July 1, 2014 by Dymphna 32 Comments

Is Snob Appeal Keeping You From Investing?

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I had an interesting conversation with a bloke and his girlfriend the other night…

It was at a nice gathering of friends and friends of friends.

This nice young couple were in their mid-thirties I’d guess, and were dressed quite well…

All the right labels on their clothes…

Expensive watch on his wrist…

And a flashy gold bracelet on hers.

All in all, they made a very attractive couple, very nicely put together and full of promise.

We were talking about the World Cup…

Well, to be honest, they were talking about it, and quite enthusiastically…

Then they asked me what kind of work I did.

I told them that I was a real estate investor.

That’s exactly what they wanted to do, the bloke said…

But the prices had gone up so much that Sydney was basically not an option for them.

The mask comes off

When I asked them what kind of work they did, she worked in the medical profession as an assistant…

He drove a route for one of the major delivery services you see about.

Nothing wrong with either of those jobs….

Honest work, doing much-needed services, right?

Then I asked a couple of questions they didn’t want to hear…

What part of Sydney were they from? 

How were the home values in their area? 

After a bit of an awkward moment, the man admitted something he didn’t want to…

They had both recently moved back in with his parents to save some money for a deposit on an apartment.

Seems they’d been spending every dollar they’d earned as soon as they got their pay cheques…

And had gone into deep credit card debt as well.

That they had gone over the top with their credit cards didn’t surprise me…

It’s a national epidemic with Aussies these days…

How else were they going to pay for all fancy clothes and jewellery?

But it seems that with all their debt, they got to the point where it all collapsed…

The rental rates in the city were suddenly out of reach for them…

So it was back to square one for these two…

Even though they were both in their thirties.

Getting their lives back on track…or not

Well, you know what I said next, don’t you?

I told them that I help people like them get their financial lives back on track…

Through real estate investing.

I told them about buying cash cows and chunk deals…

About joint ventures and getting into property without a deposit…

And how making a budget is crucial for living within one’s means and paying bad debt off…

And qualifying for good debt.

Then I told them about some of you…

My iLoveRealEstate students and success stories.

You know who you are…

I told them that many of you had come from far worse circumstances…

And had turned their lives around in only a few years’ time…

Or even less. 

Tough choices need to be made…

Then I told them that they’d made a tough choice, but the right choice.

They were very excited about the possibilities of getting into real estate investing…

But when I recommended that they think about investing in properties outside of Sydney…

In smaller towns, possibly a few hours’ drive to get started…

Their smiles went away.

Their lives were in Sydney, they explained…

All their friends and family were there as well.

They didn’t have to leave Sydney to invest elsewhere, I told them…

It just means that they’d have a bit of a drive to get to a property they could afford…

Which usually meant spending weekends looking at property that they had seen online…

Negotiating the purchase…

Not to mention doing they’re due diligence on the area…

Grid variance analysis and all the rest…

As well as the possibility of doing a reno on the property or manufacturing equity or value in it.

Tough choices not made

But what would be the point of leaving Sydney every weekend to find a property, they asked…

We want to enjoy our life in Sydney, they explained. Besides, none of their friends were doing this?

I thought about asking them how many of their friends had moved back to live with their parents…

But I thought better of it.

I wondered about those two…

And just what it would take for them to see that their own snobby attitude is what sent them into the deep end of the debt pool in the first place…

That same snobby viewpoint is also what is likely to keep them from ever getting out of it.

It’s not that I don’t have empathy for them, and others like them…

Who doesn’t want to live how they want to live?

Who doesn’t want to spend their time as they wish… 

Rather than doing a job for the boss five or six days a week?

The difference between iLoveRealEstate students and them is profound…

They’re “living” the life on borrowed money and borrowed housing with no end in sight to their predicament.

You, on the other hand, have taken your fates and your futures into your own hands…

You’re in control of your lives or are working hard to do so…

Because you have a goal and a plan to get there in just a few short years…

And you know what else?

When you don’t have to answer to a boss…

When you’re paid whether you get out of bed or not…

When your cash cows have more than replaced the income you used to trade precious days and weeks of your life for…

The nice watches are just that…nice.

But living how you want to live?

You don’t even need a watch for that.