Why we decided to become investors

Today I would like to explain to you why my husband and I decided to invest in real estate one year ago and how I realized yesterday that we weren’t going to break even in our monthly cash flow any time soon…This will be divided up into 5 posts.

Why we decided to become investors

Back when we were living in London, I was still a student and Fred (then we were just boyfriend and girlfriend) only had some free-lance work that was hardly enough to survive in such an expensive city as London. So we really had a hard time making ends meet. This is more or less when Fred decided that he didn’t want to live like this anymore and he wanted us to have financial freedom.

For those of you who are not familiar with the concept, financial freedom is achieved when your assets make enough money to cover for your expenses. Usually, people make money through paid work: for instance, an employee works around 40 hours per week and he/she is paid for that, or a free-lancer does work for a client and the client pays him/her for that work. But what happens if you become so sick that you cannot work anymore, or if you are made redundant or if your client goes bankrupt or decides to work with another vendor or if you have to stop working for a while? You don’t receive any money at all (maybe some social benefits in certain countries but it’s not necessarily enough and it’s not even sure you are eligible). On the contrary, if you spend some time developing assets, then your assets work by themselves and keep bringing you money even when you stop working on them. For instance, you create a company, you work on developing it and making it successful and then you can put somebody else in charge (a CEO) while the business is still making money without your working on it.

So this is why we decided to become investors. We would still do paid work on a part-time basis to make immediate money but we would dedicate time and energy to invest in our first assets.

We will provide you with a list of recommended books but I am already recommending two must-read books about financial freedom in this post: Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki, and Rich Women, by Kim Kiyosaki (his wife!).