In many international real estate markets, finding a piece of real estate that provides the kind of returns that passive investors in the United States have expected is challenging. Out of curiosity, we have looked at the cost of multifamily assets around Vancouver, Canada, and Sydney, Australia, for instance, and have yet to see a […]
When I was on a three-year bicycle expedition around the globe, I was on a tight budget. I averaged about $7,000 per year in expenses. This works out to be less than $20 per day. Granted, we are talking about 2009-2012 dollars, but that’s still very snug by most travelers’ standards. Hotels in pricy Western […]
Let’s get straight to the point: most of us would like to retire at some point (preferably sooner rather than later). To be clear, in our opinion retirement should not mean idleness, but rather financial independence: the state in which your time belongs to no one but you. Robert Kiyosaki has spent a great deal of […]
What expectations do you have for your retirement lifestyle? If you’re like most Americans, you were probably fed the dream of putting in your forty-hour weeks at a corporate job until you hit your mid-60s. After that, you may be able to retire with a modest pension to supplement your hard-earned savings. While this process […]
Author’s note: This article was written when interest rates were at historical lows. Since 2012 and the extraordinary year of 2020, most housing markets around the United States have experienced much appreciation. With historically low interest rates to be taken advantage of, it’s making more sense than ever to cash out on one’s residence through […]
Have you ever invested and lost money? If so, we can relate. Our first time losing money was when we put $1,000 into cryptocurrency (for fun) while the Bitcoin bubble grew to $20,000 per coin several years ago. We entered somewhere around the $14,000 mark. It dropped precipitously after the high water mark and did […]
Do you have a qualified retirement plan? We have two questions that you need to ask yourself: The fact is that most folks will not be financially free when they reach retirement age. They will not even be able to live upon savings without a major reduction in quality of life. To better understand some […]
While the investment with the most short-term safety may be your bank account or a stash of cash in your mattress, you are still exposed to inflationary risk or thievery (at least in the case of the “mattress account”). So even though money can legitimately be referred to as an investment, we won’t consider it […]
Every investment carries risk. Stocks have counter-party risk: the company you are invested in could do poorly or even fail. An experienced thief can steal gold coins hidden in a safe. Governments can default on their bonds or debase the currency to delude the value of the bonds to lighten the debt burden. Risk is […]
We believe an investor can purchase a property in any submarket of any metropolitan area in the USA and win. It’s possible to purchase a D-Class (think: crack den) apartment building in Detroit and make a boatload of money. However, few investors have the expertise in the D-Class space to deal with the challenges that […]