freedom – We Are But Ants

Investing in real estate — intro: save money on books

In my search for passive income sources (see “WABA — We Are But Ants” and “Why work doesn’t work”), I read many books about real estate investments and every single time I was disappointed. Hundreds of pages filled with emptiness. General descriptions, common sense re-written, some toddler-tips and straight forward pointers.

But you don’t get to see the magic of scaling up. How you move from that one investment for which you saved several years to the next? Because passive income at some point needs to become tangible. Sequentially saving for years to buy a new property for which a tenant pays the mortgage isn’t going to let you retire any time soon. Yet the writers of those books all claim they became millionaires in less than 10 years (me want!). So how do you really leverage? How to go from zero properties to a real-estate portfolio? What’s the trick?

In a series of posts on real estate investments, I will share some of my experiences (failures and successes) and I will also summarize the books that I read in a couple of posts with key take-aways, so you don’t have to waste money to find out some people really can fill many pages with limited content. I’ll try to stick to the following topics — topped with some of my personal experiences:

Pre-requisites for real-estate investment
Different real-estate investment methods — which one suits you?
Finding the right property — the golden square mile
Negotiation — putting rational limits, asking the right questions
Renting out — avoid tenants from hell at all cost (I had my share of those when I started and lately I got tricked again — I blame it on Covid circumstances)
Scaling up your portfolio

Upon writing, more topics might pop up. Eventually I also hope to get some readers and interaction with those readers, so more subjects can be added on demand. Just to be clear: I am not there yet myself – as said before – just sharing my path & findings.

آزادی – Freedom – Liberté – 自由

While working on the PIM to help people to find their way in the world of passive income to obtain freedom, I am these days constantly struck by the relativity of that fight for freedom.

When I look around me, I see sad friends, emotionally wrecked people. I see proudness when schoolgirls take off their scarfs and stand together for the future of their country. I see strong, persistent people that are fighting worldwide to bring attention to their country. I see anger, fear and frustration being altered by hope and sparkling eyes when an Iranian athlete is in competition without hijab.

Normal for most of us… but an historical event for people that have been suppressed for more 43 years. People that were imprisoned for having an opinion. Who were sentenced to death without fair trial. Who have been raped, tortured, beaten and killed just because they looked at life in a different way. Or just because they didn’t dress the way “they were supposed to” – #mahsa_amini. These days Iran is revolting. Women, kids, men all literally fight for their lives and freedom in the streets of Iran. Fearless, because they are prisoners of a regime… because they have nothing more to lose, only something to fight for.

For the “green” people (see map above) this might be hard to relate to. But in order to create a different, free world, without dictatorships and suppression, we all need to contribute to color the purple and orange areas into green. Everybody has the right to be free.

I stated before that the purpose of my blog is for sure not a political one, but this is a fight for freedom that goes beyond Iran and needs worldwide attention and help. It is a signal we need to give to the world. A signal that change is needed. A signal that a lot of “ants” together can lift the world to another level.

Feel free to share this blog or to sign a supporting petition on change.org: https://chng.it/y6VJ85cZ

Thanks a lot for reading!

The Passive Income Model – PIM

Yet another workweek at the office has passed by. October. A completely different color palette is starting to show and many lifeforms are preparing for a well-deserved winter-break (is it normal to be jealous at deciduous trees?). The adults were right: the flight of life shifts to the next gear when having kids – I can confirm having joined the adults with kids-group some time ago. Co-parenting seems to even have replaced my old gear-box with something cruelly more powerful.

Somehow knowing that things need to change -as you could read in my previous post, Why work doesn’t work– and feeling time fly by, results in some conflicts (still manageable – but an occasional eye-twitch can’t always be suppressed). My goal is to be able to slow down and have time to do what I want, yet there is an orientation phase that takes (a lot) of time, there will be an investment phase (taking time and perhaps money) and there’s the risk none of it will work out. Add a job, burn-out recovery and three kids to the mix and you’ll realize it’s gonna be a frightful fight for freedom 🙂

As I mentioned in my initial post Why – We Are But Ants, the orientation-phase -listening to podcasts and reading blogs/books about passive income streams- has some minor side-effects. Besides broken car consoles and books ripped to pieces, it really makes you wonder: am I that stupid? (Ok, I wonder about the latter more often, regardless of people making passive income by selling thin air/talking about passive income, but I guess that’s me :)). People who googled “passive income” know exactly what I mean: wherever you look, you get the same lists, with some vague explanation. No concrete examples of how much money and time you will need to invest, how hard it will be to generate revenue and how long it might take to see some light in the ant-tunnel.

