All Forum Posts by: DL Martin

Hey Micheal;

i have a 39 unit in Cincinnati. Although each unit is a 1/1, no two units are alike. Basement units rent for less than 1 and 2 story units. Rehab'd units rend for more than un-rehab'd units. Some units would take much more time/money to return to rentable condition should the current tenant move out, so when those rents get raised, they are raised less than units which I know would be quick to re-lease. Some tenants are not as pleasant to deal with. Those renters see bigger and more frequent increases as the property continues to stabilize and/or improve.  and on and on and on...

Your property manager is insane. 

DL 

@John Miller

1. What is the material on the walls? 

2. Is the ceiling coffer a kit, or custom made? How many labor hours would you estimate are in that structure?

3. What is the width of that shower? 

4. Is the shelving unit in the shower (for soaps/shampoos) a store bought item or was that also custom by the tile setter? Its hard to tell from the photo because of the distance. 

We are preparing to rehab the master bath at our house and I really like what you did on everything!

DL

I highly recommend MileIQ. 

If for no other reason, the annual printout of every single business related drive is worth the cost. For instance, this month (Jan 2018), I already have 70 business drives (and 24 personal drives).  In 2017 my mileage deduction was $4,851. In 2016 my mileage deduction was $5,650.

How do I know that? Because the App tracks every single drive in every single month. 

Should you be audited, this information will be golden. Further, for people like me who claim Real Estate Professional, this information makes it very plain to any potential auditor that I am engaging in real estate stuff non-stop. 

An hour ago I shot over to my apartments to check on the three boiler temperatures. That drive was logged and shows that on a Sunday evening at 7:30 pm, I was engaging in active landlord/property management activity.

Document. Document. Document. 

DL

 : )   

Add "being able to stay in the neighborhood where I grew up" on to the list of inalienable rights. 

DL

are you referring to the "indoor/outdoor bulb" thermostat? $700 each? if so, i have three of them...

Haven't really had any winter bills yet to compare to last year. November was super warm, so the thermostats had the boilers turned down to zero on many days.

DL

I think that you should allow $800-$1,200 per month for health insurance premiums. 

When I retired three years ago, I "planned on" $1,200 per month in California. We moved to Ohio and ended up paying about $700 per month the first year, $800 the second year and a little over $900 per month in 2018. 

Would be nice if the public university system in the US would put an end to liberal arts education and instead use that money to create medical schools all over the place so that we could pump out doctors and nurses like crazy. 

I imagine we could drive down the cost of health care in this country if we could double or triple the number of doctors and quadruple the number of RN's. 

Probably best to leave the art and history degrees to private colleges...

Stupidity. We have done it to ourselves. 

DL

(I wasted 4 years of my life obtaining a political science degree. I am an idiot.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaK93IfBqmU

the gopher-nator

Central Machinery® - Item#93245

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Magnetic sweeper picks up nails, screws and other metal objects over shop floors, carpet and grass

use a 20% digital coupon (on your phone). 

Its not just the roofers with the nails. drywall screws find their way onto the driveway and garage floors...

picking up nails and screws sucks , but so does puncturing tires in my personal vehicles...I leave this thing on my box truck so that it is handy.

DL

I'll agree to read The Millionaire Next Door (again) if you promise to get your act together and provide for your family so that your wife can stay home and take care of your kids. 

The Millionaire Next Door also drives an F150 pickup truck. Do you drive an F150? If not, why not??? Maybe that's why your not a millionaire? 

For my entire adult life I was an inner city ghetto street cop. Between my regular shifts, overtime and court appearances, I worked between 50 and 60 hours a week... Nights, Holidays and for several years, every single weekend, until I gained enough seniority to have Fri Sat and Sun off. I did that for 25+ years.  My wife was a stay at home mom. She also did all of the book keeping/taxes for our little Buy and Hold rental business that I worked at on my days off. I did that for over twenty years. 

The payoff? A big, fat, happy California Public Pension paycheck every month for the rest of my life and a 39 unit apartment complex with a monthly mortgage smaller than The Grinch's tiny, shriveled up heart. 

Fast forward to today. 

We seem to be financially set. Even though "we didn't live like misers" in SoCal.  Along the way I've used and abused seven (7) Porsches. My Stay at Home wife drove BMW after BMW after BMW. We are now "retired" and she "owns" (not leases) an X5 Sport twin turbo. During the "crash" in 2008, we custom built a large home in SoCal for under $600k and when we fled California in 2015 we sold it for... "quite a bit" more than that. "They" all said that we were stupid for building during the crash. I wanted a super nice home for my family to live in. I suspected that we might make a few bucks on it when we sold it but I really didn't care. I needed a nice home for my family. Having nice stuff is worth it to some people. But I didn't have to send my wife off to a job every morning in order to pay for our "stuff" OR to pay for our "retirement."  I figured it out. I paid for it. She supported me, but I paid for it. 

The Millionaire Next Door had some good points but I gleaned nothing from that book that added to my entrepreneurial or investing skillset. As a matter of fact, my biggest take away from the book when I read it nearly 20 years ago, was that private schools are a waste of money. Simply buy a house in an excellent public school district. Boom. Use that private school tuition money to invest in Real Estate. or Bitcoin?

Please, before you pontificate on the financial ineptness of high income earners and high net worth individuals, please get to know a few of them. Believe it or not, generally speaking, they are not idiots/jackasses. 

Handle your business. Let your wife stay home and love on your kids. 

DL 

No. 

The Surgeon's wife is a stay at home mom. The Surgeon is wealthy.

The web designer can't even afford to raise his own kids so he has to send his wife to work. 

Further, the Surgeon has incremental ownership in his Surgery and Rehab Center so he is earning both W2 income and business income, along with the tax advantages that come with it. 

The web designer won't let his wife quit her teaching job because the greedy web designer wants the teacher's health insurance and teacher's public employee pension. 

Now, tell me again who is wealthy?

DL

p.s. two of my closest friends here in Cincinnati are MD's. One a surgeon, the other an ER doc. BOTH are partners in their Medical Groups, both of their wives are Stay At Home Mom's. Trust me when I say that they have pretty nice lives.