A NEW YEAR!!!!!!

I will be the first to admit that I have been delinquent in my blog writing duties. But since it is a new year, I have been reviewing my goals not only for the year, but for my entire future. The good news is that I still plan on becoming wealthy.

Every January gyms across the country are loaded with new people trying to keep their New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight. By early spring, most of those people will not go to the gym again until next January when they make the same resolution.

Setting goals is a daunting task for me that I have never enjoyed. I always have the ideas in my head, but I have never been comfortable putting pen to paper to document it. The fear for me has always been having the proof at the end of the year that I have not accomplished the goals. Once I put pen to paper I become accountable for those goals. But last year I bought my first real estate investment and it has changed my perspective quite a lot. A lot of the fear that I one felt is gone. I am now officially accountable for every single one of the goals on my list.

The first few items are personal items that will not directly affect my financial future. After living in my house for two years I need to make a decision about how the living room should be furnished before another year goes by. I think it is important to have personal, family and business goals on the same list. We can all define ourselves in more than one way. All the aspects of life need to be tended to in order for us to grow as a whole. Too often we spend so much time and effort on one thing in life that all of the secondary and tertiary roles get lost.

Be reasonable when you make your list. If you think there is not enough time to accomplish an item on the list, then break it down into smaller components and set the goal for just the beginning steps. I don’t mean to tell anyone that they cannot accomplish anything they set their minds to do. I am just advising to keep in mind that some things are harder to accomplish over night then others. Time is also a limiting factor for all of these things that we do. Hours in the day are limited, and I tend to lose functioning after a certain hour of the night.

Personal Development and Real Estate Investing

You do not need to look very far to see that there is a connection between personal development and real estate investing. I have not done any research to discover where and how this may have begun, but I still find it very interesting. The information that is out there is telling people how to expand themselves personally and financially.

For some reason Real Estate investing is not a mainstream idea. When people talk about investing, they are referring to their 401K or IRA accounts. Some people even own mutual funds or tech stocks. They read Barron’s and hope to find the next break-out stock that will make them rich. Most people are just plain afraid to invest. We all fear losing money. We all fear losing all of our stuff.

Real Estate investing or any other type of investing is not taught in school. In school you learn a trade so that you can go out into the real world and get a job that will pay you enough to cover all of your bills. I am beginning to believe that investing needs to be taught in schools. The world is a rapidly changing place and we need to start to look at money in new ways.

This is where all of the gurus come in. People get to a point where they are not happy with their life, for whatever reason. Some people will reach out to try to find an answer to solve their problems. The gurus are there waiting telling people that if they want a better life, it is theirs for the taking. What is the number one thing that people think they need to make them happy? More money will make people happy. More money is the answer to your problems. Real Estate is an excellent way to make money and be your own boss. It all is very logical.

Money is referred to as the root of all evil, but it is also marketed as the savior.

Why Invest in Real Estate

Why do we invest in real estate? Why does anyone? More importantly, why doesn’t everyone?

First of all, statistically it would just not work out if everyone invested in real estate, but there is certainly still plenty of room for newcomers in the world of investing. Every time I mention to someone, friend or stranger, that I am starting to invest in real estate, people have their doubts about me, but never about the fact that real estate is a good investment. Mostly people see it as something out of my league. As something that is reserved for people that are already wealthy.

I believe that fear motivated people not to try new things. I know that when I do not want to do something, I can come up with a dozen excuses within less than one minute. That is the same thing that people are doing to me when I discuss real estate investing. The fear they feel about trying to make these investments them selves comes out as doubt over my success. I am not trying to say that no one supports my decisions, but they all doubt that it will work for me in the long run.

In 5, 10 or 15 years I might just be wealthy from my investments it real estate. I also might not be. However those 5, 10 and 15 years are still going to pass me by. I would rather spend them trying to change my life, then not trying at all.

