excited but overwhelmed!!

Hi Katie,

You’ve landed here, so you’re doing something right. [exhappy]

I’d recommend to keep reading, researching, saving and always keep an eye out for potential deals.

The Rich Dad series of books by Robert Kyosaki are awesome. Start with Rich Dad, Poor Dad and then move on to Cashflow Quadrant. By the time you’ve finished these you’ll have an even bigger fire in your belly to make this happen.

Remember Money is great, but Knowledge if power!!!!

Keep doing what you’re doing, and I’m sure great things will come your way.

All the best,

Mark.

Hey There,

Looks like you answered the start of your journey when you commented about savings lacking…. Perhaps some self education in money management would be a great start to give you more opportunities…. “To manage money, first you have to master it”
1. Spend less than you earn
2. pay off your comsumer debt as fast as possible
3. Save the rest
4. leverage you savings to accelerate you toward your savings goals
5. begin your investing career.

This will take sacrifice of your lifestyle …. after all it is just like putting on weight … it didn’t happen over night… so don’t expect it to vanish over night”
To get more information on destroying your debt… try http://www.johnburley.com – Hunt down his terminator plan … its free and you will be amazed how quickly you will move forward once you have put a plan in place.

A couple of good resources you could look at are:
– Rich dad poor dad
– The millionaire and the golfer
– The cashflow quadrant
– Real estate riches

Just my ten cents worth anyway…. best of luck with your journey
Cheers
Kiwi[baaa]

Step one – What is your goal? Finish work in 15 years? Have 20 IPs? You gotta have a goal, a vision, you gotta believe in it, then live, breathe, talk about on this forum, talk to others. You can move you vision accoding to future opportunities but you do need it to justify your energies and efforts. BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND. (S.Covey)
Step One – yep at the same time of course – Practise. Get the local paper and read every propeerty advert. What is the yield, if they give the price and rental potential, how can you calculate it quickly. (quick tip – $250K which rents for $250/wk is about 5%. Simple just take the three zeros off the purchase price and see if the weekly rent is lower/higher/same for a quick 5% baseline)
Cross out each property if it does not meet your criteria. Ahhh, that means you have to develop your purchasing criteria. Well, let’s say you start off simple to get the idea and confidence of striking out properties. First, nothing over say $250K (depending on where you are! But think about how much you are prepared to spend.) That should wipe out a good 25% of properties straight away. Now look at each photo – garden, if it’s too much garden then it’s too much for you tenants, wipe out another 10% of properties, leave them for the garden fanatics. Now, is the unit one of 6 or more in a “barrack” style development in an area of lots of same unit development from the 1960’s -1970’s? strike them off becasue there is probably an oversupply of them and they attract not the best tenants for a newcomer in IPs. Just for practise, knock off the weatherboard (wood eventually rots) and fibro (asbestos possibility). Should have wiped out another 20%. Now has the house got a garage, double preferably because people like to store their life’s treasures but not necessarily in the house. Good secure storage for bikes, tools, sporting equipment etc. That should take a good % off the number of properties left. Now it really gets down to price/value/yield and location. Just for practise, ring the agent and ask just two things – what is the address and what would it rent for. Nothing else, just stick to those two no matter what the agent says. Many agents would not have a clue what it would rent for or they use the “need to get a rent appraisal done” to illicit your contact details. When you ring, you will get the receptionist who may be able to transfer you to the responsible sales person for that property. Usually you will have to give your name and phone number for the sales rep to contact you. Just keep asking the receptionist of the address, that’s all. It’s all good practise prior to the real deals.
Good luck and good hunting. Always carry a pen and note paper whereever you go.