All Forum Posts by: Jordan Northrup

Clyde, thank you for sharing your perspective and experience on this. I agree that we must work together if this is going to work. How have you and your wife worked through trivial matters? Let me give you a scenario...I'm looking for my first deal and think I found a property that meets my ROI numbers and I want to move forward. She's bought into my vision and thinks the property is good to go, so we start looking at financing options. I want to get several quotes from banks/lending institutions, but she wants to interview no less than 15 banks and 5 credit unions and go back and forth with each one and pit them against each other in a "rate/closing cost war" to get the absolute best price. Then she wants to research realtors and interview them one by one so she can ensure we're getting the best representation. Meanwhile the property own has already sold to another investor because he came to the table with hard money and no fussing. Now my wife and I have nothing to show for it but a lot of frustration.

How do a married couple establish who's in charge and who's running the business?  Scenarios like the one above will bleed a business dry.

Hello all,

I came across the BiggerPockets community as a way to educate myself in REI before taking the big plunge and looking for my first deal. My wife and I have very stable, well paying jobs in the Washington DC metro area, but we've made the decision we want to take charge of our financial futures instead of continually trading time for dollars like our families do. We realize this will be a slow and methodical process, but we believe this is the way forward.

Here's where our paths diverge.  I'm a "big picture" guy who has a vision and creates plans and goes after them with intensity.  My military training has taught me to come up with a plan, even if not perfect, and execute it with 100% intensity and be flexible enough to adjust direction and tackle problems in the moment.  My wife is a perfectionist and gets mired in the details, treating every piece of information with equal weight.  She usually requires extensive research and analysis before making simple decisions because she doesn't want to be wrong.  A complete, 100% plan covering all "what-ifs" must be written and vetted before taking action.  Sometimes a decision cannot be made and we get stuck in analysis paralysis.  

You can already see the problems just over the horizon. We agree on the goal, but how to get there? I'd be very interested to hear peoples' thoughts on how they integrated REI with the personal side of things and lived to tell about it.