I’m finding it difficult to sustain the ‘momentum’ to continue investing many people talk about when my wife simply isn’t interested in property investment.
Many reasons are offered as resistance ;
1. Too tired
2. Too busy with the kids
3. I don’t care about stupid property
4. I’d rather spend lotsa money on our house
5. You find the deals and I’ll ‘pick holes in it’The level of dis-interest in money making opportunities is staggering compared to the massive interest displayed in purchasing consumerable / depreciating items.
This is quite a ‘personal’ issue, and has little to do with hard crunching numbers. Reading books, or heaven forbid going to seminars bores her stupid. She does like getting the ‘executive summary’, but alot of the time the import of the message can’t be transferred in 3 minutes.
How do other forumites encourage / negotiate with less willing partners who carry hefty “veto” power, based on little or no knowledge of the subject matter…and not a jot of inspiration to increase that knowledge base ???
Am I the only one with a ‘less then keen’ property partner ??
Hi
Fear is the biggest motivator as well as a hurdle. Motivator only if you know how to go past the fear. So, may be you can use the same fear to motivate to do something about it – like a not so pretty picture of life after retirement that cannot sustain consumerism.
Then a picture of life when you used delayed gratification – early retirement, travel through world,buy whatever you want etc etc.,
I kind of feel intruding in replying to this, but I am sure you understand. FEAR is what is holding her back and making her give excuses.
PadmaHi dazzling
i’d like to add to what padma has said.
firstly i can see how tough it must be without the support of your companion.
secondly you really need her on side at least supporting you in your endevours, as long as she supports you then you can do it alone, although its a lot more fun when you work as a team. I’ve been fortunate that my wife has been a great support, but i have a friend who have also retired from property whose wife is not interested at all.
thirdly , how do you get her to where she agrees that the two of you need to invest, i think you need to sit down together, one night when she isn’t tired and talk about your goals and asperations. share with her how you feel and also ask how does she “feels” about investing, padma may well be right and she has some fears that need to be overcome.
finally get her to see its not property that you are after but the better life that successful property investing can give you. 8 years ago my net worth was 25k and i was working only four days a week, today my own investments support our lifestyle and i no longer need to work (although i’ve started a business sourcing homes in NZ). My wife and 13 year old had the pleasure of 5 weeks in Europe in 2003, in dec 2003 we all moved to NZ for a “holiday”, since then i’ve been to the USA and just came back from 4 weeks holiday in Oz. My kids used to hate property having to sit in the car while we looked through them, now they see how its given us opportunities we would never have had on my salary and even the kids support my investing.
12 Years ago when i was studying full time at a Bible College, i was trading shares to help pay my way through. i wanted to buy some options. Options are very risky and my wife didn’t want me to do it. I was confident it would work and made a deal that the whole profit she could have to spend on a shopping spree (she had done without new clothes for years), she agreed and 2 weeks later my $1000 had doubled and she went on a $1000 shopping trip for herself. Perhaps make a deal where the future profit can go towards something she wants.
all the best, one last thing, if it doesn’t work now don’t let this become a thing of resentment towards her.regards westan
I live in New Zealand and for a fee find cash positive deals there, email me at [email protected] to join our database
Grrr my ISP had a glitch and lost the really long answer I’d typed to this!
[angry2]
anyway, when I started out it’s fair to say hubby wasn’t keen. He was working ridiculous hours, and didn’t want to know. Initially I started doing some small share trades, and talking to him occasionally about it, but property was just too big a thing for him to contemplate. All he wanted was to pay off the house and no more borrowing.
Anyway, one day he read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. It didn’t change him over night, but it certainly opened his eyes to a lot of things. Finally I convinced him to let me buy a rental property. We’ve moved on from there.
I have to say that even today a lot of what I do scares him, he’s not really comfortable with it all. But having said that, he took a package just over a year ago, spent last year studying full time in Children’s Ministry, and is now contemplating how best he can work to help primary school age kids at risk (and it doesn’t matter if it’s paid work or not).
He’s still not entirely comfortable with what I do, and still has a tendency to be a negative nellie when I come up with ideas, but considering where he’s come from, I think it’s brilliant!!!
