Category Archives: Family Finances

Real Estate Outlook 2022

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How I think about the pricing history of financial assets – note bottom right blip

I sold a large real estate asset this week, a residential rental.

There’s an argument that the buyer got the building for free (Twitter thread on backing out land value).

At the closing, my agent (50-ish) shared that the only recession he’d really experienced was 2008/2009. So the next chart is his personal experience with asset pricing.

Right hand corner blip looks a little bigger

The above chart is ~20-years of mortgage rate history. If you’re 40-something this is what you lived.

Mostly a one-way bet => falling long rates inflate financial assets.

Back to my sale.

I sold for a three reasons:

  1. At 53, my life is changing. The window of what I need to finance is less and less. I have begun a strategic shift towards creating the life I want to live in my 60s.
  2. Real Estate is lumpy, we don’t have the ability to incrementally rebalance. I wanted to reduce exposure before making any additional purchases.
  3. The sale was valued at 43 years gross rental income (2.3%). Cash proceeds, after tax, were 64 years net rental income (1.6%).
Institutional Memory is 1,000 days, max.
Here’s the last 1,000 days in the mortgage market.

The real estate market is like a super tanker, it takes a long time for momentum to shift. After the 2008/2009 recession, non-foreclosure prices didn’t adjust until the middle of 2010.

  • Prices move at the margin => the marginal buyer had a strong tailwind through the pandemic, that has changed in 2022.
  • There will be an impact of the near-vertical move in rates this year => initially, we will see this in markets that require loans to complete.
  • The scale of “the impact” is unknowable and complicated by supply shortages of re-sale houses and for new build.
  • Prices are being supported by rapidly rising cost-to-build and cost to renovate/remodel.

Lots going on – I can make a case for +25% and -25%.

At 53, taking 64 years-equivalent cash-flow off the table, in a rising rate environment, is a decision I’ll be able to live with regardless of future outcome.

Live Like A Billionaire – Risk Preference and Life Lessons

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This series has been about learning from those without financial limits:

  • Who do they share their best moments with?
  • What are those moments?
  • Are we missing out?

Once I’m on the inside of the team, I notice that my risk preference is the lowest in the group. Frankly, not surprising when you are rolling alongside extreme skiers and mountaineers.

Here’s something about risk. Group risk rises to the level of the MOST risk tolerant member.

It’s why my investment committee has the rule “most conservative carries the decision.”

Anyhow, with two young kids and a pregnant wife, I had learned what I could and wanted to put more time into my young family.

So I opted out.

My boss…

>You firing me?

>>No, most definitely not. There is no way I will be able to repay you for what you taught me.

…and off I went for a decade.

Once again on the road less travelled.

Not over, yet – most of them took up Skimo.

😉

Let’s recap:

Best Days are defined by shared outdoor experiences with a small number of close friends – building memories that last

Peers & Teachers have a mix of kindness and competitiveness => notice this combination when you see it. These are people who tell us the truth, push us to do better and keep us grounded.

There’s nowhere to get to => I realized that between my wife, and my kids, I could create my own inner circle. A circle where we share Best Days and reduce our collective risk of ruin.

I remain grateful for the opportunity for a look behind the curtain.

Sunday Summary 24 April 2022

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G – Literally Just listened to your catalyst podcast – excellent!!!!  Wow, truly good – thank you for putting that out there.  I took 8 pages of notes and I have already read your writing for decades

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Live Like A Billionaire – From The Inside

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A question I raised on Brad’s podcast, who’s your reference set?
Who am I trying to impress?

Last week, I wrote about my introduction to the well-adjusted rich.

Roll forward, I’m on the “special projects” team.

I have a look around.

  • World-class skier
  • World-class ultramarathoner
  • World-class mountaineer
  • Younger version of, said, WC Mountaineer
  • Biz partner: former D1 athlete

Every person a mix of kind and competitive.

A limited number of close relationships, the collective sum being who the boss wanted to become.

