finances Archives | Christopher Ming Blog

finances

Lessons from my second real estate investment

Last updated on August 14th, 2022 at 09:35 am

If you only have a minute, here are the takeaways:

Investing is emotional. I made my second real estate investment. It was more of an emotional decision than a numbers-driven one. In my opinion, this is OK (even normal) but don’t fool yourself thinking otherwise.
Upstate New York and self-funded. The investment is an apartment community in upstate New York. I funded it with the money after selling my house and from savings. Ideally, this investment adds a revenue stream that funds my Business system target.
Play your advantages. Most retail investors do not have an analytical competitive advantage. But you can have a behavioral competitive advantage. Counterintuitively, this usually means doing less, e.g. less trading, less complexity, etc.
How to increase your behavioral advantage? Understand your asset allocation, automate your saving & investing, have a long time horizon, and protect your downside.
Survival. The cornerstone of any strategy. You have to stay in the game long enough to win it.
What game are you playing? The game of money is fascinating, but the real game we’re playing is the happiness game. And happiness not having everything you want, but wanting everything you have.

I made my second real estate investment at the end of 2022. Once I started to document my thought process, I realized how much my investing was an emotional and intuitive decision, not a math-based decision.

finances

Your Starting Point

Last updated on August 14th, 2022 at 09:29 am

In the last newsletter, What Is Rich, we talked about the power of having specific financial independence targets, and how to calculate these targets for yourself.

These targets are your “Business system target” and “Money system target.” My targets are $75,000 MRR (monthly recurring revenue) and $6,000,000, respectively.

(There’s also a third target, which I call the “Perfect Tuesday target” and will explain more later.)

I share my targets as a reference point for discussion. There is a formula, so technically you and I could arrive at similar targets. But defining what you want, when you want it, and why you want it is infinitely more complex than can be derived by a pivot table, financial advisor, or Twitter thread.

finances

What is rich?

Last updated on August 14th, 2022 at 09:27 am

I know a lot of people who make an extraordinary amount of money, but few people who are rich. Rich is having passive income greater than your burn.”

– Scott Galloway

I love the simplicity of this definition (passive income > burn) but think it’s a better description of financial independence than rich.

Your financial independence boils down to just a couple of numbers. Here are mine:

$75,000/month
$6,000,000

What do these numbers mean? Where do they come from?

career

Add Freelancing to Your Career Management Arsenal

Takeaways

If you only have a minute, here are the takeaways:

Remote work is here to stay. With your next role is unbound by geography and time zone, the job marketplace is functionally limitless. This changes how you manage your career.
Transactional relationships between employee and employer, e.g. “tours of duty” will become more common, and the quality of “gig-work” will continue to improve.
This future isn’t some panacea. Like everything else, there are tradeoffs. For example, more autonomy but less security.
If you’re curious, an easy way to sample a “tour of duty” is switching from an employee to a freelancer within the company.
This can be great for your career if you see yourself as CEO someday, or you’ve worked at the same company for a long time. If your current priority is work/life balance, however, then stick with your employer until you’re ready to focus on your career.
As a freelancer, your hourly rate will likely go up, but you’ll likely owe more in taxes and they’ll get more complicated. You’ll also have less job security with each client.
If you’re a freelancer in the US, expect health insurance to get much more expensive. If you become a resident abroad, chances are you’ll be entitled to some public health services covered by the government.

—

Remote work is here for good.[efn_note]https://buildremote.co/companies/companies-going-remote-permanently/[/efn_note] This changes how we manage our careers.

When your next role is unbound from geography and time zone, the marketplace is functionally limitless. This accelerates the changing employer <> employee relationship, away from one based on stability and loyalty, towards a transactional exchange.

In other words, less monogamy, more swiping.

career

Start Earning Your Second Revenue Stream

Takeaways

If you only have a minute, here are the takeaways:

Moments in time (like a global pandemic) show us how fragile our futures are if we rely on a single source of income.
Earning multiple sources of income is a superpower. Consulting is the best way to start.
Consulting has two advantages over other business models: leverage and speed. Leverage = apply lessons learned from your 9-5, and vice versa. Speed = test, launch, and operate your business quickly.
How to find your first client? Get good at something and have 10 people know. Email them and ask for referrals. Without your first paying client, building a website or email list is just procrastination.
How to land your first gig? Give them a presentation. Show you understand their business, their challenges, and how to address those challenges.
Offer a number of packages, anywhere from an audit of their existing work, to a full Done-for-you service.
You can charge an upfront fee or a percentage of sales. I’d recommend both ($X upfront and Y% on the backend).
If you’re consulting AND working your 9-5, avoid burnout. Choose your niche strategically, manage your client, and get advice if you’re stuck.

