All Forum Posts by: Paul Vail

Paul Vail has started 6 posts and replied 189 times.

@Maximiliano Rodriguez

It depends on how much you have as some get pricey

My top 3 are:

1. Quest

2. Nuview

3. Midatlantic

Spending time on a bank holiday to explore these. I don't see a published fees schedule on the Nuview website. https://www.nuviewtrust.com/ While I have sent in a request, does anyone here use Nuview and is willing to share their fees for self-directed accounts? Thank you!

0 Votes

El Paso, Texas

Quote from @Chris Seveney:

@Maximiliano Rodriguez

It depends on how much you have as some get pricey

My top 3 are:

1. Quest

2. Nuview

3. Midatlantic

Chris, do you have a Quest acct? Their offices aren't open today. I had heard they don't support a checkbook LLC within their SD-Roth.

0 Votes

El Paso, Texas

Quote from @Eliott Elias:

Quest is great

Do you have an account with Quest?

0 Votes

El Paso, Texas

Quote from @Julie Marquez:

@Paul Vail and this attorney could still recommend LLCs even with that taxi cab case law?

Yes, I'm not trying to make it so inconvenient, so we keep it to a building or dollar value or grouped location. For us right now, 25 units = 6 LLCs and still a handful in our personal name. I'm also not trying to transfer everything into an LLC and get my good bank loans called for "changing" the ownership to an LLC.

Julie - the cab case was essentially each cab had its own LLC to isolate liability just to that cab. The atty suggested that insanity wouldn't be prohibitively expensive and possibly sketchy He suggested clustering to a reasonable number or dollar value.

1 Vote

Seattle, Washington

@Julia Romero - Would you mind sharing who you ultimately selected?

0 Votes

@Luke Jones - Who did you ultimately find satisfactory?

2 Votes

@John Upperman - who did you eventually select?

1 Vote

Quote from @Todd Rasmussen:

@Julie Marquez

If you have dozens of accounts and LLCs for 25 properties, does that mean you have one company and one account for each? If so, you are a glutton for punishment!

We have 22 and are just getting ready to start our second LLC. We've consulted with a couple lawyers and there is a famous case out of New York where a cab company structured every cab as its own LLC to protect the cab company's liability. The case law that came after they tried to isolate all of the assets of the different LLCs from the cab company was that if the LLC's were engaged in similar businesses with the same ownership then there were essentially the same company. I imagine you are set up much the same way and your network of LLC's is not the impenetrable fortress you were told it was. I'd consult with a lawyer and a tax professional and consolidate unless you are slow playing us and the 25 properties are apartment buildings with different partners.

We have two bank accounts (could be one) and one LLC for our properties (soon to be two). I use Excel to track depreciation and Stessa for all income/expenses. Stessa is currently free but they were bought by roofstock. So far all of their monetizing on the platform is through advertising.

Funny you should relate that Cab company story. I heard it for the first time earlier this week at a local REIA meeting where an atty was lecturing on business law.

A question from the audience brought up 'when do you have more than one LLC', and the atty said there's really no hard/fast rule about it. The 'rule' is what you make up. For some, it might be to hold one or multiple properties up to a certain dollar threshold, such as lump everything in together until the aggregate exceeds $1mil, then start another LLC for the next bucket of assets. Or keep 3, 4, or 6 assets per LLC. It's clearly a balance of paperwork overload and compartmentalizing liability as far as one can. Seems there is no one perfect structure.

0 Votes

Seattle, Washington

Quote from @Zachary Blomberg:

Quote from @Paul Vail:

Without knowing where you are going over, it's impossible to tell you what is appropriate or not. Everyone's wealth journey is different. That charity payment -- what does it go toward or better yet, could you not donate your time/sweat instead of the money. Surely your family's time is worth $10/hr/person -- so if the four of you spent 12.5hr/month contributing to your community or some other form of good works, you could justify not spending that cash and balancing/offsetting the dollar outlay. Why do I include the kids -- not like they will absorb what mom&dad are doing while they tag along at such young ages? Well, because the example habits you set now will take you into the future when they are kids that can contribute. And doing things as a family is a lost art in much of our culture. Walking the walk, even before they can walk, isn't detrimental. (OK, so it's silly on a few levels, but then again...)

Sure, there's plenty of fat on those bones any one of us *could* carve off. Where and what is individual, and what cost of quality of life comes with such choices? I would say there is a glaring omission to your budget. Where is your savings? Where is your investing for the future and your emergency fund funding? Where is your kids college fund line-item?

And we don't see the inputs -- what is the takehome pay contributions from each of you?

Thanks for the response! While I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment of giving your time and setting an example for the little ones, the allocated charity donations is perhaps the last thing I would change. As far as savings and investments, I left that part out. Our true takehome pay amounts to roughly $5,550, which leaves $550 for savings or investing each month. And we have a good amount saved in our emergency fund as well.

Zach -- I used to be a proponent of 529s (and still am for family members to contribute to your kids' edu funds if they are able and inclined); however, I would suggest considering I-bonds for your own personal 'Coverdell' account building. No, they don't accrue like those two tools do, but they are about as safe and inflation-free as you can get, and their proceeds would be completely tax-free for higher ed. And if they dont get used for higher ed, they are there for you for any other needs with no state/local taxes. treasurydirect.gov for more information if you want to do some research (I am NOT a CFP). Best of luck with your planning.

1 Vote

Phoenix, Arizona

If we look at historical context, housing is significantly over-valued. And historically, it has corrected over time. Folks like to think that 2009 was a one-off, yet we've had bubbles prior. What we see now is perhaps a tipping point away from individual home ownership to institutional home ownership. Will first-time home buyers become rarer as wages continue to fall further behind housing prices? Will we see only the first three quintiles of earners able to afford buying in the future, with the bottom 40% relegated to a lifetime of tenancy? Only time will tell. Here are a few graphs to illustrate economic trends. In the one on housing prices corrected for inflation, the red line is my approximation of an average bottom of the market.