Podcasts about your fico

Are we Too obsessed with Credit Scores? In this episode we discuss Credit scores, particularly FICO scores, are numerical representations of creditworthiness, calculated using factors like payment history and credit utilization.While not universally required, good credit can significantly impact various aspects of life, from mortgage rates to insurance premiums. Responsible credit management, including timely payments and low utilization, is key to building and maintaining a healthy credit score.Your FICO score ranges from 300 to 850 and is calculated using five main factors:1. Payment History (35%): The heavyweight champion of your score2. Credit Utilization (30%): How much of your available credit you're using3. Length of Credit History (15%): Your credit age matters4. Credit Mix (10%): Different types of credit accounts5. New Credit (10%): How often you apply for new creditContact Chris:https://heavymetal.money⁠https://www.facebook.com/MoneyHeavyMetal⁠https://x.com/MoneyHeavyMetal⁠https://www.instagram.com/chrisluger⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@heavymetalmoney⁠email: chris at heavymetal.moneyContact Dan:email: dan at corepln.comhttps://www.corepln.com/dan-hineResources and Links:https://heavymetal.money/creditscores/Jurassic World: Rebirth trailerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jan5CFWs9ic

As voiceover entrepreneurs, we face unique challenges, especially when it comes to retirement savings. Join Anne Ganguzza and Danielle Famble, as they share invaluable insights into the power of high-yield business savings accounts. You'll learn how these accounts can act as a safety net during lean months, accrue interest, and instill the discipline required to save consistently. The BOSSES recount their personal experiences to illustrate how a robust savings account can bolster confidence and enable you to take calculated risks in your business ventures. Plus, discover how the evolution of online banks has transformed the ability to manage finances and receive money easily to benefit our businesses. 00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey Boss, listeners Anne Ganguza here. Think about the legacy you want to leave with your voice. It's more than just getting gigs. It's about creating moments that resonate, that shine, that linger in memory. Let's craft those moments together with coaching that's as dedicated to your artistry as you are. Your voice, your legacy, our journey together. Visit anganguz for more information.  00:31 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, nne Ganguzaa.  00:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, Welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Boss Money Talk series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am tickled to bring back Danielle Famble to the show.  01:03 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Hey Anne, thanks for having me back. I've been really inspired by your red lipstick, so I'm wearing my own today. It's called Boss Lady.  01:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love it and you are definitely a boss lady. Speaking of being a boss and finances, I of course, check my bank statements all the time.  01:21 And can I just say that I first of all, love my business savings account to the point where I think it's like a must have for anybody in the business to just have a savings account, Because when times are lean and we know that this is a volatile industry sometimes we have good months, sometimes, you know, maybe not so good it's important to talk about having a business savings account. And, by the way, I have a high yield business savings account.  01:48 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Oh, my goodness. Oh, I love high yield savings accounts.  01:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That is a thing, and one thing I do want you bosses to know I am not a financial advisor nor is. Danielle, even though we love to talk about money, we are not financial advisors, so that is our disclaimer. We're just giving you our experiences with finances and growing our company, so let that be our disclaimer.  02:11 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yes, this is not financial advice. We're just talking about what we know and what we love and how it's helped us.  02:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There you go, so business savings account.  02:19 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) What are?  02:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) your thoughts on business savings accounts.  02:22 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Like you, I love my high-yield savings account. I absolutely love seeing how much interest that it brings into the account every single month. It is amazing when you think about it. But you also need to make sure that you are putting money into your savings account.  02:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) In order to gain that interest, in order to gain that interest.  02:42 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) So really it's not spending or utilizing every dollar that comes into your business, similar to personal finance making sure that you have enough money for the volatility of this industry so that you can pay yourself and pay your assistants or whomever that your business needs to pay in the lean times. It's really important.  03:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now let me ask you high-yield savings account Now. It used to be back in the day when you had a checking account, banks were offering all these incentives and you would get interest, you know, if you kept in a certain amount of money. Same thing with savings account. But it seems like all of a sudden there's high-yield savings account. Or is it just that I didn't pay attention before? Because all of a sudden I know that my money sat in the bank because I have my Bank of America for like ages, because that just was my bank, but yet it wasn't earning a lot of money, it wasn't earning a lot of interest. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh, look at this from American Express, there's a high yield savings account here and wow, look at that interest rate. I should be maybe throwing my money over there because it wasn't making a whole lot of money. Sitting there Is high-yield savings account, just a thing nowadays. Did it just happen where it just became a thing, or was I missing out all those years?  03:51 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I have to be honest with you. I'm not exactly sure how old or new high-yield savings accounts are. I can tell you that for me, when it came to personal finance, I got clued in into the power of high yield savings accounts and being able to make more money on my money in terms of interest, really, when I started to get serious, which was about six or seven years ago, so it could be relatively new. Typically, these banks are online banks and because they don't have the overhead that brick and mortar banks do, they're able to offer these incentives and offer higher interest. A way to look up a high yield account is really just to go online and Google and try to find one that has a business account, if you can. That's what I have been able to do, me too. Again, I don't know how old or new it is, but I do know that being able to have access to these products it's really important, and being able to have the discipline really to save is actually what fuels the ability to get the money and the interest.  04:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I will say that I was not confident in growing my business or taking risks in growing my business until I had a substantial amount of money in my savings account.  04:57 - Intro (Announcement) And what?  04:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) is substantial. I mean for me to feel comfortable that maybe I could pay my rent or pay my mortgage right if I didn't do any business. You know, like they always say, like you want to have as much money in your savings account like accrue three months worth of what it costs you to live in your savings account, and I would say that still holds true. I think that that made me feel comfortable.  