All Forum Posts by: Brian H.

@Thomas S. She is prepared to adopt a frugal lifestyle. That would sent an issue. I think she just frantically wants to be out of debt (don't we all) in order to change her job. They flip her back and forth from 12 hour night and 12 hour day shifts. It is wreaking havoc on her ability to get decent sleep. But I tried to point out that depleting your retirement is definitely not the way to go about that.

Hey folks!

Ok, so my girlfriend has, at this point, about $45k in her retirement from her job.  It is a 403(b) plan from a hospital.  She has multiple varieties of debt she wants to pay off to get out from under all that financial stress.  She asked me today if it made sense to cash in almost $30k of that retirement and eat the penalty to pay off the debt. It is a combo of student loan debt and a vehicle loan.  

My response was "Absolutely not! Do not touch the retirement account for that! We will figure it out some other ways." Is this the right direction? It would be really financially unwise to touch that retirement for something such as paying off debt... right? Or no?  Looking for some direction.

Thank you!!

@Doug W. Would you have any interest in sharing your versions of these spreadsheets with the community or are they more of a proprietary item for you and your company?  I love looking at other people's excel "calculators" and compare to mine and see where I can improve mine when possible.  

@Randy M.  Are you still active on BP? Had a couple questions for you. If you are, send me a PM!  Couldn't find a contact email on your website. 

Thanks!

@Frank Wolter I hear ya. I don't worry about my ability to work hard, long hours. I've run a kitchen for years. 70 - 80 hour weeks regularly that are physically and mentally (most kitchen employees are not the most functional adults, it's partly a babysitting job) exhausting. I have the drive. My first flip is closing to sell on 11/26. Pumped! Just trying to learn as much as I can for when get this project finished and am.ready to roll again. Also always looking for other jobs that allow more free time to focus on REI. But then that cuts the paycheck. Ah well. Thanks for your input!

@Frank Wolter I have seen multiple people on here talk about managing bank owned properties? How did you end up doing this? What was to process to be able to do that and have them trust you to manage their properties?

Originally posted by @Matthew Haban:

Does this software run on a MAC? I know this is an old thread but any other user reviews out there?

 This is an excel spreadsheet. If you have Excel, this should work fine on a Mac, as far as I know.

@Greg Downey That does help. I thought they needed to see renters bringing in income for a year.  Thank you!

@Taylor King in my experience the MLS searches are set up for us and then we are the ones scouring all those potential deals. I've never once he a realtor come to.me.with something from an MLS search. They did come to.me with a great off-market deal. But it is up to us to figure out which properties in those searches we are interested in, then we communicate with them about those specific properties and go from there. It got me at first too man. I was so pissed and frustrated. "Why aren't they helping me go through all this and helping me figure out which ones to look at?!". I finally realize all that is on me. Here on my end properties are selling about 15% - 25% over tax value, so I scouring those searches for anything that is decently below tax value. As a noob that is the easiest method I have found to find properties that may be of interest to me. So say it is a tax value.of 180,000 on a duplex and I see it is listed at 130,000... I will save that property to look at later. Hope that helps a little. We have to do most of the work.

@Greg Downey

Thanks for that info.  When we say "seasoning", are we talking how long it has been owned or how long it has been occupied by renters?

Thanks so much!