Real Estate News
Measuring success in first days of real estate
Diary of a real estate flipper
There but for the grace of God, I thought when I got off the phone.
So here's where I am: If I don't buy clothes, and I don't buy a car (which is seriously under-investing in my business) I'm burning about $4,500 a month more than I make.
To those of you who don't live in New York, let me point out that I'm not living like a pasha: two-thirds of that is housing costs. I own a condo and a two-family home, and the two mortgages total $3,000 a month. The rent from my tenants covers property taxes and utilities, but that's about it—and I shudder to think how bad the heating bills are going to be this winter.
Yet knowing where I am, I figure, is the first step to getting to where I want to be. Today I got offered a hundred bucks an hour to do some writing and I jumped at it. Prideful me still thinks that's not a decent hourly for a former publishing success – don't my friends make two hundred? But spreadsheet me, the one who runs the numbers on the business, is filled with happiness at the idea of a lower burn rate.
And I'm so thankful for the ability to make those tradeoffs – you just don't get it sitting at a desk. Entrepreneurs always talk about how much they love the time flexibility of having their own businesses; but what's really seductive, Jaguar-E-type-level seductive, is the control. I can focus on business that's rewarding; I can jettison work that I think is merely bureaucratic; I don't have to work with people I don't like. How could anyone ever give this up?