Purposefully Planning Your Journey To Retirement — Is Your Map Compete?

For so long now I’ve used the ‘Journey to Retirement’ as a metaphor for the real estate investor’s Purposeful Plan. It’s worked well. Sometimes the trip from A to B is a relatively uninterrupted straight line, sometimes, um, not so much. Highway 1031 can be the right road to take now, but the future may tell us something entirely different. The key is always the arrival at point B, right?

Here’s the thing though. All maps are not equal. Let that resonate with you awhile. Imagine your GPS tells you to take a road temporarily closed to traffic. Simple right? You ask for a reroute. But what if your particular GPS isn’t programmed with every road on the map? Furthermore, what if you’re not aware of that minor detail?

Oops.

As an investor your ‘GPS’ is how much you know — about what’s involved at any given point in your journey. That’s a huge pile of knowledge. What’s the #1 lesson learned by all investors, no exceptions? That’s an easy one.

It’s the answers to the questions you never knew to ask that will ruin your Plan, no matter how well your journey has been laid out. Wanna see an example? Here’s one from earlier this week.

Agent from another state calls me. Says he spoke to a family who’d bought and sold their primary residences through him for years. They’d kept one of them, turning it into a rental back in the middle ’80′s. It’d appreciated a little over $200,000 since. They sold it, had it in escrow, and about a week before it’s scheduled to close, their ‘bookkeeper’ asks them about capital gains taxes. Apparently, at least according to the agent who called me, they were gonna ‘hand carry’ their proceeds check to a ‘neutral’ party — no really, they were.

What? (Not makin’ it up.)

Anywho, the punch line is this: They were about to be on the hook for over $250,000 in capital gains and recapture taxes. I quickly discerned the impending trauma/drama and made the proper fixes by remote control, through their agent. Mind you, their agent didn’t sell the property for them, as they’d sold it themselves to an acquaintance from work.

I’m told any time I visit their area, food ‘n drink are on them. Works for me.

That’s just one example, though I could literally post for weeks about nothing but those kinda scenarios which have been brought to me — sometimes sadly, after the horse was outa da barn. It’s not always about tax deferred exchanges. It can be something they missed out on, or finding out the mechanics they used shortchanged them on a potentially delayed capital gain.

BawldGuy Takeaway: Here’s the thing about the answers to questions you don’t know to ask. Bottom line? It’s like Grandma told me once about fishing — “Jeffrey Scott, you can’t know what you don’t know.”

All the best laid Plans aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, if one of those answers ends up ambushing you. Paradoxically, sometimes the real estate investors most at risk are the ‘experienced’ veterans. They develop a false sense of what I term, ‘faux security’ when it comes to their options at any given time.

“It’s worked the last two times, why not now?” Geez, save me please.

Your retirement is far too important for one or more of these answers to waylay your own Purposeful Plan. What’s assumed in that word ‘Purposeful’ is that you know all your options in the first place. For many, that’s a deadly assumption.

I know most of those answers, nobody knows ‘em all. Good thing is, I do know the questions most don’t know to ask. Give me a call at 619 889-7100 or use the Contact BawldGuy button up top. Have a good one.

Related posts:

1. The Journey To Retirement — Are You Stuck On The Path Of Least Resistance?
2. The Purposeful Plan — Your Journey To Retirement — Part II
3. The Purposeful Plan — Priorities — Options — Your Journey To Retirement
4. Real Estate Investors: A Case Study In Turbo Charging Your Journey To Retirement
5. Why Do You Invest? Think Of Getting To Your Retirement As A Journey