All Forum Posts by: Joel W.

As I'm sitting here doing my annual Officer evaluation (military officer review, BLAH!) I cannot help but be distracted and began to think about this.... What is a minute worth to me? How do I make more money per minute or hour. The idea stemmed a bit from Gary Keller's book "The Millionaire Real Estate Investor", the section on Net worth and constantly revieiwng what your net worth is. So I ran a few calculations just to waste some of it. 

1 Year= 8760 hrs or 525,600 minutes

Gross income/8760 hrs= hourly wage

Gross/525,600 mins= minute wage

Or how much does it cost to live-

annual expenses/8760= hourly expense

Annual expenses/525,600= expense per minute

So the question is how are you going to increase your hourly wage and decrease your hourly expense. I think I'm going to get back to work, because I don't own enough real estate yet and the Govt wants me to tell them why they should pay me more.

@Justin Martin

That is a solid idea. I encouage a lot of people to do that same plan. I would recommend buying a muti unit property. If you can get a fourplex you could potentially be living for free and using that E-5 BAH as your income or reinvest it into aother property.

Here is the page:

https://www.tsp.gov/planparticipation/loans/loanBasics.shtml

Yes, you do have to be employed by the federal government

There are a couple unique advantages to the TSP.

1. you can take all bonuses and place into your TSP tax free, otherwise you will get taxed at 30% for all active duty bonuses. i.e. my enlistment bonus was my initial contribution into my TSP while at boot camp, no taxes.

2. You can take a loan out on your TSP. The loan must be repaid in 5 years, cannot be more than 50% or no more than $50K, and will be paid back at the current interest rate of the G fund, which right now is 1.8%. All interest paid is actually paid right back to you, placed into your account.

3. You can open a ROTH TSP now. Which I would definately contribute to vs. the traditional, becasue you pay taxes right now witht eh ROTH vs. your income bracket at 65 with the TRAD.

I personally am still contributing to my TSP even though I would love to add another 10% of my income to my REI ventures. But I am taking a very conservative and diversified approach. I can still use the money though, and pay myself interest which is awesome.

This is a difficult decision. The lines between business and family blur. The hard part is determining what sacrifices you will ask your family to make so that you can build wealth for them. Personally I have decided that I will spend the extra money (3.5% down for an OOC) and buy in a great neighborhood.  I have already asked my family to make sacrifices in the budget arena, which is healthy, but I will never put my family into a positin where they may be in danger, regardless of the money to be made. This really should come down to a wisdom not a #'s decision.

I am in the same  position as you, out of state investor. One thing I did that was very important is to visit the location get to know the area, find other areas in that city that might be good investments.  Otherwise you are really taking a shot in  the dark and hoping that the people you are working with are stearing you straight.

One of the conversations I consistently have with my sailors is that of finance. So many just don't get, don't want to get it, or just don't care. The entry I always use is discuss the risk of losing their security clearance due to debt trouble. The follow on conversations will always end up about the VA loan and how they can use it for make free money, at the same time you can also use your GI Bill, the compounding return of those two benefits is amazing.

I just saw a post by @Brendan Morin who used his VA loan to close on his first Cineplex

jjj

wow, congrats Brendan. Thanks for the post and lessons learned.