05:17 Once I was in voiceover, knowing that if I had a lean month I was okay because I had that money in savings and so it is something that once I was able to accrue that and whatever it took right, I was putting $100 a month away or $50, whatever I could afford at the time.  05:33 And then, as I made more money, I just made sure that I always put into my savings account until I got to that point where I had a good three months. And then I was like it was so freeing and it was so confidence building that I had that good three months. And then I was like it was so freeing and it was so confidence building that I had that money that I could say, hmm, maybe I'll try a new genre, maybe I'll get a new demo or maybe I'll invest in this type of marketing or whatever it is. It allowed me that comfort to invest money to grow my business, and that, I think, is what was so instrumental in having a business savings account. Whether it's high yield or not, right, just having that amount of money aside was what gave me the confidence to grow my business. Other than that, I was living paycheck to paycheck. Who wants to live paycheck to paycheck?  06:19 I mean, that's just not the way to grow your business in voiceover and it's tough and I know a lot of people that might be where they're at and I encourage you to find a way to put a little bit away each month or each week or whatever you can do to grow that savings account.  06:37 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, that's huge. It's a psychological boost too, because you know that if there are lean months which as we know there are there are lean times that you can take care of yourself and the ability to sort of dip your toe into maybe a different genre or do something that makes you feel a little bit more uncomfortable, that your security blanket is this account that can buoy you If it doesn't work out or if it takes a little bit longer. It makes you feel much more confident and secure because you are, because you are the one who is securing yourself. It's a really big deal. It's a big deal to be able to have that and the confidence that it gives you. It was a game changer. Yeah, it's a game changer. A game changer for me.  07:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It really really was, and it catapulted my business into different areas. I mean, everybody knows I've got multiple brands, and so I would not have been able to grow those brands had I not had that comfort or confidence level of having a little bit of cash so that, okay, I could spend more time building up this brand instead of auditioning, or I could invest in a demo, or I could invest in a virtual assistant, right. Again, we just had an episode talking about hiring assistants, right. And so that savings account gave me such a big boost in order to grow, and I continue to make sure that I have money in that. And what's nice is that, even though, let's say, some months I may not be able to put as much into it, right, the one that is a highield savings account is such a bonus, right now because it's accruing a higher interest rate than any of my other accounts, and so I am continuing to get more confidence in putting money in there.  08:16 So the more you make an interest, the more you want to put in it.  08:18 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, the account is helping you out.  08:20 - Intro (Announcement) Exactly.  08:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So the high-yield savings account is a boon and again, we're not financial advisors, but look into it. I mean Google. I know that for me. It's really given me even more confidence than I had before. So always, always, really make it a point to have a business savings account and business savings account. I mean it's great to have a savings account your personal but, as we discussed before, right when you're running your business, you really want to separate your accounts, exactly.  08:46 Into business checking and business savings and most banks right. If you're going to open up a business account with them, they're going to have options for you to open a business savings account.  09:01 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, and you really just kind of have between the personal savings and the business savings Because, as Danielle, I have my own personal savings for me and then the business that I'm running has its own savings account that I'm going to be able to utilize that money if I need it for any sort of business expenses, and keeping that separate. Going back to the basics of finance, keeping those two things separate really helps me out when it comes to tax time. It helps me out in the day-to-day running of my personal life and my business. So, yes, keeping them separate, and the same way that you keep your money separate from your business and your personal, keeping your savings account separate as well. And knowing what are you utilizing that savings for? Obviously, it's not meant to be used for everyday purposes, but what are the criteria for when you would need to dip into that savings account? Really just kind of having a plan for your money.  09:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, yeah, and it also helps in your financial well-being in terms of how banks perceive you. Your FICO score. All of that contributes. Right, these are your assets, right, this is money that you have. And it's one of those things when I spoke to you about making that $500 stock investment in the company that I worked for, right, and I just forgot about it because it was, I considered it my spare change and I'm just going to put it in and, well, I'm going to look at it, but I'm not going to obsess over it and just kind of forget about it. And the nice thing is, when you have it in a bank, that when they want your business, they're going to offer you perks of that, and so high yield savings is one of them, and so that money just grows, right, I can just put it in there and it just grows. And when I look at the monthly statement and I say, whoa, look at how much interest I got this month.  10:39 It makes me want to put more into it. It makes me want to find ways to put more into it. And when you're talking about manifesting abundance and you're talking about positive things that spur you on and having faith and thinking in terms of having abundance, that is really helps. I'll tell you, when you're looking at that account and it keeps growing, that can really be a big mental help to you feeling successful in terms of your business.  11:06 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, it's the evidence right. It's the evidence that what you are doing and what you've been doing is working and that it's growing. So, having that sort of tangible you know the statement to see I put this much money in and this is how much my money made, without really me doing anything other than putting that money into this account, it's evidence that what you're doing is working and to keep going.  11:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And it's not like you're taking a risk like the stock market. You're investing yourself in your business, exactly, so it's a fairly stable. Unless the bank goes under right, it's a fairly stable yeah well, that's a whole nother podcast but it's a fairly stable way to grow your money.  11:41 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Right and also to grow your confidence. I really love that and I think it's really important the distinction of, yes, you're growing your business, but also you're growing your confidence and you're growing your ability in your business to grow and invest and take risks, which helps you potentially grow your business. You're investing in your confidence, not just monetarily, but in that emotional feeling of security that only you can give yourself. It's a big deal.  12:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and it doesn't take much.  12:10 I mean, bosses, you're already risk takers, right, because you've decided to get into voiceover, you've decided to become an entrepreneur, you've decided to start a business.  12:18 This is just another aspect of it, and it's an aspect of it that can give you that cushion to weather all types of storms that can happen within your business. There's just so many people I know that are like they gave it all up to invest in voiceover but yet they don't necessarily have savings. And I know as a coach, when I'm talking to students that want to get into this industry, and there's a lot of people during the pandemic right that lost their jobs, that wanted quick money, and I was careful to say that voiceover does require an investment. It's not that you're going to be able to make quick money right away, and we all know that those of us that have been in the industry, this is the same kind of thing, really that you want to make sure that you've taken the risks and now you've got another savings account that can help you survive and weather those storms as you move forward in your business.  