Quote from @Bill B.:
@Cody Thayer
Check your amortization table. Even if you kick in the $350/mo you’re probably paying off more than that on your loan, so you are not “losing money” (once it’s rented.)
I had a property with a negative cashflow of almost $800/mo because I wanted a 15 year mortgage on an expensive (to me) property. It lowered th internet rate more than 1/2% and saved me more than $500/mo in interest. I was also paying off $2,600/mo in principle. So I was kicking in $800/mo and the tenant was kicking in $1,800/mo. With a 30 year mortgage it probably would have basically broke even on cashflow but I’d still have 20 years of payments left. Now that it’s paid off with rent increases it brings in $3,000/mo cashflow by itself. If you have a decent job cashflow of plus or minus $300/mo isn’t life changing. Getting enough paid off properties to stop working is. You haven’t made any bad choices yet.
People have no problem dropping $1,000/mo in to their retirement accounts with no cashflow, this is your retirement account.
That is a really good point Bill! I will say this, and it’s going to sound very ignorant of me. There are a lot of tools out there that I think I’m missing, such as an amortization table. I don’t have any guidance from friends/family, which is fine, but I’m learning everything from asking questions like this. Do you have a good resource(s) for me to research and pull these tools/tables from? It would help me with the math and margins where I struggle with naturally lol