10 WAYS TO BE A BAD HOUSE GUEST

10 WAYS TO BE A BAD HOUSE GUEST
There is an epidemic and I need to do something about it. Read on to see if you're a bad guest.

1. Eat too much

• When you get invited to someone's house, eat all their food. When they cook, ask for seconds. Eat the bread for no reason. Pour out all the cereal and milk. Sit on your butt and eat. The food is there so why not? Your host has enough money to buy more. They don't have responsibilities anyway!

2. Squeeze the toothpaste from the middle.

• Your host doesn't deserve to have perfectly squeezed toothpaste tubes. Although the lack of symmetry gets on their nerves, don't worry about it. It's not your problem. Your host just has to deal with it. 

3. Give your opinion on what to buy

• If ever you see 1-ply tissue in your host's house, tell them that they need to invest in 2-ply. When they go grocery shopping, ask if you can tag along. While you're in the store, tell the host to pick up things that you like. For example, if your host picks up a bottle of Clorox bleach, say, "I don't like the smell of bleach. You should get Mrs. Meyers cleaners. It's better for you and it's environmentally friendly." Then just throw it in the cart. Although your suggestion might be more expensive, who cares! 

4. Do laundry excessively

• As a guest, you should never have dirty clothes sitting around. You deserve to be clean at all times, right? When your host is at work during the day, put your last set of clothes in the washing machine. Hurry up before they get home. You don't want them to know that you used gallons of water plus electricity on 2 pieces of fabric. 

5. Leave strands of your hair in the bathroom

• Let's face it, your hair has to be well kept when you're in someone's house. Brush your hair every day. Preferably with your host's brush. Leave the strands of hair all over the bathroom floor and in the sink. Your host will appreciate you looking cute and won't even mind the hair all over the bathroom. 

6. Tell your host how to re-decorate

• Sometimes when you go to someone's house, you don't like the way their furniture is positioned. Make your voice heard. Tell your host that the couch should be moved  to the other wall. Let them know they need a plant pot in the living room. Go ahead and move that picture frame for them. Your taste in home decor is much more superior. Your host will appreciate your taste. 

7. Invite yourself in their bedroom

• Bedrooms are not private sanctuaries. When you are at someone's house, please walk up in their master suite and sit on their bed. Watch TV while you're at it. Hosts love it when people sit on their beds in their dusty behind, sweaty clothes and get comfortable. 

8. Leave appliances on all day

• Do you think your host has bills to pay? Probably, but who cares? Leave the TV on even if you're not watching it. Leave all the lights on in the house for proper illumination because you can take better selfies with good lighting. If there is air conditioning, turn it on high and  leave it on all day, even if you leave the house. 

9. Ask for a ride

• You need a ride to go to the mall or something. When your host comes home from work feeling all tired and worn out, demand that they give you a ride. You need to have fun while you're visiting. You should not offer to pay for gas either - no matter how far they drive you. Your host has a job, they can buy their own gas. Don't opt for ride share companies - they are too expensive for you. 

10. Ask your host to bring you back something from outside

• If your host goes out to run errands and leaves you at home, ask them to bring you back something. Maybe a snack or a drink. They will probably pass a gas station or a corner store on the way back. They should stop and get you something. You are important. 

If you have done any of these 10 things, you are a terrible guest and you should never be invited into anyone's home. We encourage you to change your ways and become a better person. Thank you. 

Beyond Broke! 25 to Life

Hey y'all,

The last time we spoke, I was telling you how I paid back $30K in 2 years. I also warned you that these real estate investments are long term investments for me.
In the first half of 2019, most of my paycheck was going toward rent, student loans, and finishing off that credit card debt. I was just left with food money after paying my bills. BUT BRUHHHH!!!! I had a life changing event that left me beyond broke! When I say broke this time, I mean that I don't even have money left to go to the hairdresser. I have to wash my hair myself. When I say broke, I mean I don't have money left to tell my husband, "I got the bill". I used to love saying that. Now, I humbly look away when it's time to pay for anything. LOL! I'm not done yet...when I say broke, I mean I didn't buy anyone gifts for Christmas. If I went to church, I wouldn't pay tithes.

