I agree to all the above regarding women. Some people say I’m sexist but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Women are great, everyone should own one! Now if I could just find the receipt,…ergh, I mean the phone no. of my last girlfriend,….?
Cheers,
Gatsby!I go through splurges. I save well but if I start buying things it can be hard to stop. Heres some regular spending:
take out once a week = $10 x 52 = $520
(subway can’t be that bad, its just like a salad roll).
movies once a week = $10 x 52 = $520
Alcohol once a week = $25 x 52 = $1300….. ah stuff it. The way I look at it is that I save around 30% of my income. The rest I can do what I want with …. basically the same thing everyone else seems to think.
james
my indulgences:
too many to mention. anything from seminar fees, trips overseas, magazines, cigarettes, entertaining, concerts, every time I buy an expensive brand of anything, designer clothes, spontaneous days or weeks off, etc.But here’s the magic thing about +ve CF. Firstly at day one of investing you don’t need to *give up* anything because you actually have a cash surplus which increases the more properties you buy. and provided you don’t increase your ‘luxuries’ spending to match your new income, the surplus gets greater and greater the more you purchase so the more you can purchase.
and then there’s CGs…
So what I actually found is that my appetite for designer goods and just ‘doodads’ in general went considerably *down* once I started investing. I’ve cut down my designer clothes spending to a fraction of what it was. Nowadays I look like shit, but hey! I have four properties! No seriously, the *desire* for the trappings of luxury goes down. Again it’s almost philosophical – instead of buying things that make us feel special and treated on the outside, our investing makes us feel special and treated on the inside and so the outside seems to matter less.
Wow, who knew giving up luxuries could be so much fun and that we could actually enjoy doing it and get a kick and a buzz out of it.
I get much more of a kick out of eliminating my consumer debt (maxed credit cards had been a life-time affliction prior to when I started investing!-) now than the pleasure I got from whatever I used to spend money on.
every week I take an armload of ‘stuff’ up to St Vinnies and I certainly don’t replace it with more ‘stuff’. then again the other week I bought the most comfortable and divine great colour great cut great fabric great quality flattering Versace tracksuit (subtle non-bling though, hidden logo) in the whole world which I have hardly taken off since I got it. So i think I have balance, honest…hehehe
joy to the world
Mini,
Sounds like youve got it all worked out!
Hopefully soon I’ll know what its like to have a surplus from property instead of having to work hard to make the repayments!
Your right about needing to feel good on the inside, isnt it a shame the “bliss of spending” wears off so quickly?!!
Our consumerism society certainly doesnt help, oh well its all food for thought…
Trisha[biggrin]
Great post Mini! Funny!! Oh I hope that happens to me!!
LOL
Versace trackies?? WOW! How many weeks of +CF did they cost you??? [biggrin]
Still laughing…
Ali G
Versace Trackies?
well I played at this $4000 a head (for charity of course!) ball at the Palazzo Versace the other weekend with this Famous Rock Star whose name I am loathe to drop, but suffice it to say he’s a musical genius and I do what I do with him for the fun rather than the money. it’s an occasional thing and odd bit of pocket money rather than money I need for rent and bills etc. So we got to stay at the Palazzo Versace too. The only 6 star hotel in Australia apparently, and everything in it is Versace from the crockery and cutlery to the fabrics, upholstery, curtains, soap, towels, even the coffee in the rooms is imported from Italy. Not my style etc but when I woke the next day on my feather pillow with Versace pillow-slip I thought ‘yeah I get this style’. it’s not some Freedom Furniture rip-off designed with the Australian mass -market in mind, it’s silk pillows and Italian cotton and great design and quality. So I had a little looksee in the Versace shop, which is a mixture of bling bling logo stuff, plain well-cut stuff, and funky leisure stuff. All ages and tastes could find something to suit. So I was kind of mucking around and killing time and so I tried on this tracksuit. Kind of a hi tech luxurious fabric with a bit of lycra in it, in dark almost-black navy with silvery beige raglan sleeves, a hood, a cute silver versace dangle on the zip, and dark pants with a satin stripe sewn down the leg. cute versace silver square toggle on the bottom of the pants too. in my size! kinda ‘what Gwyneth paltrow would wear to yoga’ style. Really flattering and the first time I wore it I was accused of having lost weight. Gotta love that. So anyway the price tag was exorbitant compared to, um, kmart. let’s say ten times the price of a K mart. but then the price was the amount I was getting paid to be there. So i figured, I went to be a rock star for free and stayed at the Palazzo Versace and came back with no money for my day of luxury but a little souvenir of bling instead. That was how I justified it in my head!So yeah there is +ve CF. But the secret weapon is capital gains. So you can make like ten times the amount of capital gains in a year than you can cashflow. but the cashflow is the reason why you can painlessly hold the properties in the first place while waiting for your capital gains, while still retaining your ability to purchase Versace tracksuits (or whatever makes you happy). Cause if you spend the cashflow this week just have the tenant drop some more in for you next week. I love that about them.
