Tentmaking Tips

This is the unfortunate thinking of so many Americans. And it’s the reason why most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and have very little savings.

“It will never happen to me,” they think.

Well, they’re wrong. Emergencies happen to all of us. And even if somehow they never encountered an emergency, just the fact that they aren’t prepared for an emergency is an emergency.

You need a buffer between you and life.

An emergency fund is of critical importance.

How much should be in it?

Some financial advisors say 3 months of expenses, others say 6 months, and some say a year. The more the better.

I’ve personally kept 3 years worth of expenses set aside for years now. That’s a huge buffer, I know. More than necessary for sure. But it’s what we are comfortable with.

Where should you p

I’m going to share the approximate costs to get your real estate license in Texas and it’ll likely be similar in your state.

Sales Agent Application = ~$150-200

Real Estate Education = ~$400-600

Exam Fee = ~$30-60

Fingerprint Fee = ~$30-50

You can use it to make extra money and also reduce your monthly expenses to nearly $0/mo.

I shared in another post about our current house hack, and in this post I want to share about our previous house hack.

In order to take advantage of both house hacking benefits listed above, we knew we needed to do a few things:

1. We needed to find a house off-market at a good price so we could make extra money by selling it for a profit a few years later. We also wanted the house to require some updating so we could fix it up some & increase our profits even further.

2. We needed to find a house with some kind of detached structure that we could convert into habitable space.

3. We needed to live in an area where there was a high demand for rentals (like near a college campus).

Here’s how we were able to accomplish each of these:

1. My wife began door knocking in a neighborhood where we knew homes sold for a premium. S
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Direct mail, calls, texts, & web forms of marketing all work. But nothing is quite like being face-to-face.

The problem with face-to-face is it’s hard to scale. And because it’s hard to scale, you won’t have a lot of competition when you show up at someone’s doorstep.

We’ve bought so many houses this way, especially personal ones.

Here are some advantages:

1. People like selling their home, especially if it is sentimental, to people they know & trust.

   As you meet a homeowner at their door & build a relationship with them, you’ll often find that they become more comfortable with the idea of selling to someone they’ve met. When Realtors are involved, it’s more uncommon that the seller actually meets the buyer.

2. You’ll likely be able to buy the house without much competition because it’s
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It’s through Refer-A-Friend bonuses.

Many cards will give you bonus points for referring a friend who signs up for the same card. I try to max out these friend referrals each year because they give you tens of thousands of extra points.

Not all cards have refer-a-friend bonuses & not all cards that do have the same bonus. And, on top of that, the various cards often change the bonuses.

Here are some examples (I’m going to focus on Chase cards here but other carriers will have them as well):

• Chase Sapphire Preferred Card - 15,000 bonus points for each friend who signs up with a maximum of 75,000 per year. If you get 5 friends to sign up & receive the 75,000 points, that’s equal to approximately $1,500 in free travel (~2 cents per Chase point).

• Southwest Rapid Rewards Cards - 20,000 bonus points for each friend who signs up with a ma
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I’m guessing most of the readers of this blog have heard of Dave Ramsey. And perhaps many of you have been through Financial Peace University or hosted it at your church.

If you’ve never heard of him, he’s a radio host of a call-in show where people call to ask for financial advice. He’s written many books on personal finance & he also developed a personal finance course that many churches use to help their congregations manage their money well.

If you have heard of him, chances are you know people that really love him & well, people that really don’t. Haha!

He’s often known as the “no debt guy” and the “cut up your credit cards guy.”

So, should you listen to him for financial advice?

My answer: It depends on what he’s talking about!

Let me share a few things I agree with Dave about & a few things where we don’t see eye to eye.

But before I do, I want to give you full disclosure.

Dave Ramsey’s teachings have been lif

Many of us are aware of our monthly expenses, but we haven’t evaluated them in awhile.

What do I mean?

Our family realized years ago that there is so much money to be saved by regularly evaluating what we spend each month.

Asking questions like:

• Am I still using this?

• Do I still like this?

• Is this still worth it?

You could basically give yourself a raise by eliminating monthly expenses that aren’t useful/satisfying/worth it anymore.

It’s so easy to get in the pattern of just paying for things because we’ve always had them, rather than evaluating if they’re even worth paying for anymore.

My wife and I still regularly have discussions about this.

Years ago we recognized that we rarely watched TV, especially cable TV. But I had been paying $100+ per month, every month, for cable TV that we hardly used. Why?!? Because that’s what we had always done. We cut it soon after evaluating it & it

Most of us want extra income for our families, but we want it in a way that allows us to still be devoted to ministry full-time.

That’s why it’s essential that if you flip houses, you do it in a way that frees up your time for what matters most to you!

When we started flipping houses many years ago, we did all of the work ourselves. I was in full-time ministry & we were doing it on the side to supplement our income (and ultimately to help us pay off our house).

We couldn’t flip many houses this way or it would’ve taken way too much time.

I knew there were 2 keys to turning this side hustle into a business where I could work only a few hours a week.

1. Great people

2. Great systems

Great people are what make a great business. No doubt about it. You need to find and hire the best people you can. I did this by only hiring people I knew or people that someone I trusted knew. That way I’d k

*Note: This blog is geared toward our American friends, but those of you reading from around the world might also have a similar benefit in your tax code.

The IRS wants to give you a generous gift.

I know that’s hard to believe.

Yet, so few people take advantage of it on a regular basis.

I’m talking about Publication 523 in the IRS code on the Home Sale Exclusion.

Here’s basically how it works:

If you’ll buy a home & live in it as your primary residence for at least 2 years, then when you go to sell it, you can take up to $500,000 profit TAX FREE for married couples ($250,000 for singles).

You might want to read that again.

Since when do you ever get tax free profit on anything?

Yet, in this case, the IRS will give you tax free profit on the sale of your home as long as you meet certain qualifications.

Here they are:

1. You must not have bo
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