I’m still the main investor, I still read the books and go to seminars by myself – I don’t know if that will ever change. His passion is helping kids, mine is investing. But at least he’s on the same page now. And he will bounce ideas around with me!
And right from the beginning, even when he didn’t want to know, he still reluctantly supported me.
So I guess what I’m saying is – take it one step at a time. It’s good to paint a rosy picture of the future, maybe even chuck in an incentive or two, but if you try to present the bigger picture right from the start in terms of how many houses you want, etc, you may just scare your partner so much that you’ll never get anywhere.
I started with little share parcels, then options trading, then one rental house, then two rental houses, then wrap houses, and so it goes.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step – take your wife one step at a time, and you may be surprised.
But if she’s never interested in being your partner in investing, that’s okay too. All she really needs to do is not block you!Keep smiling
Felicity
F.W
Just a tip, I know what a pain losing your work
can be, so: if you’re writing a sub/reply just pull
up a word doc. or alternative w/proc, type your
reply copy and paste it in the box, works like a
dream. That way you will have a copy and if it
all goes to hell on the net you just fire up copy
and paste. Interesting article guys! Good to hear
from you Westan.I have simliar issues with my wife.
She supports me but is not as pasisonate in property investing as myself. I am a numbers man (accountant) and she is more a people person.
I would love to pump all our money into property investing. But I have a family (two kids) to support and my wife runs the household.
We have a rough budget. We pay our PPOR mortgage and a little on an investment property. The rest of our monthly paypacket is for her to live within the limits of. I dont care where it goes as long as its within that amount.
This seems to be working and she is saving a little of that for other things.
She still makes the comment – i wish we could just pay our PPOR mortgage off and have the title. I tell her dont worry about that – our equity in investment properties more than pays of our PPOR mortgage 10 times over.
We did Canada last year with the kids. I explained to her the reason we were able to do this was because of property investing. We certainly did not save for it on a monthly basis. She is starting to understand this.
So in summary – keep investing. Try and teach her the benefits of investing. Dont go gung ho. Just nibble at the edges till she understands.
Hi Dazzling,
The critical issue for us was how long to retirement and how much to live on when we chose to retire and would we have enough – answer probably yes, but…..
Then bought one property and let matters take their coourse, wife got used to owning a property and could see what it was doing for us. Then another, then another, then another and so on.
For my wife it was a series of small steps and not overloading her with ‘we need a large portfolio’ type message.
In the interim we also budget and review the budget very 6 months so that we can both see the progress we are making. Comments like ‘our net wealth increased by X% this half year, this property has gone up in value by etc’ as we go along the way.
Key message start small – messages like we can own 100+ properties may blow her out of the water.
Derek
[email protected]Property Investment Support Available.
I am in the same boat.
I just work on my own, doing it for the kids I tell myself.
It keeps me going and she just keeps on spending.
Byronent
Adelaide SAHey Dazzling… you’re certainly not in the boat by yourself with this one hey? it would seem that unless you’ve married an investor to begin with, your partner won’t have the same motivation either.
I too am in the same boat… my hubby couldn’t give a rats about investing and seems to think that money grows on trees and will be there when we retire… but who is gonna keep working then? But, I have the motivation to pull us out of any worries and to give him spare money to spend. (note that this is SPARE money… after i’ve put aside what we need for investing)
It really is hard… and I totally understand your frustrations with this one… but just show small positives in your investing and slowly bring her into the picture. Once she sees that her spendys can come from the income off of your investments, she’ll want more investments!
Chin up… we’re all feeling what you’re going through Dazzling and you’re definately a step ahead of most of the population with just one of you into investing!
[biggrin]Tam
It can be difficult sometimes when a partner has issues. My husbands family lost the lot when he was a teenager and were removed from the family home.
It took me almost two years to get him to buy a place so we could move out of the parents !
I agree – the main factor is fear.
Not only of the debt but also not understanding. Hubby isn’t a numbers man and all he sees is a huge amount of never ending debt.
