With young children

Kids are great assistance when doing inspections.

They are honest and will not doubt tell you whats cool and what’s not.(an honest appraisal)

Treat inspections as a game, how many bed room, bath rooms, etc with some nice healthy prizes or Maccas.

Have fun.

hrm

Depends on what you want to do?? If you mean renovating and living in the property while you do that, gees your keener than i am! If you mean just buying ip’s and keeping the financial `balls’ in the air well thats a matter of seeing what your budget can allow. Like you I have kids also and have been sure to buy ip’s that are positive or neutral cash flow. I have no problem with negative gearing ip’s, however if your finances are tight now this may just make it tougher.

Eric

Hi Endless Summer,
While I don’t know your individual circumstances and challenges, I can give you a couple of thoughts from my journey of the past few years. Our challenges, and those of many parents of young kids I know, have been financial in terms of equity and reduced income, and also time.

We have 2 children under-5. By choice we rent our PPOR, and bought our first IP when our fist child was 9 months. We’ve continued to buy since then, even though most of that time we’ve been on one income.

Things I’ve found helpful:

1. Think regional Australia. You might not have the equity or income to buy in a capital city, but there are plenty of towns which have healthy populations and industries and property prices are cheaper. It’s a way of getting into the market rather than sitting out and doing nothing.
2. Think outside the square. Can you do a reno/ add a room, paint, anything to add value?
3. How much are you prepared to sacrifice? The sacrifice might be in material things, like better vehicles, buying secondhand clothes/toys or in time and family life. One of our sacrifices was to buy a cheap country property 9 hours drive away, send me back to work full-time, and have my husband, who was then the primary carer for our first child, commute(with child) for three weeks at a time to renovate this property. It went on for a year. Not an experience I’d care to repeat, but we learnt heaps and heaps, had a great adventure and made enough profit to help on us the next step.
4. Use the internet and phone to research your market as much as possible. Kindergarten time, sleep time, late night, whenever you can.
5. Involve your kids if they’re old enough. Make it a game. Great learning for them. My son still talks about “Daddy’s house” and “Mummy’s house” which can really confuse acquaintances!
6. Don’t hesitate to use childcare if you need to focus on something. Family daycare can be pretty cheap if you are on a low income.
7. If and when the second partner goes back to work, continue to live as if you only had one income. It’s really tempting to splash out after years of frugality, but it’s a rare opportunity to stash away substantial savings on a regular basis.

That’s all I can think of for the moment. Stay with, you can do it. Just don’t give up.

Cheers,
Jenny

Thanks Endless Summer for your question. i was thinking the same thing and i’ve gotten a lot out of reading all the useful advice.i’ve got 2 wee ones (2.5 + 1 yos) and i’ve been trying to fit ips in as well as ‘life’ as is.i’ve certainly found the internet helpful – nap/sleep times are really the main times i can achieve anything for my family’s future.i try to get the kids off to bed at 6.30-7pm. i find that really helps. ‘on becoming babywise’ is a great book for getting bubs to sleep through the nite at an early age.

love hope
xox[blush2][blush2][blush2][blush2]javascript:insertsmilie(‘[blush2]’)
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Libby Phan

Here’s something to think about:

When my second child was born, I left her with my mum at 3 weeks old and went to an all day seminar. Because she was a breastfed baby, I had to take my pump along to the seminar and excuse myself every couple of hours to …. well the mums on this forum can figure it out…

Anyway, during a break, a woman in her 50’s approached my and said, “gee you’re starting out very young, I wish I had started to buy property when I was your age, I feel like its too late for me now” I asked her why she didn’t start earlier, she said that she was too busy with her kids and wanted to wait until they grew up!!!

Food for thought, successfull people say that it mey be difficult, but it is possible, loosers say that it may be possible but its too difficult.[biggrin][biggrin]

Xenia

We buy properties in all conditions. Can offer Immediate Cash Settlements, No Real Estate Agents Required
[email protected]
phone 0412 437 582

Hi ES,

I have an 11 week old, my first, so am currently getting used to a very different lifestyle. I can’t really give any advice as its so new to me, but it’s good to hear some experiences from others a little further along the raod I’m now travelling.

Regards
Alistair

Hi there Endless Summer,

Sounds like there are plenty of people out there going through the same issues. The common thread I guess is “It can be done” but its hard work (isn’t everything when you first start).

