All Forum Posts by: Yohannes Kifle

We have a new tenant with three young kids who would like to setup a swing set in the backyard. We would like to make them happy and let them install it but we wanted to check with the BP community if there are things we need to think off. This property is in Illinois.

If it's their swing set are we liable if anyone gets injured on it?

Should we ask our other tenants if they will be ok with a swing set in the backyard. It is a very large yard that just had a small shed on it.

Thanks for the help!

Aww won't be able to make that @Loren Clive but I'd be happy to talk with you about my hard money loan experience. It's an area I'm trying to do more in. I'll PM you.

@Mark Waite I'd be happy to meet for coffee. I'll PM you.

@Mark Guagliardo I'll be in Maui from June 30th till July 4th but I'll only be free on July 3rd to meet some fellow investors. When does the investor group meet? I'd love to stop by.

Hi Maui investors! I'm going to be in Maui on July 3rd and though it would be cool to meet some local investors while I'm there. I'm a newer investor living in California with properties in Illinois. I also have some experience doing hard money loans. But I'm always looking to learn more. I tried finding some meetups in the area for that day but couldn't find anything. Do any Maui investors know of any networking events happening that day? Or does anyone want to grab some coffee and chat, my treat :).

I'm also interested how the tally looks after taxes and insurance @Michael L. My partner and I are looking at multifamilies in the Chicago suburbs and taxes often end up killing a potential deal when we run the numbers.

BTW thanks for this thread, I think it is one of the most informative on BP.

@Mark S. Yeah my employer's 401k is one of these rare ones that allows this I guess. Unfortunately I didn't learn that I could roll over the after-tax contributions into a Roth IRA until recently. And I had already been making after-tax contributions for 2 years. I later learned that I should have made the after-tax contribution and then immediately roll it over to the Roth IRA so there would be no gains to be taxed.

I'm actually using the self directed Roth IRA funds to invest in notes. My CPA told me that it is better to invest in assets like notes using tax advantaged money because notes have to tax benefits like depreciation. So to get the ball rolling I took the tax hit at ordinary income tax rates on my after-tax gains to fund my self directed Roth IRA.

I'm still learning the ropes so I'm not sure that was the absolute best long term strategy. My income does disqualify me from contributing directly into a Roth IRA. When you say "do a brokerage account at long term capital gains" are you talking about a traditional IRA brokerage account?

@Mark S. No I'm not talking about a Roth 401(k). It's a traditional 401(k) plan to allows additional after-tax contributions. It's nice cause you can roll over these after-tax contributions to your Roth IRA even if your income range disqualifies you for direct contributions to your Roth IRA.

@Minna Nah Interesting, maybe I just got unlucky in my choice of custodian. The main thing that annoyed me is that neither the custodian nor Vanguard offered to tell me this is how I needed to do it. Vanguard's 401k department just kept saying they don't accept third party transfer forms and the custodian kept saying they must initiate the transfer with their own forms. Luckily I was able to come up with this myself but it would have been nice if someone had just told me. I guess Vanguard isn't really incentivized to help me move money away from them.

@Mark Nolan

I wish I had just asked the BP community first before spending days trying to figure it out. Lesson learned.

This is just a post about some things I learned about opening a self directed IRA.

I recently opened a self directed IRA and transferred some after-tax money in my employer's 401k managed by Vanguard, to the self directed IRA. I'm not a CPA so definitely consult them about if this is something you should think of doing.

One thing I learned is that you will have to pay taxes on any gains you made on the after-tax money you transfer. And you are taxed based on the percentage you transfer. So if you transfer 50% of you after-tax money, 50% of the gains will be taxed.

The other thing to note is that my self directed IRA custodian said they needed to initiate the transfer themselves by sending a transfer form to Vanguard. I'm not sure if this is the case for all custodians. But the Vanguard department that handles my 401k does not accept third party transfer forms. After many days of calling Vanguard and the custodian I finally figured out Vanguard's IRA department does accept third party transfer forms. So I first transferred the after-tax money to a Vanguard IRA account. And from there I could transfer it to the custodian. I know it's a very specific scenario but I hope that helps anyone that is trying to do what I did.