@Robert Wright
Your plight was brought to my attention by a fellow investor who knows my story.
My wife and I are Christians and she works at our church. She too believed that debt is bad.
First, the Old Testament does speak to debt, however not on the side of incurring it. It speaks to charging interest to others who are in need. (IE: don’t take advantage of a person who is in need.) NOWHERE in the Bible does it say not to use debt.
It also speaks to the behaviors of a woman of virtue in Proverbs 31. (She appraised a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.) I recommend you tread lightly with this one, though.
Things that might help:
1.) Get your financial house in order first. Work together through this. Monthly, review your savings, income, and where your money went. Treat your house like a business and have a monthly review at minimum.
2.) Define your goals. After you start working through 1 on a regular basis you’ll know what your monthly costs are. Work together to define a safety net. 6 months is a good place.
3.) Pay down existing debt - notably the student loans. Right now you’re paying interest on your money. You will absolutely struggle to get your wife on board because to her it means more debt (bad!!)
4.) Living beneath your means will eventually become habit. You’ll say things like “we can’t afford that.” There will come a tipping point where discipline is needed. Notably, when “we can’t afford it” really means “we can’t afford to stop our trajectory.”
5.) There will come a point when it will feel like savings isn’t growing quickly. At first, saving $100 a week adds up, but you’ll eventually hit a point where that $100 is a really small percent of your “nut.”
6.) If you’ve continued to educate yourself on real estate throughout this whole process and talk about it, you’ll find yourself in a position to say “now what” but you’ll have already answered that.
7.) The first turning point for us was when we went on vacation and drove there. My wife and I traded an hour of listening time. Her music for an hour then my choice for an hour, on the road there and on the road back. (Yup, I got my wife to listen to almost 12 hours of BP podcasts.)
8.) Does your wife believe that landlords are greedy people who get rich off the backs of others? Mine did. Did. Past Tense.
When we bought the house, the woman who lived there had flashlights EVERYWHERE. She couldn’t get up a step to change the lightbulbs. She didn’t have money to fix the roof. The wood siding was starting to rot. She couldn’t fix the house and couldn’t afford to fix it. I will tell you, closing was painful and stressful for me (trying to work with her) but a lot of it was “she has a problem, how can I be the one to help solve it?”
So, we buy the house. I was there 5 days a week on top of a W2 job. I was there at 6:00 AM on Saturday and leaving at 11:00 PM.
I talked to the neighbors regularly. They said things like, “You’re here ALL THE TIME.” “Thank you for turning that turd into a gem.”
My business model is to FIGHT against the greedy slumlords. It’s to make sure we’re giving back to the neighborhood. It’s to properly manage my property and ensure that my tenants are not hurting property values from home owners in the neighborhood.
When listed, I had over 150 people contact me to rent it in less than 4 days. That rent money isn’t going to an out of state investor or company that doesn’t care about the community. It’s staying in my home town.
Now, we did this all in cash initially. It’s been less than 6 months since purchase and my wife asked, “how do we do this again?” At this point we have enough equity that we can pull cash out and do it all over. It’s not about the house; it’s about the people.
We can find someone who can’t take care of their place. We can give them a fair price for their problem home before it’s worthless. We can put a ton of work into it and give back to the neighbors by helping their property values. We can provide housing for someone who can’t afford to buy or for whom buying doesn’t make sense. We’re not getting fat by being lazy; we’re doing the work ourselves. We’re appraising a field, buying it, and planting a vineyard that will hopefully provide for our children and grandchildren.
Happy to talk 1 on 1 if you would like. Good luck in your journey!
