Several of you said you get into real estate through development.
Why are you waiting to amass an amount of money like this personally? Has anyone pursued investors for projects? Most of the successful real estate developers I know put very little (if anything) personally into their projects and use investors for most of it.
I'd think if you found a piece of property and found a better and very profitable use for it with a certain building type on it, and could show 20%+ returns to your investors, you would have little trouble finding money.
You know what I would do if I had a $200Kdollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...
agreed that the appearance of wealth is often an illusion hiding a modest (and sometimes even negative) net worth. i've read the 'millionaire next door' book too which actually was a study on the common millionaire rather than those of elite wealth
$10 million doesn't buy a gulfstream g150 let alone a g550 and it's debatable at best whether the 80 feet qualifies as a mega yacht...to be very rich i would think that one could afford such toys without fractional ownership or financing schemes
of course with inflation, it wouldn't surprise me if we are only a generation away from everybody being millionaires
having just re-watched Money as Debt last night i really feel the illusion today. just how fake it all is. these bankers i tell you...
The Info Underground http://infounderground.18.forumer.com/
Money as Debt Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created. It is an entertaining way to get the message out. The Cowichan Citizens Coalition and its "Duncan Initiative" received high praise from those who previewed it. I recommend it as a painless but hard-hitting educational tool and encourage the widest distribution and use by all groups concerned with the present unsustainable monetary system
i would buy a property and sell it off by the end of the year for an 80% interest due to the inflation in the real-estate market in this part of the world. then i would buy a bigger property, and sell that and so on and so forth...
after a couple of years, owning a couple of sky-scrapers in Dubai and elsewhere, i would start wasting my money on coke and women and occasionally loosing chunks of money while gambling in Vegas and Monaco.
sometime after that i would go unconscious after an overdose in the middle of a hotel bathroom, loose all my wealth and experience a decade of depression and misery.
after that, if i'm lucky, i would start over in another country, wondering........... what would i do if i had 200k$...........
impala, that is more or less what we are doing here in tokyo (using other people's money to invest in real estate).
it is not remotely easy. especially right now where banks are not interested in financing small projects like we are into (recently was told by banker to come back when we have $60 mil. project and they might think about talking about something)...and any banks have simply stopped lending, closing down entire sections of their business.
the reason to do on own is because you get to keep the rewards and not just a small fee (which is what you end up with if you are doing with other peoples money)...that fee can lead to comfy life but it isn't like hedge funds, or at least it hasn't been for us so far...the risks are terrifying though, that is a fact.
was pure unbridled chance to start...met people at parties and timing was right. meeting people is soooo important it isn't remotely humorous
now we have portfolio and spreadsheets and buildings to point at. but it is still hard slog. like i said especially right now...will be interesting to see how the next few years plays out. my partner is positive cuz he sees land prices coming down again and a ripe time to buy before next upswing. i am too much a farmer to be so certain, but he is much smarter than me...so we'll see.
I heard the following existential scenario a few years ago.
Ask people: "What are your plans should you win the lottery?" and they can give detailed explanations of telling their boss to shove it, buying this or that, retiring to a certain exotic locale, etc.
Then ask them "What are your plans for funding your retirement?" and you get blank stares and silence.
I think this $200k question, as posed by impala, is a good one, but I also think everyone needs to have ideas how to deal with the far more likely non-windfall reality. Lest anyone think I'm being righteous, I say this as someone who gave up retirement savings for a few years while starting my own business- which I know is not smart, but is just a reality.
i would find a couple more people with $200k and look into opening a self storage facility. You figure you can put them anywhere (under freeway overpasses, middle of a corn field, old abandoned building) and charge an average of $100 per month per unit. The facility that I have my stuff stored at has aroung 1000 units. That is $100k a month that they are making in rent. You have 2 people managing the facility at any one time
Self storage places are incredibly profitable due to low labor and maintenance costs and cheap builds. IF you can rent a high percentage of the units. An uncle of mine set one up in Tennessee 5-7 years ago and has cleared his first mil in profit since.
Yes, and as long as we keep getting into wars, self storage is even more profitable. The military makes up a large share of self-storage costumers. So...McCain '08!
you are right LB. we are paying our natlnl pension plan here in japan but that is all we can afford right now...and it looks pretty likely it won't exist by the time we are old enough to collect anyway. we still put money every month into kids education account though. so maybe they will be our retirement fund ;-) hopefully next year can catch up with real plan. yikes.
