These include some mutual funds, rental property, and – our friend – international preconstruction investing, too.

certainly, rei is not the same as investing in mutual funds or a useless 401k where you answer 5 questions and "pick" your investment "preferences"...i love those - moderate aggressive...aggressive...super aggressive...conservative...lol what a joke.well keep us posted.

After taxes, social security and such, the government winds up taking 50% of it.Portfolio - Money earned by paper investments (stocks, mutual funds, etc).

I can stay on the golf course every day if I dont' see something that meets my profit standards.The good side of this is that I'm sitting on a fat pile of cash that I haven't sent into my mutual funds because every day I think; "maybe one will turn up today".

Real estate investing strategies are so numerous it's hard to "pick" one.the problem with "picking" a real estate investment strategy is they're not like mutual funds. to be a real estate investor, you've got think like a businessman. a businessman or entrepreneur, is a control freak - they want to figure everything out and have the satisfaction of control.real estate investment strategies do not match the modern-day "investor"...people with 401k's who "pick" a portfolio are not investors. heck, the portfolio managers are not entrepreneurs, they're employees of a HUGE company and they manage these gigantic funds with so many different companies, it's no wonder there's no money in mutual funds.real estate investment strategies involve looking at CASH FLOW.

--Washington Mutual(i have business history with them)--B. of A.

My original long term goal was essentially to retire from my 9-5 job in 15 years time making enough to have a comfortable lifestyle on income from mutual funds and stocks (I'm slightly ahead of target on this front) but believe I can shorten this to (at most) 9 years if I add real estate into the mix.

At the end of 5 years, which case is going to be beneficial for me as I do not know what value the property will have 5 yrs from now.Hope to hear from you and others soon.

check out ING direct mutual funds.

I will have 50k equity in my condo and another 30k approximately in other "investments" (Park and pray mutual funds.)As I already have a decent amount of capital, I was hoping to get some recommendations on what you folks would do for a first time investor's money.Right now I don't think that I can realistically get positive cash flow in the Seattle area so I might have to take the "not in your own backyard approach."