March 2016

The 4 Ways to Make Money with Rental Properties

The 4 Ways to Make Money with Rental Properties

10 Comments / Real Estate, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

For those of you who have been regular readers, you know that I’m starting to get a little more involved in the real estate world with rental properties.  As of this posting, I have a single-family home that I’ve been renting out for several years now and I recently purchased a duplex.  I think that owning rental properties is not only a great way to start an income stream, but it’s also a hedge against having almost all our eggs in […]

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The Rental Property Investment Chase [Part 3]

The Rental Property Investment Chase [Part 3]

8 Comments / Real Estate, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

It’s time for the final segment of this series.  In Part 1, I talked about how I decided that it was time to stop letting life pass me by and get back on track with finding another rental property.  In Part 2, we went over the deal that we had found on a good duplex.  Now, I want to give you an update on where things stand with the duplex. We closed on the property in mid-December (2015) and everything was

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To Reveal or Not to Reveal the Numbers...

To Reveal or Not to Reveal My Numbers…

30 Comments / General Thoughts, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

We’re coming up on a year of my site’s first post in a couple of months and with that, I’ve been able to really get to know you guys as well as some of the other financial independence sites out there.  As I’ve been investing a lot more of my time reading the other blogs, I’ve noticed that it really makes for an interesting read to see where people are at on their journey.  One of the dilemmas that I’m facing

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Mistakes and Lessons of a Real Estate Investing Newbie

3 Mistakes I’ve Made as a Real Estate Investing Newbie

10 Comments / Real Estate, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

I’ve learned that real estate rental property can be one of the best methods of passive income.  Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket with the stock market, you can set yourself up with steady rental income that can last a lifetime.  Additionally, you pick up some tax benefits and might even get some appreciation off the properties as some icing on the cake. Because of that, I’m starting to chase this a little more.  However, I’ve also made some mistakes

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Time to Say Goodbye to TurboTax!!

Why I Dumped TurboTax for an Accountant

20 Comments / Taxes and Financial Planning, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

I started using TurboTax in the year 2000 and I’ve used it every year since then.  Going to a tax preparer didn’t make sense – it was expensive and TurboTax made it easy enough to do my tax returns myself.  All the TurboTax alternatives (H&R Block, TaxAct, TaxCut, etc.) are all similar in that can guide you through doing your taxes to make life smoother when doing your returns. Sure, sometimes I would stare at the screen for hours and try to figure out

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