200k used to make more money is good way to have something for retirement, as well as for now. the real thing is to just earn a shit load of money and then move to hong kong so you can avoid taxes.
networking is very cool. "angles" make me very uncomfortable. we never pitch angles to anyone and are clear to not speak that way to ourselves. in the end we want to make and sell quality things, not sell an idea and see how much we can get from a client. maybe we are naive but we think if we do good work we can make business from it. and more meaningful + lasting one at that. not sure if that makes any sense...
regarding the retierment thing, I just got me a finacial planner who has set me up on a system to retire at age 62. In addition, she has set me up with a savings account that I will be using to fund a business in a few years. It is amazing how much I will have to cut back on my day-to-day expenses, but it will be nice to know that I will have financial security down the road.
One thing that she brought up as well for me is disability insurance. I never really thought about it before, but if I get hurt somehow and can no longer work, Im fucked
how many of you think you will at some point retire?
i dunno if i could be that inactive (at least retirement in the sense of my grandparents: move to florida coast, spend a month a year traveling, get a house w/ pool, bocci/crossword puzzles all day whilst sipping gin & tonics...)
i don't ever see myself retiring, just taking on a smaller workload. i think i'd get bored and probably OD on something if i never had to work again.
guppy, pawn shops near military bases always seem to rake in the dough as well. might be more liability though (hold ups, desperation, etc)
i don't think that is an angle meta. could be, though. i'm not sure how to explain it but i do think there is an attitude one can take about architecture where the goal becomes to do a deal rather than make great architecture. i don't think they are compatible at a fundamental level, so we avoid that approach altogether...our intent is to make architecture and see where that takes us. i wish i could describe it better but words fail me. just a gut reaction sort of thing...but you know when the turnaround on a project is a minumum of two years for an investor the only way we can work together is if we are on same page and that means we are brutally honest with each other and we don't try to sell anything. that involves trust. it also invlves not doing certain projects that would make money but we would be uncomfortable with morally (no, not abu grhaib moral, but still moral)...i guess we just try to avoid coming off as hustlers. don't know about you, but there is no bigger turnoff than the feeling i am being sold something.
I had close to $200K and invested it all on a piece of property and the construction of a sf home in florida that my wife and I designed and built. construction was completed at the height of the market but instead of selling it, we lived in it for 2 years (got sick of florida) and sold it at the beginning of the downturn...nearly breaking even. the plan was to market the house for my architecture practice and/or launch a design/build firm...things didn't quite pan out. so now I guess I'm onto PLAN B.
the experience, I keep telling myself, was worth far more than the money invested. with what I know now, if given the chance, I'd do it all over again but different.
I move to a lake town. Find a building that fronts the road and opens on to the lake. I build wooden canoes and kayaks. Do some general woodcraft type labor when called upon. A little architecture when asked. There is little year round economic activity in the places I'm thinking about.
I live in the sleeping loft over the shop. I have a scruffy beard and lots of time to pursue my own endeavors. I sip whiskey and smell of cedar shavings. In winter, the whisky has a little coffee in it.
In addition to the $200k, I have no personal debt. That plus the sale of my home and other assets get me to enough coin that I can live a simple life without the need for a big income. Which is good, because my income is probably very low, probably in the $15-20k range, but I don't care. I've gotten rid of my cellphone, TV, and all the other BS of the world.
I'd donate the money to Astoria community theater for building improvements so they can continue to perform without the imminent fear of burning to death because the village idiot snookered them.
I would say my prayers were answered. I would buy a house, car, and furniture. I don't have anything except the clothes that I have, sometimes I don't even have anything to eat. I have health problems so I would feel blessed and humble.
Dec 7, 22 3:24 am ·
·
Non Sequitur
You resurrected this ancient thread just to tell us this? Is this not what Facebook updates are for?
if you had $200,000 cash/free money, what would you do?
i do two chicks at the same time, and I have about $1K in my savings account.
On a serious note, if I had this windfall, I would become an architect/developer ala Jonathan Segal.
Ok next question:
Several of you said you get into real estate through development.
Why are you waiting to amass an amount of money like this personally? Has anyone pursued investors for projects? Most of the successful real estate developers I know put very little (if anything) personally into their projects and use investors for most of it.
I'd think if you found a piece of property and found a better and very profitable use for it with a certain building type on it, and could show 20%+ returns to your investors, you would have little trouble finding money.
