How much monthly cash flow do you have?

Question

Jerry W. · Answer

Account Closed, since your question is a little vague my answer will be a bit vague also.  My cash flow after over 20 years of investing is actually zero.  I have at least 30 doors of residential and have no money to take home from investments at the end of the month or year.  No matter how much I make I manage to make I always end up putting a new roof or two on a property, or installing a new sewer line, or my favorite, buying a new property.  The books show I make money, and I have taken money out to pay on income taxes, but not much.  I often spend much more than I make on monthly statements as I buy materials or pay workers for fixing up the newest acquired property.  The cool thing is that it has grown from one little house to many houses and a duplex, a fourplex, and even a small apartment complex.  I know this isn't the answer you were looking for, but it is very accurate.  On the other hand I hope to retire someday with at least $10K per month of rental income after expenses.

Steve Vaughan · Answer

Thank you for your very real answer, @Jerry W.  Not many get that honest on here.

I know most strip every buck of equity they can and frantically seek the next deal to deploy it.  I quit doing that a while ago and started paying off my higher rate and commercial loans. No PMI. No refi costs. Saves me tens of thousands.

So, cash-flow, yes  5 figures and increasing another $5300/mo in 9 years.  What did it take? 15 years of buying right, DIYing all value-adds, repairs and management. Being hyper tax concious. Self-closing my own SF purchases. Living in a doublewide for 5 yrs. Driving a piece of crap. Not having a smartphone or any of the latest gadgets or games or skinny jeans. Eating pb&j and shopping at yard sales.

Live a little like no one will, a lot like no one can I think is the saying...

Jay Helms · Answer

Not as much as I want and not as much as it's going to take Account Closed.

Steve Sell · Answer

I've only been at this for about eight months, but my answer is pretty similar to @Jerry W.--I try to continually re-invest my cash flow at this point via savings or by taking on additional debt.  My personal ownership percentage of all properties I'm on title for brings in $5,490 per month.  After all expenses--debt, fixed operating and those eventually realized such as vacancy, maintenance, etc, a very conservative est. average is around $800 / month net cash flow.But I've also got $913 / month in general debt service above and beyond my mortgages from raising capital.  So at the moment I have negative CF.  However, most of that capital isn't deployed yet; I have about $80,000 to get into more properties which should put me well back into the green.  Hope to close on a duplex netting out at least $250 / month in the next week or two, and in due diligence at the moment on a 12 unit I'll own half of.  But I'm also partway through getting a HELOC and another private note created... hard to give an accurate answer to this question when the target is always moving.At the end of the day my primary goal is expansion at this point so I try to stay relatively close to neutral cash flow in order to grow more quickly... all the while keeping sufficient liquidity around to cover the worst scenarios I can imagine and making sure my credit / financial ratios remain healthy.  Also prefer to work in partnerships with financially healthy friends and family I implicitly trust in order to disperse risk that way as well.Hope that sheds some light on what these things can look like in practice.

How much monthly cash flow do you have?

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