Mortgage

Winning Real Estate Investment Strategies (Door Prize, too)

Do you ever pay attention to the handouts at your bank? No, I don’t either, but for some reason I picked one up at my wife’s CFE (Federal Credit Union) outlet.
Their multi-colored newsletter, called “Currents,” had a lot of information about a Memorial Day car sale with a local dealer offering interest rates as low as 3.35% and an offer of college money (no prepayment penalties). Forget that, but there was also a section on “Retirement Investment Strategies.”

Some of the points made here are of interest to all investors, real estate or others, starting with the warning that CFE is not a tax advisor. It advises that you consult professionals (nothing wrong here, simply good advice…as long as you find capable people).

Other areas covered in the seminar were pertinent to perhaps your own concerns and mine as well. Here’s what it covered and my own thoughts about it:

Calculate the cost of retirement. No, I did not and almost certainly should have but I suspect the world here is made of two diverse types: planners and the rest of us. I am the rest and have no ready explanations except the commonly expressed observation that “God must love us because he made so many.”

Manage taxes and outpace the effects of inflation. In all honesty, after years of observing ongoing economics, I think this is a laudable goal but perhaps unrealistic and even impossible. You can see this by buying a rental property or even just going to the food store: do costs at either place ever go down? So you learn to cope with the reality.

Avoid common investment pitfalls. This is open-ended and I am sure there are many but another type of the word common  –  common sense  –   may help somewhat here. This has always seemed to me a prerequisite to any area of life.

Invest for growth potential, income and stability. This is a tautology (sorry, the obvious, but if you have to look it up, a “tautology” is using different words to say the same thing). So you can say this is redundant. Did you want non-income and volatility?

Reduce investment risk while maintaining growth potential. See above. This is so general it is also not much above the word “meaningless.”

The brochure urged potential attendees to reserve their spot today. I could not, however, because the seminar had already been presented. All I could conclude was better luck next time around. And maybe they will again offer a chance at a unmentioned “great door prize.” I hope to win it.

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