You know what I would do if I had a $200Kdollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...
agreed that the appearance of wealth is often an illusion hiding a modest (and sometimes even negative) net worth. i've read the 'millionaire next door' book too which actually was a study on the common millionaire rather than those of elite wealth
$10 million doesn't buy a gulfstream g150 let alone a g550 and it's debatable at best whether the 80 feet qualifies as a mega yacht...to be very rich i would think that one could afford such toys without fractional ownership or financing schemes
of course with inflation, it wouldn't surprise me if we are only a generation away from everybody being millionaires
having just re-watched Money as Debt last night i really feel the illusion today. just how fake it all is. these bankers i tell you...
The Info Underground http://infounderground.18.forumer.com/ Money as Debt Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created. It is an entertaining way to get the message out. The Cowichan Citizens Coalition and its "Duncan Initiative" received high praise from those who previewed it. I recommend it as a painless but hard-hitting educational tool and encourage the widest distribution and use by all groups concerned with the present unsustainable monetary systemhttp://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/3120/Money-as-Debt-Xvid
a stinkpot generally has to be 35' LOA min. for "yacht" status, 100' for mega.
w/ sailboats, it's 25' LOA i think.
you can get your own private plane for a few hundred g's, but it certainly won't be quiet...
meta - i dig it! best of luck and let me know how it goes.
i am investing my $200k in metamechanic
id blow it on some cool 3dh model
use it as a hedge to keep your firm afloat while you invest a large portion of your fee as equity in a developer driven project.
i would buy a property and sell it off by the end of the year for an 80% interest due to the inflation in the real-estate market in this part of the world. then i would buy a bigger property, and sell that and so on and so forth...
after a couple of years, owning a couple of sky-scrapers in Dubai and elsewhere, i would start wasting my money on coke and women and occasionally loosing chunks of money while gambling in Vegas and Monaco.
sometime after that i would go unconscious after an overdose in the middle of a hotel bathroom, loose all my wealth and experience a decade of depression and misery.
after that, if i'm lucky, i would start over in another country, wondering........... what would i do if i had 200k$...........
impala, that is more or less what we are doing here in tokyo (using other people's money to invest in real estate).
it is not remotely easy. especially right now where banks are not interested in financing small projects like we are into (recently was told by banker to come back when we have $60 mil. project and they might think about talking about something)...and any banks have simply stopped lending, closing down entire sections of their business.
the reason to do on own is because you get to keep the rewards and not just a small fee (which is what you end up with if you are doing with other peoples money)...that fee can lead to comfy life but it isn't like hedge funds, or at least it hasn't been for us so far...the risks are terrifying though, that is a fact.
was pure unbridled chance to start...met people at parties and timing was right. meeting people is soooo important it isn't remotely humorous
now we have portfolio and spreadsheets and buildings to point at. but it is still hard slog. like i said especially right now...will be interesting to see how the next few years plays out. my partner is positive cuz he sees land prices coming down again and a ripe time to buy before next upswing. i am too much a farmer to be so certain, but he is much smarter than me...so we'll see.
I heard the following existential scenario a few years ago.
Ask people: "What are your plans should you win the lottery?" and they can give detailed explanations of telling their boss to shove it, buying this or that, retiring to a certain exotic locale, etc.
Then ask them "What are your plans for funding your retirement?" and you get blank stares and silence.
I think this $200k question, as posed by impala, is a good one, but I also think everyone needs to have ideas how to deal with the far more likely non-windfall reality. Lest anyone think I'm being righteous, I say this as someone who gave up retirement savings for a few years while starting my own business- which I know is not smart, but is just a reality.
i would find a couple more people with $200k and look into opening a self storage facility. You figure you can put them anywhere (under freeway overpasses, middle of a corn field, old abandoned building) and charge an average of $100 per month per unit. The facility that I have my stuff stored at has aroung 1000 units. That is $100k a month that they are making in rent. You have 2 people managing the facility at any one time
Self storage places are incredibly profitable due to low labor and maintenance costs and cheap builds. IF you can rent a high percentage of the units. An uncle of mine set one up in Tennessee 5-7 years ago and has cleared his first mil in profit since.
impalajunkie
I assume that business in always pretty good...people always need a place to keep thier shit...and blow...and dead hookers
Yes, and as long as we keep getting into wars, self storage is even more profitable. The military makes up a large share of self-storage costumers. So...McCain '08!
i keep my dead hookers in the icebox
"I've never seen so many dead hookers in all of my life"
guppy
you are a fucking genius!!!! A self-storage unit costume!!!!! I cant wait for halloween!!!!!!!!!
ha ha...dyslexic moment
you are right LB. we are paying our natlnl pension plan here in japan but that is all we can afford right now...and it looks pretty likely it won't exist by the time we are old enough to collect anyway. we still put money every month into kids education account though. so maybe they will be our retirement fund ;-) hopefully next year can catch up with real plan. yikes.
