I don’t know about you but I was never a good budgeter.

Never good with rules and because I worked hard always thought that I was entitled to spend my money for stuff that I wanted.

First, it was motorcycles and cars…go fast and impress girls.  Then houses, to impress girls.  I learned that I really did not like the girls that were impressed with stuff.  Plus stuff purchased with that in mind were never great investments.  It was not until I discovered that every dollar you make, invested can make more money and money put to work meant that I did not have to work as much that I really got excited.

First, I had to make money.  Real estate brokerage was an easy entry business.  Education requirements were nil and capital requirements were virtually nil.  Plus, let’s be honest the competition is not world class.  All I had to do was find the owners that were the most likely to want to sell or the people that loved me.  I called my data base with short and compelling scripts.  I reached out to out of state owners and showed them how they could move their investment closer to home and pay no income tax on the capital gain.  I visited expired and FSBO listings and gave them value before I asked to become their adviser.  I learned how to ask questions to prevent crazies from wasting my time.  I told the truth, got top dollar commissions and learned to walk from bad deals.  I had a huge personal listing inventory of motivated sellers at the right price.  I did everything within the legal confines of the profession to get both ends of as many transactions as possible.  I kept my clients happy by time blocked feedback.  I got help for the things that I did not want to do in the business.  I made lots of money and got tired.

After 15 years, almost bored, so I thought about reaching out into related fields.  I had always like real estate investing for myself.  I had lost much on alligators so I started to buy cash flow, keep forever real estate.  I still needed money for the down payments so I kept up the brokerage side of the business but I manualized all of my systems that made me successful (some say top agent in North America) and started selling my manual and speaking.  I soon became proficient at showing people how to duplicate my system and easily make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

By the way the 9 big books that I have written along with the DVD’s, data cd’s and audio cd’s that just a few months ago sold for $1500.00 now are available on my site as long as supplies last for $90.00.  Yes, it is a little gift to the industry that has given me so much.  Selling at my cost, a 40 pound box of the best real estate products in the world.  Real life stuff that is easy to implement and has made most that use it, rich. 

I digress, so here I was, selling real estate (a mountain that I had already conquered), buying real estate and needing money for down payments, and taking my show on the road to teach thousands of Realtors all over the world what you have to do to become rich and famous in your own hometown.  As the speaking and product sales took off, I replaced my brokerage income with my speaking/training income.  Life is a process.  Years late, I got tired of the travel and now you are up to date.

I am retiring from the speaking and traveling business and now all I do is coach some of the best, or soon to be the best Realtors and Agents in the US and Canada.  Besides this, I am managing my real estate empire that I never sold, just improved.  In my opinion the perfect transition.  I now get to affect future generations with the wealth that I manage for God (yeah, it is all his).  Investing my cash flow from real estate investments and  coaching I continue to grow the estate that someday may fund my church and my family.  I got to tell you that I sure am happy that I chose to become proficient at real estate brokerage because I was never good at budgeting but good at spending.  With great real estate brokerage you don’t have to watch your spending if you can always make more.  I am glad that I grew up and started to invest with a larger goal than just providing for myself and tossed away the things that don’t matter.  I am also very happy that I implemented this plan because I am turning 62 in a few months and have applied for Social Security.  I applied early because I don’t trust government and would rather invest a smaller amount at my rate of return than wait for a larger check later.  Oh well, seems that I make too much money and there won’t be any money until I am 65…Unless they come up with another reason not to pay me back the money that I paid in.

Sure glad that I planned for retirement.