Back to the point. The major life event that left me broke is . . . I HAD A BABY!!!! I knew I couldn't afford daycare on my tight budget, but being working parents left us no choice. My husband and I split the cost of daycare, but my account is still on zero.

What will I do about it?
1. I will re-do my budget and find ways to cut costs.
2. I will sacrifice costly activities like traveling often. (One or two international flights/year will do)
3. Reduce eating out.
4. Get a side hustle. (Send me a job offer: msmitchelltutor@gmail.com)
5. Get baby a job when baby can talk.

Stay tuned...

25 to Life - Paying Off Debt

The hardest part about making property investments for me is paying back the loans and spending money on repairs. Obviously I don't like the feeling of losing money, but you must give in order to receive. For me to get loans in the future, I better pay off my current ones on time. For me to keep tenants in my house, I better make the necessary repairs.

Most of the rent I collect from property 1 goes to paying the mortgage. The small amount that I pocket monthly goes towards repairs and renovations. There's no money left for me to save.
I'm broke!

So why buy properties if you're not making any money?
For me, this is a long term investment. I know I won't be making any money now, but in many years when I want to just be barefoot and pregnant, I will be able to still have income to facilitate my lifestyle. Again, this is a LOONNGG term investment. I'm doing this for when I no longer want to work. I'm young and strong now - I need to go to work to network and make connections.
     
In the last post, I mentioned that I borrowed $15,000 from my credit card and another $15,000 from a trusted person. How am I paying off those debts?

1. I focused on paying off the credit card first

    Because the credit card company gave me only 1 year of interest free payments, I had to calculate how to pay that off quick! Here's how:  I divided 15,000 by 12 months. That came out to $1250 per month. So every month, I paid $1250 on the credit card until it was all paid off. Some months I couldn't pay as much, but I would make it up during a good month. When I say "good month" I mean tax-return season. LOL!

2. I paid the trusted person

Again, I divided the $15,000 I borrowed by 12 months and paid $1250 per month. I already knew I could do this because I did it with the credit card company. The person also knew I could do it because they witnessed what I had done the prior year.

All in all, it took me 2 years to pay off a $30,000 debt. Not bad right?

Questions I received from readers:

1. What type of credit card gave you 0% interest for a year?
     Bank of America travel rewards card.

2. How long before you make back your money on this  $50K apartment?
13 years. Although within 13 years the value may go up, the rent may go up, and I'll make back my initial investment faster. That's the hope.

3. How long before you make back your money on property 1?
I plan to pay it off in 10 years. It'll take another 5-6 years of collecting rent to make back the purchase price. All in all - 16 years.



Stay tuned. . .

Getting $30K in 1 Month - 25 to Life

Aight, BOOM!

          So like I said in the last post, I saved up $20K in 2 years. No problem. I knew this would be easy because I did it 2 years ago. Whenever I have $20K in my savings, I always start seriously looking at houses. This time, my location of choice was Cape Town, South Africa. I searched on property24.com because I like their inventory and the interface is easy to use. I filtered my view to only look at the cheapest properties in my favorite area. Luckily, I had a friend from the US who stayed in an apartment complex in a cool part of Cape Town. She said it was safe and a great place to live. That's all I needed to hear to start looking for apartments in the exact same building! Move over girlfriend, I'm your new neighbor! Lol.

