All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

A dropout from the prestigious London School of Economics (Michael Philip Jagger) has said on many occasions over the years: "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need."

I also grew up in a family that put a lot of value in material possession. Unfortunately, that value remained aspirational for my parents for their entire lives. The area where I grew up was declared an economic disaster zone in the 1960s by the Johnson administration and today, the area is part of the much larger Rust Belt. Cashflow management there means knowing how to run out of month before you run out of money just for the basics. Ask someone there how they would survive an economic crisis and the question you'll get back is: what's an economic crisis?

For me, money buys freedom which in turn means choices (such as I can choose to sleep in late if I want because I don't have to work for a living anymore [which gets old after a while and it becomes more fun to get up and find something interesting to do]). When I moved from the West coast to the East coast a few years ago, I had the rule if it didn't fit in the trunk of my car, I didn't bring it with me. Material possessions become a drag once you've had some because they take time and money to protect from thieves and keep clean from dust (and move when you decide to change addresses).

My heirs and beneficiaries, which mostly are charities, will be happy someday. The more money I accumulate, the more money I will have to leave to worthy causes. The better news is with my money, I don't have to wait until my body organs are available for donation. I opened a donor-advised fund and make regular donations to worthy causes that have been granted 501(c)(3) status by the IRS. My DAF lets me donate anonymously as an option, which I do so the charity doesn't have to spend the time and money to send me a thank you letter. Instead, every penny I give to the charities is used by them to continue doing their good work. I get a psychic reward out of being a Secret Santa and the DAF handles all the necessary IRS paperwork.

No, you have it all wrong. You need to splash money all over the place. Why settle for economical when you can afford luxury? Buy now and save. It's the American Way. 😄

Where do you shop? What do you buy? Let us know and if any of these businesses are publicly-traded, I'll look into buying some shares. Your spending is my income.

A popular saying on Wall Street: There are old investors and there are bold investors, but there are no old bold investors.

All of the above. Taking risk is foolish. But everything changes once you're in your fortress of solitude. 😃

If you are at work and can use headphones for privacy (highly recommended), learn what you can do once you've reached The Position of F*** You (you can even do it with index funds instead of income real estate if you want). I wish I had known this when I was starting out. My journey to financial freedom would have been quicker and smoother.

I knew a couple of people who sold all of their real estate holdings in 2006 and became renters because they saw real estate at an all-time high and ready for a major correction (one was a real estate investor and the other was an investor, but not in real estate). I know the RE investor was a fan of Bruce Norris, but I'm not sure about the non RE investor. With the benefit of hindsight, these two individuals look like geniuses.

What I don't know is where these two individuals are today. They timed the market successfully to get out, but they would have had to time the market successfully to get back in. Timing the market consistently and successfully over a long period is hard to do.

In 2007, I could tell something bad was happening from the Cashflow parties I attended. The NINJA loan period of the early 2000s attracted many new entrants into real estate (just as the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s attracted a lot of workers and venture capital into tech startups [remember pets.com and webvan.com]). People make easy money when easy financing is available. These real estate workers started showing up at the Cashflow parties and had long faces because they had either been laid off or their business income had dried up and they were looking for what they might do next to earn a living. Then the 2008 meltdown hit and things got bad all over.

I've learned to base my investment decisions on my household budget rather than on the market. If I have money to invest, I buy intelligently (at least I hope I do). If I need money, I sell some of my assets to raise the cash I need (selling a loser raises cash and creates a tax loss). I try not to overextend myself so if I'm wrong about an income-producing asset or if a large expense unexpectedly comes up, I have enough reserve cushion to ride out the storm.

I have no idea where we are in the cycle today, but since it's been so good for so long, my planning premise is the downside is more likely than the upside. I'm being cautious. Now is the time to make a shopping list of what to buy if the market pulls back. If the market doesn't pull back, then any items on the shopping list will cost more in the future, which is one of the hazards of a free market economy. Either way, however, it's important to stay engaged with the market.

I've had a couple of my own burn-the-ships moments, although in hindsight, I think of them as career inflection points.

Normally, I'm a ladder climber ("never give up a good grip until you have secured another good grip with the other hand"). But a couple of times in my career, I had to be a chasm jumper ("when crossing a deep chasm, it's better to take one big step rather than two little steps").

I consider these bold moves as desperate measures for desperate times and prefer to avoid them whenever possible. Sometimes, however, the world of living crosses into the world of spirituality ("man plans, God laughs"). Then I have nothing to lose and figure I can only come out ahead.

@Sinil Kim

One REI idea you might want to pursue is using your software skills on a W-2 gig at a crowdfund company. Big data and analytics captured the public's imagination a few years ago when the Oakland As became the best team in baseball.

Crowdfunding might look like magic, but it's the marriage of RegTech (JOBS Act of 2012) and FinTech (inexpensive powerful computers) that makes crowdfunding possible. It still takes the hard work of software engineers to make a crowdfund company happen.

DISCLAIMER: I have no idea how to find a job anymore. I haven't worked in years.

@Sinil Kim

Business skills are more important than technical skills in real estate or any other business. You might never have heard of Ronald Wayne before, for example, but he cofounded Apple Computer with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. He determined early on from the information he had at the time that it was in his best interest to part ways with the others. You need to stay within your circle of competence to be successful.

My skills are in line with the technical skills of an individual contributor and not with the people skills of a general manager, for example. I earned good money over the years doing what I'm good at doing, living below my means and investing the rest intelligently (in my case, the stock market, and I was a homeowner for half my life). Eventually, I was making enough investment income to cover my living expenses so I could FIRE.

If you want to test applying your software skills to real estate, I've noticed real estate app startups every once in a while seeking funding on various Reg CF crowdfunding portals. 506(c) crowdfunding sites such as PeerStreet and Upstart were founded by ex-Googlers if you want to research these people as role models to learn how they did it. In any event, your ability to think logically will take you far in life no matter what you end up doing.

The Boomers were raised by The Greatest Generation who endured the extreme hardships of The Great Depression and World War II. State-of-the-art parenting in the 1950s and 1960s was to make sure the children of The Greatest Generation never had to experience what hardship was. The result, not surprisingly, was the creation of one of the largest generations (my generation) of spoiled brats in human history.