GroundLeaseGuy

Specialized in ground leased assets

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@realEstateTrent Montreal

[Olivier Primeau @olivier_primeau]

Un politicien qui me bloque parce que je dis que le Bloc est un parti inutile… et il y a encore des gens qui votent pour lui pour les représenter 🙃 #lol

[Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦🇳🇱 @ryangerritsen]

This exchange is from 2021 & a reminder of who Carney is. The guy agrees with canceling pipelines in Canada but uses his company to invest in pipelines all over the world. His “climate agenda” is about money, while we get poorer.

[The Real Estate God @TheRealEstateG6]

Running the Numbers

I was talking to a friend the other day. Guy is in his late-20s at a decent job. He was telling me how he couldn’t wait to have a house in the Hamptons before age 40.

I spent a few seconds wondering if he was just delusional or it was simply cognitive dissonance, but I decided to play along and help him out.

“That’s sounds cool, how do you plan on getting there?”, I asked him. From his reaction, it was clear no one had ever asked him what his exact plan was before. He fumbled around a bit then said, “I guess I don’t really know, I just know I’m going to get there.”

This is exactly what you don’t want. You want to make sure that every year you’re setting aside the building blocks to get where you want to be. You want to make sure your goals align with your actions.

Most people will tell you “I want to be rich”. And then they’ll put their head down, blindly follow a career path that simply won’t get them there and then look back 25 years later wondering where it all went wrong. The day it went wrong was likely 20+ years ago when they refused to calculate exactly how much money was needed to live out their dream.

I’m actually not a fan of “running the numbers” in everyday life at all. I never track my daily or monthly spending. And I never care if I’m overpaying for a small item like dinner. I think stuff like that is totally pointless. You really don’t want to be the guy constantly worrying about money and cheaping out on events since you’re afraid it’ll screw up your hypothetical future networth.

But, at a certain point, you have to make sure you’re steering the rudder in the right direction. Focusing on the macro, not the micro is how you get rich. Most people wait until a major life “checkpoint” (turning 30) to reassess what’s going on, which is incredibly stupid. At that point, it’s nearly too late – you’ve already wasted a decade.

Say you’re like my friend and you want to buy a house in the Hamptons. A run-of the-mill house will cost you $3MM minimum. If you’re putting 30% down, that’s a ~$1MM down payment. In order to have a $1MM down payment, you need to make ~$1.7MM pre-tax. Now do you see what I’m getting at?

The next step is to calculate how many years at your current job gets you to that point. If you’re making $150k/year, you have a ways to go. Even if you’re making $250k/year you still have a ways to go (7 years, assuming all your savings go towards the down payment, which is unrealistic)

I know these calculations seem obvious, but in reality, almost no one does it.

Now let’s layer back one step. Is this Hamptons house going to be your first house? Probably not. It’ll probably be your vacation home. So that means you’ll have to buy a main home too. That’s another $500k+ you need to sock away post-tax.

Now what about socking away cash for other investments? Retirement? Living expenses? And so on and so forth.

By the time all these items are accounted for, you probably need to earn $5MM-$10MM before age 40 to effectively make that purchase. So you’d better get on your horse.

The main purpose of this post is to get you to make sure that your actions align with your goals. If your goal is only to make $100k/year and you’re on pace to achieve that goal, that’s fine, you’re achieving your goals, so you’ll end up happy.

But if your goal is to live in a mansion in the Hamptons by age 40 and at your current trajectory, you’re not even going to clear $250k at 30, you’re lying to yourself. You need to start making drastic changes. This may sound harsh, but it’s the truth.

Here’s the strategy I follow, which allows me to “run the numbers” at a high level (making sure that I’m on track to hit my macro financial goals) but also ensures that I can live my entire day-to-day life without ever running the numbers on any small purchases.

Keep all recurring expenses relatively low. Especially when you’re young (anyone below 30), you don’t need to rent the nicest apartment. First off, no one cares.

And second off, your quality of life still remains pretty much exactly the same (especially if you’re in a profession where you work a lot and are rarely home). This doesn’t mean that you live in poverty. It could be as simple as living with roommates and choosing the smallest bedroom of the house to pay 25% less in rent.

