Caroline

CNN Health reported on a new study out of Heidelberg University in Germany, which found that parents are happier than non-parents in old age, but ONLY if their kids have moved out. We are a sample size of one: we dropped off our youngest to college in late August and were on a plane to Costa Rica within the week. While our oldest still lives at our official home address, we [...]

We’re staying in Costa Rica for a full month, so it’s a great experiment in day-to-day living. One of my goals for our stay this time was trying out the health care. I decided to start with a visit to the dentist since I am in-between dentists at home. My regular New York City dentist was on a sabbatical. I tried a neighborhood dentist in Riverdale but wasn’t 100% convinced [...]

About one year ago, we started exploring selling our Indianapolis portfolio. You can see the property details on all five rentals here, and our sell v. hold analysis here. In a nutshell, this was our highest cash-flowing geography (compared to Asheville, Jacksonville and Tamarindo), which is why we bought in this market. But it was also our biggest management headache – while we worked with local property managers in Indy, [...]

Continuing our posts on your FIRE questions, such as when you are late to saving, when you and your spouse disagree or when you don’t want to pinch pennies, we come to another savings obstacle – the high cost of elder care. How do you insure for long-term care?How do you budget for the unknown costs of elder care – your parents and your own?How can you use geo-arbitrage when [...]

Thanks to the feedback we received on your FIRE questions, we have tackled how to make FIRE possible when you and your spouse disagree or when you don’t want to pinch pennies. Now, we’re tackling another question, this time about retirement in general, not just early retirement: How do you make FI possible when you’re later in life and still haven’t saved enough for retirement? Specifically, the questioner shared that [...]

The purpose of our visit to Cleveland was to attend the Real Wealth Network Income Property Showcase event. You can read all about that event over here. We added a 2nd day to the trip so we'd have more time to sample what Cleveland has to offer! Fun fact about the hotel hosting the Real Wealth Network event: it was also host to the National Yo-Yo Championships! Unfortunately, we didn’t [...]

Scott and I took a work/ play road trip to Cleveland for the 2019 Real Wealth Eastern Income Property Showcase Event. Real Wealth Network is a real estate education and referral network that partners with turnkey providers in various markets. Based in California, they do most of their conferences out west, but once a year they go further east to capture investors on our side of the country. This post [...]

These days, Barbara Corcoran is probably best known for judging the start-up pitch show, Shark Tank. As a native New Yorker and real estate fangirl, however, I will always think of Barbara Corcoran as the founder behind New York City real estate agency, The Corcoran Group. After splitting with her boyfriend and first business partner, she went out on her own with half the remaining team (seven agents) and built [...]

If you saw the press around how Jay-Z is hip hop’s first billionaire, you might have glossed over it for the entertainment value but missed how important it is to your FIRE plans. Sure, Jay-Z and other celebrities have outsized paychecks that bear little resemblance to the money you and I have to work with. However, the way he and other astute celebrities have managed their career, time and money [...]