Decision time: is property investment for you?

How might you evaluate property as your investment vehicle?

I invest in property for what it gives me, and not for what it is. I don’t get emotionally attached to an investment property. If the fundamentals that drove my decision to invest change, then I’m very happy to sell that property and move on to pastures new. You see, the only reason to invest in property is lifestyle. That’s it.

Property investment – what’s the point?

There’s only one reason to invest, and that is to improve your life:

• It should give you the opportunity to lead a more fulfilled life than you do now
• It should create the lifestyle that you’ve always aspired to

If your property portfolio takes a lot of managing, using up your time and energy, I doubt that it’s doing what you hoped it would. Oh, it’s changed your lifestyle, alright; you’ve got a second, full-time job looking after your property and managing your tenant. And as you build a property portfolio, the call on your time will only get worse.

Working yourself into an early grave to build a property portfolio is the mug’s way of investing in property. It’s vital that your property works for you, and not the other way around. Whether you own one property or 100 properties, your investment should be the key to a newer, more liberating and rewarding life. It’s not a job; it’s an investment: it should work like one.

So, what is a lifestyle?

I’ve said that owning a property portfolio shouldn’t eat into your life. You probably already do something that eats into your time. You work. In effect, you exchange your time for money. The money you need to live the type of life you want (or can afford). You give up time in exchange for money, so that you can spend the rest of your time doing what you want to do. That’s lifestyle.

Money is only a concept

Time is real (even though some academics believe it is only conceptual). It’s a finite commodity. There are only so many hours in a day. Only so many days in a week, and weeks in a year.

Money, on the other hand, is a concept. It’s a way that we place value on something. Think about it for a moment. You buy a property – which is something real, solid, big, and heavy – and the seller accepts a suitcase of paper in exchange. For that is all that money is: coloured paper that we are told has a certain value. Why is a £20 note worth £20? Because society tells us it is, that’s why.

In summary, money has no inherent value except that which we collectively place on it. We expend huge amounts of time and energy to get it and become enormously emotional about it. As a society, we associate money with power. Because we value money so highly, we place a huge value on attaining it. That value is most commonly time.

Overcome the emotional pull of money to attain real wealth

If you can overcome this emotional pull, you’ll be on your way to making money work for you. You’ll be a stand-out individual among the crowd of people who slave every day in pursuit of wealth, not understanding that the time and energy they are spending on working for a living is what is stopping them from attaining true wealth.

The key to becoming wealthy is to control money, and not to let it control you.

If you have a big enough WHY, the HOW will fall into place
We all have a passion in life. Once you have found yours, you will have found the reason for investing in property. Money isn’t the reason. Achieving your lifestyle goals and passions is the reason to invest. It may be the most important investment concept you will ever learn. Put simply:

If you have a big enough WHY, the HOW will fall into place.

Take me as an example. My passion is personal growth and personal development. Property investment has been and is the vehicle that has allowed me to pursue that passion. Back in Australia, with 700 distributors working for it, I was the founder and owner of one of the country’s largest personal development companies.

I enjoy reading books about self-development. I have participated in and presented seminars, workshops, and boot camps. I’ve meditated, chanted, written, sang, and listened to well over 1,000 books and hundreds of seminars since I was 13. I’ve written books on the subject. I enjoy talking to people and helping them along their path of self-development.

Property investment has allowed me to achieve my passions. If I’d been stuck in a 9-to-5 job, slaving away to earn money to pay my bills and expenses, I wouldn’t have been able to live the life I do. I would have missed out on everything that makes me the person I am.

But if I had invested in property and then let it control me, I would have become cash wealthy and time poor. I still wouldn’t have achieved my goals. That’s why when I invest, I invest in a Set and Forget philosophy. I reap the wealth creation advantages of property investment while making sure I have the time to enjoy that wealth.

Discover your WHY before you invest in property

If you want to know why you should invest in property, get a blank piece of paper and a pen. Take a few minutes to think about your ideal lifestyle, and then write down your thoughts.

Be realistic, and detail the things that would make your life better. It might be:

• Time with the children
• Money to travel and see the world
• Learning a second language
• Private education for the children

There are too many possibilities to mention. Apart from which, this is your list, not mine!

Go on, spend a few minutes – no more than five – on writing down as many things as possible that would be a part of your ideal lifestyle. Make them realistic, obtainable things. Owning Manchester United or being the manager of the England or Australian cricket team won’t be on the list, for example. And neither will being a billionaire or owning a Ferrari. Think about the idealistic and realistic at the same time.

Write all those things down now. Once you have your ideal life mapped out, ask yourself if your current way of earning money will help you achieve all these wishes. If the answer is no, then it’s time to get in touch with Gladfish on +44 207 923 6100, and discover how we’ve helped hundreds of people like you achieve their dream lifestyles with the help of property investment.

Live with passion

Brett Alegre-Wood

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