All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Its only complicated if you dont have money and are trying to get fancy. Millions of people who have never heard of BP or all the acronyms just go out and buy a second home and rent it out. It would be good if you can do basic math to figure out if you will make money or not doing it but other than that its no different than buying a house to live in. Now when you try to "house hack" your way with "OPM" into a "BRRRR" situation it may get a bit hairy.

So the world is collapsing, the evil UN and Global Conspiracy will take over everything. Hell, even Sauron will rise again. Meanwhile as long as we have bitcoins, some land and maybe some self storage units, we should all be just fine. Okay. Got it.

 I suggest a Monte Carlo analysis with all possible use case scenarios. After all, future tenants may take 33 minute showers at 7.21 pm you know. :-)

 Great advice for most people. Most Debt really is bad. Even in Real Estate investing, debt is a tool but many people take it too far. I dont think his advice for buying rentals with cash is realistic nor the idea of a 15 year mortgage for most people. But getting a mortgage and paying it off is a good thing. Constantly leveraging is highly risky. His stock market investing advice is good in general (buy and hold funds) but lousy in specifics (load funds, the mythical 11% "average" return) and his projections for how rich someone will be if they just do that is quite wrong. But on the other hand if the idea is to just get people to save and invest money, following his advice is better than doing nothing or blowing your income on new cars every 3 years. So all in all he is more good than bad for 99% of his listening audience. I dont care for his Evangelism or politics but I mostly ignore that part.

You have to decide what your life strategy is going to be. You want to live the high life and retire early. You want the big house and the car even while carrying large amounts of consumer debt. The 401k loan is simply stealing your future income and spending it today. Thats it. The car is paying 7% interest on a depreciating asset. No matter how high your income (which BTW can disappear in a day) you can't " out earn your stupidity" (not my quote but I like it). What I mean is your decisions so far show that you are not that smart with your money decisions today. That is what will make the difference in the long run. Not a townhouse in Texas.

I see a lot of risks in buying property in foreign countries (with the exception of a few). 

1. Legal recourse. If something goes wrong in the US, the courts function (more or less, and very slow but still). In a foreign country the legal system will be opaque and not accessible to you at all. You will be ripped off even by the lawyers. There are exceptions. For example Singapore. But exceptions are few and far between

2. I would not buy property in a country I dont have a permanent right to live in. Like preferably Citizenship but at the very least a permanent resident status. Covid showed how borders can be shut. Malaysia dramatically changed its retirement visa income requirements. 

3. I would not buy in a country I have no other ties to. But say you have a spouse from another country who understands the system, has family there etc, then maybe. Of course she can probably walk away with that property but then you have bigger problems anyway.

I play tennis 2 to 3x per week and have a personal trainer 2x per week. I just turned 57 but feel (and some say look) better than I have in the last 20 years. I also get 8 to 9 hours of sleep every night and try (TRY) to eat healthier than I used to. Im enjoying life too much to have the good years cut short by illness or disability. 

 I agree with everything you say and meant no disrespect. And I never assumed anything about your financial status. I am sure you are super successful. I have great respect for people who make it from nothing and you are right, if you dont have capital that's the only way to do it. I do apologize if my post came off the wrong way or sounded arrogant. I just wanted to point out there are multiple models of success (and even more models of failure). 

I think your post talks to a large subset of wannabe investors who dont have any real capital to invest but want to get in the game as taught by scammy seminars and uneducated Tik Tok videos. Many in my circle (including me) hardly know what end of the screwdriver you hold and yet have invested and made 6 and 7 figures in real estate. So there is another class of investor, those with cash, access to credit and ability to pay others to do their dirty work. Now that's not to say owning rentals is passive. There is still a lot of work to do, but the smart and successful ones set up the right systems and people and are willing to accept the price to pay others to do tasks they dislike. As it says in the E-Myth: "Work on your business not in it".

Just because you USED to live in a place doesn't mean its your primary residence forever. Local governments do have definitions for Primary residence. Think about tax laws and property tax rates. There is a difference between homeowners and investors. Local governments have long distinguished between the two even before airbnb. By your own admission you moved out and rented another place to make your primary home a STR. So you are on the wrong side of the law (whether you like the law or not) and the city has a right to enforce the law. Im not saying the law is good or bad. I have mixed feelings. I wouldn't want my neighbor to make his home a STR but I like having STR options when I travel. Your choice is to keep or sell the property. Im sure Denver prices have shot up like other desirable cities. You can sell and 1041 the gains into other states where laws are more to your liking. But STR will always carry huge regulation risk which most people ignore at their peril.