13:06 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) It's infrastructure. It's setting up the infrastructure for the what-ifs or what could happen in your business and it's creating sort of more cushion for yourself, just in case things happen. Also, saving maybe totally different, but saving for things that you need to do in your business. Maybe it's setting aside a certain amount of money for taxes, maybe it's setting aside a certain amount of money because you want to attend conferences and you need to travel and take the time away. That can be part of the business savings. But I think making sure that you have the mindset that the money that is coming into your business, not all of it, needs to be spent or used now you do need to put a certain amount of money aside for certain things taxes, education, investing in your business, investing in yourself in the lean times and in the slower times. It's really looking at what is happening in your business and creating the infrastructure for what could happen.  14:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you know, what else is interesting too is that with some banks, they'll give you more benefits, right, the more you have. So if you open up this type of business savings account, you need to maintain a certain amount of money in there, and when you do that, you'll get free checking, you'll get a lower interest, credit card from them, all types of things, different perks, you'll get 3% back or you'll get money back, and so it behooves you to do that, because they're also offering you incentives to kind of keep money in that savings account, right, and you're not going to just have it to like blow in the first month on a new microphone or a new demo, but to maintain funds in there, right, so that you can keep up the benefits.  14:40 - Intro (Announcement) And so.  14:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I like that. There's like a double incentive. Really it's nice to have that cushion and then you'd want to keep it in there, and it's not like we haven't really discussed retirement funds or mutual funds or anything like that, and again, we're not financial advisors. However, they work differently, where, if you keep the money in there for a certain amount of time, or you're required to keep money in there for a certain amount of time or until you reach a certain age as retirement.  15:04 A business savings account is simply just a business savings account where you're not penalized if you have to take money out. So I think it's got like everything in it. You know what I mean? It's got that added cushion security. You get benefits if you keep more in it, but yet you're not penalized if you have to take out of it. Necessarily.  15:21 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, it's access, potentially very quick access to the money that you have that you've put aside for whatever it is that you are saving for. I think it's important to have access to the sort of quick access to the account, so like a business savings account and then other more long-term, like you were discussing you know we're not financial advisors but having access to your money for retirement or things like that. It's really important to have the infrastructure for short-term, medium-term and long-term savings.  15:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, especially because, as entrepreneurs, you're not necessarily contributing to a pension fund from your own business, right? There's a lot of people that we haven't even really talked. We'll probably have an entire podcast dedicated to retirement, but you probably are not thinking about contributing to a retirement fund, so this can be one step towards money that can go into that Although I do think that's another separate podcast episode that we need to talk about because I'm very lucky because I have a pension coming from my experience in education and my husband has a pension fund coming from a job that he worked for previously. So when we retire, we're going to have that money, and so I'm not necessarily contributing to a quote unquote retirement fund.  16:38 But I do have mutual funds through my financial advisor that I'm investing money in, and I have an independent retirement fund that I basically take $100 a month for that particular account, and I would recommend that as well for anybody that is not necessarily have a retirement fund, because all of a sudden, you're going to be at retirement age and you're going to be like oh, wait, a minute, I don't have. Where's that money? Do I have money in savings? Do I have that money in a fund that can help support me when I'm no longer working and most people say, well, I could work in voiceover forever. But I mean, look, I love voiceover but I'm not going to work in it forever. I mean, at some point my voice will crack and sound old and I'm going to be tired. I'll be happily traveling the world living off my savings slash retirement because I invested.  17:27 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Now so it's something bossy. You're painting a wonderful picture of your life, and I'm just like me too. That's it. That's what I want to do.  17:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm going to be traveling the world and it's because I'm thinking now about those things, right, and of course, in reality we should have been thinking about it and people tell you all the time, right, Thinking about retirement when you're like 18.  17:47 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) But think about savings.  17:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Best time to save and invest is yesterday and next best time is now and so, in terms of some people were like, well, I just don't have it right To invest in savings. And again, if you are in voiceover and you're living paycheck to paycheck, really consider thinking about that. You know, I mean, and I did it when I first started full-time in voiceover, I had a part-time job.  18:09 I worked my butt off contributing and saving and having a fund so that I could ultimately, when it got to the point where I was making more money doing voiceover, I could ultimately stop that part-time job, but I do encourage all of you if you are living paycheck to paycheck on voiceover, maybe it's time to consider a job that will bring in some steady income that you can put into a savings account.  18:31 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Exactly have something that will help invest, input capital into your life and to your business. This is a long process. Entrepreneurship is a marathon and you have to learn how to pivot as time goes on, and maybe that means that you need to bring in something that will help bring in capital to your life and your business. Maybe that's a part-time job, maybe it's freelancing, maybe it's figuring out how you can pivot to make money elsewhere. Whatever it is being able to have again, the infrastructure of savings around you is incredibly important because it's a long game and there's nothing wrong nothing at all wrong with having outside resources. That's bringing you in money outside of voiceover.  19:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Gosh, no, I mean I was just talking to somebody the other day. I always talk about my Chanel lipstick or whatever it is, but I love fashion, right, and so if I love something like that and I'm spending a lot of money on clothes because I recently did lose a little bit of weight, so congratulations.  19:32 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Oh, thank you.  19:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But I mean, what's wrong with finding something that brings me joy? So maybe I'll be an affiliate or I will do some form of my business that will allow companies to maybe send me free clothes or make some money off of the clothes that I buy so I can buy more clothes. So it's that kind of a mentality. And I'm still doing voiceover. I'm still a coach, I'm still, but I happen to love fashion. So I just added that kind of to my alternate. This is what Anne's going to do on her free time. Maybe I can make a couple extra dollars that I can put into that high yield savings account and have fun along the way, right? Yeah, so it really is. I think, up to us as entrepreneurs, right? There's nothing saying you have to do 24-7 of voiceover in order to have a successful business.  