“How do you stop habits that keep you financially poor?” That is a question someone posted in an online forum the other day. The person asking the question must have been hoping for that special answer that would give him the directions he needs to put him on the road to wealth. Some people offered good advice, such as tracking expenses and breaking habits that slowly drain your bank account. I really like what one person said about saving. He said that most people – if they save at all – use an equation like this: – Income – expenses = savings In other...
“If you have saved enough to afford a comfortable retirement, congratulations. You’re in a tiny minority.” That’s the way an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the current state of retirement preparedness starts. The article touches on a variety of common retirement investments – more on those in a moment – but it doesn’t include the strategy that many in our area are discovering: hard money loans on Los Angeles and other California properties. Most individuals think in terms of “savings” when they consider retirement planning. Further, we start to get...
If you follow mortgage industry news you’ll discover that Wells Fargo probably has the single biggest chunk of the business right now. Often the company with the most business also leads in customer service. That’s why Amazon has been able to build up such a huge group of customers. It operates quickly and efficiently. But if you apply that logic to the conventional mortgage industry, you would be making a big mistake. If you go over to Credit Karma, for example, you’ll see that Wells Fargo Mortgage has about a 1.5 star rating (out of five stars). Of the 85...
With so much uncertainty in the securities markets recently, smart investors are finding better alternatives for their portfolios and real estate is one of the most appealing strategies. There are ways to directly and indirectly include real estate investments in your portfolio, some of which you may already be familiar with and others that might be somewhat less common. While all of these can give you a good return on your money, some require more “care and feeding” on your part. Here’s a quick overview. Residential rental property Investing in single-family...
