Tag Archives: Investing

How to structure a real-estate partnership?

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MoneyRunner asks:

A friend and I are in the process of writing an operating agreement for an LLC and I’ve got a question for you. We have raised capital for the down payment on an apartment building. I have raised $15,000 ($10,000 my own and $5,000 from family) while my friend has raised $25,000 (all from family). We both have a 50% ownership in the LLC. Once we start to produce income, is it fair to distribute funds according to initial capital invested? Is it even possible to do 50/50?

Firstly, I don’t like buying long-term assets in partnership … times change … longer times change even more šŸ˜‰

For example, to help a friend out (really!) my wife talked me into buying a half share in a downtown property. In ordinary circumstances it would have been a great, long-term hold.

However, two brothers-in-law had gone into partnership to acquire it and some years later one of the brothers-in-law wanted OUT. The problem was, the other B-in-L couldn’t afford to buy him out, and didn’t want to sell.

These sorts of decisions break up families … and was threatening to do exactly that to this family. Our friend, the third brother-in-law (and the only one of the three NOT involved in the deal) asked us to help out by buying out the one B-in-L who wanted to sell.

And, that’s what we did: bought 50% of a building that we know that we can never sell without causing the same situation to erupt again. My wife talked me into in … that’s my only excuse šŸ˜‰

But, if you still DO want to go into partnership, here’s what I suggested to MoneyRunner:

All is fair and possible in business and investing … as long as you both agree!
You will most likely need a shareholder’s agreement drawn up by your attorney, if the equity and/or profits are not to be split equally.
However, a simple way to deal with your situation is:
1. Both put in $15k as capital (it makes no difference HOW or WHERE you each got the money).
2. Let your friend put in the extra $10k as a loan.
3. Agree a rate of interest (say, mortgage rate plus x% e.g. if the current mortgage interest rate that you are paying on the property is 6%, your friend might get 10% for his $10k).
4. Split the equity and remaining profits (i.e. rent MINUS mortgage + interest owing to friend + expenses) 50/50
Here’s why you will still need a shareholders agreement:
– Rules as to how/if/when your friend’s loan is to be repaid,
– Rules as to who can force a sale of the property and how you deal with each other’s share in the property in the event of a dispute.

However, there are other ways to enter a ‘partnership’ that stop all of these issues:

My first real-estate purchase was with a friend of mine who found a new condo development in foreclosure; the bank was selling off the individual condos. My friend thought that we would get a better deal if we bought two condos together.

… and, we did!

We negotiated a price of $55k for each condo.

How did we deal with the partnership issue? Simple!

We each bought one codo in our own names. Then, when I stupidly decided to sell (I was still young and reckless, and this was my first ever real-estate purchase), I didn’t need to ask him. I sold it for just over $75k about 2 years later [AJC: But, it would be worth closer to $500k now, 25 years later]Ā … not a bad deal, and no stress on our ‘partnership’.

 

The problem with financial advice – Part I

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Now, I’m just some semi-anonymous blogger, so what do I know, right?

So, sometimes it’s nice if I can point you to others who share my opinions on controversial financial matters [AJC: I write almost exclusively about controversial financial matters … why write something that’s already in 5,000 other blogs, therefore, has a 99.9999% chance of being wrong?!].

For example, my opinion on financial advisors is that they are a waste of money.

But, Dan Ariely, aĀ behavioralĀ economist and author of two best-sellers, includingĀ PredictablyĀ Irrational, agrees:

From a behavioral economics point of view, the field of financial advice is quite strange and not very useful. For the most part, professional financial services rely on clientsā€™ answers to two questions:

  • How much of your current salary will you need in retirement?
  • What is your risk attitude on a seven-point scale?

From my perspective, these are remarkably useless questions ā€” but weā€™ll get to that in a minute. First, letā€™s think about the financial advisorā€™s business model. An advisor willĀ optimizeĀ your portfolio based on the answers to these two questions. For this service, the advisor typically will take one percent of assets under management ā€“ and he will get thisĀ every year!