20:20 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Absolutely. What can you do and how can you do it that will bring money into your ecosystem, your business, your life, so that you can use that money to fund really everything else about your life. And that means also saving, because saving is really just putting money aside for future you so that future you can benefit. That's right. It's also a discipline too. For me it's been a discipline of looking at the amount of money that I have access to and dedicating some of those funds to my longer term savings maybe retirement or maybe, as you were talking about, mutual funds and investments but also to my business high yield savings account, to my business account, because I know that one day I will need access to that money.  21:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, and a lot of times the banks will make it very easy. You can have it $100 or $50 or $25 or $500, whatever it is on a monthly basis, literally just streamed into those accounts, into your savings account, into your retirement fund, whatever it is, it can be done automatically, so you don't even see it. It's like when you worked for my company and they would ultimately take out so much money for retirement or whatever it is, automatically and then match that back in the day when companies did that. Very few companies do that anymore, but it's similar to that. So when it's taken out automatically, you don't necessarily notice it. So try to implement those things right so that you can contribute regularly and consistently to a savings account, so that you can have that money for when you want to go travel or retire from whatever it is you're doing.  21:51 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I will tell you that automation is the way that I was able to consistently put the money in savings in the first place.  21:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's hard when you manually have to do it, you know.  21:59 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Because it takes away the human element. The human has emotions about money and may not want to put that money in these accounts. Oh, so true. The automation doesn't have that, so it's going to continue to do what you've set it up to do, and actually that's how you get the result that you're wanting when you take away the human element.  22:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love how you said that there's the emotional element to money, and again, we could write a book on that right there's an emotional element to money.  22:24 In so many ways. We have such a connection to it, whether we want to or not, right? I mean, it's how there's a roof over my head, it's how I afford this microphone, it's how I can afford to put clothes on my body and food in my body, and so there is a lot of emotion tied around money. So if you can make that emotion as painless and as easy, and even as possible.  22:48 Yeah, make it invisible, I mean. And they also say that one of the most frequent causes for divorce is financial right Issues and troubles. So if you can make it easy and seamless, why not? And a business savings account for me, having it taken out automatically, having my money grow on a monthly basis and being encouraged and inspired to contribute on a regular basis to it, it's a no brainer. It should be a no brainer, I think, for everybody that wants to run a successful business.  23:16 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, and it's a tool to be able to utilize and run your business successfully. It's just another thing, it's another tool in the tool belt. It's a way to help you feel more confident when times are a little bit tougher, and it's a way to know that you can fund the business that you are running. It's invaluable. I love it.  23:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. And again, we both decided early on bosses that we could just spend 27 minutes saying I love my high yield savings account.  23:43 - Intro (Announcement) I love my high yield savings account.  23:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love my high yield savings account Again, not that we're trying to push anything on you, but we are not financial advisors. How many times do I have to say that to this time? But no, really, I mean it's the most amazing thing, because I'd been sitting there for years, like literally for years, watching getting pennies, like every month, in my bank account. I'm like what happened? It used to be the banks were like here, we're going to give you so much percent each month for keeping this money in our bank, and it just became a little bit different until, like you said, the online banks who don't have the overhead costs of brick and mortar, can offer those things right and again.  24:16 And my bank has really upped its game too, by the way, because when I told them about my high yield savings account, I said, well, why are you not matching that? And so they actually came up with because I wanted to have a business savings account as well as a high yield business savings account. Right, with them, they upped their game. So it's something you can actually talk to your bank about and say look, why can't you offer me this amount of interest? A lot of times? Banks, if they want your business, they're going to work with you.  24:48 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) So yeah, and also just educating yourself of what is out there. To be completely honest with you, for the longest time and for me, coming from a musical theater background I never, ever, ever considered what I would need to do to have savings for my business. The education for me happened from my personal life, for personal finance and then bringing that into how I'm running my business. But, to be honest with you, for me I wasn't even really thinking about savings because I was just looking at what was coming in. I need this money now, okay.  25:16 It kind of just kept cycling through the moment, but really stopping and taking a look and saying, okay, I can be the person to fund my level of confidence and security when I'm in an industry that is volatile sometimes. That is a complete game changer and it requires thinking about things differently, but it also requires educating yourself of what options are out there for you to be able to do that.  25:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And bosses repeat after us like I love money, right, danielle? I think the two of us could just say I love money, I love money.  25:48 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I love money.  25:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That is our emotional attachment, right? We just said that there's a lot of emotion attached to it. I love money, and so if I didn't love money, if I hated money, it would not want to come into my life, right? I mean, I can't be hating things that I want to manifest, hating things that I want to manifest, and so I love my relationship with money. And at times, yes, it's tough that it runs the world, it's tough that I have to spend so much on a monthly basis to put the roof over my head or that oh my gosh, you know how much is food these days. It can be frustrating at times, but in reality, my relationship with money is to have a love affair with it so that I can manifest it in abundance.  26:23 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yes, and a love affair that is not fear. Yeah, because when you're running away from something, even if it's trying to catch you, then it really seems like it's just chasing after you. So a love affair and being open to it and wanting it, and wanting to learn about it, and wanting to invest the time into it. I love money too, anne. I think we I love money too.  26:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's it. That's it. We can go home High-yield savings account and we love money. There you go, bosses. What a great conversation. Again, we could say this 500 more times, but I think you guys get the point. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect, network, make money like bosses and find out more at IPDTLcom. There you go, you guys have an amazing week and we will see you next week. Bye.  27:10 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at VOBosscom and receive exclusive content industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a bosscom and receive exclusive content industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPD TL.   