joy to the world
Great story Mini! You can really paint a picture!!
Ali G
Thanks! I do love writing and painting ‘word pictures’…
I just wrote my first screenplay this year (well cowrote, with some people who had actually written scripts before) and that was lots of fun too, especially when i got to be on the shoot watching it all come to life…and BTW property deals helped me get to that point too…so in a way Steve’s advice helped me get to an even better place than just owning properties…joy to the world
Everyone has there weakness. For some its fast cars, fine food, for others its travel.
For me its watches. In my humble opinion the automatic wristwatch is the ultimate refinement of low tech. Its one of the few articles of jewelry that a man can wear that is an expression of himself.
So for my 30th birthday I splurged and bought an 18K Gold leather band, Patek Phillipe Calatrava. Retail price circa 16K. This is more than the value of my car, its about half of what I earnt as a 1st year graduate. 5 times the price of my first car, 40 weeks worth of rent, 4 plasma TVs (the smaller ones), 16,000 one dollar istant scratchies, 1.6% of a lotto division 1 jackpot.
but hey, you only live once. I turn 30 in Jan 2005, I couldn’t even wait that long to get it, haha.
While there is nothing wrong with a splurge now and then,one should ponder on timing.
While also you may have just completed a profitable transaction or a wise investment move has payed off it appears unlikely.
Had your 16k been placed in a growth stock or part of a property deal it may well have been 32K in 12 mths.
300K in 5 yrs—-who knows.Money DOES make money and having it NOT working for you (Unless your watch appreciates in value) in your early days of wealth creation is a fatal error.
Thats why you see some of us old guys with our toys most of us didnt have them when we were younger.
Id rather be an old guy capable of having some toys than just a plain old guy!!
Midlife crisis
yeh sure and I can afford to have a real good one!!tech
Humans are the DUMBEST of creatures.
They do the same thing day in day out and expect a DIFFERENT result.To all you Op Shop bashers out there…
Opshopping is an art. And a mild addiction. My sister and i can get to one and go through it like a plague of locusts. All my children wear desinger surf brands and nike, vans etc footwear. T-shirts that retail for $60.00 i buy at the oppie for 0.60c – $2.00. shoes for a couple of bucks too. Please to all you people who don’t want to deny your childern anything, continue to buy your kids the $100.00 quicksilver duds. I’ll be buying them next year for a dollar and they will still be in fashion.
Oh my boys also have top of the range mountain bikes and motor bikes (which actually work) all scavanged from the tip (legally)!Now mummy and daddy can afford to buy those twenty houses they need to generate their passive income…SIMPLE!!
OH!
Mini – define Bling-blingHere here Wallflower… There are many a bargain to be had at an op shop. I was in an op shop in Perth just the other week and we were looking for a wardrobe to go in our spare room. I stumbled across an entertainment unit (which we also needed but weren’t really looking for) and it was… get this… Jarrah. Yes Jarrah! Well Jarrah veneer but it still weighed a bloody tonne!
