I have been a member of Del’s company Lifestyles Unlimited now for about nine years and I’ve been on the team here for about two years. What I do is teach some of the introductory classes. I mostly help new members with their real estate investing questions, and that’s what I’m here to do for you whether or not you are a member.
Who We Are
If you are a first time reader, Del’s company is a 19-year-old real estate investor/mentor group that teaches people how to use real estate—single-family homes all the way up to several hundred-unit apartment complexes and everything in between to build wealth and passive realized monthly income streams. So we’ll take you through.
And if you have any questions right now about property locating, evaluating, negotiating, financing, closing, leasing, make-readies, rehabs, management, then let us know. It is a question-driven program that is at its best when you participate.
The Wisdom of Children
I am one of those people who I’ve a real interest in just the wisdom of children. I am amazed every day by my own and how profound some of their observations are. And I think when you have that outlook of simplicity many times it just strips the ego away from the lens. It just makes it a more honest evaluation sometimes.
The first time I noticed this was three years ago when my daughter was just a two year old and we used to take her out for ice cream every Thursday. We took advantage of our church having a mother’s day out program that day, and when we picked her up, you know, it became a family routine. Mom and dad and little baby girl went out for ice cream.
And it became something that she looked forward to so much that when we picked her up from school every day, everybody there wondered which ice cream parlor we were going to that day because it’s all she would talk about. She learned the days of the week and what time 3:00 o’clock was on the clock just because of this ice cream outing that happened every week.
“Everybody Needs Ice Cream”
I mean, you could see it in her face. It was something that she looked forward to so much. It was just so evident. She just lit up on that day. On one particular Thursday when we were on the way to the ice cream parlor, I remember the trip well because of something she said.
Before she said it we passed up a guy on the corner who was obviously destitute and begging. Then we passed up a couple in the front of a pickup truck and they were arguing, yelling, and screaming at each other. And then another guy passed up and shook his fist at us obviously in road rage.
The look on my daughter’s face went from just so much excitement about going for ice cream—an event that she treasured so much—to just a blank look, she was deep in thought. I said, “What’s wrong, baby?” She said, “Daddy, everybody needs ice cream.” Everybody needs ice cream.
Balance
And around here we use the metaphor “peace, joy, wealth, health, and happiness” when we talk about going out there and getting from your life what it is that you want. You may have heard us use that string of qualities on the program many times. And one point that I want to make about it is that every one of those things is connected.
And you know what we are implying by using so many qualities like that—and you may have heard Steve Davis recently talking about the wheel of life—we are talking about balance. Because if you think about it, if you go out there and create wealth and compromise your ethics, compromise your spirituality, what have you really gained?
You end up in a position where you’re stressed out because you’re violating what your conscience is telling you is right. And when you get stressed out, your health can deteriorate. When your health deteriorates you don’t feel like reading or growing or going to workshops or classes and learning.
It’s All Connected
And it comes right back to if you’re not growing, well, what happens to your ability to conduct business? And when word gets out that you conduct business in an immoral way, what happens to your business? So it’s all connected. What I’m suggesting we do is we break that spiral, break in somewhere.
And this program is about building wealth with real estate. And if you get out there and if you build enough wealth—and we’re not talking about gobs and gobs of money, we’re talking about an income stream— you don’t have to have a million dollars or more to have enough of an income stream to meet and exceed your bills. The median home—or I’m sorry, the median income for Texas families is $45,000 a year. You break that down monthly and that’s $3700 and change.
You pay taxes on it, and your taking home $2900. Hopefully you’re saving $300, ten percent, or more. And so your family’s budget is $2500 a month. That’s what you’ve got to get, $2500 a month. You can get $3,000 a month—that’s 15 houses at $200 a month in passive income, and 15 houses in cash flow. You don’t have to be a millionaire to go and buy 15 houses, and you’ve covered your monthly note.
Taking Steps Backward
Now, there are three levels of concern that I am finding here, and I think a lot of prospective real estate investors are taking steps backwards. It used to be two, three, four years ago when people would ask me about my real estate investing. They would ask questions that were more geared to “How do you do what you’re doing?” And they wanted to know things like “How do you find property?” “How do you evaluate property?” “How do you lease property?” “How do you manage property?” Things like that.
And I think a lot of folks have taken a step backwards. And I started noticing this about two years ago when questions changed from “How” to “Well, do I have what it takes?” “What if I don’t have money?” “What if I don’t have credit?” “What if I don’t have time?”
And then more recently it’s even taken another step back when people start mentioning things that are just outside of their control. Things like “What if the market changes?” in whatever direction. I’ll tell you, we make money in both the up and down market with real estate investing.
We’ll pick up more on this topic when we come back from the break. But I will say that if you’re thinking that the grass is greener on my side of the table, it is, and we have ice cream on this side.