This Episode is for the collective and we are discussing Your FICO score, how many of us are burried in debt because of it? Sure, its a necessary evil that we need in order to move and elevate through society. To get a good job and utilities even a mortgage or car loan, but how many of us get in way over our heads?--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dailylifetip/messageSupport the showhttps://chat.openai.com/g/g-8E47AuJfB-life-points-assistanthttps://FaceBook.com/Lifepointswithronda1https://youtube.com/@lifepointswithronda2968https://TikTok.com/@lifepointswithrondahttps://Instagram.com/@lifepointswithrondahttps://Patreon.com/@lifepointswithrondahttps://Lifepointswithronda.com

Join host Shiva Dhanasekar on Learn or Be Learned as he tackles the tough but exciting world of real estate investing mindset with a fantastic group of guests. In episode 3 of the miniseries, realtors Ramu Velu from Velu Holdings LLC and Nithin Thomas from Nithin Thomas Consulting Co. discuss everything potential homebuyers need to know to prepare for purchasing their next home. From prequalification to the importance of putting down a significant down payment, the hosts cover it all. They even advise potential buyers to prioritizing owning a home over a car! Throughout the podcast, they emphasize the importance of finding a good realtor who will guide the buyer in the right direction to make their dream home a reality. Don't miss out on this episode and many others like it to come on Learn or Be Learned! Timestamps [00:00:00] Real Estate Investing Mindset Mini-Series [00:03:33] Navigating Prequalification for Home Buying [00:06:53] Financing for Home vs. Car Purchase [00:10:27] Benefits of 5% Down Payment on Conventional Loans [00:14:12] Co-borrowers for loans and building credit [00:17:37] Navigating Mortgage Loans and Realtors [00:21:00] The Importance of Realtor Intentions [00:23:59] Finding the Right Full-Service Realtor [00:26:34] Choosing a Realtor Based on Experience and Qualifications Notable Quotes [14:03] You might have a parent that'll cosign the home for you. And what does that mean? That means they are a co borrower. If you fail to pay, they are liable to pay. - Ramu Velu [17:42] Your FICO score, your Credit Karma, credit score are not the same level of scores that are gonna pull up when you apply for a mortgage loan. They use much strictor standards. - Ramu Velu [25:13] Those who can ask you that 1 way that I find out if a realtor is really really, like, into into the thick and thin, is if you look at their shoes, if it's polished all the time, that could be an intention that it may maybe not may not be going out as much. If your shoes are dirty, that that could be also an intention. - Nithin Thomas [26:10] This is typically it it sounds like this is the middle man. This is the person that is going to connect you with the dream that you're looking for. Right, with the expertise that they have. They're the ones that are kind of guiding you in the direction that you want to go, but don't know where to start. - Shiva Dhana [28:49] If you're looking for your realtor to be your buddy, that is not a qualification for employment. Right? How buddy buddy you are with your realtor does not speak anything about the quality of the job that they're going to do or how well they will meet your needs. - Ramu Velu Links to the Guests and Resources Mentioned (if any) ⁠⁠Ramu Velu's Instagram⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Nithin Thomas Instagram ⁠⁠ My Information Podcast Link Page: www.solo.to/shivadhana Instagram: ⁠⁠@shivadhana⁠⁠ Email | ⁠⁠shivadhana@dhanastudios.com⁠⁠ Video Podcast on YouTube: ⁠⁠Click Here for YouTube Channel⁠⁠ Apple Ratings & Reviews: ⁠⁠Click Here for Apple Podcasts⁠⁠ Show Notes, Tips & More: ⁠⁠Click Here for Linkedin Page⁠⁠ Contact Me or Be a Guest: ⁠⁠Click Here for Podcast Website⁠⁠ Share a link to my podcast: ⁠⁠Click Here for a Link to Podcast Platform Selections⁠ Hashtags #LearnOrBeLearned #RealEstateInvestingMindset #HomeBuyingTips #RealtorRepresentation #CreditScore #MortgageApplication #CreativeFinancing #ConventionalLoan #CoBorrower #QualityService #FindingTheRightRealtor #FullServiceAgent #VettingProcess #Experience #Qualifications #CommunicationStyle --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/shivadhana/message

On this episode of Financially Naked: Stories from The Financial Gym, our host is Jazmin, a Certified Level 2 Financial Trainer based in California. Today, she is joined by Carlos and Yuni Garcia. Carlos is a Licensed Real Estate Agent in California and works together with his wife, Yuni. When you're ready to buy or sell a home, choosing the right real estate agent can make all the difference, especially in a competitive market. Carlos and Yuni are here to share their insights about what the home buying experience should look like and red flags to keep in mind when interviewing prospective agents.  Podcast Notes What does a real estate agent do, and when should someone work with one?  It is a real estate agent's job to represent buyers and sellers with honesty and integrity. You can work with one when you're buying or selling a home.  In these competitive times, a great agent can make all the difference. They are out there every day and know the ins and outs of the market.  They can provide a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) - a tool used to estimate the value of a specific property by evaluating similar ones that have recently sold in the area. Each buyer and level of purchase is different. Everyone has their own background, goals, needs, and limits when it comes to purchasing a home.  A great agent will guide you through the process and make it fun because they are experts in the field.  Qualities of a GREAT real estate agent:  From the beginning of the process, they are timely and communicative. Great communication is important. They should make themselves available.  They take the time to answer your questions and share valuable information. It's an educational process, and they should be willing to teach you along the way.   Someone who checks your references and makes sure you will be a good fit for them.  Someone who has credentials and experience in the field. Some questions to ask: ‘How long have you been in the business?'  ‘How many sales have you made?'  ‘Are you a top producer?'  ‘Are your offers being swiftly accepted?'  A great negotiator. Someone who will work to get you the best deal.  A person who will be straightforward and with you through the process. Their goal should be to get you into a home that you can truly afford in an area you want to live in.  What are some RED FLAGS to watch out for when interviewing real estate agents? As with every industry, there are predatory people in the real estate business.  An unresponsive agent can stall the process when it's time to put in offers. Watch out for someone who is unresponsive, or lacks timely communication.  A lack of professionalism, for example, arriving late or unprepared for meetings or showings.  Never surrender your deposit to people who are promising to give you a deal. That will ALWAYS go through escrow.  Why do some people look to sell their homes?  The last two years, there has been a desire to upsize. People working from home or realizing they would like a little more space.  Some folks want to downsize, or move to a different area.  Folks looking to invest in their long term future, and want to do so through real estate.  General best practices when preparing to buy a home:   Make a plan. There are many steps to ensure you're ready before starting the home buying process!  Your FICO score will determine the loans available to you. Aim to raise your score if it needs work.  Focus on your debt to income ratio.  Fund the emergency fund. Save for the down payment (anywhere between 5%-25%)  Practice making the mortgage payments and deposit that money into a savings account.  Get your pre-approval before getting in touch with real estate agents.  Have your documents prepared: 2 years of tax returns, paystubs or a letter from your accountant, and bank statements are a great place to start.  Do the research, use the internet and references from friends,  Always get a second option. This goes for lenders and real estate agents. It is a huge disservice to yourself to only get one opinion.  Work with a local, licensed agent, rather than one of the big platforms.  Remember, buying a home should be fun!    More on Home Buying & Home Ownership: Gymsplaining Mortgages and Refinancing  Buying a House Connect with Carlos and Yuni  Instagram: @0carlos0 Facebook: Facebook.com/carlosgarcia Meet The Trainer Meet Jazmin Higgins, Level 2 Certified Financial Trainer  You can become a Certified Financial Trainer, and build your own Financial Coaching Business! To learn more about The CFT School, follow this link:  Financial Trainer Certification