I agree with Dan when he says:

Not to be offensive, but I think that a simple algorithm can do this, and probably with fewer errors. Moving money around from stocks to bonds or vice versa is just not something for which we should pay one percent of assets under management.

Now, this is targeted at funds managers (both retail and institutional) as well as those who charge fees and/or commissions to prepare similar financial advice.

Remember, funds tend to fall short of the market in performance over time, by about how much they charge in fees …

Lesson: if you really want to short-change yourĀ financialĀ future by investing in funds and over-diversifying (two sure ways to die broke), do what Warren Buffett suggests and invest in super-low cost Index Funds:

A very low-cost index is going to beat a majority of the amateur-managed money or professionally-managed money.

In the next part of this special three part series, I will show you how most people short-change their retirement by 60%,

 

A formula for investing in real-estate …

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People are always looking for “magic formulas” to get rich. Even I’ve had a go at sharing mine …

But, when it comes to real-estate, the formula is simple: buy/hold/reinvest.

That means:

1. Buy positive cashflow ‘20% down’ real-estate in an area that can appreciate

2. Hold on to it until it does appreciate

3. Refinance using the extra equity plus any accumulated rental profits to create your next deposit

4. Goto 1.

Here is a guy who has a very conservative (and, sensible I might add) real-estate investing strategy [AJC: for those who take the trouble to read the whole post, they will find the ‘magic formula’ they are looking for]:

I went from zero to more than one hundred units between 1977 and the early eighties by seeking tired rental property owners with free and clear buildings who were willing to finance the sales.

The early eighties was a financial climate not too unlike that today in there was really no mainstream lending occurring. It was the savings and loan crisis, Jimmy Carter and 18%+ FHA mortgages.

At the time I paid a bit more than the properties were “worth” in cash. But I operated with a buy and hold strategy so the properties became free and clear off the rents while providing me an above average income. We still own almost every property we purchased in the past 33 years.

In the early 2000’s every kid entering the business had Excel spreadsheets with estimated returns that would have them richer than Bill Gates in a decade. Every waiter, barber and auto mechanic you ran into was on their way to be the next Donald Trump or so it seemed.

Even buddies of mine called me a “dirt farmer” because I wasn’t taking advantage of easy lending and apparent ever expanding market, rather I stuck with the hard work of landlording. But the prices were unsustainable compared to rent. So I kept with what I knew worked and withdrew from buying. Between 2002 and 2010 I bought just three properties, two of which were commercial units for our own businesses. I’m still here and they all went belly up.

Usually you can’t go wrong if you are headed in the opposite direction of the majority. So that means today, with everyone shunning real estate it is probably a good time to buy, just as it was in 1982.

This year I reentered the market , but only on limited basis as there are some good deals, but for the most part the market still is in somewhat of a free fall.

My math in the beginning, which remains so today is: Assuming that you financed the whole purchase at 12% for 15 years, even if you paid cash, the property had to net $100 per month per unit after all expenses including at least $100/unit/month for maintenance. Did I get every deal? No, but why own if ownership will not help you reach a financial goal.

[AJC: 12% is very conservative; if you used 8% in the USA and 10% in Australia you would still have plenty of margin for error; remember, this guy was investing in an era with 18%+ interest rates]

It may not be ‘get rich quick’, but it is sensible šŸ™‚

The right time to speak to a professional …

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I have previously gone out on a limb to say that it’s very difficult (actually, I said impossible) to pay to get good commercial / investing advice.

Why?

Unlike a doctor, accountant, or attorney who can only give themselves so much self-help [AJC: unless the doctor’s a hypochondriac; the accountant’s an embezzler; or, the attorney’s a criminal] Ā …

… any “investment / business advisor” really worth listening to is probably making too much money for themselves to waste their time advising you on how to make money.

