Free Real Estate Investment Analysis Tool
Our friends Ali & Josh from The FI Couple (Episode 430) created a free real estate deal analysis tool that I wanted to pass along here in the newsletter as I’ve been really impressed with them generally and I’m certain this will be quite valuable if you’re looking to get into real estate investing.
They designed this free tool to help FI Community members interested in buying real estate understand the potential return on investment a real estate opportunity might offer.
It is set up to help you determine specific metrics including: Cash on Cash Return, Net Operating Income, Cap Rate, One Percent Rule and then ultimately help you decide on the viability of making an offer on potential rental properties.
Actions Taken: Insurance Savings
Last week, I challenged you to take action on your insurance policies to see if you could lower your premiums. I want to highlight a few recent wins from the community for some extra inspiration:
Ben wrote in, “For my 1% better I cancelled a whole life insurance policy, saving $550/month (I have adequate term coverage). This also will give me a cash inflow of the cash balance which I’m putting in my investment accounts. This reduction in monthly expenses also lowers my FIRE number!”
Dori & Nick said, “Your newsletter today inspired me to review my insurance policy. I ended up switching my auto, homeowners, and umbrella policy from All-State to progressive and will save $1,500 per year! Plus, we put it on our rewards credit card which will now help us meet the spending requirement on our first card in this new travel rewards process you’ve taught us.”
Connie said, “My giant 1% better this week is: I shopped car insurance. I am a Costco Executive Member. I decided to get a quote because my car insurance was $437.74 A MONTH!!Granted, I have a young driver in the house, but COME ON! Well, with Costco, I’m paying $244.60 a month, and every sixth month you get free! I went from $5,200 a year to $2,446 a year FOR THE EXACT SAME COVERAGE!”
Melvin said, “”My 1% better was changing my car insurance and renters insurance for the first time in 2 years or so and saving about $200/year. I own a home and the home insurance is ready for renewal so I jumped on Policy Genius to get a new quote for that as well!”
ChooseFI Community Taking Action This Week
- Julian said, “My latest 1% was renting my vehicle out for the first time on Turo. Since I work from home, my SUV just sits in the garage and *sometimes* I use it on the weekend. So, I figured why not make some money on it. So far, a 2-day trip netted me over $100 and I already have 2 more weeklong trips on the calendar. This compounds on a prior 1%, where I stopped leasing and bought my vehicle – it’s about 7 years old, but in great shape. So now when I only put a couple thousand miles on it a year, I feel less bad than when I was leasing and throwing that money away! So at the end of the day, this side hustle may cover some car payments and maintenance but it’s less out of pocket than before and I can save the difference in a HYSA.”
- Jasmine said, “My 1% better this week was following my local Buy Nothing group on Facebook. We had a chest of drawers that was literally falling apart and would have cost hundreds of dollars to replace new. Instead, I got a used one for free from my local Buy Nothing group!”
- Wren said, “My 1% better was saying NO to my company dumping a bunch of extra job duties onto me with no extra pay. I was not falling for the “People who DO, do MORE” trope. It felt like a penalty for being great at my job and I was dreading the extra workload, which includes some nights and weekends. I told them I’d be willing to help them reshape those duties so that they are less miserable, but I am not taking them on until that reform happens. Myself and 3 other people were volun-told into these duties, and I am the only 1 of the 4 who said “No”. Cheers to preserving my sanity, protecting my pay-to-effort ratio, and to strong women in Tech!”
- Brianna said, “My 1% better is downloading Libby. I’m an avid reader but I haven’t been in the past few years because of cost and convenience. I’m able to read anywhere off of my phone and tablet which makes it so much easier since I travel for work. In the past 6 months I’ve read over 20 books through my library for free. If I would have purchased them it would have been around $1500! I’m saving money and getting to do something I truly love and miss doing.”
- Amber said, “At the end of April I happened to relisten to Your Money or Your Life, which inspired me to do something I hadn’t done in probably 5 years or more: I added up all of my accounts and debts and found that I had a lot more saved than I thought I did. I also found that I have nearly 2 years of living expenses in cash. I had been holding tight to my cash due to the uncertainty of things. That said, I feel that my job is secure and there shouldn’t be a reason to have that much sitting in bank accounts (albeit mostly high interest savings). So, feeling inspired by Rakesh (Episode 436), I immediately, during the show, set an automatic transaction to draw down $1k every month from savings and to buy VTI. While I’m not ready to delete the Fidelity app from my phone, or to put ALL of my savings into the stock market just yet, maybe I’ll “graduate” to something more aggressive in the coming months as I become more comfortable.”