BUSINESS CREDIT SERVICE: https://getfundedprogram.com/business... APPLY FOR LOAN: https://getfundedprogram.com/ Sing up for Salesforce Business Analyst training: https://sfbatraining.com/ Before we start don't forget to give us a thumb up and click the bell icon to be notified for future videos. Business credit is important for a number of reasons. With a good business credit score, you'll find it easier to obtain financing with lower interest rates and more favorable terms. You can also land better deals with vendors and suppliers. In addition, strong business credit may protect your personal credit score. If you have bad personal credit, rest assured you can still build business credit. While it will be a bit of a challenge, it's certainly possible. First of all, let's talk about the difference between Business Credit and Personal Credit. Your FICO personal credit score is based on five factors including your payment history, credit utilization, length of credit history, credit mix, and new credit. Business credit, however, works differently from personal credit history. It considers how long you've been in business and your business payment history. Business credit also looks at your history with Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax, Experian and FICO. What is a Good Business Credit Score? Every lender has its own criteria for what they consider good business credit. In most cases, however, lenders prefer business credit scores that are higher than 75. Some lenders may have more lenient requirements, especially for startups or newer businesses. Here are some tips on how to build business credit for people that have bad personal credit. 1. Establish an EIN If you don't have an Employer Identification Number (EIN), it's time to establish one. It can give you an alternative way to apply for business credit. With an EIN, you can also open business checking and savings accounts. In addition to an EIN, it's a good idea to establish a physical address and separate phone line to legitimize your organization. 2. Sign Up with Dun & Bradstreet Dun & Bradstreet is a bureau that provides information on business credit and reports on businesses. You can apply for your nine digit D-U-N-S number for free to start building business credit right away. 3. Use a Business Credit Card With a business credit card, you can begin to establish your business credit history. Just make sure that you pay your credit card bills on time and in full so that the credit card company will report positive behavior to the credit bureaus. Note that you may need a personal credit check and personal guarantee to get approved for a business credit card. In the event you don't qualify for a traditional business credit card, opt for a secured credit card or retail credit card at a store your business frequents. 4. Apply for a Working Capital Loan Some business loans are easier to obtain than others. If you don't have the best personal credit, a working capital loan may be an option. It can help you finance your day-to-day operations and cover your short-term financial needs. By making timely payments you'll find that your business credit score will increase. Plus, you'll still have access to ample cash flow to grow your business. 5. Check Your Business Credit Reports Often It's important to keep a close eye on your business credit reports so you can stay up-to-date on where your business's credit stands. You may also catch errors and inaccuracies that take a serious toll on your credit.

To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1085/29 Do you know the number one reason why it's good to have a high credit score? Here's a hint: it's not about bragging rights or feeling superior, although some folks might view it that way. No, the number one reason you want to have a good credit score is that it makes sense,dollarsand cents. A high score saves you money! We often get calls from folks who are concerned about their credit scores. Other times we hear from people financing a car and they want to know if they've been offered a good interest rate. What they may not realize is how closely those two things are related. When a lender approves you for a loan, the interest rate they offer isn't something they just picked out of a hat. The first thing they do is check your credit score, often from more than one source. The higher your score, the lower the interest rate they'll offer you. And over the term of a car loan, a lower rate will add up to big bucks in your pocket. But that still leaves the question, What exactly is a good credit score? FICO is just one company providing credit scores to lenders and consumers; however, their scoring range is typical of most. Your FICO score will always be a single number between 300 and 850. Keep in mind what that number really means. It's based on your credit reports which show your past performance in handling credit. That is, how well you've kept your word to pay back money that you owe on time. Since lenders don't know you personally, they need a tool like a credit score to determine the risk factor in lending you money. And while the good range (which will get you a decent interest rate) is anything from 670 to 740. Some lenders may give you a car loan with a score as low as 450. Why would they do that? It's not because they like you. Since a higher percentage of folks with credit scores that low will likely default on their loans, lenders need a way to make up for those losses. They do that by charging higher interest rates to folks with lower scores. So, with a credit score of 450 to 500, you'll be offered the very highest rates. The higher your credit score, the lower your interest rate and the lower your monthly payment. How much lower? Consumer expert Clark Howard ran some numbers on an all-too-typical 48-month new car loan for $25,000 and the results are eye-opening. Keep in mind that it's always better to pay cash for a car. But if you have to borrow, keep saving until you can pay cash for the next purchase. So let's say you have a FICO score in the top range, from 720 to 850. And let's say that gets you an interest rate of 3.9%. Your monthly payment would be $560. And over the life of the loan you'd pay a total of just over $2,000 in interest. If you're worried that your credit score is too low, the process for raising it is relatively simple. It starts with checking your credit reports for errors that might be dragging down your score. Order free credit reports atAnnualCreditReport.comand dispute any errors you find. If you have balances in arrears, bring them all up to date, then commit to making all of your payments on time. Finally, work to pay off as much debt as you can. Ideally, you don't want any balance on a credit card. But never have a balance of more than 30% of your available credit as that will drag down your credit score. If you start doing all of those things, your score will gradually begin to rise. It'll take time, but now that you know how much money a good credit score will save you, you've got plenty of incentive to get started. If you need help, sign up with a volunteer coach atMoneyWise.org. We can help you get on a budget and set up a plan to get the process started. Remember: a good credit score is really just the result of doing what you've promised, to pay back what you owe. As followers of Christ, that should always be our priority. On today's program we also answer your questions: What's the best way to pay off early a fixed, 30-year mortgage? I have a 401(k) from work. Also, my wife has a 403(b). We're both retired and are approaching age 70. I'm assuming that we can set up a direct transfer of money from each account into our savings accounts, for example, since we don't need the money. But when we do that and when we reach 72 and have to take the RMDs, will that go over and above what we're transferring out or will this take care of that? Other than my monthly deposits into my IRA of $500 (earning 4%)and that's limited to $7,000 a year worth of depositswhere else can I put additional money for retirement? Remember, you can call in to ask your questions most days at (800) 525-7000 or email them toQuestions@MoneyWise.org. Also, visit our website atMoneyWise.orgwhere you can connect with a MoneyWise Coach, purchase books, and even download free, helpful resources like the free MoneyWise app. Like and Follow us on Facebook atMoneyWise Mediafor videos and the very latest discussion!Remember that it's your prayerful and financial support that keeps MoneyWise on the air. Help us continue this outreach by clicking the Donate tab on our website or in our app.

