#164 3 Ways To Find Money to Invest

Hi, everyone. Today we're going to talk about a common challenge that everyone faces in their investing journey. Where do I get the money to invest? Today we're going to talk about three places to do that. So stay tuned and enjoy. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe. Now, let's get on with the show. Okay, so this is a common challenge faced by many, if not everyone at some point in their investing journey. Where do I find the money and the income and the capital to invest? Whether you're a beginner eager to enter the world of investments, or you're a seasoned investor, you know, looking for different opportunities and maybe you see one that seems lucrative, that seems like a great opportunity. Where do you find that capital? Because finding enough money to invest, it can be a major roadblock. In fact, if I talk to people about the challenge of investing, people say that is probably the number one, two or three or three biggest challenge when investing. I mean, when I talk to investors, that always pops up in one of the top three obstacles for investing. But especially when it comes to times like today, when the market seems like there's so much volatility, when things are resetting, when we're in the middle of winter or a recession, this is when you want to figure out where your capital sources are because you're going to want to go into investments during this downturn, when everyone else is running away. This is our opportunity as a community to find good investments and to find deals when they're at the bottom and really set ourselves up for success over this next run. So learning about where to find that capital today, knowing where those capital sources are, identifying that will really prepare you to take advantage of whatever opportunities might come. So today we're going to talk about those sources so that again, you're well equipped to take advantage of whatever wealth building ideas or opportunities are going to come to really propel yourself, to set yourselves up for the future, to reach your financial goals. And again, for all of us, we're just trying to live our ideal lives. Now, quickly, before we jump into these things again, I just want to take a moment to honor who's listening to this. Our listeners are amazing. Our community is amazing. Your feedback, your support, you're sharing it with other people. All this has kept us committed to providing you with valuable insights, actionable advice. So please leave us a review and subscribe. It really helps us out to continue to bring you Weekly content that hopefully provides a ton of value to your life. So many of you know my story that I started investing just a few years out of residency when I became an attendant. So most of you know my story. I started investing in real estate just a few years out of residency when I started, when I became an attending, only because I figured out that you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, and especially when it came to medicine. If you're like me, you see the writing on the wall or you hear things from older colleagues or even your current colleagues about how things are changing, how security in medicine isn't quite what you thought it'd be. For me in that situation, I learned early, and I was very fortunate to run into people who had figured out how to create other streams of income, primarily through real estate, through building businesses, and I started doing that as well. The problem was, especially as an early attending, especially with building my family, especially getting my feet under me, having student loans, it was tough to figure out where could I find actual money to invest. Seemed like whenever I made a paycheck, most of it went out in the form of either. Again, student loans, rent, whatever it was, and I didn't have much left over. However, I knew that if I didn't start investing that nothing would change. If I wasn't able to create that passive income, then I'd be pretty much in a worse situation in five, 10 years. And I saw the writing on the wall. And so I started finding ways to. To find that capital to ultimately invest. And again, as I started investing, I started seeing new opportunities, coming across, new resources, meeting new people, figuring out new strategies. And then, of course, you always feel like you don't have enough money to invest. So this is what I started doing to ultimately find capital to invest in these deals. Now, number one, this sounds like really simple, but what I did was increase my savings. I don't know if you ever heard that saying, invest in yourself or pay yourself first. For a while, I had no idea what that meant. What do you mean, pay yourself first? You only have so much money. You got to pay for your essentials. And what's left over, you can spend, right, or save or invest. Well, let me ask you this question. This is something I've learned. If your rent or your mortgage today went up $100 or $500, what would you do? You'd absolutely complain, you get pissed off, property tax would go up, you wouldn't be happy, but you would pay it and you'd figure out how to make it happen. Well, I think we need to take the same strategy when it comes to our investments. So now I'm sure we don't have a lot of the payoff in the short term, but in the long term it's absolutely what's necessary to help us get where we want to be and when. I mean long term, I'm not talking 20 years down the road. I'm talking about in the next three to five to 10 years and is it worth it. So what I started doing was not just taking what I had left over and investing it from the beginning. I started saying I'm going to actually allocate or invest or save X amount per month to put towards my investments. Now a lot of these investments that we talk about, especially in real estate, like syndications are at minimum 25 or, or maybe $35,000 and increase over time. Now if you're investing in your own properties, you know, you got to save up quite a bit. Now that may take some time and that's fine. But if you come up with a plan to save X amount by a certain amount of time, you're going to