All Forum Posts by: Erwin F.

@Quinton Slay, I had a similar issue when getting our savings rate to 40% from ~15%.  What I did (and still do) is give my wife semiannually PowerPoint presentations with where we were and where we are now as far as real net worth.  

1. In the beginning of the presentation, I include our "why".  Our's is to have more free time to spend with our kids and to do cool things!
2. Then I include graphs of stock, savings, and rental portfolio growth.  Also a downward graph of debts.
3. Then I also show our passive income (rent minus expenses) and portfolio income (dividends) along with equity growth.
4. Then I show total growth (our contributions and gains are separated so she knows we're investing well).
5. Finally, I include pictures of cool places to travel and pictures of us playing with our kids.  I think this probably has the biggest impact.  You might want to tie in how house hacking helps her (maybe graduating debt free or being able to quit when you guys have kids).

It took a couple of presentations, then she really got on board.  She even got a side hustle now that pays for going out to eat and stuff like that :)

Ouch! I've had 2 of 3 units vacant at one time. Luckily that's a part of my cash reserves account where I put CapEx, Vacancy, and repairs that I expect to go out monthly. Additionally, the 1 place is paid off so I didn't have any real urgency.

I'd start the eviction process for all 4 if you have the cash set aside.

Good luck!

I don't have good advice for you here, but I think you saving 80-90% of your income is amazing!  You'll hit financial freedom really quickly.  Keep up the great work!

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shoc...

We're saving 40% of our income and now our dividends and rental income covers our fixed cost (minus mortgage).  Now we're trying to tackle our mortgage (might pay it off in 4 to 6 years but haven't decided).

Wow! Love your story. We have a family of five and have just started living frugally the beginning of this year. I wish people told us that you don't miss all the consumerist things (i.e. Out to eat at restaurants we barely like, getting hammered at bars we don't remember, and buying a big house that we use 30% of). Frugality gives us the ability to save 40%! Half goes towards retirement accounts and index funds while the other half goes to real estate. Great job! I think you just became my hero :)

We ran into something similar where the tenant found a job in a different city.  My PM called their company (with the tenant) and was able to get three months rent.  After they left, it took two weeks to fill the unit.  Maybe you could try to fill it and let them break the lease all the while they pay rent.

I've used 99designs.com for a t-shirt design.  You get a bunch of different people designing it for you, and you could pick the best one.

I use TenantCloud and they have online payments.  It takes about 3 days to hit your account.  The monthly subscription costs $9.  They support PayPal.  Good thing about TenantCloud is that it will automatically update your reports (Operating Statement, Tax Prep, etc.).

I have a buddy that uses Google Wallet and that's been pretty successful for him.

Whoa!  How big is the unit?  I just got a Trane 4 ton ($5K), Trane 3.5 ton ($4.5K), and a Goodman 4 ton ($4K) in the last year.  I usually call 5 different companies for quotes, but I generally use the same company.  

Per wiping out cash flow. If you're buy and hold, you'll recoup that cash over the 15 years that they estimate the new unit will last. I generally take off $150 per unit to put in my CapEx account. We're fully funded for each unit now.

I always say first pay down CC, student loans and/or car loans. Next, make sure you have 6 months emergency fund. Finally, anything left over (where we are in our finances), we put 50% into index funds (e.g. SP500, Emerging Markets, and Total American Market) and the other 50% goes into a real estate fund. We are trying to break into small apartment buildings (5 to 20 units). But if it were my first deal, I'd go 4 units or less to let the REI bug bite :)

Wow!  I'm totally stealing this idea.  Thank you for sharing.