I have found that the best way around it is to introduce new ideas and projcts slowly. One step at a time…..and yes rewards work. you would be amazed what a man would do for a ski trip ! [biggrin]
Louise
Challange the Norm
Hi Dazzling
I understand you are frustrated but if you just keep in there, she might get interested.
My partner was talking about property to me from the day we met. I didn’t have his motivation for as I knew “Yes, this is what you want to do BUT how are we going to do it without us losing the lot?”. When kids are involved it can be harder to get someone motivated – I know as a mother myself I tended to think more of the security of our current home than investing.
But Roy persisted with me over 4 years and when we moved to Dubbo 10 months ago I gave him the chance to prove himself – I handed over our renovation money to purchase property! Of course my family said I was crazy as renovations would never happen now but I trusted him and he tried to explain things to me as we went. We now have 7 properties and renovations are about to happen in Feb due to him getting the money back.
Another thing that helped me get into Steve’s book was Roy reading a bit to me each night before we went to sleep. I thought it was going to be one of these books where my eyes would glaze over but found that it was actually easy reading and informative. Soon after, he recommended I read the book and I did. So maybe that could be a good tip to help her understand.
Keep hanging in there
Jenny
Thanks for all of the great responses. It was very encouraging to know I wasn’t the only one “in this boat”, especially with some of the senior or veteran contributors experiencing versions of this.
I suppose all partnerships are going to have differing levels of keenness.
Fear seemed to be common thread in the responses. I don’t believe it is fear, as we have owned IP’s for over 10 years now and we are both pretty comfy with the debt situation – although the scale of things is getting such that we now have no-one in our immediate circle of friends and family to guide us…perhaps this is partly to blame.
No need for the ‘little rewards’ technique either, they are taken regardless of the investing results.
Anyway, cheers for the responses…very comforting to know others situations, I’ll do as Byronent does and forge ahead. The wife is definitely the people person in our relationship and I am the number cruncher – perhaps we should buy a high yielding hotel and let her at it !!!
Originally posted by Dazzling:The wife is definitely the people person in our relationship and I am the number cruncher – perhaps we should buy a high yielding hotel and let her at it !!!
I have thought about the same thing. Maybe a Bed and breakfast after the kids grow up and before we really want to retire. Let the people person do the work and I can go play me golf.
Wow!
Funny this thread should popu up this morning when I was about to post exactly the same thing anyway!
I went home last night and told my wife how excited I was at the prospect of interest free loans under Derivex and started talking about the implications and numbers. Not only was she “not excited”, she downright tore my head off. In fact I had to take our dog for a walk just to give her time to cool off. When I came back she was OK, but still thinks its a “too good to be true scam”. She may be right, but I’ll wait for some other forumites to progress with it to prove me wrong.
At least she is in to investment properties and is willing to buy some. But, turning willingness into execution is kinda hard. She’s a lawyer and I’ve told her I want her to buy “Trust Magic” by gatherum-goss so she can setup the trust and learn about all of the implications around structure for us. She’s OK with the concept but hasn’t actually done it yet. I’ll leave it a few weeks then follow it up. Might have to buy the book for her myself.
I’ve got to say though, that my wife is inspirational! I don’t look at her negativity as a chain holding me back, more as the voice of reason to temper my enthusiasm. If not for her I might bight off more than I can chew and be worse off for doing so.
Between the two of us its a happy balance…
Cheers,
Michael.Michael
I had the same situation when I mentioned Derivex. What it wrong with it? No one gives interest free loans, etc, etc. Trusts are something else I can’t talk about. I have to mention a new opportunity a few times, let it sit, and in about 6 to 12 months, it seems to be OK. Sometimes the subject is brought up before I bring it up again.Dazzling
I think you have to find the key to the resistance. Does your wife need to think about it for a while first? You mention you have had investment property before. Is your wife tired of property or does not want the financial worry. If she likes getting the summary, it does not sound as if she is totally disinterested, just needs something that she can get enthusiastic about. Can you make the summary more meaningful for her. Stick with it. Most of us go through something similar at various times. The important thing is not to give up.
