All Forum Posts by: Kevin M.

@Natalie Reese Portland and Seattle are great places for STRs. Portland has a reputation for being the place, young people go to retire. Portland market has been strong for quite some time. Another great place is Tacoma, WA.

Yes. You don't have to get a person to hand you the money in their pockets outright. Now you can have them hand you their time. 

@Jay Hinrichs Hamilton is really nice in the summer. Since I have been here I haven’t done much fishing but I did get to snowboard around some of the best and smallest resorts in Montana. Some are not even on the map.

Montana is in no way cheap. I would say prices have gone up 40% since I have been here. Portland seems to have flattened out but I am sure I am just reading the listings. I don’t doubt there are not a ton of multiple offers over there.

As far as not going to college and doing a trade?

As @Shiva Bhaskar said having that incredible debt looming over your head didn’t seem worth it to me. I aced math in High School and in Junior High I won awards for Metal and Woodshop.

I watched a YouTube video of a guy who saved his house from flooding in Houston with a giant bike tire around his house he inflated with water before a hurricane. It was 3 feet high. I found the company who sold it to him and it was a High School redneck kid from Kentucky with a mullet selling them for $12K. I think he was selling like 3 a month. So I guess my point is you can go to college but as with anything results may vary.

In the future, I see once the foreigners learn English the sky is the limit. They won’t need an education they have something many Americans lack, questioning things. Anyone who has been to a foreign country knows in other countries people like to barter. In the US people accept the price. Often people will look to pay more even if the cheap one is the superior product. Because of this millennials just accept their fate.

@Roger Steciak there is no such thing as news anymore from a media company. News is what your buddy found out while he was there. Media Companies are full of Wordsmiths. A Wordsmith is someone who opens there mouth to spin a circle of information around you to keep you engaged. Then they just put advertisement before it and get paid. The anchors are the “pretty people” reading what the Wordsmith typed up for them on the teleprompter. Wordsmiths would have PhDs in Psychology, Sociology and Political Science.

@Thomas S. it’s about engagement. Video game creators hire psychologist now to design games based on demographic profiles (everything from gameplay to colors on the screen). With the big data they can know you better than you know yourself. When AI takes over 2040ish it’ll be hands off. The companies that run the show and manipulate the data will be companies we never even heard of.

In the future someone will watch the movie Idiocracy and think the same thing Jay said about the song 2525.

@Peter Sanchez “I don't blame millennials for not working themselves to death to get "More" and not knowing why.”

I do somewhat agree with that statement. It’s kind of the other side of the coin. And a harsh reality check. Waiting until you are 65 to have free time? When you’re 65 how much “fun” are you going to have? 10 years of some activity, then 5 in a wheel chair and 5 years of pooping your pants and people being overly kind to you because you can’t remember where the kitchen is.

@Thomas S. Trump said it right, not enough people in the trades. If I could do it all over I would have told my parents to politely FO. I wanted to be a mechanic. The stigma associated with trades and the generational acceptance of the path to wealth is get a degree and work that 40 hour x 52 week a year job for 40 years and get that pension is so ingrained in peoples heads is what you're seeing. Graduated college in 2000. I tried buying my first duplex in 2001 (Pawtucket, RI) and talking to my parents about their mortgage or asking my dad who was a Master Electrician in addition to being a cop to help me come inspect it, he was in no way interested. They were not interested or even willing to help. His reply was, go do it. We didn't have BP back then. And thus I never pusued it. When 9/11 happened I lost my first engineering job, before it happened I knew my job was not a 40 year job, industrial engineers were basically hired consultants. Once peak performance is achieved they would think, why are we still paying you? Of course until the next time they are wasting $800k a year. After 9/11 I was laid off and no one was hiring because companies were in shock. There was a huge cutback to see what would happen. Meanwhile my parents wanted me out of the house and rents were going up. So I continued to work crap jobs for sometime and live at home.

But hopefully you can see the mindset. I felt trapped. My parents wanted my to leave but they didn't want me to go too far. If I could go back first off I would have learned a trade that can be applied in any town, any city instead of going to college to sit behind a desk for 40 years, and instead of going the military route I would have packed my car and filled up my tank and drove until I ran out of gas. Cities only make up 2% of the American landmass. I was bound to find a cheaper place to live where I could wash dishes if I needed to and still pay rent. Then and only then, once I had some cash, then I could move back to where the action is and invest. Or stay where homes are cheaper. The point is move. I loved the movie Boiler Room and Ben Affleck gives a great speech in it. He is training new employees and he says "motion creates emotion" he is talking about getting out of the chair stand up and move around on the call. Millennials need to move around, and I am not talking about go tour southeast Asia and post on Instagram. That's cool and all but you can't invest or sometimes live there so while it's an experience it is also an expense and when you get back here your problem will be here to greet you when you return.

Millennials are stuck in this mindset driven by their parents to live close and the instant satisfaction they get that comes from the big cities where the action is. Bearly making rent. They are not concerned about the future. I mean with global warming and cow farts and the crash coming they will be alright. Bernie Sanders will be President we can let in the immigrants and they will still be able to provide me with free top notch health care.

Bottom line is people (millennials) are much more interested in being entertained than worrying about finances. Finance is BORING. The options of entertainment are now limitless because we have the internet. You don't see masses of people watching how to videos. The masses are concerned with keeping up with Paul Logan. There are leaders and there are followers, and there are get out of the wayers. As the masses follow the "leaders" it creates new opportunities for those who are looking.

@Joseph Weisenbloom why don't you take her application over the messages? name/ phone / address / ss# etc.. and run a background check? At least you'll have something to give to authorities to look into... and don't cash the check until she shows up at your door to sign the lease. The interest on that money, $5,600, is what until she shows up? $5.60, and the background check is what, $30? How many tenants are looking for that room? Can you hold it until the date she asks? If the background check is all FUBAR and doesn't sound right then don't hold the room at all. If the background check is screwy you can hand her information over to authorities and you now have an address to send your letter for a $30 reimbursement or threaten her with mail fraud and hand all her info to the United States Postal Inspector and Alaska State Police. If she even is from Alaska? Remember the US Postal Inspector has as much and maybe more authority than the FBI. However this all has to do with time management.

A good rule of thumb is if you have to ask you already know the answer.

I'm sorry if anyone invested there but I might have noticed this coming when a paper had showed up at my door one day asking for a $40 art tax from each residence of Portland proper.

I found the venue to be very entertaining. However the $7 water was killing me. I can buy two cases of water at Costco for $7. However I needed a vacation. I did meet some great people. And Grant Cardone is a pretty good guy.

Arizona? Get a CHL. Arizona is one of the most gun friendly states in the Union. I recommend a .38 because it's small with little recoil but a 9mm is a great defensive round. Of course checking IDs etc... is always the best prevention. I am not a REA but I can empathize. I've sold a fair amount of things on Craigslist.

One angle that might help is you have the pet option. I have been thinking about smaller Multi in places with huge Multi-Facilities and you have to think some of those bigger facilities offer dogs of a certain size and weight. They seem to favor the little lapdogs over the full size breeds. Well not everyone is Paris Hilton. Just something to think about.