           Any-who....the apartment was listed for about $50K. I couldn't go to look at it in person because I was thousands of miles away, so I asked my friend to go look at it for me. She took videos and sent them to me. I emailed the listing agent and told them I was interested in purchasing the property. They emailed me back a copy of the contract. I filled out the contract, signed it, and returned it to the listing agent via email.
           Next step was to pay the downpayment. If you're a foreign buyer, South Africa's rule is that you have to pay down at least 50% of the purchase price, and then get a mortgage on the other 50%. I tried to open international bank accounts with several banks in Cape Town but I had no luck. All the banks required that I either have a South African ID# or a visa. Of course I had neither. I had 50% of the purchase price, BUT I couldn't get a mortgage. That's when I realized that I would have to pay for this $50K apartment fully in cash.
         I went to my bank in the US and made a wire transfer of $20,000 to the real estate company in Cape Town. I was now the official owner of this cute little apartment in Cape Town...well almost. The process was delayed a bit because I had to find ways to get the other $30K. I kept telling the real estate company that my US bank had restrictions of how much money I can send within a short period of time (because of fraud). So the seller just had to wait until my bank allowed me to send another large sum of money. During this time, I was hustling my resources (Google) to find out how I could get this $30K.
         After much reading and some browsing, I learned that I could use my credit card.
        I had two credit cards: one was already in use, paying off some student loans. The other had a limit of $17K and was barely ever used. I was able to get $15K cash from my credit card at 0% interest for a year. This is called a cash advance. My bank loans me the $15K and I don't have to pay any interest on this loan for one year. However, if one year passes by and I haven't finished paying off the entire $15K, I would be charged about 22% interest per statement period.
        Ok, so I saved $20K, borrowed $15K from my credit card, that adds up to $35K. Where did the other $15K come from?
I borrowed it from a trusted family member who knows I'm about my money so they have nothing to worry about.

The Breakdown:

List Price: $50,000
Downpayment: $20,000
Cash Advance: $15,000
Personal Loan: $15,000

Bonus: This property also had a tenant already living there so I was collecting rent right away. The rent is just so tiny when you convert it to US dollars lol. But money is money.

What do you want to know next?

Property 2 - 25 to Life

Life became a lot more expensive after purchasing my first income property. My student loans were no longer in their grace periods, so Sallie Mae was entitled to a fair share of my monthly income. Also, I started a serious relationship. Seriously, who knew love would be so expensive? I found myself spending more money during my vacations. Love makes you hungrier I guess. When I was traveling as a single woman I barely ate food. Now, walking around with this handsome giant, we were trying everything (except meat for me). I was also spending money on Airbnbs. When traveling alone, I always stayed with a friend or family member for free, but most people don't have space for me and my handsome giant. So now I have two additional expenses - Sallie Mae and love.
          I was looking for other ways to make up for the extra spending so I started tutoring an old student in math and reading. That only lasted a short time because my student started doing way better in school - she didn't need me anymore. In short, I didn't find any immediate way to make extra money so...I tailored my goal to fit my brokeness. Instead of going for another single family wholesome house in America, I started looking outside of the country.
         I looked at houses in Italy, Ghana, South Africa, Jamaica...and probably on Mars.
I knew that maybe one day I'd find myself living in Cape Town, South Africa since I survived it there for 5 months while I studied abroad in college. No, I didn't just survive, I thrived. I loved Cape Town so I devised my plan to own some type of liveable space there.

         Remember in my first post how I saved up for property 1? Well I did the same for property 2. I saved $20,000 within 2 years and purchased a 1 bedroom apartment. But, the apartment did not cost just $20K. It actually was listed for about $50K. How did I come up with the other $30K?

The Buying Process - 25 to Life: Property 1

In the midst of all this saving, I contacted realtors in my top 2 cities of choice. I went to look at houses during my time off from work. It only took a couple of weekends for me to decide the perfect location. Once I figured out which house I wanted to buy, I immediately put down an offer and waited to hear back from the seller. If you're an indecisive person and you take too long put down an offer, someone else might put an offer on the property you like and you end up going with your second choice. . . or maybe you end up with nothing at all.
         The seller's counter-offer was $3000 more than I wanted to spend so I brought up some problems I saw on the property. I asked the seller to either fix the problems OR just sell it to me at my offer price. It would've probably taken up too much of their time to fix the issues - or maybe it would've cost them more than the discount I asked for. Either way, we agreed on my offer price.

List Price: $137,500
My Offer: $130,000
Counter-Offer: $133,000
Final Sale Price: $130,000

How Did I Finance the Property?

