I must say that it feels like I’m driving a brand new car once I got back my Jimmy from Monro Brakes! They decided to take off $200 since I had to miss work due to their screw up. So I ended up paying $600 for the replacement which is pretty good. Anyway, in a post I did in September of last year called A New Competition, I spoke about my need to compete against both my brother Rex and my best friend in Smalltown, Sha. Every once in a while I give an update, so now is as good of a time as any.
Rex and I agreed that the competition is a good motivator and should continue, and we have done so. Ours is more of a friendly competition but I still want to beat him. He called me yesterday and told me that his Forex trading isn’t going as planned. I’m not sure what the problem was, and Forex trading is so complicated that even if he told me I wouldn’t understand, but my best guess is that his initial trade strategy isn’t working so he has to do more research and try again. Because more research requires more money, he’s currently looking for a job. Essentially, he’ll be doing exactly what I’m doing—using job money to finance a start-up business that will yield enough money to retire. Because his chosen trade can make him a hell of a lot more money than security work, he still has an advantage but it’s not as much as it was before.
On Monday, Sha and I went for a ride. He wanted to pick up some jewelry at a mall for his wife for Valentine’s Day, and I tagged along just to get out of the apartment for a while. Along the way, he stopped off to meet a former tenant, Deen, who wanted to move back into one of his best properties. When we got there he needed a ride home, so he got in Sha’s truck and we all went to the mall. As Sha asked what Deen was up to, Deen went on and on about how he has been moving from job to job. He said that he didn’t have much money but he will work it off by working for Sha. He went on and on about everything that has been going wrong in his life and it was annoying me. Deen was saying all the wrong things yet Sha continued to entertain the idea. After we got the jewelry, Sha dropped of Deen then asked me what I thought of him. I told him that Deen looks like a total loser and can only bring trouble. He agreed, but still made an appointment for him to see another one of his properties that would fit Deen’s budget.
Because Sha has many of his properties in bad areas, he has no choice but to continue working with scum like Deen. I wouldn’t have given Deen a second thought because he struck out too quickly. He moves around from job to job and currently pays no rent. Strike one. He constantly brings up the negative things going on in his life while applying for an apartment. Strike two. He was a former tenant whose last tenancy ended with him skipping out on the rent owed. Strike three and Deen would have been out! Because Sha is letting some of his properties go into foreclosure and keeps all the rent money for himself, I’m guessing that he is going to continue to move guys like Deen into those properties. With no mortgage to pay, Sha can build up money much quicker in order to buy more properties. Due to his awful credit history and multiple foreclosure filings, he has to use his family members’ or his wife’s name to purchase with a mortgage, or buy a property in a bad area with straight cash.
All-cash purchases make no sense to me in a country that has banks to make life easier for investors. My hope is that my good business practices will eventually beat Sha, even though he has more money, more opportunity, and more properties than me right now. Everyone has an Achilles’ heel, and his seems to be hanging around scumbag tenants and hiring full-time scumbag handymen that cause more problems than they fix. It’s the way he does business and it works for him, but I’m betting that I can play catch up and win this competition that sees who will retire first!
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