What The Wealthy Do Different With Their Money

by Michael Yates

If you carefully follow along below, you will then learn the proper method of determining profit, plus how and what the wealthy do different with their money.

Wealthy People share a few things in common, and I’m going to explain them in this article. This may sting a little, so be forewarned. They all view their house as a home, not an investment. Yes, I know that sounds like lunacy to a North American mind. How can something worth so much money not be considered an investment? It’s Simple…

Wealthy People are almost always financially literate, they understand the power of interest, the time value of money, and the return on investment (ROI). Your neighbor next door calculates how much profit he (or she) made on the house, like this…

Paid- $500,000
Spent- $45,000 on renovations
Sold- $600,000.
Profit- $55,000

Seems straight forward, and hard to argue with these numbers, doesn’t it? In fact, there’s a whole lot of information missing here that could greatly change this calculation. How long did he own the house? How much interest did he pay? What other expenses were incurred besides renovations, repairs, maintenance, etc? And finally, the time value of money. The $600,000 that he received from the sale of the house (above), is actually worth less than $600,000 from when he first bought the house.

I used to laugh at this concept, thinking that it was irrelevant… It’s anything but… Now let me illustrate…

Year 2001 bought house for $500,000
Year 2004 spent $10,000 on renovations
Year 2006 spent $35,000 on renovations
Year 2007 spent $5,000 on repairs.
Year 2008 sold for $600,000

At a rate of even 2% for inflation, which is only true in fairy tales and government statistics, let’s see how this pans out. We’ll take the $600,000 received in 2008 as an example. I’m going to simply regress $600,000 back to 2001 to find out its value and compare apples to apples with the $500,000 paid for the house…

2007 $588,000
2006 $576,240
2005 $564,715
2004 $553,421
2003 $542, 352
2002 $531,505
2001 $520,875
Total gross profit= $20,875

Now we deduct expenses. For the sake of efficiency, I’ve regressed the expenses too. If we’re going to regress, we have to regress all of the numbers…

$9412 + $31,637 + $4429 = $45,478

Now let’s run the numbers…

Purchase $500,000(2001 dollars)
Profit after sale in 2001 dollars. $20,875
Expenses $45,478(2001 dollars)
Loss $24,603

I haven’t factored in realtor fees, or interest costs. Both are significant. I increased the value of this house by $100,000 in 6 years, a very healthy increase by anyone’s standards, and still this person lost money. Let’s say we remove the renovations? Yes, probably a good idea, but we would also likely have to reduce the sale price as well. The net effect would depend on how wisely the renovations were done. Some renovations add more value than others, and some add no value at all.

This is one example of how sophisticated investors view investments. They know the power of interest and inflation, whereas the average person thinks they’re too minor to consider. In this scenario, even a puny 2% inflation cost this homeowner $80,000 in potential profit, and I can guarantee you that inflation is more than 2%. How? Easy! What did you pay for milk 5 years ago? 10 years ago? Add 2% per year and see if you come to today’s price. I guarantee you won’t. Use items where inflation is impossible to hide, like milk, meat, and vegetables, and you’ll begin to see how high inflation actually is.

Are you beginning to see why wealthy people don’t view their home as an investment? Or, at best a poor investment? I hope so, because it will serve you well in years to come. Imagine if inflation is actually closer to 5%. You don’t even want to know the numbers if I work in a 5% inflation figure, nevermind realtor fees and interest costs. This is how banks and large financial investment firms make money, they fully understand the power of inflation, and interest.

Now let’s reverse the scenario. You can play the wealthy investor instead. I think you’ll enjoy this end of the bargain much more…

Let’s say you decide to lend money for mortgages and big ticket items, like boats, cabins, and home renovations. We’ll say you lend out $75,000 for a home renovation to a nice couple who want to do some updates to their home. Let’s break down the numbers. We’ll use 5% as an interest rate, a very low rate, but these days about average for a loan like this. The loan will be for 7 years…

2001 Loan of $75,000 Monthly payments of $1056.14
2001 Interest(your profit) $3462
2002 Interest $3001
2003 Interest $2518
2004 Interest $2010
2005 Interest $1477
2006 Interest $917
2007 Interest $330
Total Interest Received $10,253 Return on Investment 13.67%

But let’s be fair, the time value of money would eat into your profits, but notice your largest interest revenue comes early on, which means you lose less due to inflation. Now inflation is more your friend than your enemy, like it was before (above). On the flip side, the couple who borrowed from you agreed to pay 5% interest, but in reality they paid in excess of 10% due to compounding interest. I wonder if they would still choose to do their renovations, if they knew that it would cost an extra $5000 to $10,000.

This example is one of the fundamental principles to investing. You have to understand the power of these concepts before you can ever be a successful investor. Most people think investing is all about picking a hot stock, and then becoming a millionaire. In reality, wealthy people do very little of that. Instead, they will use a concept called leverage, if they want to take a risk for an outsized gain. What does this mean?…

Leverage is simply borrowing money, or using existing collateral, to gain access to more money. In our previous example, making 13% is a pretty safe investment, but lending $75,000 isn’t enough to make big money, so how can we make serious money with this system? That’s where leverage comes in. Actually, it’s used in many investing models, but we’ll discuss this one…

Suppose you are wealthy, and have access to borrow money at 3%, because you have assets which can be used as collateral. You can access $20-million at 3%. The 3% becomes your expense in this scenario, and your objective is to lend out money at a rate higher than 3%, but maintain a low risk profile on your investments. You discover you can get 5% with very little risk. The 2% becomes your profit, but now it’s 2% of $20-million, which is much more than 5% of $75,000. You can now do some quick math in your head (or on a calculator) to get a good understanding about how this all works, and how it can potentially work for you.

Michael Yates is a Financial Advisor for: DineroMax Online Car Title Loans