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I did the math as Zoom loaded. The answer was 7.

If we did layoffs, 7 colleagues would be let go before me. I was Chinese lucky number 8.

Like most people, I lived in this fantasy where my future was secure. Moments in time (like a global pandemic) tug at this facade. Behind the curtain is nothing more than a harried man peddling away at his Rube Goldberg machine.

Moments like this are the best thing that can happen to you.

It’s the Inciting Incident in your Hero’s Journey. Your opportunity to re-examine the fragility of having a single source of income (your job) and explore building multiple revenue streams.

For me, it nudged me towards landing my first consulting gig.

Why consulting?

Earning side income is a vast universe. You can teach online courses, start a food blog, sell ads against your content, and much more.

I choose to consult, trading my time to work on someone else’s education company/products, in exchange for money.

Consulting is the best way to start earning additional income for two reasons:

career

How to Build an Incredible Career: Lessons from Arnold Schwarzenegger

Last updated on September 9th, 2021 at 03:00 pm

Young[efn_note]Image is from Maggie (2015) a post-apocalyptic horror drama film Arnold stars in. It’s a dramatic turn for the action star. I love that he continues to push himself in his roles.[/efn_note] Arnold Schwarzenegger plastered his childhood bedroom with pictures of the greats: Steve Reeves, Bill Pearl, Jack Dellinger, Tommy Sansome, Paul Winter. All were influential in Arnold’s life, but none more so than the winner of Mr. Universe in 1974, Reg Park.[efn_note]Source for all things Arnold: Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009G3MSC0/[/efn_note]

Reg Park provided Arnold with the blueprint for his own career:

Become a world-class bodybuilder
Win Mr. Universe
Leverage that success into Hollywood

finances

My Brutally Honest Review of How to Win the Game of Advanced Personal Finance

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:59 am

This is an honest review of How to Win the Game of Advanced Personal Finance, a program from Ramit Sethi.

Advanced Personal Finance (APF) is a video course that serves as the “next steps” in personal finance.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering:

“Should I buy Advanced Personal Finance?”

In this article, I’ll explain:

Who should buy Advanced Personal Finance
Who should not buy (and what to do instead)
How the Advanced Personal Finance program works and the changes I implemented in my personal finance system

Let’s get started.

Disclosure: I used to work with Ramit Sethi at I Will Teach.

finances

The 6 Things I Wish I Knew Before Buying a House

Last updated on November 29th, 2021 at 06:06 am

We sold this house and moved to Dublin, Ireland. Most of these lessons have held up, but living in the house for 3 years developed my thinking in other ways.

TL;DR we weren’t ready for a move to the suburbs. We missed the energy and walkability of the city. I believe your environment — the people and places you surround yourself with — quietly shape you. You can resist the change but you’re fighting upstream the entire time. Someday we may be ready to be molded into archetypal “suburban parents”. Just not yet.

So at the peak of this crazy post-pandemic market, we sold the house at a loss to my brother and his girlfriend, packed our things into 7 large suitcases, and moved to Dublin.

New lessons learned:

finances

My Brutally Honest StashWealth Review

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:59 am

Update 3/30/2019: I no longer use StashWealth and instead of switched to Vanguard. Everything about this review still stands — it was a reflection of how I felt at the time. For a brief explanation on why I switched, read this. I will write a more detailed article on the decision in the future.

When I was 14, I started packing take-out orders at a Chinese restaurant.

I’d stand in the oppressive kitchen in poorly fitted dress shirt from TJ Maxx for 7 hours and box ubiquitous white boxes of Chinese food. I’d put an X on the check, then sort and drop different sized boxes into a brown paper bag, like Tetris.

finances

The Millennial’s Guide To Doing Your Taxes

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:43 am

When I worked in literary management, our writer clients would call me looking for tax advice. “What can I write off as an expense?” and “Can I write off my rent if I work from home?”