I am not slated to retire from the general work force for another 30 years. 30 years is an awfully long time. And in 30 years they may have risen the retirement age another 5 to 10 years. I am not a patient person, waiting 5 to 10 years to retire is going to be difficult for me. I would hate to see what I miserable person I would be in 30 years of jobs that I only marginally like.

So, why aren’t you investing?

Motivation to Invest

In this crazy and busy world it is sometimes difficult to stay focused on our mail goals in life. It is very easy to get sidetracked by family and anything else that happens in life. Some real estate and self-help gurus recommend writing down your goals, and the steps that you can take to get there. Then you can go back and read these goals and methods to help you stay focused. I think this is a wonderful idea. I had helped a great may people. I was about to add that I have not yet done this myself, but that is not true. This blog is helping me to write out my goals and keep me motivated.

I recently spoke with a friend of my husband who is a personal fitness trainer. He was discussing with us the methods that he uses to keep people motivated and give them a more positive attitude towards those things that they really might not want to do, like go to the gym, or not eat that tasty dessert. A lot of what he had to say I could relate to my situation. You need to focus on the positive aspects of the future and not what may have gone wrong in the past, or even what may be unpleasant or tedious to do in the present. It is all about the greater good of the future. In my case, my future as a full time real estate investor.

My goal is simply to become a full time real estate investor. I still have to take care of certain family and personal obligations, but when the mood strikes, or I just run out of time, I need to reevaluate myself and restructure my time to make sure that I can still reach my goals. I never thought about myself as someone who was goal oriented, but it turns out that I always have been. I just have not always been the type to write my goals down in a nice list.

To Become Wealthy: The Master Plan

Ultimately the question is ,”How do I want to live my life?” I never aspired to be a real estate investor. I have no training or formal education in this area. I am enjoying what I am doing so far, but it is far from what I would call one of my passions. However, I am passionate about making large bank deposits.

I am investing in real estate as a mean to an end. That end is financial freedom. To be able to do what I choose with my time. To not have to make a contract with someone for 40 hours a week of my time for only $40,000/ year. I want my time to be my own and my families. Time is the ultimate currency for me.

My husband has different reasons. His passions is to start a company of is own. He is a web designer and a graphic designer. He has some innovative ideas on how to run a business in this field. He plans on starting his own blog about it some day soon. So for him the money w make from real estate investing will free him up to pursue his passion and make a real go at his own business. Of course if it also frees up my time, I will be able to be by his side to help him along the way however I can.

We have done a lot of taking and planning for the next few years of our lives together. We have already survived the wedding and the first home buying. Now we are trying to figure out who should leave the rat race first. We have discovered that it takes a decent amount of time to look thru properties and prepare to purchase them. So we decided that if I stay home from work that I would do most of the work to manage the real estate investments and expand our portfolio.

I make less than he does, so in one way it makes sense for me to leave my job first. We are also planning on starting a family next year and the mother is traditionally the one that stays home with the children. This is something that I look forward to being able to do. Even though both of the grandparents are hoping to be able to take care of any babies during the work week, I would rather have that responsibility myself. My plan is to have any potential baby sitters come over during the day to give me the freedom to attempt to have uninterrupted time to manage our investments. Those of you out there that are already parents may be laughing at this plan, but I think I am allowed to dream.

The other option is for my husband to leave his job first to pursue his own design business. If he can do this free from most financial stresses his can take more risks, try more things, and do what he needs to do to take this business from just a start-up to a self supporting entity. All while I have the rat race job and the health insurance.

Health insurance. This is the real issue that keeps me in the rat race. I am too dependant on other people paying for it. I did a quick search for rates for small businesses. We are planning on holding our properties in an LLC that we would purchase the policies under. It would be approx $8-10,000/year for the two of us, more if we have any children. Of course we can just calculate this into our numbers and be done with it, but some mental block I have makes me worry about it. For me it is the largest issue that we face when deciding when to give up our day jobs.

Oh how I dream about giving up my day job……

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.