Ali,
I said

then you said:

So I think you are agreeing with me, ok cool.

As for idealism, yeah I would love the world to live in perfect harmony/honesty/goodness. I personally prefer and thrive on these concepts when dealing with other harmonious/honest/good people in this way.

My problem that I raised in this thread was that when you step outside your tiny little comfort zone and enter the “hard cold realities of the world”, I found that my idealistic kind approach was taken advantage of. On a number of successive occasions without fail, My niceness not only left me worse off, but also left the person I was helping….worse off.

I found that the “kind thing to do” was not necesarily the best thing to do while conducting business. Pretending to be a social worker while investing was, in my opinion, bad news for all involved.

Ok..example.
I advertise a room for sale and get a call from a young lad who needed a place to say, he says he is copping abuse from his step father where he is living. i say ” how terrible” (I think to myself “great, i have acquired my first investment property and am finally in a position to help somebody.”) I have a room available, lets meet after the weekend.

We meet at his step dads home, and he is sitting on the steps with his bags. On the grounds of my words, he had initiated a huge argument with his family, and was there ready to go.

I think “gee whiz toto, this poor fella”. Common sense dictates that you do due diligence checks on a potential applicant before offering a place… but what was i to do, if I didn’t offer this fella a room, he would be homeless (I had a newspaper cutting on the wall about the terrible statistics of homelessnes as a good intentioned reminder to me of how i could help people.) So I put him up in a hotel for a few days til room was available. And give him $30 for food til room was available, as he was flat broke.

Well, didn’t I feel good about myself. Doing good and helping a misfortuned person person out. I couldn’t get in touch with any of his references, but I had met him, and he SEEMED genuine and good.

A few days later, (the room was still not ready), I call the Motel to pay for a few more days for this poor unfortunate lad.

An angry motel manager yells at me “Well, that young man will never stay here again. He had stained all the sheets with alcohol smelling vomit, had cigarette burnt and ashed everywhere. Even though I was standing next to him when he was originally told it was a no smoking room and he said “Thats ok, I ALWAYS smoke outside”. There was also other damage to the room. He had scooted without saying anything to motel owners…I was charged with cleaning bill, and my name and my investing companies name was now DIRT, for vouching for someone who I thought was in need of my help.

The weekend went by, and no word from our little character. Still giving him the benefit of the doubt I thought “I hope he is ok, he must be a very troubled soul.”

Monday comes, and I get a call from the young lad…”hi, um, is that room ready?”

This lad had dug himself into a hole long before I came along, and I was just being used.

I then bite the bullet and turn off “mr. kind and ready to save the world” and say NO, I can’t help you anymore.

He may now be homeless by my kind gestures

IMAGINE, if I had of signed a tenancy agreement with him and put him in my house, My property would have been trashed!!!!

My point is, that when doing business, I have found that if you act like a social worker, you get treated like a charity. I would be better off joining greenpeace than playing “hero”.

I repeated similar scenarios on a number of occasions when faced with someone who had come to me as the last chance of not being homeless, often after the local government funded housing support services had turned them away. Skipped my due diligence, gave the benefit of the doubt……and both me and the person i thought i helped got BURNED EVERY TIME.

By continuing with that attitude I would now be broke and unable to help anyone at all.

Instead I am trying to understand how other experienced investors approach their business. To try to find out where on the scale I can interact with the real world.

I maintain my own personal virtues of honesty and integrity. Which I think are the best in the real world as it is very hard to push over a building without flaws.

But I no longer let kindness rule. I base my judgements on fairness and sound business sense. I think pure idealism fails to survive in the real world.

[dozey]

Sonja,
I am glad that your faith in your god works for you. That is great.
That book sounds interesting, i may check it out.
I will continue to walk my own path though and choose my decisions as they come up without set external rules.

Maybe I’m just stubborn :o)

lifexperience

Ok, to confuse things. I have had a property lawyer tell me that (in Vic), Stamp duty is payable on transfer of titles. Which could be 2,5 or 25 years later,,,???????

Is this one of those legal “It can be what you want it to be type things????[dozey][confused]

lifexperience

Kay,

I also have a problem with “facts”[cowboy2]

I don’t know that you can ever 100% be certain about anything. You can play on the probability of certain incidents happening again (which is how science works), but you can never know for sure.

So you only ever have a handful of incidents on which to test theories.

So anything may and can happen (murphys law)

Perpetual questioning goesaround in circles, but if you want to take the next step and actually do something then, at the end of the day you still need something to go on.

I don’t know if there is ever a right answer or not.

But I am slowly working out my own guides as i go, with the help of friendly people on this forum and my own conviction (hopes) that this is not all a dream.

cheers

[drummer]

lifexperience

I like to use and interpret actual life experiences I have had or others have had rather than theories or opinions.[angel]

lifexperience