15. What You Can Do to Stay Ahead of the Kids

All of us have different levels of understanding and varying comfort levels about money and finances.

My most important piece of advice would be to develop and maintain an open mind, recognizing ideas that will push your boundaries of comfort. We all have our limitations and our unseen boundaries. Most of the time, we don’t realize what our comfort level is until we’re confronted with an idea that doesn’t fit into ourthinking pattern or our mode of behavior.

Let Me Share a Story With You

I have four rental properties I purchased before the big run-up in prices in the mid-2000. I eventually stopped buying properties for rental purposes because I couldn’t find one that would provide me with a positive cash flow. In other words, even with a conventional 20% down payment, my mortgage payment, taxes, insurance and emergency fund would be larger than the rent I could reasonably expect.