All Forum Posts by: Todd Blyton

@Mike S.

I would have to agree Clint has a lot of great information.

Like most things its how much are you willing to pay to increase your intellect in an area of interest.  Yes you can find a lot of information for free which is fine.  You can also pay for information of which some will be good some not so good.

I have purchased a few of the programs offered and you can find them online, generally on discount.  For the most part I have been happy with my purchases.  Although the information would allow you to do a lot of things DYI, the information you learn will also allow you to engage your team of professionals in a manner more to your benefit. 

Lawyers generally like to use boilerplate language and its often the paralegal that does your work, but your needs might be specific and if you know what your needs are and can communicate accurately to them.  Some accountants wont go outside what turbotax tells them, when in reality your tax is based upon your facts, and your specific way of conducting business may be more advantaged tax wise rather then a cookie cutter aproach.

Setting up a holding company say in Wyoming to hold your LLC's as disregarded entities set up in other states to hold your rental.

Would you set up one set of books and treat each state as a subsidy in the books of the Wyoming LLC or would you set up a set of books for the Wyoming LLC and each entity having its own set of books?

@Mike McCarthy

You might want to research what is call IBC, infinite banking concept, family bank. Nelson Nash should be a name to look up.

If you set up a whole life policy with a large cash value and a good paid up additions rider it can act as a cash reserve account with a tax beneficial death benefit.

Do some research not all agents are going to know how to effectively set up a policy, and the policy should be set up with a mutual insurance company. When the policy is with a mutual company your whole life policy makes you an equity holder of the mutual company and therefore entitled to dividends if any.

It took me almost a year to fully understand and set up a system using this policy structure.

Another book of interest along this thinking is “what would the Rockefellers do.”

As Kim Butler says. You can rent your insurance with term, or you can own your insurance with whole life.

There are many other types of whole life but the safest one is the simple Whole life policy.

Hello,

Anyone working the Puerto Rico market,  I am getting sick of winter and think there would be some good opportunities there.

I generally use Pittsburgh Radison White.  It’s a simple off white for most of my interior painting needs.  

Welcome from the Wisconsin west coast

Communication is good and can avoid a lot of problems.  I agree with many of the things others have said above.  Talk to your tenant and get to understand there situation (this empowers you to be the problem solver rather then the AH Landlord).  You then have information to provide you with options.  Some of which have been talked about above, but addressing the issue and putting the tenant on notice to conform to the agreement is paramount. @Jason Boulay had a good recommendation a side aggrement with the tenant to come current with payments or agree to vacate.  This may avoid the costs of an eviction or other litigation and attorneys fees.  Some points to keep in mind, are IF the tenant cannot follow through with the lease its best if they move on, however tenant turn over can be expensive, and what loses may you incur during the eviction proses.

Enforcement can be an Item in the agrement, IE “arbitration clause”.  The point of the OA is to prevent internal disagreements in the first place, if there are any issues that might currently be existing address them before there is an issue.  Use the OA to put members at ease,  however, if there are issues at this time do you really want to enter into a legal agreement with another party??

The more you put down into the OA and keeping the LLC formailties properly the more protections you have in litigation. In the OA you can provide the scope of the agreement, the obligations of the partners/members, management structure, taxing structure, charging order responses. If you are using the LLC just for real estate investing, you can make the OA specific to the needs of investing, owner rights/ responsibilities, managing, financing, acquiring and liquidating realestate/assets. The more you and your partners think out the OA the more smoothly you can operate your business and resolve issues with partners or creditors.

Ultimately how you wish to conduct business is up to you.  

With that in mind there are many ways to set up your operations for liability asset protection and tax efficiency. The simplist way would be to set up an LLC and have two checking accounts. AN incoming account and an expense account. You could then have savings accounts for Deposits, Capital Reserves, or what have you. One thing that I have done is used a Whole life policy with a good PUA rider for cash holding, for Taxes, insurance, capital holdings with the two checking accounts for in and out funds.

If you have more then one LLC though, you should have separate books for each LLC.

Quicken is nice but Quickbooks does allow for your accountant to access information and I think its easier to generate K1 if you have partners.