I have 3 children (10,5,& 14 mths) and we have been increasingly involved in real estate investing over the last 3 years.

We have been to so many inspections with the kids(100+), that my 10 yo daughter is getting to know what we are looking for and can be a great help.

We do get the normal complaints – “not another house”, “can I wait in the car this time” etc. But we both decided that this was going to be a big part of our lives for a long time, so there was no point in not involving them. Who knows, they may even pick up on some good ideas, at least its better than sitting in front of the tv watching reality shows.

This is our reality.

We have lived in two of our houses as we did reno’s. The first was only relatively minor – full paint job internally and garden work on an unloved house, so not much impact on our lives. The second was a full kitchen and bathroom gut and refit (took me 1 month for the bathroom alone) we were all taking showers outside for the whole month. Thanks to a warm summer in Perth, this was kind of nice (although the girls were more nervous about this than the boys).[biggrin]

We currently own 3 IP’s, and have one income. I go to a day job 40hr/wk and my partner does what she can inside school hours, while looking after our youngest. Some days this can be nothing, other days we can get heaps done. My partner tends to do a lot of the ringing around during office hours, and co-ordinating things so that after work or on the weekends, we are all go.

Our social life has probably taken the biggest hit, but true friends want you to succeed in what you are doing, and don’t really care how much time you can spend with them.

It is very important for us to try to keep a balance with time dedicated only for our family.

One day soon hopefully, we will be better off financially, and we may be able to pay people to do most of the work. But for now its us against the world, and I think we are slowly winning.

As Dr X suggested, don’t wait untill your kids grow up, every year you delay, makes it another year before you reach your goal. Get into it…

Damo.

Today I attended the funeral of a friend who left behind three sons, the youngest of whom is just 14 and must finish growing up without a Mum. So I guess tonight I find myself musing on how do you find the balance? How do balance being there for your young family giving them a positive emotional legacy for a life, building a financiallly comfortable/free future for yourself and your family and with doing the hobbies and things that make life special for you? I don’t have the answers – everyone does it differently, some well, some not so well. While some people here prove that they can invest and have a young family, don’t be too hard on yourself if for you that doesn’t work right now. To quote previous posts, focus on what you can do, not on what you can’t.
Jenny

our investing path started a couple of months before my wife became pregnant. My daughter is now 5 and when we lived in Sydney, she travelled as a bub to Brizzy 7 times and even Perth with me on a buying trip when she was 2. It is hard but the harder thing is to do nothing.

You know that for a bit of hard work now you will have more money and time for those later years with the kids. By adding them to your early ip journey you are also ingraining in them the value of property and hopefully a mindset for life.

Never think you are taxing your family to drag them around looking at property, even in hot conditions in Brizzy one January. Seeing a baby in tow could ease your negotiations with an owner occupier who thinks you are buying as a ppor their little home or unit.

The awww they have a baby worked for us and a townhouse in Kingston when we had a limited budget. The lady assumed it was for us and we didnt realise until the agent mentioned it back in his office after talking with her.

Hopefully the whole process is fine for the kids and you end up spending more quality time with them due to your portfolio and the steps you now take in acquiring it.

Sadly, too many of us use the kids as an excuse to not do things in our lives, I for one am guilty of this as I have put off diving for a year now saying its due to the kids. I have a wonderful wife though who has kicked me out of this thinking. Im off to Swains Reef out of Gladstone for a week in August for a 6 day live aboard 5 dives per day trip.

All Im aluding to is that we need to focus on what really is important now so we can realx a bit later when our impetus is slightly slower.

Go, get those inspections, get the properties, spend time with the kids, and most of all have a life while achieving those goals.

DD

Buyers Agent (Dip Financial Services(FP)
Don’t sweat the small stuff,and it’s all small stuff!!

Hi

For us starting out, which wasn’t that long ago, with 3 boys under the age of 5 it was tough. But with a united determination of “why” we investing we were able to push through the long distance drives and overnights away from home, (a small tip an in car DVD helps and motels that have pool do too!).

We realised to really make it we had to endure some pain. Most recently for us that pain was being apart from our boys while investing in the USA for 2 weeks. Next month we are going back again to the USA for 3 weeks investing but this time we have decided to take the kids, (the pain this time being the cost, and a 14hr non stop Pacific flight ….but it will be worth it)

If you know why you are doing it you can make it happen.

Regards

Tony