On the other hand, on rareĀ occasions, you can find such high-quality advice:

– You can find a mentor; somebody who’s been there / done that and is willing to counsel you one-on-one

– You can buy stock in a company owned by such a person e.g. Berkshire Hathaway; by investing in BH (for example) you are ‘paying’ Warren Buffett to look after your wealth as a by-product of looking after his own.

WARNING: if you ever receive a bill from either of these types of people … run for the hills! They are not whom they seem šŸ˜‰

But, there is a time when you DO need to seek – and, pay for – financial advice; to illustrate, here is an e-mail that I recently received:

Heh Adrian, do you think you can help and ole lady, who has been swindled more time that you can count, now unemployed (forced retirement), drowning in debt with but 1.1 million in property assets and 80K in bank that I am using to live off but it will only last 11 months with what I am paying out? I am 66 my husband (also retired) is 68.

It was our two financial advisors that got us into some of this trouble.Ā We Lost our retirement investment through their recommendations. Even our other real estate investment (2 raw land and 1 condo) are now worth less than the remainingĀ mortgages.

[My last] $80kĀ is not just spending money; it is also supporting those mortgages, which I can’t sell due to the market.

You see, the time to pay for GOOD financial advice is when you think you might be in financial trouble (even if it was BAD financial advice that got you there, in the first place).

That’s why I don’t like to seek advice about WHERE to put my money.

But, this reader DEFINITELY needs to seek urgent professional financial advice!

She should get a recommendation from a friend to a fee-based advisor and/or accountant and just ask them to help her make some immediate decisions about her current structure: e.g. should she (can she) walk away from her mortgages? How much can she budget for the next 12 months in living expenses, and so on?

Then she’ll need to start learning (reading this blog is a good start) how to make real money, all over again …

What would you do in her situation?

You don’t need to become a barber to become rich …

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Darwin’s Money shares a story about his barber that shows how anybody can become rich; here’s a trimmed down version of Darwin’s assessmentĀ of how his barber became rich:

  • Real Estate Mogul ā€“ He owns multiple rental properties. Ā He started off small and kept rolling his profits into more and larger properties.
  • Business Savvyā€¦ and Patient ā€“ He knows the real estate market very well and he waits for deals to come around. Ā Heā€™s patient.
  • Frugal ā€“ Just through some casual observations, itā€™s evident heā€™s a frugal guy.Ā  He dresses modestly, he doesnā€™t take extravagant vacations, and he doesnā€™t drive a fancy car. Ā The combination of multiple streams of income and frugality make for a huge net worth in your later years.
  • Small Business Ownerā€“ Like all smart business owners, he gets other people to work for him and generate income and offset his costs.Ā  Rather than just running a one man barbershop, he has a couple other barbers working there.

This looks likes an great observational report … I’m not certain that Darwin actually asked his barber how much money he has or how he made it?

I’ll do the reverse; I’ll tell you how I made my money … it’s much the same as the barber, but I think it’s the order that’s critical:

Business Savvy, Impatient, Small Business Owner – I started by becoming a small business owner, then trying to become business savvy. But, it was a slow path.Ā When I finally hit rock bottom (business-wise) and found my Life’s Purpose, hence my Number, I suddenly became impatient. In fact, this was the turning point for me: as I accelerated my business growth, I accelerated my income, which is the first key to becoming rich.

Frugal – Now, this is where most high income earners go wrong: as their income increases, they become looser with their money. It should be quite the reverse: in dollar terms it’s OK to (in fact, you should) reward yourself by increasing your expenditure [slightly] in $ terms. But, and this is the secret, you should be decreasing your expenditure in % terms. While it’s fine and dandy to be frugal while you are still on a low and/or fixed income (i.e. job), it’s actually critical to become more frugal inĀ relativeĀ termsĀ as your income increases.

… and Patient Real-Estate MogulĀ – What to do with the rapidly increasing bank balance? Well, you could put it in mutual funds (but the fees are too high and/or the returns are too slow), stocks (but, they are not leveraged enough), or other businesses (but, you run the risk of spreading yourself too thin). For me, the best compromise between the leverage of a true business and a passive investment is – and remains – investment-grade real-estate. This is where being patient finally kicks in, because buy/hold real-estate is subject to the vagaries of the market. But, I had a primary source of growing income, so I didn’t need to touch my real-estate investment income until I finally began Life After Work.

