BABY BOOMERS GUIDE TO INVESTING
Hello Baby Boomer's! Our time is here for some and almost here for others. Time to retire and enjoy our remaining years in the pursuit of joy and happiness. Plan those trips, buy that home on the beach or get that convertible you’ve always wanted. It’s time for your dreams to become reality.
What is that I heard on the news? Stocks, mutual funds went down!!!! All you have is your IRA and maybe if you’re lucky a pension and oh yes, let’s not forget our social security.
Well, I’m here to tell you that I’ve secured my future and didn’t even start till after I was fifty (50). Have I gotten your attention!!!! Would you like to know more, then read on!!!!
In 2001 when the most catastrophic event that has ever happened to our country occurred on September 11, 2001 I too became one of many who was layed off, over fifty and told by everyone, “Good Luck” find a job at your age. Well, guess what? Those people were right. I spent a year searching for a job and found that what was available was 30-40% less than what I had been making. The tears fell, the woe is me and pity party set in but, then reality hit. If I can’t get a job and our mutual funds aren’t growing, what will we have when we retire.
Of course, all of us have become accustom to our own life style and being a BABY BOOMER myself I realized our generation has and still are big users of credit cards, cash in on the equity in our homes and live the motto of “Live for today and deal with tomorrow when tomorrow comes.” Tomorrow is already here for some and just around the corner for others.
My husband and I sat down one evening and pulled all our financial records to see where and how much money we had accumulated to this point for our retirement. We sat looking at our mutual funds, annuities , stock, bonds, Cd's IRAs and even our savings bonds that we started saving with when we first got married. Wow, we were so excited back then to think that we had started so young to secure our retirement. The total amount of all those years of saving and often doing without, putting our son through college had now left us with about $158, 000.
Once upon a time that would have been a great amount to retire and live out those golden years upon. Now that might be enough to live 5-10 years on and that’s if your home is paid for and all you have are your regular monthly expenses. Of course that’s no car payment or any type of expenditures that would increase your monthly set expenses.
Since our mortgage lenders have made it so easy to draw the equity out of our homes there are a large percentage of baby boomer's who have taken that equity to pay credit card debt, make improvements or renovations on their homes. Our parents were a cash and carry generation. If you couldn't pay for it you didn't buy it until you could pay for it.
Back to my story. My husband and I were concerned about our future and talked for hours and hours trying to decide how to take our $158,000 and turn it into $500,000 or more. Our conclusion was that unless we hit the lottery or a rich relative died leaving us a fortune we were up the creek without a paddle.
Then one evening our son came over and having a finance degree he began talking about how he was securing his family's future. He had bought his first investment property and was only thirty (30) years old. Thirty is a great age because you're still not afraid to be a bit adventurous. In just his first purchase he had acquired $32,000 in equity. Wow, it had taken my husband and I 10 years to save that amount. Now it was time to think about buying property. Could we overcome our fear of spending our hard earned money in order to invest. Our mutual funds and certainly our other investments weren't growing the way we had anticipated so we decided to call various lenders and see what type of financing was available and what we could buy for X amount of dollars.
Long story short, we found a mortgage broker who could help us with little or no money down. We were then fortunate enough to find a Realtor who understood our needs and what we had to invest.
We bought our first property in 2003 and now own fifteen (15) properties and have a net worth of over $500,000. We've set a goal as to how long we want to keep the properties and what our proposed net worth will be at that time. In the meantime, the properties are rented and cover the cost of the mortgages and we have a monthly residual income of $2,400.
Does that sound good to you! My father always said you can't go wrong owning real estate. Since acquiring these properties my son and I have gotten our realtor's license and now show others how to achieve what we did in a short time period.
CALL US FOR DETAILS.........
Doug Boyer-678-451-8426
Dawn Boyer-678-491-4258