200k used to make more money is good way to have something for retirement, as well as for now. the real thing is to just earn a shit load of money and then move to hong kong so you can avoid taxes.
networking is very cool. "angles" make me very uncomfortable. we never pitch angles to anyone and are clear to not speak that way to ourselves. in the end we want to make and sell quality things, not sell an idea and see how much we can get from a client. maybe we are naive but we think if we do good work we can make business from it. and more meaningful + lasting one at that. not sure if that makes any sense...
LB
regarding the retierment thing, I just got me a finacial planner who has set me up on a system to retire at age 62. In addition, she has set me up with a savings account that I will be using to fund a business in a few years. It is amazing how much I will have to cut back on my day-to-day expenses, but it will be nice to know that I will have financial security down the road.
One thing that she brought up as well for me is disability insurance. I never really thought about it before, but if I get hurt somehow and can no longer work, Im fucked
mdler brings up a good point...
how many of you think you will at some point retire?
i dunno if i could be that inactive (at least retirement in the sense of my grandparents: move to florida coast, spend a month a year traveling, get a house w/ pool, bocci/crossword puzzles all day whilst sipping gin & tonics...)
i don't ever see myself retiring, just taking on a smaller workload. i think i'd get bored and probably OD on something if i never had to work again.
guppy, pawn shops near military bases always seem to rake in the dough as well. might be more liability though (hold ups, desperation, etc)
retirement? yuck.
i don't think that is an angle meta. could be, though. i'm not sure how to explain it but i do think there is an attitude one can take about architecture where the goal becomes to do a deal rather than make great architecture. i don't think they are compatible at a fundamental level, so we avoid that approach altogether...our intent is to make architecture and see where that takes us. i wish i could describe it better but words fail me. just a gut reaction sort of thing...but you know when the turnaround on a project is a minumum of two years for an investor the only way we can work together is if we are on same page and that means we are brutally honest with each other and we don't try to sell anything. that involves trust. it also invlves not doing certain projects that would make money but we would be uncomfortable with morally (no, not abu grhaib moral, but still moral)...i guess we just try to avoid coming off as hustlers. don't know about you, but there is no bigger turnoff than the feeling i am being sold something.
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I would go back to school
and buy bonds with the rest, safe deal
i would open an architectural office to conduct indepth study how my services would make a better world...
why?
because i'm tired of dumping money to the sea, like to try something different.
Funny how spam resurrects a half year old thread.
too bad, if i had recognized this thread back then, i would have save more lifes.
I had close to $200K and invested it all on a piece of property and the construction of a sf home in florida that my wife and I designed and built. construction was completed at the height of the market but instead of selling it, we lived in it for 2 years (got sick of florida) and sold it at the beginning of the downturn...nearly breaking even. the plan was to market the house for my architecture practice and/or launch a design/build firm...things didn't quite pan out. so now I guess I'm onto PLAN B.
the experience, I keep telling myself, was worth far more than the money invested. with what I know now, if given the chance, I'd do it all over again but different.
sadly, $200k is barely a down payment (20% these days) on a below average house in SF CA...
Spam bump
if I had $200,000 i'd open a theater in astoria. With blackjack. And hookers.
in fact forget the theater
and the blackjack
Jafar Lending you say Mr. Spambot... Jafar is totally a reasonable face to put on your loan shark business card:
a kangeroo
A+ Holz
I move to a lake town. Find a building that fronts the road and opens on to the lake. I build wooden canoes and kayaks. Do some general woodcraft type labor when called upon. A little architecture when asked. There is little year round economic activity in the places I'm thinking about.
I live in the sleeping loft over the shop. I have a scruffy beard and lots of time to pursue my own endeavors. I sip whiskey and smell of cedar shavings. In winter, the whisky has a little coffee in it.
In addition to the $200k, I have no personal debt. That plus the sale of my home and other assets get me to enough coin that I can live a simple life without the need for a big income. Which is good, because my income is probably very low, probably in the $15-20k range, but I don't care. I've gotten rid of my cellphone, TV, and all the other BS of the world.
K4L
I would say my prayers were answered. I would buy a house, car, and furniture. I don't have anything except the clothes that I have, sometimes I don't even have anything to eat. I have health problems so I would feel blessed and humble.
You resurrected this ancient thread just to tell us this? Is this not what Facebook updates are for?
I would go to Atlantic City and put it on red
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awcx-gTQDLM
Probably gonna need it to buy groceries with the way prices are.
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