So, my assessment is that Darwin is right, but the order is wrong.

Oh, I also think that you can substitute small business ownership for any high income potential (e.g. highly-paid professional; CxO-level employee; consultant; etc.) with the only catch being that you miss out on the potential capital gains that owning a business may offer – on the other hand, you may be able to negotiate yourself a nice golden parachute …

How well do you think this simple strategy could work for you?

The New Lexus 401k Hybrid …

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This is actually a post about finance, so keep reading, even when it seems to be all about cars!

I have a 2009 BMW M3 Convertible. It chews through a tank of gas at least once a week. At Aus prices of $5.30 a gallon, it’s not cheap.

But, it is a heck of a lot of fun šŸ˜‰

My wife counterbalances: she owns a 2009 Lexus 400 Hybrid. She grudgingly refills about once per month … sometimes I think that she must push the car up hills just to avoid having to refill early.

But, she also thinks playing Gas Roulette is a heck of a lot of fun.

My first car (actually second) in the US was a Mustang GT convertible. It had a monster V8 engine, sounded great with the roof down. Needed a gas station on every corner. Drove like a tank.

It was also a heck of a lot of fun.

But, it was the dumbest car I ever owned …

There was an air-scoop on the hood of the car. The idea of an air-scoop is to suck in extra air to the carburetorsĀ on the car to keep the engine happy.

An air-scoop is supposed to be a performance enhancement …

… except, it sticks up out of the hood, so it destroys some of the air-flow, increasing drag, actually decreasing performance and fuel economy.

But, the engineers are made to make the hard design choices: do the increases in performance (extra efficiencies in the carbies) offset the losses (extra drag)?

Naturally, the engineers are experts at what they do so we can trust them to make the right decision. Right?

Well, I would have thought so … until I bought my Mustang. You see, I’m a layman, but even I can tell that:

1. The Mustang has NO carburetors (neither does any modern car), nor does it have any turbo-chargers or anything else that required the injection of air that a hood air-scoop would provide.

2. Now, here’s the killer (just in case we have any engineers out there to dispute my point 1.): the scoop has no air-holes in it.

That’s right, it’s simply an imitation airscoop. A fashion accessory.

As a marketing device, simply designed to make me buy the car, it worked brilliantly!

In other words, it reduces the performance of the vehicle!

Now, don’t get me wrong, the Mustang performed well, and was fun to drive, but didn’t perform better than ‘advertised’. It’s (partially) a marketing con.

My wife’s hybrid is also (partially) a con.

She paid a lot of money to have a hybrid that clearly does save money. But, just like the Mustang, it is designed to perform less than optimally, I believe just to build a marketing story to help sell the product.

The Lexus Hybrid includes a dynamic dash that shows the power flow between the gas engine, the wheels, and the electric motors.

If you don’t understand how a hybrid works check out this video:

In essence, it’s a closed system that uses electric motors (and batteries) to augment the traditional 6 cylinder gasoline engine:

– The gas motor drives the vehicle at all times except when the car’s at rest

– It saves gas simply by ‘switching off’ the engine whenever the vehicle stops.

– The electric motors then restart the engine as the car begins to move (like ‘jump starting’ a car by pushing it downhill … you can even feel a very slight ‘jump’ as the engine kicks in)

– The gas engine then takes over again when the car is moving at a mile or two an hour

– The electric motor’s batteries never need recharging: they are simply charged by an alternator and whenever the car is coasting or braking (it’s called ‘regenerative braking’)

Now, just like the Mustang’s air-scoop, the problem is in the ‘performance enhancement’ of the recharging system. For example, let’s take a closer look at regenerative braking:

Whenever the car is coasting down a hill, it needs to be able to retain as much momentum as possible to help carry it up the next hill, otherwise you have to hit the gas pedal that tiny bit earlier.