Your FICO credit score somehow predicts your likelihood to pay debts and represents your overall creditworthiness. Anyone can go online right now and visit a website that can calculate this for you. But doing so will reveal a slight dilemma: why does your score vary from one website to another? Which one is the most accurate? How can you tell if your score is good for you or not? Rondi Lambeth explains on a recent Facebook live how FICO credit scores are created. He dives deep into the five areas of the FICO pie chart, discussing how to properly manage your credit cards and deal with your negative payment history.  

Host Sandy Clough and Larry Jaeger, President of SCL Mortgage, talk about credit scores. Do you really know your FICO score, do you need to know how to find out what it is and how often should you check your credit? Your FICO scores equals the cost of money. Listen and learn how to improve your scores. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today’s episode, I am joined by Eileen E. Galbraith also known as the Credit Gal.  We are going to talk about your credit, business funding, and ways to fix your finances right away. Eileen E. Galbraith is your Savvy Credit Business Woman, aka The Credit Gal. She works with individuals and small business owners, specifically with those who are seeking to grow their business. Entrepreneurs hire her to maximize their capital because most are turning over couch cushions to invest in their business, putting their families, credit, and growth at risk. So, she positions them to get the money they need, protect their assets, and leverage their genius.  In this episode, we start out talking about personal credit because it is the foundation.  We talk about optimizing your own personal credit to build your business credit.  Eileen talks about beginning steps to make your business official so you can become a fundable and creditable business.   Show Notes: [00:58] Eileen E. Galbraith is your Savvy Credit Business Woman, aka The Credit Gal. [01:27] The very first thing you want to do is get a copy of your personal credit report and continue to get your credit report every year. 78% of credit reports are wrong.    [02:01] Your credit follows you everywhere.   [03:39] You want to make sure your personal data is correct and optimize these areas.  [04:02] After you verify your personal information you then need to check all your accounts are reporting properly.  [04:58] Once we have maximized your credit report, we look at if there are any ways to optimize your credit score.  [05:59] Your FICO credit score goes from 300 to 850.  [06:22] You want to make sure your business is fundable and creditable.  You also need to be incorporated around your EIN.  [07:28] Then open your business checking account using your business documentation and EIN right away.  [07:52] The underwriting guidelines say your business opened the day you opened your business checking account.     [10:12] 35% of your FICO score is how you pay your bills.   [10:55] Your goal should be to use less than 20% of the credit you have available.  [11:57] There is only one determining factor for business credit and that is how you pay your bills.   [12:50] You want to have a D-U-N-S number for your business.   [15:04] The beauty of business credit is that you can get the business credit lines and credit cards without personally guaranteeing them.  If someone comes to sue your business they can’t come after you on a personal side.   [16:58] Eileen recommends three to six months of reserves in your personal and business world.   [18:12] The more address you have listed on your credit report the harder it is for the underwriting to get your qualified.  The goal is to have two addresses.  [19:04] Your bank account should be set up in the name of your corporation. [20:36] Many use a personal credit card in the beginning before they transfer that to a business credit card and that can be used to verify funds.  [22:27] You can dispute anything that is inaccurate, misleading, or erroneous on your credit report.  There is a process to follow to dispute something.  [24:13] It does take time to reverse errors on your credit report.  Prior to COVID dispute letters had to be responded to within 30 days. Since COVID they have a 45-day window to respond back.  [26:37] When you join a network marketing company you want to start an entity as soon as you can. You also want to set up the business checking account and all the commissions should go into this account.  Any expenses should go through that same account. [28:04] You can text or call Eileen to book a free 30-minute consult at (610) 609-1526 or eileen@thecreditgal.com [28:55] Entrepreneurs don’t realize how important it is to establish their business in the name of their business and how much it can benefit them. It is something you want to start now instead of later because it is going to give you so many more options to grow your business.   Links and Resources: Ask Loral App Loral on Facebook Loral on YouTube Loral on LinkedIn Money Rules Millionaire Maker Store The Credit Gal Website Eileen on LinkedIn Annual Credit Report  

Credit Boosting Changes are Coming. Your Fico 10 Score Could Drop. Credit Scores will be affected. Now is the time to plan for this change and pay attention to your credit scores.BUSINESS INQUIRIES: Eric@stopstrugglingnow.com

Your FICO score might just be one of the most important elements of your credit application. Because so many lenders use the FICO system, it might be best for you to get acquainted in the ways you can help the system see you as a better applicant. Merrill Chandler is joined by Jessica Tabora, a business manager at CreditSense. Merrill and Jessica run through the ways FICO matters in your credit application and how you can keep up the appearance of a stronger credit applicant. After all, you want to succeed as much as the FICO system wants you to succeed. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Get Fundable! Community today: GetFundablePodcast.com Get Fundable! Facebook GetFundableBootcamp.com

Your FICO score might just be one of the most important elements of your credit application. Because so many lenders use the FICO system, it might be best for you to get acquainted in the ways you can help the system see you as a better applicant. Merrill Chandler is joined by Jessica Tabora, a […]

Your FICO credit score determines the interest rate you get on car loans and mortgages. Here is how they arrive at that mysterious "score."

