What is the difference between someone working a 9-5 job and Millionaire? It’s just the KNOWLEDGE AND THE ACTIONS.
HOW MINDSET SHIFT HELPED ME?
· Mindset shift helped me to shift my focus from my job to other investments like Real Estate.
· I am able to grow from almost nothing to $2 Million in NETWORTH in just 6-7 years.
· I bought 25 Units in the last 6-7 years’ which are worth $4.5 in current market value.
· I have achieved Financial Freedom; I can quit my IT job anytime and I will still survive on my rental income.
LET’S START FROM BEGINNING
I am a Business Intelligence Architect\Software programmer, I have been doing this job for the last 15 years or so. It is a very nice job, and it pays well.
But am I going to do this same job for all my life? Spending half of my life sitting in a cubicle. I do not picture myself-doing this for that long.
Are we born to spend our precious lives like this? I DON” T THINK SO.
HOW HAS IT STARTED?
It was around the year 2013 and I was bored to death in Montreal winter. So, I started reading some random books and then I found one section in the library about INVESTMENTS, especially around Stocks and Real Estate.
10-20 PAGE A DAY
I was not reading a lot, I just made sure that I was reading every single day, I started taking my books with me everywhere. Reading while travelling to work in a Metro was my usual way of going through 10-20 pages a day.
Some of these books had a huge impact on my mindset and made me think differently. I don’t think the same way anymore, I feel completely different and SUPER MOTIVATED person.
I will quickly give you an overview of some of my favorite books and then move to my first investment in 2014. It just took me 1 year to make a move.
1. THE COMPOUND EFFECT
Compounding is called 8th wonder for a reason. Compounding either works in your favor or it works against you, either you are getting richer every year or you are getting poorer. It needs time to help you grow, the earlier you start the better it is for you. That is why this book teaches us to start small but start as early as possible. It is difficult to get the time back.
2. THE MAGIC OF THINKING BIG
Growing up in middle class society is very different, we never learn to think big. Our families push us towards getting education and jobs and keep working all our lives like they did.
Middle class parents don’t know anything different, and they won’t teach you any differently.
This book encourages you to start thinking big, and have big goals. People with big goals achieve big things.
3. THE SLIGHT EDGE
Little choices we make every day either push us towards a better future or worse, the habit of eating extra food will make you fat or doing some exercise daily will keep you fit.
Either you are working for you or against you.
4. 4 HOUR WORK WEEK
This is a crazy idea of reducing work and focusing on new ideas, we always think of adding more work to make more money but that sometimes is not the way to go.
This book is amazing to realize that there can be better ways and reducing the work hours can make us focus on new things.
5. ATOMIC HABITS
Just having GOALS does not really help us achieve them, sometimes GOALS are too big and sometimes people lose their perspective after achieving them.
It’s important to build a system which you can stick to for a long time and it still helps you after achieving your goals.
Divide the whole process into steps and try to improve 1% in each step which will make a huge difference in results.
6. RICH DAD POOR DAD
This is the book which pushed me towards Real estate investing, this book helped me understand the difference between real Assets and Liabilities.
It changed my mindset completely and was a stepping stone towards Financial Freedom.
These books helped me understand the importance of investing and helped me buy my first Rental Property. I kept growing and currently I have 25 units worth well over $4.5 million. I love my job as a software programmer, but I think I can build better wealth in real estate.
BUYING FIRST RENTAL PROPERTY
I was eager to start my investments and finally in the starting of 2014, I bought my first rental property of 8 units. My wife and I were working for a long time and we had some savings, we also got some help from our family to make this first purchase.
25 EASY STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO BUY AN APARTMENT BUILDING IN CANADA
BUYING SECOND RENTAL PROPERTY
Refinancing is amazing; I was able to refinance my first property for $150,000 just after 3 years in 2017 and able to use that money to buy my second rental property that year. It’s amazing how money grows so quickly.
FLIP
I thought I had to try this, there must be some good money in FLIPPING. People talk about this so much, then why not?
In 2019, I bought a beat up house to flip, unfortunately we listed this house for sale in March 2020 exactly when we got hit by COVID.
So, we must sit in this house for months before the market opens, we made some money from this, but it is not worth it. I will write a separate article about this in more detail.
BUYING THIRD RENTAL PROPERTY
I believe doing it alone will take a long time. That is why I decided not to refinance any of my first two properties and instead have a partner to buy the third property.
This property is one of my biggest purchases compared to the previous two and it is one of the top locations in Montreal.
I bought my third rental property in 2020-2021, it took much longer to close the deal due to COVID in 2020 and final closing went to January 2021.
FINANCIAL FREEDOM
I never thought that I would even buy 1 rental property let alone 3 properties with 25 units. If I go 10 years back in 2011 and tell myself that I will be buying 4.5 million worth of real estate within the next 10 years, I would have laughed, and I would have thought it’s impossible.
5 FACTORS TO CREATE WEALTH LIKE MILLIONAIRES
In 2011, I lost my US work permit and my job and packed everything to move to Canada with little savings. I never would have thought how the next 10 years will turn out to be.
It’s that Financial Mindset which made a huge difference, otherwise I would be just doing my IT job and living in a small house which is not so bad either.
Currently, I can survive financially without my IT job, that’s what Financial Freedom is all about. Sometimes I feel bad about my co-worker who are worried about not having enough work and losing their job.
For me, I do not care what happens because I don’t have dependency on my job.
That is how FINANCIAL FREEDOM feels like.
YOU SHOULD STOP DOING THESE THINGS NOW TO SAVE MORE