Don’t cheap out on any “experience” related activities. This means that if you’re on vacation or at a bar or anywhere with friends, you don’t even look at the price tag.

Dollar cost average a set amount of your post-tax salary every month into the S&P, bitcoin or a business (at least 10% of your post-tax salary). I “DCA” (reinvest) into businesses but that’s obviously not required and will probably only be used by those of you with a higher risk tolerance.

Take your entire bonus and make one large asset investment every year. Your options here are either a private company, starting up your own company or investing in real estate. Personally I invest in real estate because I think it’s the best option by far, but other businesses work as well. If you have additional money to invest, you can certainly make more than one large asset investment a year. But under no circumstances do you dip below one.

Take the rest of your free time (the time that people usually spend watching TV) and put it into starting a business.

By the end of 10 years, you’ll own a significant chunk of an index fund/bitcoin, and significant alternative assets/a business, all while still keeping elements of a normal life (you definitely won’t be able to party every single weekend, but you’ll still have more fun than most). It’s simply not possible to be poor following this strategy.

This strategy ensures several things. It ensures that you maximize your happiness by spending freely on fun related experiences. It ensures that you gain equity ownership of at least one asset a year. It also ensures that you can spend most of your year having fun.

Unlike most people’s retirement models, which usually involve constant “rise and grind”, you simply DCA a portion of your income each month on autopilot (zero “rise and grind” required with this aspect of the strategy) and buy one asset a year (takes up 2-4 months of hustling time when you're closing the deal). The rest of the year you can essentially sit in cruise control. As a caveat, if you start a business, you will need to hustle far more. But most people likely won’t take that final step.

It also ensures that your savings are relatively illiquid. This sounds like a bad thing, but it’s not. An easy way to screw up is by constant fiddling around with and pulling capital out of your investments when a downturn hits. Illiquid investments make it difficult to do that. Lastly, it ensures that you’re adequately diversified (both between equities and private assets and between the private assets themselves, since you’ll own 10 of them).

In summary, make sure that your actions align with your goals. If you aspire to be wealthy and are nowhere near achieving that goal (be honest with yourself), you need to kick it into high gear to realign your actions and your goals. While you don’t have to use my strategy, I believe it’s the best way to do this while still maintaining a normal life for 2/3rd of the year.

If you want to learn how to underwrite and buy profitable deals (or even smaller deals, my first deal was $200k and I only used $2,500 of my own capital)

Apply in the next post for the Acquisitions Bootcamp to work 1-on-1 with me

[Triple Net Investor @TripleNetInvest]

I'll say this again:

Buying covered land plays (in the path of growth) is the holy grail of real estate investing

This should be discussed more as there aren't many strategies that've minted more millionaires for non-professional investors

I'm ALWAYS looking to buy well located covered land plays in the path of growth regardless of the macro situation

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@AlpacaAurelius Name of the Wind

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@ShaanVP From Harvard to PE to egg cartons

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@taylorswift13 https://t.co/1Qi40196As

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@newmusicguru https://t.co/1Qi40196As

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@elonmusk https://t.co/1Qi40196As

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@ClintFiore Hey Clint, great thread! I'm looking into a countertop business that does about $4M in sales with ~20% margins. They have $1.1M in inventory, do I pay a multiple on the SDE + $1.1M? Or, should the inventory be part of the purchase price?

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@TheRealEstateG6 deal

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@PierrePoilievre @SteveSaretsky can you get Pierre on the pod (Loonie Hour)?

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@WallStreetSilv @PierrePoilievre

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@ShaanVP CoD Modern Warfare II

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@SievaKozinsky Driving around for 30 minutes to find free street parking

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@brianbeers Super helpful to see what's worked for you at scale. We're closing on our second location in a couple months. Appreciate your openness.

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@coookwithchris What's the recipe? I have shrimp, veggies and rice for tonight.

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@GavinClimie What does this mean in layman terms?

[GroundLeaseGuy @groundleaseguy]

@coookwithchris Does the turmeric stain your juicer? I don't know how to wash turmeric off...