To Become Wealthy: Inspiration to change

Sometimes all it takes is one little thing to inspire me. At other times the message needs to be repeated over and over and over again. Hearing the same message repeated in different ways cements it in my mind. My inspiration to become wealthy first came from my husband. Once we got engaged and started planning our lives together I began to see how I wanted so much more from life than what I had. My eyes began to open. They just did not know what they were looking for. I wanted so much more, but I did not know all of the options that were available to me. That is when we began discussing real estate and passive income. I realized that these were not just things that rich people can do, but things that anyone can do.

This weekend, on public television, I saw Robert Kiyosaki and his wife speak in an effort to sell some of their products about investing and building wealthy. They were also promoting a weekend long seminar of investment gurus at the Javits Center in NY. For anyone unfamiliar with him, he is the man behind the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series (richdad.com). I admire what he and his wife are doing. They both possess a lot of intelligence about money and how to make it. The best part is their passion to share their knowledge with everyone else. They have had tremendous success and they are trying to teach others how to be successful too. They are worthy of my admiration and have certainly been a source of continuing inspiration for me.

I want to add in a small point here about my journey to become wealthy. One of my other major goals in life is to be a philanthropist. Wealth just happens to be a prerequisite for that.

During the past year, I have read one of the books in the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series, called “Cash Flow Quadrant”. The book does not tell you how to buy or sell real estate, but it give a whole new perspective on money. It brings up simple ideas about how your money should be working for you, instead of you working for your money. After reading it I felt like I had an entirely different view of my life, and the lives of those around me. I can not longer imagine working for the next 30 years for other people. How other people have managed to do it, I will never again understand or accept. I have so many things that I want to do with my life and none of them involve spending 40 hours a week in a cubicle.

Another gentleman that I listened too before beginning this blog was Steve Pavlina (stevepavlina.com). He is a personal development guru. He is responsible for inspiring me to write this blog. He does not have anything to do with real estate development, but he has a lot of wonderful ways of looking at life that are very inspirational. If you are not ready to jump in and change your life just yet, go and read what he has to say. He also has several pod casts that are also great to listen to. I find the tone of his voice and his manner of speaking to be very comforting.

Please let me know if there is anyone else out there that has inspired you.

To Become Wealthy: How to Begin a Search for Properties

Once I created the list of cities that I thought would be good to invest in, I took each and searched further. But to really begin to get an idea of what is available, I spent a lot of time on realtor.com. However the most effective thing I did was to randomly contact realtors. I performed a simple Google search for realtors in an area, and emailed them stating my intentions to buy investment properties within the next 6 months. Some replied with interest, others did not reply at all. I simply concentrated on the area where I got the best responses.
Once again time has become a factor. I simply do not have the time to chase properties in each location. Realtors can set up automatic list services thru MLS that automatically send you daily listings that meat your specific search criteria. Ultimately, I should be set up in all of these areas, but so far I am only set up in two areas. I need to add more areas once we purchase our first property.

There are two different schools of thought on investing. Those that tell you to diversify and those that put all their money into one area. The most common advice that you hear is that diversification is the beat and safest way to go. However, if you look at some of the most successful people in the world in any industry, they made it big by not diversifying and by risking it all in one area and having the payoff be all that much larger because they did not diversify.

I am not a very big risk taker, so I am trying to diversify my real estate holding across the US.

To Become Wealthy: Cities of Interest- Where I am looking to invest

After the initial search for good cities to invest in, I still had to dig a little bit deeper. I compared several lists. Forbes has a list of over and undervalued cities. Expansion Magazine has a list of the areas with the most growth in business. So, I cross checked and picked out about a dozen cities that ranked favorably on both lists.

From there I went to the site realtor.com. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the site, it allows you to enter basic search criteria for a nationwide search. It also allows for a more detailed search, but I have discovered that the less info entered, the better the results. So, I entered the city, state and my price range. The purpose was to see if my price range fit this city. Were there a lot of properties that looked nice enough that I could live in them in that city? And I narrowed the list down even more.

