hospital told us they were running diagnostics, completing a COVID test and would update us. Through the day, the updates from the nurses looked promising. The COVID test came back negative and my mom remained in good spirits. We would be able to visit tomorrow. Her condition started to deteriorate that evening, however, and the doctors began to ask her about if she were willing to be intubated while they could help get her breathing back to a more acceptable level. She asked the doctor about the odds of survival after they reviewed her end-of-life decision making wishes. The doctor told her that there was probably a 70% chance that she would make it out of that procedure. Apparently, the last words she said to the doctor were with a confident smile, “I'm going to make it.”

Sadly, despite my mom’s strength of will and profound determination to do anything she set her mind to, she did not make it and now I received the call that stared with the dreaded words from her doctor, “I've got some terrible news.”

When you hear those words from a doctor it is kind of like when a bomb goes off in the movies. Your ears start ringing, you lose sense of time and place, and any words you hear are that muted garble that always follow the explosion in the movies as the star’s vision comes back into focus. I could not tell you much about what the doctor said after that. I remember repeatedly whispering “No” as he summarized what happened, I remember thanking him for all that he did for her, and I remember the two words I said to my wife as she anxiously asked about what was being said on the other side of the phone, “She’s dead.”

As a quick aside, grief has always brought regrets about the person I have lost, and those words are among my regrets. I don’t know why I believe I should have mustered more in that moment. Perhaps it is because I feel I should have done more to soften the blow to my wife, or maybe I feel I should have honored my mother more with my initial response, but whatever the reason is, I feel as if I should have done better. Grief is an interesting and fickle thing.

What the heck does this have to do with real estate investing or Bigger Pockets? In two words – Nothing. Everything. You see, I am a big fan of Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle and if I expect anyone to devote any of their time to reading what I write or getting to know me, I feel an obligation to start that journey with an unvarnished “Why?” In short, my mom’s legacy is the purpose of this investment of my time, energy, and money. In my professional life as an estate and multigenerational tax planning attorney, I find it is easy to get lost in numbers, figures, deals, costs, and all the things this community can burn the midnight oil analyzing. Because of that, it is important for me to get clients back to what brought them to a given moment, back to their central mission and purpose, and back to what standard they hold themselves accountable to. In other words, through the craziness of life and death, of wins and losses, you must center yourself on a single priority and evaluate everything from that priority or else the experience will be for nothing. So, the standard I am setting for myself is to always recenter myself on my mom’s core values – love, compassion, and giving.

You see, my mom worked very hard her entire life. She rose to fairly high level in pharmaceutical research after starting her working career as a gym teacher. She was a good person and treated people, including me, better than they often deserved. Her biggest fault was lying for the benefit of other people. After I got married, my wife and I agreed to let my mom use her frequent flier miles to fly us to our Hawaiian honeymoon. She insisted, despite all the common sense and fact that was thrown at her, that upon hearing the reason for which she was making the reservations, the airline gave us a free upgrade to first class. You and I both know that didn't happen, but good luck getting my mom to budge an inch on that story. Shoot, she probably didn't use any of her miles, come to think of it! My mom loved to commune in love and kindness, even if she had to fib to get there.

To submit my mom's legacy, therefore, I need – and I use the word need with all the heaviness it can muster – to create a factory of money and the freedom that comes with it in order to be available to those that I love, that she loved, and that love me. Now, money is not everything. In fact, a lot of times in life money is nothing. None of my mom's money could save her life. All the saving that she had done meant nothing when she began to crash. What my mom’s money can do now is ensure that I never miss a recital or parent teacher conference. My mom’s legacy can allow my son to start his business and to do all the things we want to do as a family.  While money is not the goal, it can be the means to achieving the goal.

However, my mom’s legacy would be left to the elements if all I pursued was the unqualified maximization of cash flow or net worth. I am in a position where I cannot put the financial independence horse in front of the ethos that rides in my mom’s cart. So, my goal in real estate investing is to create a set of properties that provides steady income to me and my family while also giving back to the community in a way that would make my mom's heart swell with pride. I have been inspired by Bigger Pockets members who have invested in workforce and attainable housing and I hope to help use that type of housing to help people with mental health, addiction, or joblessness issues get back on their feet. I am looking to invest in solid industrial properties leased by tenants who employ those in my community so we can ensure our entire community inherits the solid work ethic, caring, and industriousness that my mom left us.

So, there it is. My “why” story. I hope to bring you all along on this journey through my blog here and I look forward to getting to know many of you and your “why” stories as our paths cross. As far as deals and pace go, my standard will to always pursue the right deals and not the right number of deals. I am currently working my way through “Essentialism” by recent Bigger Pockets Podcast guest Greg McKeown and was stunned by the idea that Warren Buffett generated 80% of his wealth from just 10 of his investment decisions. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take that level of wealth in exchange for making less, but better, investment choices. In the next of my weekly posts, I’ll detail my vivid vision for my portfolio and lay out just where I see things going for me in my effort to cement my mom’s tremendous legacy for myself, my son, our community.