This insight does not require assets.

It requires:

  • enough space in your life to think strategically (control your schedule)
  • the knowledge of where you want to go (choose wisely)
  • access to the people you want to become (last week)

What wasn’t there.

I saw: spouse, kids, PA, pilot and the rest of the team.

No Posse.

The world has an incentive to tell us what we want to hear, if you’re rich then even more so.

Close relationships, who share truth.

How was the team used?

Short trips, shared experiences, having fun together.

Doing fun things with world class people.

Assets are no barrier to this life.

Go get it.

Sunday Summary 17 April 2022

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Live Like A Billionaire – Student to Teacher

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Unexpected mid-week power day.
It’s hard to put a value on the ability to “drop everything”.

What does the title of this piece bring to mind?

  • Jet?
  • Multiple properties?
  • Luxury yacht charters?
  • Seven-figure burn rate?
  • Handing out favors to friends and strangers?
  • Being hailed and feted?

One of the best parts of my coaching journey was getting to know “the well adjusted rich.”

I’m going to spend a few Thursdays running through the lessons I learned from watching people who have a different set of limits.

The Best Teachers You Can Find

My journey started ten years before I got the job.

First, I was a student…

Meeting Joe Friel: Joe is the founder of triathlon coaching in the United States. I had the chance to spend a weekend with him in the Spring of 2000.

By the way, this is how you might get a mentor interested in you…

  • I went to him
  • I showed him how he’d helped me
  • I listened to his advice
  • I went away and did it

Something he said stuck with me, “I’d never met someone who understood my teaching as well as you.” I didn’t just study his philosophy, I tried to embody it.

Joe started me as a coach, helped me win races and wrote a book with me.

Great deal for both of us.

The strategy worked once, so I repeated…

John Hellemans, Scott Molina, Dave Scott, Mark Allen => I was able to learn from the best.

I shared what I learned, for free, widely.

Eventually, I was a teacher…

A decade later, I turn up in Oceanside, on a road bike, in March, and crush most everyone over 40 in a 70.3 race.

Two guys, I’d never heard of, reach out for a call and I accept. I didn’t know they were friends and checking me out, separately.

I get hired and have the chance to look under the hood of the well-adjusted rich.

Turns out my client was a successful finance-guy, who stayed in the game.

His life was, and remains, the best-case scenario of a life I decided not to lead.

Becoming world-class, publicly, creates unexpected opportunities.

Let’s call this Chapter One.

If you’ve been watching me on Twitter – you can see I’m following a similar playbook in 2022.

Not towards any specific goal => simply to connect, be engaged and create unexpected opportunities.

Sunday Summary 10 April 2022

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The Choices That Define Your Financial Life

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  • Act as if personal finance is a game where you only get ten tickets to play.
  • Invest as if you are holding a checkbook with only a dozen checks inside.
  • Speak as if you’re holding a six-shooter, is it worth one of your bullets to make the point that’s on your mind.

I’ve been hearing versions of the above my entire life. It’s been great advice and encouraged me to:

  • Slow down
  • Resist the urge to interrupt compounding
  • Keep it simple
  • Focus on the big decisions
  • Treat small movements like noise

So, we started your kids with the allowance game.

Then, we moved onto discussing the family’s allocation of capital towards education.

With that, we considered the impact, across generations, of borrowing.

What next?

Teach your kids their financial lives will be about no more than a dozen choices.

Here are mine:

  • Study finance (class of 1990)
  • Save 50% of my take home (1990-2007)
  • Partners investment scheme (late 90s, all in then, equivalent of 1 yr spending now)
  • Work to build a startup (2000)
  • Sell into the frenzy (2005-2007)
  • Move into a low-cost Vanguard portfolio (2008 onwards)
  • Boulder real estate (2010 & 2012))
  • Downsize (2012-2013)
  • Borrow long at 3.25% (2013)
  • Debt free (2007 & 2020)
  • Have kids with a kind woman from a humble background (on going)

Every other choice turned out to be noise. What to do?