Cheers
CalderHey Dazzling,
Yes there are lots of others like you. My partner, the love of my life, is an entrenched employee with the corresponding mindset. He wouldn’t dream of not working at the PAYE gig whilst I could see him handling alot of aspects of the IP’s eg contractor management, contract negotiations, project management etc.
But investing is not this thing, he likes to work and come home to his family. It took me a while to drop the notion that we HAD to be the dynamic duo working together on the grand investing plan. Luckily he is a saver like me, so we don’t have the reatil therapy issue. He never spends a cent.
I stopped trying to make him like me. The catalyst was going to a seminar and hearing a couple of speakers talk about their massive property portfolios (Craig Chandler and Brendon Fordyce) and I realised there was not one word about their wives, their wives were not even there, I have no idea who they are.
Bless him, though, he supports me and my goals for the family’s future wealth, and takes full responsibility many weekends whilst I am out researching suburbs or meeting buyers. I don’t go through every little detail as he’s not interested and I table documents for signing etc after dinner and we discuss what they are but that’s it.
In fact, I got to that seminar by making a deal with him that I had to earn back the cost of the seminar whithin 12 mths, and BEFORE I went to any other seminars. It gave me a huge incentive and I did it. It’s a case of “show me the money” and then some of the fear abates.
Cheers
skippygirlSkippygirl,
Great post! Makes me feel a hellavu lot better about my situation. At least my wife is in to the investment thing as well as not being a retail consumer. She’s just a “cautious investor” to temper my “gung-ho investor” style. She justs makes sure we do our due diligence in detail, that’s all.
Cheers,
Michael.Hey people great topic…..
I am some what in the same situation as a number of people in the forum so it seems…..Several years ago I convinced my wife that it would be good to invest some money in purchasing a trading package from Safety in the Market. Once I had learnt the ins and outs of the trading system I started trading the Share Price Index (SPI) and naturally with this came a certain amount of risk. I had a couple of wins, however, the losses exceeded my wins and this has been a thorn in my side ever since. My wife likes security and has developed a bit of a negative outlook on out of the ordinary investment strategies. Having said this though, she has seen the benefits of having IP’s due to having our one and only IP in Cairns. She is keen to buy more property but is stuck on the negative gearing concept because she has not taken the time to educate herself of the different strategies available. I have introduced the wrapping and options idea to her, but I think I took the wrong approach due to my over enthusiastic ways. Her response was ‘it sounds like a get rich quick scheme’ and ‘that we would be taking advantage of people in low socio-economic or financially difficult circumstances’. Anyway, I’ll convince her at some stage. I have continued to press forward with the concepts. I am currently laying the foundations to undertake lease options at the moment ie obtaining contracts etc and getting everything right so my wife will ultimately have a better understanding…..I am predominately the investor in our family but keen to include my wife, as I think it will be something fun for us to do together.
All I can say is that persistence is the key and to assist our partners to overcome fears and to show the benefits of taking action towards a better financial future through investing….Further, I agree that progressing slowly by setting small goals and not making grandiose statements of large portfolios can help.
Best of luck to all for the future….
Kind regards
Profiteer [biggrin]
Profiteer,
Snap! I put the concept of going money partner on a JV wrap to my wife to earn 20% pa returns and she balked. She reckoned it was a get-rich quick scheme and wouldn’t be in it. I’ve had to revert to the old buy-and-hold strategy to get us started. Maybe once we’ve got the trust in place and a few buy-and-holds I can revisit wrapping and other strategies that aren’t as common place.
Persistence is king, and temper that enthusiasm! I find I’m much more successful when I come across as cautious and dubious. If I come across as excited and enthusiastic then she, by necessity, adopts the cautious and dubious position so she can play devil’s advocate. If you lay claim to this position then I find your partner is more likely to come around to the positive point of view. I’m not messing with my wife’s emotions, just being careful how I approach certain discussions so as not to have a nasty fall-out situation.
Cheers,
Michael.I have been in a similar situation with a girl friend. She didn’t even want to know about finances despite my attempts to involve her.
I ended up just keeping quiet about the whole matter. I think getting people to step outside their comfort zones is just very very challenging.
“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb
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