The regenerative braking takes a bit of the car’s energy and turns it into electricity, creating additional friction which slows down the car. So you do have to hit the gas pedal that tinier bit earlier.

If you know your physics, introducing this extra step MUST reduce overall efficiency hence increase gas usage.

So, the hybrid works (because when you have to come to a complete stop, such as at a traffic light then you might as well put some energy into the batteries rather than simply heating up the brake pads), but it would work BETTER by turning OFF its regenerative braking ‘performance feature’ when coasting.

But, then that pretty display (image at top of post) wouldn’t be nearly so pretty šŸ˜‰

What does this have to do with finance?

Well, your 401k is pretty much like my wife’s hybrid!

Sure, it helps to save money. Sure, it’s employer matched. Sure, it’s tax-protected.

But, it could be a lot BETTER simply by turning OFF some of the ‘performance enhancements’ that they’ve added to make the products SEEM more attractive to both employers and employees e.g.:

1. Choices of funds: it has been shown time and time again that long-term buy/hold investors would be better off either selecting their own stocks (if they have the necessary desire and aptitude) or simply putting their money into an ultra-low-cost Index Fund (e.g. S&P500).

All those other high-fee fund choices perform more poorly over the long run. So, why not eliminate them from the fund choices offered? Simple: marketing!

2. Additional services: Fund managers, and the guys that put together benefits plans for employers, offer all sorts of freebies & incentives to the employer to encourage them to buy THEIR funds and services; the problem is, these help the employer – not you. Worst of all, they cost you money. So, why not eliminate them? Simple: marketing!

So, a 401k performs a lot worse than it should, just so the marketing guys can pitch a better story.

Forget the Lexus Hybrid – and, your 401k – they don’t deliver on their promise.

Instead, hop into a BMW M3 – or, direct stocks, real-estate, or business investments – and, supercharge your life.

Unlike my wife’s Lexus Hybrid, or your 401k, their promise – living a little on the edge, but being thrilled with the results – is delivered in spades!

Marketing and performance, for once, are totally aligned šŸ™‚

 

How to give your children $1 billion each …

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When I was still on my own personal financial ‘seeking journey’ …

[AJC: This is theĀ journeyĀ that you may be on right now; you know, the one where youĀ read Every Available Book And Blog on Personal Finance Looking For the Mythical And Magical Secret To Financial Success But End Up Settling On Becoming A Miser Disguised As A Debt-Free, Frugal-Saver]

… I remember being very impressed by a tape set [AJC: Yep, that’s a cassette tape set] about a guy who had a ‘system’ to guarantee that your children could become billionaires in their own lifetime.

I no longer have the tape set, but it was all to do with putting aside $x per week (and, adjusting for inflation) and relying on the power of compounding (sic) to allow the sum to run up to $1 billion.

Sounds simple, soĀ I ran a few numbers on my own, and here’s what I came up with:

– Put aside $5 a day, beginning the day your children are born

– Increase by 5% each year and keep up for 40 years

– Vest the sum into your children’s names when they are 80 years old

Then they will each have $63 million dollars!

Not exactly $1 billion, but not a bad sum, right?

Now, it’s really a Grandchildren’s (or, Great Grandchildren’s) Plan, because your children may not even be alive at 80, but if they do the same for their children, and so on, it’s a reasonably smart and easy Generational Wealth Plan and your progeny will thank you for it (well, you won’t be alive, but take my word for it).

But, there are (other) problems:

– Your children have to wait until they’re 80 to ‘cash out’

– You have to contribute for 40 years, starting with $1,825 Ā year and ending with $12k a year (probably, when YOU need it more than your children do)

– And, $63 million is ‘only’ worth – a still healthy – $5.5 million in today’s dollars

Ashley Ormond (a fellow Aussie) has a more practical, shorter term plan in his book that shows you “how to give your kids $1 million each!”

