All Forum Posts by: Andre O.

I would imagine your intuition is spot on, Steve! You hit it right on the head. The above works for me personally as I am both young and single. Perhaps in 4-5 years I’ll be very much inclined to purchase a home and settle down. Maybe find a great partner/wife and decide to start a family.

Can’t see ourselves being renters at that point as there is no need. In fact, the moment the market changes I’ll switch strategies and put capital towards a paid off home. That was the plan for this year, but all of a sudden we discovered around month 2 money became valuable again.  That’s when the long-held strategy changed. 

What an incredible deal you uncovered! Did you know what you were in for when you purchased your current home? What a great move!

A buddy of mine is in his early 30s. It’s cheaper for him to travel the world and live really well than it is to live in the states. His parents have a 5,000sq foot home in California. He visits them a few months out of the year. For the rest of the time, he’s living lavishly in Argentina, Brazil, Vietnam, Philippines, Ireland, Spain, and other places. He’s in the ecommerce business and nets about 200k annually while paying himself 4.5k monthly. This is more than enough for his needs as he’s really handy with travel mileage. Ad spend is something like 20k/month which amounts to a lot of points :-). It really does all depend on each persons unique situation.

To your point — he is looking to settle down very soon as he has recently gotten engaged. I believe they are thinking of living in Europe as his fiancé is a school teacher and a college education is free from what I understood. Settling down in a home as he ages to your point, nonetheless!

Hope I was able to reply to everything coherently as mobile has me scrolling up and down to reply. BP user interface on mobile has some areas of improvement here. Perhaps it would be better on the app if one exists.

My strategy has always been real estate first. Particularly doing it the Dave Ramsey style and paying in cash. From there large piles of expendable cash could be thrown into other investments which may include the stock market.

In reality, the markets changed. My strategy and execution followed. Have neither done the real estate or stock market play just yet. Being adaptable is important. 

The approach I’ve taken is to plow capital into treasury bills. Not only does it cover my rent, but it has given me the optionality to explore living in different locations. This was at 4.9% yield which reached maturity a few days ago.

Plowing it all back again into treasuries this week for a 26-week duration. Expecting 5.4-5.5% this time around. 

- More than covers rent 2/1.5/1 car garage 

- Provides optionality 

- Zero time/mindshare to re obligations

- Peace of mind regarding stock market volatility

- Allows complete focus to continue current cash-flowing business, while cofounding company #2.

Sharing the above to demonstrate it’s different for everyone. There is no black or white answer. Focus on what drives the most impact for your particular case.

This could even be working on your career and furthering your education. An opportunity earning low-mid-high 6 figures annually has a way of making other decisions irrelevant. Focus on what moves the needle for you, your risk tolerance, and the life you would like to live.

This will be my final post in this thread. Hope it helps others. Cheers to everybody who contributed and posted!

 Is your definition of what constitutes a true RE investor or trend investor the world-wide standard? This is how your post comes off. Your opinion isn't written in law. One can invest in real estate in any way they choose and be a RE investor. Your response feels quite rigid, as if having blinders on.

There is not one way to do things. One can earn a few hundred thousand a year and plow it into real estate and have small returns. This still makes one a RE investor. Now does it make them a true RE investor as you say? Who cares. What even is "a true RE investor"? What you think or say it is? I didn't make this post to defend myself to people who only see things in their way and from their situation and perspectives.

 You have some solid points. Coming from a different state, renting for a few months up to a year will better serve me. I have never been to Austin and all I really know is South Florida. I am happy to live rent free -- previously I was troubled with regards to renting and throwing money away. But due to the high yields on T-Bills, the possibility of renting without the feeling of throwing money away is a great benefit to me and my circumstances.

 I make my money on business and entrepreneurship. My time energy and focus is spent there. I'll gladly take ~4.7% as icing on the cake for a few mouse clicks.

Update #2 Just to Clarify:

Your yield or interest earned on capital invested is simply known as Coupon. This is the Jargon used with respect to Treasury Bills. 

Upon some further research, Yield has effectively increased from ~4.05% (HYSA) --> ~ 4.759% (8-Week T-Bill).
We should look towards the investment rate column, and not the high rate column. 
Would somebody with more experience be able to confirm or correct? Thanks!

https://www.treasurydirect.gov...

 Edit - Just moved all of my HYSA towards Purchasing 8 week T-Bills. 

Yield Increase from ~ 4.05% —> 4.66% :). 
Fun Fact: Yield or Interest Rate is simply known as Coupon with regards to Treasury Bills.

May need to treat you to a very nice dinner one day for the great information!

Respectfully James, I stopped reading after you wrote “and they will NOT”.

I’ve done enough reading on that other thread with 100+ pages and for me personally, it’s difficult reading a post where one uses caps lock on many parts of the post to emphasize a point. 

This is just something on my end I don’t enjoy and not a fault of yours. At the end of the day I am not interested in arguing. I have my convictions and you have yours. None of us here are hurting financially. Best wishes 

 Hi Craig, 

Returns and risk tolerance really is on an individual basis. There is no one clear answer. If working hard busting your butt for 10% returns is serving you, keep at it!

As an example, my income comes from business/being an entrepreneur. This is what I love. Parking capital on 4.5-5% returns in the meantime serves me quite well as we are no longer in growth-stage at the moment. But for you this may not be the right answer.

My reasoning ties into the philosophy of capping the downside aka mitigate risk to put myself in a position where I am able to place large bets in my entrepreneurial endeavors. If those bets go to 0, it’s ok as it actually really isn’t a risk. I get to start over and try again in a different endeavor, doing what I love to do in life (Whatever that entrepreneurial endeavor may be). We all have different reasons for what we do, there is no one right or wrong answer.