I paid down 20% of the sale price because I wanted to avoid mortgage insurance. Mortgage insurance is just a penalty for being broke. The mortgage company charges you extra money each month, just in case you lose your one little job and can't pay them anymore. At least they got some money out of you up front. So any-who, 20% of $130,000...

Downpayment: $26,000
Mortgage Loan: $104,000

My monthly payment was $744. Nice, right! But it went up since homie took office in 2016.

Stay tuned to hear about property #2.

25 to Life: Property 1 - The Saving Process

In 2014, when I graduated college at age 22, I had never worked a full-time job and I had no money in my bank account. But, I looked good on paper. My resume was already two pages long with all the serious volunteer work I had done, along with running the non-profit organization I founded. My goal after graduating college was to own a home before the age of 25. This meant that I had three years to get this done.

Backtrack -- I have the same cliche immigrant story as many other Americans. I was born in the Caribbean, migrated to the US at age 12 and tried to assimilate. I knew my purpose here was to change the financial and social dynamics of my family. My motivation was to move up the social ladder - it still is.

I spent latter half of my college years researching different ways to make money online. I needed large sums of money fast, because time waits on no one, plus before you knew it, I'd be 25. By the time my senior year came around, I had taught myself some valuable things about money and finance.

• Sadly, there are no legal shortcuts
• You need money to make money
• You actually have to work for it
• Nobody cares about your struggles

After college, I took a job offer that paid less than $60,000/year. It sounded like decent money coming right out of college but after paying NYC taxes, it dwindled down to a very modest amount. I was taking home a little over $30,000 a year. After paying rent, grad school tuition, transportation, travel expenses, insurance, bills, bills, bills, it seemed impossible to become a home owner in 2 years. 

Of all the research I did online about how to make more money, only one worked for me so far. I realized that I didn't have any money in the first place, so using the other strategies were far-fetched. The strategy that worked for me was SAVING. Plain old boring SAVING in a regular bank. 

I was able to save enough money in less than two years, and before I turned 24, I purchased my first home.  

Don't get me wrong, I also explored the other money-making strategies I learned online, like purchasing stocks, mutual funds, etc., but those are more long-term. I needed money fast, and straight up saving money at the bank worked for me. Of course after making my down payment on the house, my bank account was looking hungry but I just started from scratch again. The bright side: I am not paying mortgage out of pocket. In fact, I am profiting off the house I bought. 

Ask me how in the comments section. 

My next step was to repeat this process in the next two years. Did it work?

The Breakdown of Acquiring the 1st Property

Year 1

Employment: Full Time from 7am - 5pm
Gross Salary: $56,200
Net Salary: $36,962
Pay Frequency: Twice per month

Each paycheck was roughly $3000. From each check, I paid myself $500. Since I got paid twice per month, that's $1000 paid to myself each month, for a total of $12k that year.

What did I do with the other $24k?
I paid rent, which was $500 per month for a bedroom. That's a total of $6000 for the year.

Now I'm left with $18k...
I also paid about $3000 per semester for graduate school, totaling another $6000 per year.

We're at $12k now...
Ummm...I spent most of that on travel and life insurance. I took approximately 5 vacations and decided to do something that sounded responsible. LIFE INSURANCE (whatever that means).

Year 2

Employment: Full Time from 7am - 5pm
Gross Salary: $59,800
Net Salary: $38,059
Pay Frequency: Twice per month

Each paycheck was roughly $3100. From of each check, I paid myself $500. Since I got paid twice per month, that's $1000 paid to myself each month, for a total of $12k that year, and $24k in 2 years.

What did I do with the other $26k?
I paid rent, which was $500 per month for a bedroom. That's a total of $6000 for the year.

Now I'm left with $20k...
I also paid about $3000 per semester for graduate school, totaling another $6000 per year.

We're at $14k now...
Ummm...I spent most of that on travel and life insurance. I took approximately 4 vacations and decided to do something cool - HOT YOGA, and a GYM MEMBERSHIP.

Do you think this strategy can work for you? Let me know...seriously. 😝