It's So Easy to Lose Your Way

It really is. I went to go look at apartments today. It started out as a max of $500/month. Slowly but surely, that price made its way up to $550 then $575 then $600. Like boiling a frog, the various apartments I visited lulled me into thinking $620/month was just fine. Then I came across one last apartment. $670/month. I was ready to exclude this one outright until the lady said, "And we have a program where 20% of your rent goes toward the purchase of a new KB home!" ........The frog is cooked. KB is a builder in this area. If there were one phrase that they could have used to get me to sign a lease, that was it. And the apartments were nice, in fact I'd go so far as to say that they designed the apartment the way I'd design my house. So a KB home isn't what I had been planning? Who cares, it's equity! Equity from rent!! $134 of equity a month!!

Now, I'm a level headed individual and I had no plans of signing anything today. So after getting a bit lost, I make the hour long drive home. I just ran the numbers and I'm thankful that I did. The whole point of the duplex/4-plex plan was to eliminate the cost of living from my monthly expenses. With the KB home, I may have a few hundred dollars in equity but the cost of living would still be there. By running the numbers, I found that by eliminating the cost of living I would pocket a little over $1200 a month. That's after utilities, taxes, food, savings, tithe, etc. All of it. $1200 to use in any manner I wish. If that's not incentive enough to stick to the plan, I don't know what is.

The numbers also showed me something else. Getting this affiliate marketing business up and running will make a huge difference. All profits (profits being money left over after reinvesting into the business, not the commission) would just add onto that $1200. My goal is to get two sites up to $1000/site/month after expenses. I don't know if that's overly ambitious or not but that's the goal. Let's say that I use $400/site/month to improve the sites (I consider this reinvestment as seperate from the normal expenses). That's another $1200/month for a total of $2400/month of pocket money. Makes your mouth water, huh? =)