REI Lifestyle Blog | A Real Estate Investors Finances

Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash     Living a life on FI/RE   I didn’t really have a defined plan when I got into real estate investing. Some of you may know it all started with my personal residence purchased back in 2017. I had a burning desire to own a house and further than that, to own an income producing asset. There wasn’t much past that at that point. I knew I wanted to own houses and make money. It wasn’t until a couple years later that I discovered the FI/RE movement and how the average person across America is using the system in place to retire early and live a fulfilling life. It blew my mind to read of all these different, average America, people leaving their job to do whatever they wanted and just further solidified everything I’ve wanted to do.   Financial Independence / Retire Early   If you’ve never heard of the FI/RE movement….then you have now. It’s the idea that the average American can buckle down and save their way to financial success using mostly low ris

                                                                                                                             Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash 2022 is looking to be a great year so far! The market gains over the last couple years for Real Estate has done nothing but good things for my small Midwest portfolio. I was able to take advantage of the extra equity in 3 of my properties and pull out a few down payments to continue growing my portfolio. I was fortunate enough with these properties that I haven’t done much work and no renovations at this point. The most exciting of the properties that brought me over $40k during the cash out had the highest expenses since ownership which total $3,400 to the tune of an AC replacement. My cash position this year for the business is in a far different position than when I paid out my last $3k for that AC unit, and I plan to keep it that way.   In total I pulled out $91k after taking care of a line of credit I used to purchase one

Why I Switched to iPhone on my Real Estate Journey   Summary   Hey guys welcome back to my page. Today I'd like to jump into one of my personal financial decisions that effectively changed the way I live my life with the simple idea of getting myself one step closer to financial independence through real estate. What'd I'd like to try to do here is get some of you into my state of mind and how I tackle every day issues when It comes to finances. I’m not a big money wizard working with 100s of thousands of dollars. I’m an ordinary father and husband trying to accomplish extraordinary goals by making simple changes to my everyday life. How could it possibly make sense for me to become an iPhone person and SAVE money on my phone bill? Keep reading to find out.   Backstory   To kind of get things started off here I’d like to just say I’ve never been a person big on material possessions or jumping on the latest trends to impress the people around me. Luckily at a young age I dis

     Photo by Kvnga on Unsplash   Growing up through my very early 20s in the real world and in the military everybody was always talking about real estate. The owner of the company I worked for at the time started out in rental properties and used that money to buy his first business. Many higher-ups in the military spouted constantly about their 8-10 properties they own/manage.  I kept hearing about it everywhere I went and I've always wanted to do something with my life. I tried multiple small businesses out of my second-story apartment that eventually failed due to my lack of enthusiasm for the idea. I'd write it all up, make fliers, and post them all over my tiny town in Missouri. After a week or two of no responses or bogus spam, I'd give up and slowly slither back into my hole. I eventually developed the idea that business ownership just wasn't for me. That was my mindset at the time. I've since come to realize, through various books and mentors, that busine

I recently had to inquire about replacing my roof with my insurance company. I had a roof guy out to my house to tell me about the damage, gave me the date of different issues I could claim. I had bent back shingles and asphalt had flaked off of a lot of major parts. I also had dents in the shingles indicating hail damage.  After everything was done, he left and wrote up an entire report and gave me a speech for when I call the insurance company. I thought, "this is crazy, right?". We're gearing up for war trying to gather information on getting my roof replaced. It was like a crime scene. He had chalk lines around all the hail damage and smudged the wind damage so it wouldn't look as exciting. On my personal home insurance hail is a 1% deductible and wind damage is a 2% deductible.  Not so obvious to me at the time the insurance company will push to do the wind damage replacement. Same replacement, but as a homeowner, I would be on the hook for more money out of pock

Today is the day that you've decided you want a change! You're tired of working every month just to be in the same situation next month no matter how hard you try by yourself. Living paycheck to paycheck is the normal life for most Americans these days no matter their financial status or ranking.  You get that glorious bi-weekly deposit and it's off to the races! You've got bills to pay, food to buy, mouths to feed, cars to gas, and many other items on your to-do list that leaves the bank account a little on edge after a few days.   Now everything is taken care of, for the moment, but now we just wait another 2 weeks to repeat the cycle all over again. Is that how it's meant to be? Does it feel right barely having enough to get through to the next big payday and then it just drains out as fast as it came? You're not alone, but that certainly doesn't mean you have to put up with it anymore! What does it mean to Live Paycheck to Paycheck? As I kind of got into

This has been a year full of ups and downs across many different aspects of life. Since COVID-19 has started people have lost jobs, started jobs, changed career paths, and gone on unemployment. This has been some of the worst months for certain people and some of the best for others. Due to all of the changes going on right now and that continue to happen one of the biggest questions on everybody's mind is, "Should I refinance my home?", "Will a lower monthly payment help us get through these harder times?", "Will a shorter loan term give me more money for the future?", "Does paying less interest matter to me?". Everybody has questions about this new uncertain future and hopefully some of the information belong will hope answer that for you, and if not feel free to reach out  and we can discuss your specific situation.  How much does a refinance cost? This can be the biggest hurdle for many people when it comes to changing up their mortgage.