make it happen. Hey everyone have a quick question for you. Are you looking for a secure and reliable long term investment strategy? Meet Eckerd Enterprises. It's a family owned and operated firm with over 35 years of experience specializing in US energy and alternative investments. Here at Passive Income MD you often hear me talk about the need to diversify. One of the safest investment strategies available today are mineral rights. And with Eckerd Enterprises you can diversify your portfolio. Their team is committed to helping private investors like you and me identify and develop successful diversified portfolios. With an average return on investment of over 24% across their portfolios. The Eckerd team is dedicated to helping you build and protect your wealth through long term passive income. All of this while minimizing the risks associated with traditional investments. So check out Eckerd Enterprises if you want that great investment experience, go to eckerd enterprises.com again that's eckerd enterprises.com thanks and back to the show. Now when I tell people reduce your expenses, I hate telling people that because I tend to not enjoy that myself personally. One way that you can increase your savings, and this is kind of part of this first point, is you can also invest a little more. Find a side hustle, find ways to create more income so you can ultimately save more. I actually personally like making more than trying to reduce and cut my expenses significantly. And if you use A strategy where you prioritize your savings or increase your earnings a little bit on side hustles so that you can ultimately save more. You'd be surprised how quickly you can build up your reserves to save pretty quickly. Now we're pretty fortunate. Most people that are listening to this were high net worth or high income professionals. Depending on your specialty, you might make more than others. But I know doctors all the way from pediatricians to plastic surgeons who are able to collect those savings, figure out how to make extra income, create that savings or investment fund, and ultimately get into big investments. Now you'll find that over time, as you get into more investments, especially cash flowing ones, they will begin to compound those savings and it will get easier and easier to save as you go. But you got to get started somewhere. So every single month I committed to saving a certain amount to put towards these investments. And I was going to make it happen no matter what. Maybe for you that's 3,000amonth, a 5,000amonth, whatever it might be, but you'll find that amount adds up pretty quickly. All right, number two, this is a big one. You can unlock trapped equity. And what do I mean by that? That you have value. If you have some assets, if you have some properties or some businesses or whatever it might be, there is equity. There's some value there that is stored up in some way that you can try to figure out how to tap. Some people like to call this lazy equity. For example, in your own home there might be value in the property that you have, but it's just sitting there in your walls, not helping you get where you want to be. Now again, I'm a fan of leverage, meaning using debt or tapping equity. But you got to do it responsibly. So that's the double edged sword that you have to watch out for. But even in your own home or rental property, there are ways to unlock some of that equity. Number one, there's something called a heloc, a home equity line of credit, where you can get a credit line against your your home, essentially using your property as collateral. For example, I have several HELOCs on a bunch of my properties. Now if I don't use those, if I don't draw from them, they just sit there and honestly, it cost me nothing to create. And the yearly maintenance is somewhere like 30 to 50 to $75. So it's not very much. But you have that option to tap that equity if you want. It's a way of you unlocking some of the equity in your Home and your rental properties if you absolutely need. It's like a revolving line of credit that you can use whenever you need to tie the gap. Maybe there's an amazing opportunity for you, you know that those funds will come. Basically what I did back in the day, I'm not suggesting this for every single person, is that I had a HELOC open. So when I found a good opportunity, a lot of times if I didn't have the funds there, I would actually use that home equity line, tap some of those funds, invest in it, and then made a commitment that whatever cash flow that I got, those investments will go back to paying that as quickly as possible. That way I'm not stuck in a situation where I've got multiple points of leverage. I didn't like that situation for myself personally, and you probably don't like that. Then there's other ways to refinance some of those loans altogether so you don't have that revolving credit. Maybe it's a cash out refi for your property. Now obviously interest rates are really high right now, so it may not make a lot of sense. So you've got to figure out what is the current loan on your property, what is the value that you have, the locked equity. So what would your new loan or new mortgage look like after you refi? Now this strategy may not be the best during this period now, but over the next few years if the interest rates do fall, that might make for a great opportunity or a great strategy during that time. The other thing is to actually sell some of that property and maybe downsize or utilize those funds somewhere else. Personally, I had several properties in my own portfolio and what I ended up doing was that one of the properties was a multifamily unit up in Seattle in the Northwest. Was causing me a lot of problems, honestly from a cash flow basis, was not doing well, just taking up tons of my time and I felt it wasn't worth it. So what I ended up doing was selling that property, reinvesting that amount into a short term rental, which actually had higher cash flow, which is something that my family and I can use, but also makes a lot more sense from an investment cash flow opportunity. So I was able to unlock the equity that was