Real Estate Investing — Life BEFORE Retirement

A client recently observed something about how some folks seem to live their lives. He’d recently seen a video of an interview of both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in which Jobs said the following, loosely paraphrased:

Steve said, about Bill’s philanthropy — “Bill decided he didn’t want to be the richest guy in the cemetery.”

That’s an incredible observation, and one, at least for me, having many potential applications.

For instance, how many times have you said to yourself, “When I get to this point, I’ll do this particular activity”? Speaking for myself it’s been a real surprise how many times I’ve said that, and the contingency for which I was waiting had nothing to do with either more money, or my ability to make it happen without that contingency becoming reality. Bill Gates has been able to transform himself into a hugely effective philanthropist simply because he made the decision to do it.

My memory is so richly detailed thinking back to a conversation I once had with my grandparents while spending a week with them in the Sierras. It was the week of my 15th birthday, and having them to myself in that setting was Nirvana. Grandpa was a minister, a successful oil painter, a teacher, and almost by default a pretty fair photographer. He told me to avoid at all costs saying things like, “when I make this much money I’m gonna do such and such”, because he said, “most of the time money isn’t what’s stopping you from doing something, it’s fear.”

We, and I’ll speak for myself here too, seem to protect ourselves sometimes by attaching various and mostly irrelevant qualifiers to some of our most desired goals in life. I can name a couple in my experience.

When I first became a dad it was obvious I’d become a walking ad for someone’s ‘before’ picture for diet and exercise. I began jogging on my own, and was becoming a little discouraged and more than a little bored when I discovered some friends who were runners. To make a long story short, not only did I lose 50 pounds in a little less than a year, but shortly thereafter ran the first of many marathons! What had I been waiting for?

Though baseball has always been one of my passions, I was always pretty good, just not nearly elite in skill level. So I coached when my son was old enough to play. Though I was in the dugout for every game, including every all-star game as a coach until high school, it just wasn’t the same as being a participant. I was blind to opportunity parading in front of me several times a week. What are umpires for Heaven’s sake, but frustrated ballplayers? Even then I had to be forced into it by Little League rules — all coaches in my area had to umpire.

I loved it and became pretty good at it. In fact, I ended up being headhunted by the local umpire association for adult hardball. Wow, ex-college and pro guys playing ball and I was calling balls and strikes, out and safe. Talk about Heaven. Then the local NCAA group came calling and I found myself in a summer long audition for their group. They asked me to join them, and I was a college umpire for several years, even granted the honor and privilege of working in post season playoffs.

I remember a particular college game at San Diego State. They were playing, I think, one of the northwest Pac 10 teams, probably Oregon State. It was a gorgeous spring night, the stands were packed, and there was some BawldGuy behind the plate calling balls and strikes. As I pointed to the pitcher and said, “play ball!” it dawned on me how much I owed to Grandpa and that day’s conversation so long ago. The first pitch was thrown for a strike, I grunted “AAGGHH!” loudly as was my style, and could’ve died happy the next moment.

As a real estate investor you might be falling victim to planning things requiring certain milestones to be achieved. Sometimes of course, it’s unavoidable. However, how foolish is it to not have visited the Greek Islands you’ve lusted for so long to see, when all you have to do is pull out a little tax-free cash to make it happen? Your Plan isn’t going to disintegrate because of a few grand here and there. Don’t allow yourself to become so narrowly targeted towards your dream retirement that you begin delaying the enjoyment of your life today.

The fruits of successful investing are not exclusively for our old age. After all, our retirement shouldn’t be just creating dozens of new memories, but enjoying and repeating old ones. What have you delayed doing for no good reason? If it’s money, you have it in your income properties. If it’s not money, why are you delaying potentially life enriching experiences? Who benefits from the delay? Not you.

Allow your investment success to serve you before retirement too. Sacrifice is so often a fact of life, but it can sometimes become an ingrained habit, accruing to our detriment.

I’ll forever know what it’s like to see a 95 mph fastball coming my way — thanks to Grandpa’s advice. What have you been delaying for no good reason — and why can’t you do it soon? Don’t make all your memories after you retire because of some false sense of discipline and sacrifice. You are where you are because you’ve already demonstrated both qualities in spades.

What memory are you dying to make?