I recently had to turn down the purchase of a property because I did not have enough money for the down payment. I put a feeler out to some of my friends to see if they wanted to joint venture and I tried my very hardest to fund the property myself. Unfortunately I could not come up with the cash or with a joint venture partner. Thus I had to let a very good opportunity pass me by.
My motto for investing is this “The most important thing about investing is learning”. The more you learn the quicker you can make your money back if you lose it (or the more money you can earn). I ask my wife all the time
“What do I say is the most important thing about investing?”. And she says
“Oh, I always forget this one….wait it’s learning”
The other day I was thinking about how I could raise capital to purchase investment properties. I thought about getting a full time job. I could earn $40,000 per year. That’s about $3,000 per month after tax, and after rent I would be able to save about $1,500 per month. It would take me about 5 months to save the money I need for an investment property. But then I felt my inner voice say to me (or God say to me).
“What is the most important thing about investing? Learning. If you get a job the next time you need to raise capital for an investment all you will know how to do is get a job and work for it. It is more important to learn. So don’t get a full time job”.
Then I thought to myself “Dammit! That would so be the easy way out. Ok God I will try to find another way to raise capital.”
Then last night when me and my wife were having pillow talk. Yes we were talking while resting our heads on our pillows (don’t get any funny ideas), the idea of using Newspaper Ads and Flyers to attract investors came to me. You could place an ad in the newspaper, and put flyers in people’s letterboxes to see if anyone was interested in joint venturing. This idea scares the crap out of me, because it would be me trying to convince people I don’t know that I am a worthy investment. I can’t even convince my family and friends that they should invest their money with me, how am I going to convince other people.
Then the soft still voice comes into my head…”The most important part about investing is learning, by doing this you will be learning how to raise capital from people you don’t know. This will be a great learning experience even if you fail.”
So I think in 2010 I will definately send out some flyers and put some ads in the newspaper. This is just one of my ideas on how to raise capital so you can build wealth.
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