in that multifamily and utilize it to invest in something else that I thought was had a greater return potential. So take a look. Where is your trapped equity? Where can you get creative to find some funds for some of these investments, especially during this period and see if it absolutely makes sense for you? Now the Third source that people don't think about all the time is your retirement funds. I know for all of us, we've been kind of trained to think that retirement should all go towards the stock market, that it should be something that we don't touch for 20 to 30 years. And all of that again should go into equities like that, stocks and bonds and nothing else. Or just know that there's so much more available to us in terms of investment asset classes. In our retirement accounts. We're not tied to just mutual funds and bonds. You can invest in commodities, you can invest in alternative assets, you can, you can create diversification within that portfolio itself to help you get where you want to be. For example, if you were able to take some of the money in your IRA 401k and convert that into a self directed. Again, we'll talk about that in a different episode. But into a self directed IRA or 401k, you are able to use a lot of those funds to invest in some alternative assets. I know a lot of people who have over the last few years, based on appreciation, have grown a nice retirement fund in their 401s. They were able to transfer that to self directed and were able to diversify out of some of their stocks and, and equities that have grown so much over the last few years. They're able to take that and invest some into some gold, invest some of that into mineral rights, invest some of that into syndications. Just know that when people tell you that all of your retirement savings can go into only one thing, just know that there's potential for more. And I would definitely explore that for you to see if that makes sense. Certain investments would do much better even within a tax efficient vehicle like in your 401k. Personally, some of the investments that I've made through my self directed is like things like debt that would normally get taxed at normal nominal income tax rates, but within a retirement vehicle it might be more efficient, allows for greater compounding. So probably now more than ever, it'd be a good idea to look at some of your retirement accounts, see what's in there, see what's possible and see if some of those things you might want to diversify, see if it makes sense for you. Now, as we wrap up this episode, it's obvious that if you don't start investing, you don't take action, you're not going to actually get closer to your goals. But again, one of the biggest obstacles to that is trying to figure out where to get funds for that and so hopefully this is giving you some ideas. Now, these are not the only three ways, but these are three major ways that people tend to unlock or find equity or income to invest in different types of investments. I think now more than ever it's absolutely important to get crystal clear on where these sources are of capital are because there are going to be opportunities that you're going to see over the next 6, 12, 24 months that you're going to want to get into. Number one, that you're ready and educated. And second, you have the confidence to invest. And third, you have the capital to to make that leap and take that action. Investing is a long term game. However, if you can get in at the right opportunity, it makes for longer compounding and helps you accelerate towards your goals that much faster. So I'd love to hear from you. Where are places where you can find trapped equity? As I've heard before from Tony Robbins, it's not a matter of our resources. It's a matter of how resourceful we can be. And I think for our community, they've shown again and again that we can be absolutely resourceful to get closer to our goals, to accomplish things that maybe we didn't think were possible. In any case, thanks for listening. I hope to see all of you this Fall September at our pimdcon conference, the Physician Real Estate Entrepreneurship Conference. We'll talk about all of these things and a chance for us to get together in one place, share ideas, share opportunities, keep each other accountable and just have a lot of fun together. So anyways, enjoy, take care, have an amazing week. Hey everyone. I'm excited to tell you about PIMDCON, the Physician Real Estate and Entrepreneurship Conference happening on September 21st through 23rd. This year, as always, we're bringing together some of the smartest minds in real estate investing and entrepreneurship to speak at this event. Now, what sets this conference apart from others goes way beyond the speakers. It's being part of the community that's created at our live events. Now, this year, we're offering specific tracks focused on real estate investing or entrepreneurship acceleration so you can customize your experience and focus on what matters to you the most. Now, our expert speakers, coaches and workshops. They're going to help you gain the knowledge and confidence you need to take your next steps forward and towards achieving financial success and independence way beyond medicine. And it's not just about the information you're going to learn from the speakers. It's about the conversations you'll have with other attendees that I know will spark new ideas inspire you to take action. So every year people leave PIM Nikon and they launch their real estate investing careers while others grow their portfolio in exponential ways. I mean ways you wouldn't have even imagined. Now this year is going to be no different as you leverage your big ideas to expand your vision for what's possible. So join us in person in Los Angeles on September 21st through 23rd. There's also a virtual option available for those who can come live, so don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with a community of like minded individuals and gain practical skills and knowledge to help you achieve your financial goals. Save that date September 21st to 23rd 2023. I'll see you there. Thanks everyone. Bye.