Focus on actions, not outcome.

What does that really mean?

Do what moves you forward and have faith. Sport, marriage, money, all things… daily action is the fundamental force moving you towards “better.”

Education matters => I was given a chance in Private Equity because I had high marks in a useful field. Between my high school graduation (1986) and my youngest’s (2031) the nature of “useful” will have changed. However, the need for skilled people to “do” will endure.

The most useful part of my degree wasn’t finance! It was financial accounting, programming and mathematics => I learned fundamental knowledge in college. I learned my profession on-the-job. You learn the valuable part by doing work, for the best people you can find.

This keeps popping up over and over again (professors, partners, coaches, mentors, twitter follows). At 53, I’m learning from people less than half my age! Do work to learn.

Avoid Ruin => studying, then working in, financial accounting helps you learn when a situation doesn’t feel right. Embezzlement is an old game and it’s useful to learn the patterns. Financial fraud happens, and will continue to happen. Take steps to reduce your family’s exposure to ruin.

With the accounting, I learned the most with 9 credits spread across three courses. Financial Accounting 1, 2 and 3. Small investment, huge return. Do it when you’re young. Being forced to rely on others to do your financial math is a disadvantage that will cost you.

Let’s pull it together for you…

Starting your working life (in a useful field, with your financial accounting courses done)…

You are at least a decade away from making the shift to lifestyle sustainable, so you focus on:

  1. Learning by doing with the best people who will hire you
  2. Saving – get that first $100K banked, you will be grateful when you’re older
  3. Waiting for the fat pitch – once in a lifetime investment opportunities happen once a decade
  4. Turning yourself into the sort of person you’d like to marry, the friend you’d like to have, the parent you aspire to be => meaningful connection is true wealth

Your mind will try to trick you into thinking it’s the investment choices that matter.

It is not.

It is the four habits I outlined above, and avoiding substance abuse.

When One Dollar Costs You Ten

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My kids won’t fully appreciate my choices until after I’m gone.

My #1 financial goal for my kids is debt-free education in a field that enables them to get paid.

With the very best of intentions, the US Government has completely screwed up both (a) the cost of college education and (b) the financial lives of the students they were seeking to help.

Debt isn’t free.

Every market juiced with easy money gets screwed up.

Explanation below – my life mirrors the blue line – graduate early, debt free, start saving

I googled up average debt at graduation and average graduation age.

$40,000 and 23 yo.

So let’s make three simple scenarios:

  1. Debt free early graduation (21 yo) => McGill 1990 finance grad
  2. Debt free at 25 yo
  3. Debt free at 30 yo

Let’s run it forward assuming:

  • Investment return of 5%, prior year close
  • $20,000 per annum savings

The late-start saver

  • who saves at the same annual rate
  • who earns the same return

ends up ~$1 million behind at 60 yo.

This is not the whole story, not even close!

In my demographic, families can burn ~$250,000 of capital to help a kid “get started” => 529 accounts and parental support. Even more if you roll private from Kindergarten.

What’s the 30-year cost of this choice?

$250,000 * (1.05)^30 = $1,080,000

Million bucks gone, you never see it.

  1. You burned the capital
  2. The kid figures life out by 30, and spends most of their 20s pissed at you (for tapering their support) 😉

$2 million opportunity cost, spread between two generations.

You assume it was what you were supposed to do and are grateful you finally got them off the payroll.

A possible alternative…

Our default position is in-state education and I’ll buy whatever’s left of your 529, at $2 on the dollar, once you save $100,000 of your own money.

What do we want to have happen?

  1. conserve family capital
  2. use debt sparingly
  3. build a habit of saving

Everyone pays their own way.

Sunday Summary 27 March 2022

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Getting a much clearer idea about the topics that engage y’all.

Thank you for the likes, RTs and replies.

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