It’s essentially the same kind of plan, obviously running for a shorter period, and includes interesting tweaks such as having your kids pay you back your $7k initial contributions. It also includes sensible children’s savings strategies (such as setting them up with individual ‘saving’, ‘spending’, and ‘investing’ accounts) … but, the rest of the book is Aussie-specific.

Still, all these ‘power of compounding’ books and strategies show me – after spending a LOT of time, in the service of writing this blog, playing with simple spreadsheets (and, you should do the same) – is that there is no real power inĀ compoundingĀ at all …

… it’s just simple maths and (a lot of) time, and if you rely on it for your real wealth … well … you’ll never have any šŸ˜‰

A brilliant 94 y.o. investor?

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Edward Zajac is an amazing man: at 94 he is still alive, sprightly (or so it would appear from his photo), and actively investing his own $2.5 million share portfolio …

… and, is still sharp enough to describe himself as an opportunist.

Wealthy Matters shares Ed’s financial success with his readers (you should read the whole article to learn more about Ed’s ‘EZ’ investing system):

Stick with stocks, says investor Edward Zajac. He should know. The 94-year-old has been trading for 72 years and said heā€™s made about $2.5 million.

So, should we all aspire – strictly from an investing standpoint (after all, who doesn’t want live to 94 and still be so ‘with it’) – to be like Ed?

Absolutely!

According to my calculations, Ed (assuming he started on or around the average salary for college educated technicians “installing computer systems” of $1,900 in 1939) would had to save 50% of his salary until he retired young (at the age of 51) and receive Warren Buffett level stock investing returns (21% compounded) for the entire period!

What I can’t model, because the numbers simply fall short, is how Ed managed to draw enough salary to “travel the US in a recreational vehicle with his wife” after he retired in 1968, yet still manage to double his portfolio again in the 42 years since he retired.

Good on you, Ed, we have a lot to learn from you šŸ™‚

real rich, real simple, redux

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This is a redux of a 2009 post, but it’s about time that I gave my newer readers a heads-up as to what we’re all about … if I had to point somebody to just one of my posts to get them started this would be the one; putting in all of the links nearly killed me šŸ™‚

______________________

I get a lot of questions, comments, and e-mails in general from new readers, and this one – from Chad – is reasonably typical of what I might see:

I’m turning 27; just got a job making 50k/yr.; on the market for my 1st condo to live in (and hopefully rent out a room); have 1 student loan at < 3% fixed interest. My goal is $7 million in 13 years.

1. I have very little to no knowledge of finance/investing. Do you recommend any resources to get me up to speed so I can understand what you write about?

2. Where does my situation put me in terms of Making Money 101 and 201, i.e. where do I go from here?

I appreciate ANY direction you can give me as I do not want to be stuck behind a computer in a cube for the next 30-40 years.

While I love reading these sorts of e-mails (AJC: I really do!], I have a hard time responding because I can’t / don’t give direct personal advice … but,

I can suggest that Chad think about:

1. Exactly HOW important that $7 million in 13 years is to him, and

2. Assuming it’s VERY important (critical even), how he is going to get there.

You see, my advice might change according to his Number – more importantly to his Required Annual Compound Growth Rate:

a) If low – say, no more than 10% to 15% – then I would point Chad to the various ‘frugal’ blogs (my personal favorite is Get Rich Slowly) and ‘starter books’ like The Richest Man In Babylon, or the more modern equivalent: Automatic Millionaire by David Bach, or anything by Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman.

Each would probably suggest something along the lines of:

– Keep your job; times are tough!

