Tentmaking Tips

Too often we don’t treat our personal finances like a business.

We don’t watch them closely. We aren’t as active in cutting costs. We aren’t looking for ways to generate extra income. We aren’t investing wisely. We aren’t looking for a “profit” at the end of the month.

But we actively do all of these things when we run a business. You have to.

A number of years ago I paid an extra $25/mo for a Quickbooks account for my personal finances. Quickbooks is business accounting software.

I was already using Quickbooks for my businesses, but I thought it was time to begin treating my personal finances like a business.

Sure, we had lived on a budget for years, but I felt like that was not enough. A budget is just trying to help you not spend more than you make. A business is...

We had a blast.

Neither me, nor my wife, nor our daughters had been to DC & we all wanted to see the White House, the Capitol, the museums, and the monuments. Oh, and the cherry blossoms too!

And it didn’t disappoint.

Here’s how we booked the trip for nearly free:

• I booked a round-trip Southwest flight with 40,749 of my Southwest miles. I could’ve booked with fewer miles but I booked fairly close to the departure date. You can often get the best point redemptions if you book further out.

• My wife also booked a round-trip Southwest flight with 40,749 of her Southwest miles.

• Since we both have Companion Passes, we were able to each add one of our daughter’s as a companion for free (well, we had to pay $11.20 in taxes, but nearly free). I’ll link below to our past newsletters that describe how to earn the Companion Pass.

• We love staying at Park Hyatts and we booked the Park...

And, believe it or not, the government is giving you a little extra time to do something very wise.

As you know, most activities that affect your 2022 taxes had to be completed in 2022. Income, expenses, deductions, charitable donations, etc for 2022 had to take place in 2022.

But there’s a contribution that the government gives you until tax time in 2023 to take advantage of.

It’s the contribution to your IRA - Individual Retirement Account.

For the 2022 tax year, both you and your spouse can contribute up to $6,000 to your IRA (or $7,000 if 50+).

And you still have time to make this contribution.

You can contribute to a Roth IRA (if your income qualifies) or a Traditional IRA.

A Roth IRA doesn’t save you on taxes in the short-term but it definitely does in the long-term. You make after-tax contributions now, but it grows tax free and you can withdraw tax free after age 59.5.

A Traditional IRA does save you on taxes in the short-term,...

If you missed the first four, here they are:

$140,874 Profit - Student Deal Highlight

$13,000 Profit - Student Deal Highlight

$26,000 Profit - Student Deal Highlight

$23,637 Profit - Student Deal Highlight

Profit

The student in today’s deal highlight made $50,000 on this particular deal. He put a 5-property package under contract for $390,000. This basically means that one seller had 5 properties he wanted to sell & sold them all to the student as a group. Then the student sold the property package to an investor for $449,000. The student agreed to pay almost $9,000 in back taxes for the seller out of his profit and he also had closing costs to pay. The final amount the student earned was $50,000.

List

The student found this deal...

I tell them I’m glad to help. Then, I direct them to the free resources we offer like:

• Our weekly Tentmaking Tips newsletter

• Daily tweets/threads about earning extra income

• Step-by-step guides to earning thousands in extra income and free vacations

But it’s usually the case that they want to pay extra for additional courses & coaching.

I tell them about some of our paid products and then share the ways they can get those free as well.

After all, if I’m teaching hacks to get free travel or live nearly free, shouldn’t I give hacks for getting my paid content for free? Ha!

Here are the ways I tell them they can get any or all of our courses for free (and you could too):

1. Follow my step-by-step guide to earn an extra $1,200 quickly and apply that to any or all of the courses

2. Refer 3 friends to any course and get all of the course...

And I’ve always wanted to take my Mom to Wimbledon (we’re a tennis family).

We had a trip booked a few years ago but it was canceled due to COVID.

I recently booked another trip for this summer & we are all so excited!

And, to top it off, we won the Wimbledon lottery and received 2 tickets on the front row of Centre Court. We’re pumped!

We are going to start the trip by flying up to Boston and spending a few days there first. We’ve heard that it helps with jet lag to take the daytime flight to London from Boston.

We booked the flight to Boston using Southwest points & our Companion Passes (where both of our daughters fly for free).

The first time I booked the trip to England, I booked with United Airlines. But this time I decided to book with British Airways.

For all 4 of us to fly from Boston to London & then back home was 29,250 points each.

I didn’t have British Airways...

If you’re like most people, probably not.

Houses usually don’t put money in your pocket each month, they take money out of your pocket each month.

Well, I’ve got good news.

You can change that.

It’s called House Hacking.

It’s using your house to earn extra income and reduce or eliminate your housing expenses.

Our last 2 guests to stay in our guest house paid us $6,121 and $3,797 respectively.

And what did it require of us?

Nothing really. Just cleaning up & letting them stay with us.

These two guests paid all of my property taxes & insurance for the entire year, with money to spare.

And this isn’t just a fluke. We’ve been doing it for years.

How do we do it?

Simple.

Move into houses with detached structures that we can convert into guest houses (or that have already been converted).

And that’s not the only way to do it.

I have a pastor friend who bought a tiny home to put in his backyard. They...

Some of the common misconceptions of getting stated in real estate are:

• I need to go into lots of debt

• I need to understand the real estate market

• I need to be able to understand the inner workings of complicated contracts

• I need to be good at construction

• I need to be good at decorating

• I need to have a lot of money

These are misconceptions that keep many people from getting started in real estate.

I’d like to use this newsletter to give you 6 simple ways to get started in real estate (in no particular order):

1. Buy a fixer upper & update it while you live there

   We’ve done this many times and made a significant profit when we sold. And I’m not handy at all. We hired everything out. What’s great is that if you live there at least 2 years, the profit is tax free up to a certain amount. We call these “live-in flips.”

2. Airbnb something on your own property

   There are so many ways to make money on...

And it didn’t make sense to me the first time I heard it either.

I read about this concept in Vicki Robin’s book, Your Money or Your Life.

It’s become a popular concept in the Financial Independence community as well.

And by following this principle, it can really generate a lot of extra income.

The principle goes like this:

Spend more money on what you love and spend very little on everything else.

The truth is, if you made a list of the top 10 things that you really enjoy, you’ll find you’re spending money on a lot of things not on that list. Why are you doing that? :)

Often, when we start budgeting, we try to cut back on everything, including what we enjoy. That usually doesn’t last long & we give up on the budget. It’s because we feel like it’s robbing us of happiness.

The truth is, it’s much easier to stick with a budget that encourages you to...

Courses.

Coaching.

Communities.

There’s so many ways to make extra money online.

Millions of people are spending money on self-education.

And there are online platforms where these people gather to learn from one another.

That makes it easy to get the word out about your business.

You could start making $1,000+ per month online by serving people there!

Here’s my story of getting started with online business:

In my book, From Megachurch to Multiplication, I wrote a chapter called Tentmaking. In that chapter, I shared about my tentmaking journey and how it allowed me to come off the payroll at our church.

Readers started reaching out and asking for help with their own tentmaking journey.

I decided to put together a few courses & communities to teach others how to make extra income on the side like I had done.

People started buying them and many made extra income following what I taught in the courses....