All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Mertens

I totally agree with you that this should be taught much much earlier. But unfortunately, it's not being done yet and is definitely a systematic problem, but that's a whole other conversation.

I also agree that College is way too expensive and that you can use that money somewhere else, like investing in your first property.

While you can learn about health online, I'd be cautious though, since there is a lot of contrasting information out there and a lot of "health claims" are being made that are based on nothing and are actually damaging on your health. It's actually something I'm addressing with my business.

@Joshua Milam I'm going to come in from a totally different perspective here. While I truly believe it's important to learn skills that will benefit him in his real estate career, a lot of that can be learned through experience and having a good mentor that will walk him through every step of the way while he's already doing it. 

However, there's a lot that will come his way in real estate (as we all now) and then it's very easy to stop taking care of yourself. As a result, your health will drop and that can have major consequences, not only to your personal life, but also to your real estate business. So, my advice is this: He could really benefit from doing a major in nutrition, health education, etc. so that he will know how to stay healthy and on top of his energy while working in his real estate business. 

I hope this was helpful! 

@Dolev Zaharony I had it recently that my brother wanted to buy himself into one of our investment properties. Doing so, he would also be added to the mortgage (logically). After handing in all the necessary documents with the mortgage lender and the notary to get it finalized, the mortgage lender literally said 'No.' for the only reason that he lived in another country. We live in Europe and our investment properties are in the Netherlands. My brother literally lives 15 minutes away from the property, there's just the border with Belgium in between... 

So, we simply ended up doing a refinance with another mortgage lender who didn't mind that he lived abroad. It even got us a better interest rate as well. 

Now, obviously this is a very different situation and different criteria will apply here in Europe compared to the USA. But what I just want to say is that it might benefit you to go to other financial institutions, explain your situation and see if they are willing to help you out. 

@Shane Burlingame That's amazing to read! Indeed, it is such a game changer when you start caring about what you put in your body and too many people just don't realize that yet. I hope that with my post, I managed to maybe make one person aware of the importance of a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Especially their nutrition! Thank you for your kind words!

@Steven Foster Wilson Thanks for sharing the article. It's an interesting read. 

While I'm not vegetarian or vegan myself, I do center my diet largely around fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes. So, I'm a big proponent of plant-based food! 

@Sandra Kraus Thank you for your reply. I couldn't agree more with your first sentence, where you say "We get so busy trying to build wealth not realizing that our health is the most important thing in allowing us to achieve this goal." 

I'm happy to read your story as well and that you've seen great results! Exercising with friends is indeed the best way to make sports fun! And it sounds like healthy food is also a priority to you. Congratulations on losing 25+ lbs!

@Scott Trench Thank you so much for your kind words! And yeah, I agree with everything that you're saying. Health is something that people often overlook in pursuit of other goals. But no one realises the potential consequences of that, myself included until some years ago. Not anymore! 

Hi BP family, I wanted to share something that is dear to my heart and I hope you get something out of it. My apologies that it is not about real estate. 

It's about my story with an autoimmune disease. 

As a young kid and especially as a teenager, I never really cared too much about what I was eating. The more meat, the better. The more crisps and chocolate, the better. Could I have some candy with that, please? And don’t forget the soda!

Now, my mom always took a strong stand on us (my siblings and I) eating enough fruit and vegetables and I thank her for that today. However, it was summer 2016, and all of a sudden, I had some weird symptoms and these symptoms didn’t go away. After a few misdiagnoses, I finally got the verdict: Ulcerative Proctitis.

For the first few years, I didn’t think much it. I just had the label, but the symptoms didn’t bother me so much. With my medication, I actually didn’t have any symptoms at all and I also started to eat pretty healthy. Until I slacked off again, that is.

Fast forward to December 2019 and January 2020. My symptoms were worse than they’ve ever been. I felt terrible all the time and I couldn’t eat anything without getting a massive reaction and being completely out for a few hours. I received a change in medication and started taking my diet seriously again. This worked wonders and I got the disease back under control! 

About 1.5 weeks ago, I received a colonoscopy to determine the progression of the disease. I was anxious the whole week leading up to the colonoscopy, because I was honestly afraid that it had gotten a little worse again.

The results came in, and… NOTHING. As if I had never been sick!

I was so relieved. And on my doctor’s advice, I could immediately cut back my medication from 6x/week to 3x/week.

While my medication definitely helped me to take control over my condition, I strongly believe that my healthy diet took it to the next level. I don’t know if I will ever be able to completely stop taking medication, but this surely is a huge motivation for me to keep going!

It truly shows me how powerful a healthy, balanced diet can be. And it’s my wish to help a lot of people take control over their diet, so that they don’t have to go through what I’ve been through.

What are your thoughts? Do you believe in the powerful effect of a healthy, balanced diet?

There was already great advice here in the other posts! Ultimately, it depends on what you feel is the right thing to do. 

Personally, in this situation, I would probably buy them a small $40-50 electric oven in a local store, so that they could still heat up a pizza or so if they wanted to. Afterwards, you could always resell it on FB Marketplace or Ebay or so, or keep it, or have them keeping it. 

Hi @Schneur Sanowicz, this sounds like an incredible opportunity! It's great money, that you could save up and then invest in your own properties in a few years. On top of that, you will get a great experience that will help you in the rest of your RE career and you will get to know a lot of people in the industry that will make it much more easy for you to start investing in RE in the future. 

You could literally do this job for 3 years, be 24 years old, and start investing in great opportunities that will pay you out for the rest of your life. So, I would definitely take it.