Then I searched on Google for the Economic Development websites for each city. I read thru the web sites for a better understanding of the dynamics of the city and to see what programs they have to spur growth in different industries. It also gives you a good idea of the size of the area, and the largest industries and employers.
This is the list of cities that I have narrowed it down to:
Tulsa, OK
Dallas, TX
Houston, TX
McAllen, TX
Little Rock, AR
Memphis, TN
Rochester, NY
Dayton, OH
Wichita, KS
Greenville, SC

To Become Wealthy: More on Passive Income

My husband is a very patient man. I am not. It is sometimes painful for me to sit patiently and wait. So I am expecting that the steps it takes to build passive income to come difficulty to me. I want to be wealthy now; I want to quit my day job now. And there are plenty of people out there who promise instant wealth. I do not believe them. I can not see how I am attend one seminar or buy a few products and suddenly be wealthy. I am very skeptical of those promises.

My husband and I live a comfortable life. We both have decent jobs. (His is much more decent that mine.) We bought our first home a year ago, right before we got married. It is a wonderful house with plenty of room for our future family. I am in love with this house and think about all the things I would rather be doing there while I am stuck at work all week long.
We are also fortunate that our only debt is the house. We have no outstanding car, school or credit card debt. And we are able to save some money each month. But now I realize that simply saving money will never make me wealthy. Sure, we invest in the stock market, but what do we know about stocks? Our day jobs have nothing to do with the stock market. I own some index funds in an IRA and he owns shares of Google. Both are pretty safe investments. They may pay out well one day and help us retire, but they will not make us wealthy.

Both of us work for our money, but we are going to switch things around and have our money work for us. It sounds easy, but it is taking more work and time than I expected. I have discovered that even passive income takes a lot of work to set up. But I would rather work hard now to rest later, than have to work with no end in sight.

To Become Wealthy: Where I began in Real Estate.

I began my search a short while ago on the internet. Anyone in the world can tell you that when it comes to real estate it is all about “location, location, location.” So, I listened to other people’s advice and then added some logic of my own. My objective was to find cities that were growing, but had not yet reached their peak. Some people tell you to buy only in those cities at the bottom because they have the most potential for growth, and therefore more room for your equity to grow. I decided to play it safe and look only in cities that were already growing, but have not yet reached the insane peaks of New York, California or Miami. Sure, there are still good investments to be made in these areas, but they probably require more skill and money than I have right now. I want to start out easy. Basically, I was looking for cities that were middle of the road, growing but still affordable. We are planning to purchase our first investment home with conventional financing. I have a limited amount of money that I can put down on any one property, so the purchase price is a limiting factor for me.

The two big sources I used to find cities to invest in were Forbes and Expansion Magazine. Of course Google is also an invaluable resource. Just put in simple phrases like “growing real estate markets” or “cities for real estate investment”. The tedious research has already been done. You just need to find other peoples results.

To Become Wealthy: Passive Income is Real

I want to make passive income because I am stuck in a rat race. Only 2 days out of each week belong entirely to me. The other 5 belong to my employer. During those weekdays, only 4.5 hours each day belong to me and my family. (Not including sleeping.) The rest are spent at work or commuting to work. (I have a long commute, 1.5 hrs door to door each way.)

My husband was the one who introduced me to the idea of passive income, and the idea of not having a 9-5 job until I turn 65. I am NOT one of those people who love my job, but I am a slave to that weekly paycheck, so I continue to work for other people. Fortunately I no longer see this as the only option for my life. Eventually I am going to create several different sources of income. I am expecting real estate investments to be the most lucrative, so I am putting most of my time and effort there. There will be lots of work involved to set up each source, but then they will run themselves with a little work as they still continue to produce the same levels on income. (One source of income might even be this blog.)

There are so many people out there with ideas on how to change your life. Some of them will help you organize your life so that you are mentally prepared for what you need to do. Others take it even further and will tell you how they became wealthy and how you can do it. All you need to do is open your eyes and look. Let me know what you find.

To Become Wealthy:Starting in Real Estate

Most people work for their money, and they can become very rich doing that. But wealthy people have their money work for them and can become even wealthier with ease.
I have already begun to go down the road to a life of wealth. I began my journey thru education. I read everything I can about real estate. Some books are better than others, and I only read the good ones from cover to cover. As I go along I will mention those that have helped me in my journey.

I have heard time and time again throughout my life “There is no time like the present”, “Just do it.” and other encouraging things, but I was always too afraid to try, or did not know exactly what to “just do”. Well, my advice is not to just go out there and buy investments, but do go out and learn about them. Nothing could be simpler. In this modern day, you do not even need to buy the books. The bookstores offer you comfortable seating to read the books right there in the store.

So what are you waiting for?