Why is it so hard for some people to ever get started investing and improving their financial position, while others can attend a seminar, read a book, or listen to a home study course and jump right in and do something? For some people, there is never a right time regardless of what they want to do.
It seems there are basically two types of investors–the one that looks for all the reasons not to buy, and the one that looks for all the reasons to buy. Some people seem to make a point of inventing excuses to avoid doing anything that might be the least bit unfamiliar, or not a sure thing.
They always want a “guarantee” before they will do anything. So they let fear and procrastination prevent them from ever doing anything. And doing nothing is the biggest mistake they could make.
Back when I was buying up rental properties, there was another investor that must have looked at just about every property I looked at. I know of at least eight properties that I bought that he had looked at. But he managed to find some excuse not to buy the property.
I’m glad he didn’t because I made a sack full of money on all them and still enjoy monthly checks from some of those same properties in the form of a mortgage payment.
Results instead of excuses
But occasionally I hear from someone who grabbed the ball and ran with it. And today I got a call from just such a man. What a pleasure it was to hear from someone with results instead of excuses. I’d like to share this story with you.
John had just completed his first mobile home deal after reading Deals On Wheels and called me to see if he had made a mistake. He was worried because his calculator was spitting out such ridiculous figures that he thought maybe he was punching the wrong buttons.
I checked the numbers on my calculator as he read them off and assured him they were correct. Let’s go over the deal as John told it to me:
John bought a mobile home in a senior park for $4,000. He sold it for $7,275, got $1,000 down and a note for $6,275 payable $194.66 monthly for 54 months, 25% interest.(His attorney says there is no usury law on mobile home notes where he lives. That was my first question.)
When he ran the numbers to figure his yield, he kept getting 74.9%, and he just couldn’t believe he could made that kind of a return. But his numbers were correct. He was making 74.9%, but that’s only part of this story, it gets better. John then told me that he had found an investor who used his IRA money and bought the first 29 payments of this note for $4,500.
Since John only had $3,000 left in the note, he has now realized a $1,500 cash profit. And he still gets to collect 25 payments after his investor is paid off, which will be an additional $4,886. To say that John was ecstatic would be a gross under-statement.
We continued to talk about this deal and did some “supposing.” Suppose the note paid off early, say in 12 months, what happens to John’s and his investor’s yields? They will go into orbit. But I suggested to John that if that should be the case, and it paid off early, his investor might not want to be paid off.
Since his investor was now used to getting a monthly check and making a good return, he might be happy to let John substitute the security in that note for security in something else and continue getting monthly checks. If he did that, John would have the entire payoff and could use the cash to do more mobile home deals. The compounding effect if this should happen is awesome!
Thirty deals a year or still looking?
To further illustrate my point on how fear and procrastination can effect people, let me share another story. Several years ago, a couple attended one of my mobile home seminars. This couple knew absolutely nothing about mobile homes before then.
After the seminar, they went back home and started doing deals. In less than one year they had done over 30 deals and had created $300,000 worth of mobile home notes.
There’s another couple that I’ve known for over five years. They live within 100 miles of the first couple. I see this couple at least once a year, and I always ask how things are going and what they’ve done. Each time I get the same story, “We’re still looking, but we just can’t find any deals where we live.”
Can the circumstances really be that different within 100 miles? Or is it the people who are who different? Another man I know spent two years before doing his first deal, and yet another man spent six years before finally making his first deal. Most likely, they were all looking for a reason not to do anything, rather than a reason why they should do something.
The choice is yours
I wish there was a way to figure just how much money these two men lost by waiting so long to get started. And this is just two people. Multiply these two by thousands in the same predicament and just try to imagine how expensive fear, procrastination and excuses can be for all those people.
Opportunity is all around you, but you have to learn to look for it and to recognize it. And once you recognize it, then you must ACT on it. You can make money or you can make excuses, but you have to live with your choice. The choice is yours.
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