An interest only loan means you only pay the interest each month, So if you take out a loan for $100k after 5 years you still owe $100K because you havn't paid back any of the priciple you have only been paying the interest(priciple is the actual loan amount).

interest only loans are not recomended for your own home, but are usefull for your investment properties, simply because your own home loan is not tax deductable where as your investment loan is, so you should put your investment loan on interest only so that you have more monthly cash flow to smash down your non deductable loans,

for instance a 8% interest on your investment loan after you have claimed the interest back on your tax works out at around 5.6% so why would you want to pay of your invest loan thats at 5.6% interest when you could be paying of your home loan at 8%. 

If they have been paying rent on time, I can't see how the agent can harass them  or do anything to them, I own investment properties but I am also a tenant and I must say that the only contact I ever had from agents as a tenant was the occassion where we forgot to pay our rent on time, or when we had to sign a new lease,

The biggest thing that will annoy a land lord is late rent payments, property damage or to many maintance calls, so as long as this is not the case I can't see the problem,

Always get a schedule done, They normally write the depreation over 40years,

"Deppro" actually have a policy that if the depreation schudule doesn't return enough money to cover the cost  you out lay for them to write it up for you they don't charge you,

The sad part about have money in the bank is it gets eaten up by inflation, has zero capital growth and zero gearing,

so your healthy return of 6.25% from ING after tax depending on your tax bracket is about 4% take away inflation brings the return down to less than 1% per year, I would hate to think that inflation might spike to 8 of 10 percent for just one year and wipe away 5 or 6 years of investment income,

Who says money in the bank has zero risk investment,

G'day Mate,

I think the best thing to do is just keep going as you are paying the house off and clearing that car debt as fast as you can,
If you do refinance to reduce your payments you will be adding years to your loan,

Also beware of refinanceing the car loan into the property loan it can be a "Trap"

If you refinance the car into your home loan with out increasing your payments you will be thousands of dollars worse of in the long run even if it has reduced your monthly payment and interest rate, simply because it's better to pay your car off over 5yrs at 12% interest than to pay it of of 25years at 8%.

The only way I recomend doing it is if you refincance your car loan into you property loan to save interest but increase your monthly payments by the amount that the car loan used to be this way you will pay your car of in a shorter period and pay less interest, and once you have paid of the car your probally used to making the monthly payments so just keep the payments they same and start smashing down you home loan faster,

Never reduce your monthly payments on any thing unless there is a good reason, just to give your self more spending money is not a good reason, do the hard yards eating baked beans for a few years and the benefits will be compounded enormously over time.

Offcoase you should not live like your in poverty,

The point I was trying to make was not to be a scrooge, but just be wise with you money and not blow it, I certainly do not deprive myself of the basic's, but when it comes to big ticket luxury items I certainly don't go over board,

I drive a nice tidy 1997 VT commodore converted LPG, I don't need or want the lastest V8 HSV with fully sick sub woofers,

I am sorry but getting into debt for doodads really does not interest me in the slightest, As I said I have mates that have all the flash doodads and it is really over rated, their life is not any better than mine. I don't feel I am missing out on anything at all.

as a matter of fact when I had just turned 19 in 2001 and I was in the process of buying my first investment property and I was explaining to my mates that it was actually going to be negative geared and cost about $100 out of my pay each fortnight to own it they tryed to talk me out of it saying things like "live large while you can mate, we are only 19 worry about that stuff when older and have kids and shit"

now beening 6 years on I am glad that I didn't listen to them, these same mates look at me and say they wished that they had done things differently, some of them are only now trying to save for house deposits and because they have kids now and house prices have gone up alot they are finding it difficult, mean while I have a healthy investment property portfoilo worth close to a million $$$.

When you are young with no kids is the best time to get started, looking back the situation myself and mates were in 2001 was probally the best time in our lives to have started, we were freash out of school most of us earning well over $50,000 a year in the army, no kids or wife, living at the barracks pay $100 a fortnight rent and electricity,
 

I don't believe the peak oil theory will have much affect, There is plenty of oil left, As new technogy arises they are getting more and more oil from existing wells that were thought would be un economical by the mid 90's, finding ways to drill wells in deeper waters and in areas thought imposible years ago, and are begining to drill heavy oils that in the past were thought to be un recoverable,as the technolgy become available there will be more use of oil shale rock and oil sands as a sourse of oil, yes oil may run out one day but not in the next 30yrs, the price may increase but as it increases investment goes to new wells that were previously un economical and new production will come online and the price will steady,

Plus there are many new technologies that will slowly take the load off oil, for example better fuel efficiant cars eg, hybrids, plug in hybrids and fuel cells, different  fuels such as Bio fuels, biogas, hydrogen and solid fuel gasification.

I don't think there will be a silver bullet to replace oil, but i think the future energy needs will be sourced from a mixture of technologies that are slowly becoming available.
 

Yes she may pay a little more interest in a wrap, but atleast the property will be 100% hers, why save 2% by giving up 33% of the future capitol growth, she can always refinance the wrap when shes in a better situation.

 People

Stop looking for positive cash flow properties for you to BUY.

As I said in my last post you have to create a positive cash flow these days,…… as said some of the previous posts the do exist, but you will be hard pressed to find an off the shelf positve cash flow solution.

If you want a positive cashflow near a capitol city you'll have to work at doing, reno's, subdivsion, property trades to lower your total debt, invest in commerical property, wrap deals, small developments,

If your not a proactive investor willing to get out there and and think outside the box, then yes for you positve cash flows don't exist, and the only way you will make money is buying a neg cash flow investment and wait for the market to increase.

IN regards to rich dad series of books, I think they are great books for motivation, but there is not really any nuts and bolts "how to" infomation, they are really aimed at putting you in an investment mind set

 I own all the books mentioned above and they were all great reads, I am just saying you also have to invest time and maybe some money educating yourself in the art of investing, which is really a life long project.