Most people in the western world feel stuck in an endless cycle of hard work and debt, with no time to pursue the things they love.
Property investor Paul Glossop has seen and felt the tragic cost of this lifestyle.
“I lost my old man last year, and I know full well that he didn’t have time,” Paul told Bushy Martin on the Get Invested podcast.
“And that was mainly financial reasons, he ended up working right up until he died.
“My wife’s father passed away three years ago with an unexpected diagnosis of terminal cancer which killed him four months after being diagnosed. And he’d literally retired at the age of 60, a month before he got the diagnosis.
“And it’s not that I want people to think this could happen to anyone, but it’s also the fact that for me, I don’t want to be in a position where I’m 65 and all of a sudden saying ‘I can finally now potentially have my home paid off and now I can go and live a really privileged life’. For me it’s all about how do I get as much time as possible, and what does that time cost me?”
This decision to pursue time, instead of chasing a big salary and an expensive lifestyle, paid off. Paul has now acquired 17 properties worth almost $9 million, and has the freedom to do what he wants when he wants.
But there was no get rich quick scheme. Instead, it has been a 15 year journey.
“I built a property portfolio over a relatively decent period of time, which gave me exactly that, which was time,” he said.
“I started my property investment journey with my wife when we didn’t have kids and we were just boyfriend and girlfriend back then, and that led into life becoming more complex and having busy full-time jobs and starting a family and all those things that came with it. But eventually we ended up creating a financial position through property which gave us the choice of ‘do we want to choose the big income and everything that comes with that forever? And is that going to happen for another 25, 30 years?’
Paul’s road to success started by knowing his numbers.
“I know exactly what my life costs are, which is nice for me because it also allows me to be very, very specific with each strategic investment decision that I make in my life,” he said.
“We’ve drilled this down, and we do it every six months between my wife, Kim, and I, in that we need about $110,000 to $115,000 a year. And potentially if we want to blowout with an extra holiday a year with the family, we might need $120,000 to $130,000 income to actually fulfill the life that we have right now.
“And that really was a number that we were aspiring to from early point, we kept rolling those numbers to keep figuring out what do we buy that’s going to fit the cashflow, that’s going to fit the growth, that’s going to help us to pay down this debt, that’s going to keep allowing us to get closer and closer to getting that 120 or 130 grand a year income?”
Along with knowing the numbers, Paul said successful investors a long-term thinkers, level headed and disciplined.
“They have a very good long-term goal, but they have an element of creativity and they are not rigid to the point where they can’t move their mindset or change their strategy if the unforeseen or unexpected happens,” he said.
“And I think that’s where the best elements of the best investors come in, is they have a relatively flexible mindset if need be, and they don’t have a ‘woe is me’ mentality when things go wrong, they say, ]Well, I’ve got to figure out how to do something different here’ and actually effectively make that change, which is a very key skill of the best investors I know.”
Listen to the full podcast interview here.
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