– Save as much of your salary as you can (max your 401k’s, then your IRA’s)

– Pay down ALL debt, following a Debt Avalanche or Debt Snowball, whichever is your favorite

– Invest any ‘spare change’ (after all debts are paid off and the requisite ’emergency fund’ has been built up) into a low cost Index Fund

… and, wait until your government-directed – or, employer-forced if you are retrenched and become unhireable – ‘retirement’. This is where that fully paid off home and a lot of candles and canned food stockpiled will really pay off … you won’t be able to afford real food šŸ˜‰

a) If high – say, more than 10% to 15% (and, I would venture that $7 million in just 13 years would well and truly put Chad in the 50+% required annual compound growth rate category!) – then I would instead point Chad to books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The E-Myth Revisited and then towards this blog and its 7 Millionaires … In Training! ‘sister blog’ and suggest that he starts working his way through the back issues (well, posts).

After reading/digesting properly, he should be able to come up with his own plan … something along the lines of:

– Keep your job, but get into active stock and/or real-estate investing – better yet, start a side-business; because times are really tough(!):

i) A mildly successful part-time business might provide additional income to help you weather the financial storm and supercharge your savings, investment, and debt repayment plans

ii) A more successful part-time business might provide a built-in ’emergency fund’, tiding you over should you lose your job and/or unexpected expenses crop up

iii) An even more successful part-time business that can be started and/or survive during a recession may prove to become wildly successful once the clouds of the recession begin to lift, maybe even carrying you directly to your Number [AJC: do not pass Go, but do collect $200 million šŸ™‚ ]

– Control your spending, and save as much of your salary as you can to build a war chest for starting / running your business

– Pay down ALL expensive debt, following the method laid out in the Cash Cascade, but keep your mortgage (lock in to current low rates) subject to the 20% Rule and the 25% Income Rule and seriously think about keeping your other cheap debt loans.

– Invest any ‘spare change’ from your job and business (after all expensive debts are paid off and the requisite ‘business startup fund’ has been built up) into quality ‘recession-priced’ stocks and/or true cashflow positive real-estate.

… and, wait until you have reached your Number (through sale of business and/or conservative valuation of your equity in your investment assets).

That’s it šŸ™‚

Premature Retireration …

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Don’t get me wrong, early retirement is great …

… not for everybody, mind you.

Many go back to ‘work’ because post-retirement life can become pretty boring, if you haven’t properly planned your time and your money.

I don’t include in ‘work’ anything where you are earning money because you want to, except where the commitment / stress / boredom rises to sustained uncomfortable levels and you feel that you can’t just walk away, in which case it’s probably ‘work’ just the same.

No, the real problem is that people don’t know when ‘retirement’ really begins:

They think it begins when they receive the huge card signed by 50 people they have hated for 40+ hours a week, or when the gold watch that they expected to receive turns into a Parker pen (in a nice box!), or when they get a nice speech from the boss who says: “Gee, we’ll really miss you, Bob” when your name’s John.

But, it really begins much, much later.

Ashton Fourie puts it best when he says:

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend after we sold our first business.

His comment then was, that having a pile of money, is not useful, because expenses continue to be a regular occurence. So we realized that one can only really ā€œretireā€ when you have enough secure, passive income. Many people make the mistake to think you can retire on a pile of money.

Until youā€™ve figured out how to turn the pile of money into secure, long term passive income, youā€™re going to have to keep ā€œworkingā€ ā€“ even if that ā€œworkā€ is the process of moving that money into income generating, secure, instruments.

This is really a very important observation and realization!

I remember being insanely jealous [AJC: slight exaggeration] of my friends who cashed out while I was still trying to earn a quid. Now, I am insanely jealous [AJC: this one is probably a huge exaggeration for dramatic effect] of those who still have a job or a business because they can spend pretty much whatever that want, knowing that next week the magic pot of honey will be refilled.

You see, it really is all about cashflow …

… when you have a pile of cash, you can only deplete it. Sooner of later it has to run out, no matter how much you started with, right?

Just ask [Insert big spending celebrity who’s financially crashed at least once in their lives: Elton John; MC Hammer; Willie Nelson; etc; etc] šŸ˜‰

So, think about the early days of your retirement as a “transition phase” while you busily reassign your financial jackpot into income-producing investments then think about how much income those investments produce (after tax, various buffers for contingency, and reinvestment to keep up with inflation) and retire on that!