3 Things I Pondered today:
- How much would you need to make to live comfortably?
- Why are tiny houses so cool?
- Why aren’t there theme parks like Disney or Universal in Texas?
I often think about what the minimum requirement to live comfortably would be. My current income at my job is super comfortable. It would be cool to make more however the year to date amount is a great amount to be able to sustain myself in my current living situation. I would love to be able to have more time for myself and I have been thinking a lot about starting a business that I could make enough to match what I am currently making. Obviously this is something a lot of people want to do or at least I am assuming do.
Everybody keeps predicting that the next economy crash will occur soon. I know it will. History repeats itself so the key is noticing when that happens and what you can do about it. I have been thinking a lot about my investment property and how I purchased at the tail end of a good time frame of the last economic down fall. This blog post is more money based because a lot of what my professional “day jobs” have been are mostly financing and sales. I happen to be good at it.
At the time of my first property purchase I was working as a credit analyst where I would determine how to help consumers get lender ready. In doing so I was able to make myself lender ready. It’s also a work in progress and a lot of what I learned I use every day of my life. It just so happen that at the time I worked as a credit analyst I was at my job long enough to get a conventional home loan on my own where I did everything by myself from finding the home to financing it to signing the contract all on my own. I was in my late 20s. I knew buying the property that it was going to be a short term living situation. I had no idea that I would get married and move to Texas but it happened then I rented it out.
There are a lot of things I am working towards aside from the creative venture and that will eventually be to continue to invest in real estate. Some people are good with stock market others are good with baseball cards and I am good with real estate. We purchased a home in Austin which was a great time to buy for our specific neighborhood however right now the market is starting to slow down. I recently saw somebody’s home go for sale in the greater Austin area and it has been on the market for over 50 days without any nibbles. They’ve even dropped the house price significantly without it moving much.
I think the issue with the greater Austin area is that the homes in the city are selling quick but the outskirts are so cookie cutter that it is not appealing. In our neighborhood the homes have been selling very fast however they aren’t going to buyers they are going to investors who buy them up and rent them out. There are very few home owners in our neighborhood.
Right now there is a lot of capital being raised for all different types of the economy from the tech companies to all different start ups. The cool thing is to be an entrepreneur right now but the issue is people aren’t making profits. They are loosing funds. I see it all the time on Shark Tank (kind of an extreme circumstance but you might be able to catch the drift) and with different markets. I think once this bubble bust it’s going to be bad.
Another thing I know from underwriting loans all the time is that I see trends. Mind you I am in subprime car loans which means the people who come to me are typically in poor financial situations. It’s not limited to low income families. In fact sometime people with middle to low income tend to have super high scores compared to those who are making $10,000 a month with scores in the 400s.
With that being said some Americans are over extending themselves. They have horrible credit scores and have multiple car loans charged off or in some cases they roll car notes into new car notes and end up with a car that’s only worth $5,000 owing $30,000. The interest rate on subprime loans is also insanely high. Sometimes the interest rates on the cars are higher than my credit cards which is ludicrous to me that somebody would be willing to take on a loan for that high of an interest rate.
I believe that the two things that will create a huge economical downfall will be the car industry as well as the entrepreneur band wagon a lot of people are on right now. It’s not going to be a pretty site and this isn’t in a way negative thinking because I do believe that when the economy does follow the historical path it would be an excellent time to start a business.
When you are able to build something from the ground up in the middle of a recession and it thrives you are pretty solid on expecting that to do well when it rises back up. In this particular situation with everything is that it’s a good time to start saving for the rainy day. It’s going to pour and saving for the storm will allow an upper hand when the time comes.
I do plan on working for my current company for a long term time frame or at least until I am able to invest into more properties. I’ve already come to terms that this is a long term process not something over night. The pay off of working like crazy now to the silver lining of being able to work for myself is worth the wait.
On that note I have thing strong magnetic attraction to tiny homes. I feel drawn to them. I think they are so freaking cool. I don’t think I could personally stay in one long term because I have so much stuff but I love the concept of them and would love to have a tiny house to visit or vacation to or even to go to so I can work on my creative stuff.
One of the things I learned was that the residents of Austin who own tiny houses have a hard time finding a place to park. The recent places for tiny houses have shut down and are no longer able to hold their homes. I would love to have a tiny house parking location for people. which transitions me to the next topic of tiny houses and theme parks.
It would be super cool if there was a theme park that had tiny houses you can spend the night in while you visited. I also wish there were theme parks in Texas. We visit Orlando a ton and every time I come home I think about how there is so much land in Texas and why the heck Universal and Disney having opened up in Texas yet. I really wish they would. I think Texas could use it. We have Sea World and Six Flags as well as a bunch of water parks but it would be nice to have a resort where you can truly feel like you in an all inclusive experience.
Maybe during the next economic down turn I should open a theme park. Laughing but kind of a little serious.