All Forum Posts by: Leanne J.

Can’t compare ACH versus Cozy.co but I can tell you that depending on your bank, you can receive deposits without ever giving your account number. Bank of America, for example, uses your phone number of record or your email of record. I’ve found it very convenient when exchanging money with my family.

Tim Porsche Good on you for being a human being!!! Life happens to good people. My ex-husband and I paid our rent 4 months in advance because we didn’t have steady income and wanted to make sure we didn’t worry about being on the street every month. That’s called foresight and responsibility. When we got divorced, the only reason I wasn’t in this woman’s shoes is because I paid the bills. If I’d depended on my husband to pay them, as so many women (and sounds like this one) do, I’d have been in her boat, too. She has 1700 a month and is giving you 795. That leaves her $900 a month to live. Utilities are probably $250 so $750 for everything else. One individual can live ok on $750 a month. Ultimately, you’re the one taking the risk and it’s you’re decision so you got to do what you feel you can sleep with at night. If it were me, I’d ask for a letter of recommendation from her lawyer. If s/he validated what she is telling you, I’d have her sign a 1 year lease with strict penalties for breaking, take her up front rent and put it in escrow. You could also look and see what her credit was BEFORE divorce, as that would be a better indication on her proclivities to pay bills. Good luck!

My 2 cents, for what it’s worth: Even if you make 0 rate of return, your wife’s employer is handing her 3% free money plus the savings on tax rate by lowering your taxable income. I’m not good on the maths, but isn’t that 100% return on investment? If you’re afraid the market will crash again, be conservative and put it in low risk buckets. You’ve still been given 100% of your initial investment! So maybe you have $3k less a year to spend on investment, but how likely is that to break you or end your ability to invest if you’re both working? There are people in this country that spend that much on coffee...

If you can pay it off in 2 years, your other 2 houses are paid for, and it’s cash flowing, why are you worrying about the market cycling? Even if the market crashed tomorrow, you have one mortgage. I’m fairly new to RE, but it makes more sense to me that you’d keep using cash flow to pay the mortgage and start banking as much free cash as you can so that when the market cycles down, you can buy more properties :) if you are so inclined.

I successfully fought mine in GA 2 years ago. They wanted to assess my property at $126,000. I pulled up all the houses with similar comps, their address and price sold in my zip code and listed the 10 closest matches in a simple spreadsheet with price per square foot figured. I then determined the average price per square foot based on the 10 and multiplied that by my house’s square footage. I added a little note of explanation. My assessment is now $77k which is what I argued for. I made sure the 10 I used for comparison were as close distance wise as well. The easier it is for them to see what you want them to see, the more likely you are to win.

Seems like a win win to me.

Congrats on knowing what you want to do at so young an age! I wish I’d been that smart.

@Joseph England- First and for most, thank you for your service! And thank you for this thread. It’s been very informative and I am glad you’re picking it back up again. 

I look forward to reading more about your process and your experience. 

I’m still in the learning phase of investing so I looked at this as a renter and my issues would be: 1) it looks like there is no grass in the front yard so it’s going to be mud everywhere every time I go outside. 2) there’s almost no counter space in the kitchen to prep a meal 3) there’s not much room to maneuver around at the front door because of the white posting to the left. Am I going to get my furniture in the front? 4) it’s really dark in the house based on the pictures.

That’s an excellent point, I’ll have to think about the implications of that. I don’t have any plans of letting go of the property, but we plan and God laughs... Might not be worth the savings now to pay later if something changes.