I’m working on a model to at least make that initial google-search more focused and to reduce that standard list of options to a top-5 that fits your personality and your time-/money-investment possibilities. A model that gives a more concrete explanation of your top-5 earning models (risks, timeline, financial requirements,…), including links to existing, more specialized sites that can get you going. Ladies and gentlemen, my beloved 10 followers (ok ok – 9 admittedly: I follow myself – curious to see what happens on my own page :)): I am eagerly expecting the PIM! I will share ultrasounds of premature stages whenever I think it looks nice enough to get some feedback and then iterate (or abort poor little PIM if the public opinion doesn’t agree upon it being life-worthy – no intention to start any abortion debate here).

In the past 20 years I’ve already made some attempts to become financially independent, long before people started to be on FIRE 😉 In my next posts on passive income, while PIM is growing, I’ll share the scarily discouraging stories I lived as landlord, Crypto-god and stock-star (I told you I often wonder: am I that stupid – you might start to wonder too ;)). But: still standing and ready for the next series of stories.

Thanks for reading!

The burn-out clichés

Truth is I didn’t just start writing because Christmas decoration was in the stores even before my birthday… although it gave me the final push 😉

For years I’d been looting my body… first without knowing, then knowing but not caring and finally knowing and caring, but not being able to snap out of it.

I might elaborate on the above sentence if my loyal fanbase expands beyond the single follower I currently have (ok ok… I am that single follower – what can I say? I wanted to try out if wordpress was broken, since I didn’t get an audience. Still now, it makes me happy for a second when I see my blog-statistics. The duration of the disappointment – realizing again it’s me myself and I following myself – also shortens, so the balance is tilting towards happiness). So leaving the elaboration on the how/why for a later time.

I reached the point where I was on holiday with my kids (co-parenting 3 lovely monsters) and I couldn’t move anymore. I could only lie down. I could exceptionally drag myself to the pool (which looked 10 times bigger on picture and was actually an ennobled bathtub that made my son cry at arrival) and wanted to sleep. I was actually so restless I couldn’t sleep properly: my body felt like it was under permanent attack and needed to be on guard 24/7. Cortisol. It f***s up all other hormones by the way – the only focus of your body becomes survival.

Upon return I thought I’d go for a run with my daughter – back then ~11 years old and to put it euphemistically: not the fastest runner around. We barely ran 1km, my sports-watch started making a sound I never heard before and I was about to crash. I had to ask her to stop and face the facts: even a half dead cheetah is able to catch up with a turtle – so I was beyond half-dead. The 1km run resulted in 2 additional recovery days for my heart-rate (not kidding) and despite the fact that all blood- and heart-tests were negative, I had never felt so close to being dead as I did back then. Yup, feelings have the power to conquer your body. Feelings caused by work, divorce, break-ups, kids, covid and kids, losing my sister years ago, some luggage from the past… and the feeling I would always be strong enough to bounce back. In the end, it’s me 🙂 I always did!

So all clichés were there: I never expected to feel like this… not me?! I ignored signals I didn’t know of. I kept on working full-time while my job and fight for the people in the organization were a constant drain for me. Till I didn’t bounce anymore and I sat on my knees in front of my three kids, telling them how sorry I was, I couldn’t be a good dad to them at that moment. It needed change!

For the first time in my life I invested in me. In all possible ways (also financially, because my beloved multinational employer of course didn’t insure mental issues – those are for the weak… and the weak are not the winners… and my company only hires the best :)). I felt guilty doing so at first, but grew out of that. I felt pressured to go back to work, but let go of that eventually (I know I made it sound Ninja-tough and strong, but it took me months to accept). I was going to take as long as was needed.

During the process (lasted a year, still not 100% there), I realized 1 thing: I needed to change my life. I needed freedom. I wanted to do things I like doing. Writing is one of them.

I actually realized more things. You need to be strong to make the decision I took in this over-populated world with its society-rules and -pressure. And you need a person next to you that believes in you, despite cortisol-mess, fears, tears, fatigue and all emotions that come on your path. Thanks love x

Mahsa Amini

I don’t have any intention to give this blog a political character – however given my huge fanbase ;), my incomparable quest for freedom and mostly because of the fact I have Iranian friends and family in law, I wanted to draw attention to the situation in Iran – all little bits help.

A 22-year old girl -Mahsa Amini- died after she got beaten up by the so called morality police of the Iranian regime, because her hijab wasn’t properly covering her hair. After years of suppression, this was the final drop for the people of Iran. People are in the streets, risking their lives for freedom. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-62986057

As said, I don’t want to make this blog political at all, but I do want freedom for everyone on this planet and I support all people that try to achieve it.

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