And we bought it all for the bargain price of $125. Hubby (a cabinetmaker) couldn’t make the unit for that price and considering Jarrah is no longer being logged… we will make money on it if we wanna get rid of it!
I also think Anita Bell has something to offer with ehr first book. We found it to be a good stepping stone with budgeting. We sacrificed a few things for 6 months and saved $26,000. Needless to say we don’t scrimp so much these days.
My main expense is water polo each week.
$4.00 x 3= $12 week.
But the good side to that is my butt is shrinking a little….
Hee hee…THANK GOD FOR THAT!!![lmao]Cheers
Steph.oh hi!!
The philosophy of Bling, by minimogul
my definition of bling bling (for the purposes of my previous posts) is when the wearer ostentatiously wants you to know it’s designer – for reasons of wanting to show their status or wealth on the outside. Bling bling basically means anything where the expense is obvious. i.e. anything designer with the logo showing, as well as diamonds, gold teeth, furs, etc.
I didn’t feel that the Versace tracksuit in question was bling bling because it was not obviously logo’d and therefore subtle, a quality or a feeling of luxury observable only to the wearer and (perhaps) the odd person in the rag trade who can spot the difference in quality between the versace and (say) the nike version, logos notwithstanding… and the friend who says ‘you look GREAT!’ but couldn’t put their finger on why.
Re op shopping, I definitely went through that phase, vintage this and that, recycled, all of the above – it was necessarily cheap at the time (when I was a student) and now to be quite honest I can’t do it, it’s the smell that gets me. Smells like the combined essences of 100 harrassed and overworked government employees without deodorant on and wearing nylon on a hot and muggy day with no aircon….God be praised, there are more sanitary but still economically viable alternatives (factory outlet stores, Kmart, target, best and less!
joy to the world
Nice one Mini…love your phrases..
I’m using.’whatever floats yer boat’ at every opportunity I get. I will endeavour to manipulate all future conversations to include ‘bling-bling’As for the op shop smell..yes i’ts an occupational hazard.
My mum won’t go into op shops she says they smell like dead people (matching your reference to goverment employees), you forgot big double-ya!Screamin- SCORE!!
WH
for me, i went and got a cash and carry card, you dont get alot of savings, but some things are ok.
i buy toothpaste at a dollar a tube (i buy 20 tubes) i can get my hands on 30 kilos of good quality laundry detergent for 25 dollars. toothbrushes at a dollar a pop as well. the little things like that add up over time, and the great thing about it, is i only have to shop for these things about once a year.
but in saying that, i also buy expensive shampoo at 40 dollars for a litre of the stuff.
cheers all
shaunLead, Follow or get out of the bloody way
If only you could get that through to 95% of the population … phil
Hmm well I just bought a new Honda Jazz (through the company.. of course!) for $22k as the Lantra was making expesive smells… like head gasket/broken head smells! (NEVER liked it much anyways…). Can’t really justify the expense but we keep cars untill they die so will probably have this one until some alternate fuel systems come on the market at a reasonable price.
For best value fro your car you should (do as I say not as I do…[biggrin]) buy 2 years old and keep till they die… but I wanted the Jazz and you cant find the b***ers 2nd hand!!!
Now to really show unjustified expense, we had to replace the 121 bubble (written off darn it! Why couldn’t it be the Lantra????[angry2]) in March this year, and my wife packaged a new Focus through work… so OUCH too much on cars this year!!
I suppose that the Jazz will save the company some tax, and the Focus is leased with pretax dollars.. but still locigally we could have gone with seconhand bang boxes for a while.
Steve Kerr
Opportunity knocks softly, listen carefully!
Well done tungasauros, a nice watch IS noticed.
Its that sort of understated ‘i’m doing quite well’ but not showing it with a 325 that people are comfortable with.cheers
brahms
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