Two big mistakes are: 1) Renting out your former primary residence. 2) Only being invested in one market.  This Beginner’s Real Estate Investing Audio Guide also helps you step-by-step with buying an income property: Credit Scoring Mortgage Pre-Approval Writing An Offer Inspection Vetting A Property Manager Appraisal Insurance Closing LLCs  **The entire audio from this episode is transcribed into words and can be found at the end.** People set up LLCs for asset protection, anonymity, or tax purposes. But there is a lot of administrative work. Is it even worth setting up? Your FICO credit score has five ingredients. Down payment, debt-to-income ratio covered. Mortgage pre-approval is better than pre-qualification. Select income property in: job-growth economies, high rent in proportion to low purchase price. Cash flow = Rent Income minus “VIMTUM”. Why would someone sell you a cash-flowing property? “Turnkey” defined. Should you make a lowball offer to a turnkey provider? Also discussed: Negotiation Strategy, Earnest Money, Purchase Contracts, Management Fees, Management Agreements, Mobile Notary, Title Company, Rent-To-Value Ratio, Collecting Cash Flow. __________________ Want more wealth? 1) Grab my FREE E-book and Newsletter at: GetRichEducation.com/Book 2) Your actionable turnkey real estate investing opportunity: GREturnkey.com 3) Read my best-selling paperback: getbook.at/7moneymyths __________________ Resources mentioned: Mortgage Loans: RidgeLendingGroup.com Find Properties: GREturnkey.com Memphis & Little Rock Property: MidSouthHomeBuyers.com Turnkey Real Estate: NoradaRealEstate.com QRP: TotalControlFinancial.com JWB New Construction Turnkey: NewConstructionTurnkey.com Our Tampa Real Estate Field Trip: RealEstateFieldTrip.com Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold     Complete Audio Transcript:   Welcome to Get Rich Education. I’m your host Keith Weinhold and I’m here to help Beginning Real Estate Investors Today.  The biggest beginner mistakes to avoid, when you make an offer - can you lowball a turnkey provider, and all those buyer steps like LLCs, mortgage pre-approval, inspection, appraisal, and closing. Today, on Get Rich Education. _____________________ Welcome to GRE. This is Get Rich Education Episode 249 - and this is your Beginner’s Real Estate Investing Audio Guide. Hi, I’m your host Keith Weinhold. We’re talking about how to get into long-term buy & hold RE investing - and that’s because it’s the most generationally-proven way to build wealth. First, let’s talk about a couple of the biggest mistakes that real estate investors make - it’s being invested in only one geographic market. Often, that’s the market that they just happen to live in.  There is more risk with being in only one market than most realize, because you’re now tied to the fortunes or misfortunes of just one area’s economy. Another substantial, common real estate investor mistake is that they continue to hold onto one - I’ll call it - special - property in their portfolio that they usually need to get rid of - but they have either sentimental ties to it - or they just hold onto it for convenience, and do you know what that property is? I’m actually talking about a specific property here. It’s the home that THEY YOU USED TO LIVE IN yourself. Well, what’s wrong with renting out the home that you used to live in yourself?  You might still have the preferable owner-occupied financing locked in on that one - and afterall, that’s a better rate than you could get on a non-owner-occupied rental. The problem is that the property probably doesn’t perform BEST as a rental. But you might be clearing, say $500 per month by using your former primary residence as a rental today.  Look, for you, it’s often about the cash flow - and yes, it is about the cash flow.  But there’s something even more important than cash flow - that’s because nearly any property will cash flow if the loan were paid off. That’s why it’s really more specifically about the rent-to-value ratio of a property. If you’re renting out the home that you used to live in, and it wasn’t strategically bought as a rental, if your rent-to-value ratio (or RV ratio) is 0.6%, meaning that for every $100K in value it has, you’re only getting $600 of monthly rent income, then you’re losing cash flow dollars every year - and every month. Look, let’s give a real life example of the .6% RV ratio. Say that you can get $1,800 rent out of that $300K property that you used to live in.  But instead, three $100K homes bought strategically as rentals can have a combined rent income of $3,000. Yes, you can still find that full 1% rent-to-value ratio. So it’s either one $300K property at $1,800 of rent income. Or three $100K properties at $3,000 of rent income.  So you’re losing $1,200 dollars of cash flow every month - you’re only getting $1,800 rather than $3,000 - by not buying and owning strategically in markets in the Midwest and South where the properties make sense as a RENTAL on the day that you buy it. Your primary residence only made sense as a primary residence on the day that you bought it.  Now you can see that the only reason that you own it, is because you defaulted and “fell” into it. Don’t fall into things. Be intentional.  You are a better investor when you’re intentional rather than emotional. It’s even better for you now. Beyond your $1,200 of additional cash flow with some repositioning, now, with three properties instead of one - now you’ve also taken care of the first real estate investor mistake that I mentioned. WITH three rentals rather than one, now you can be diversified across multiple markets. Two birds are killed with one stone. Now with some re-positioning, you’ve increased your cash flow by $1,200, AND you’re in multiple markets. One property isn’t divisible. We’re talking about real estate investing for beginners today, so let me clearly guide you through step-by-step on just how you go about buying your first property - writing an offer, inspection and vetting your Property Manager which is known as due diligence, appraisal, and onto closing and receiving cash flow from the tenant. As you’ll see, much of today’s show pertains to any investment property at all. But we’re talking mostly about how to buy single-family turnkey homes, especially homes outside your home market - as most of the best deals are not found where you live. Like they say, the best investors live where they want to live, invest where the numbers make sense. Get Rich Education is heard in 188 world nations.  Today’s content is primarily geared toward United States real estate investors - but those that live outside the United States will benefit here too. Here’s a question that you might have - “How do I go about setting up an LLC - a Limited Liability Company - to hold my investment property in?”  I’ll tell you - I don’t think “How do I set up an LLC?” is the best question to ask. The best question to ask is, “Should I set up an LLC?”  The three main reasons people set up an LLC are for either anonymity, tax purposes, or asset protection. Now, if you know that you WANT to set up an LLC - I’ve done three episodes on that topic with Rich Dad Legal Advisor Garrett Sutton. You can go to GetRichEducation.com, type “Garrett Sutton” in the search bar, and those three episode numbers will appear so that you can listen. But the reason that the question is, “Should I even SET up an LLC?” is because: Setup of LLCs complicates your life. Maintaining a registered agent, Articles Of Incorporation, having separate accounts, tracking expenses with separate credit cards, paying annual fees for everything - depending on how many LLCs you have and how you structure your life - it can wear you out.   The second reason you should ask yourself, “Should I even set up an LLC?” is because you might not have many assets for a litigant to go after. Retirement accounts have certain protections already. Equity in a property could be low-hanging fruit for a plaintiff attorney if someone gets a judgement against you. But since the Return From Equity is always zero, what would you have much equity in a property anyway?   The third reason you should ask yourself, “Why should I even set up an LLC?” is that frivolous or slip-and-fall type of lawsuits are rare. Not only have I never been a party to one, I’ve never even heard of any investor friend or associate having one - and I talk to a lot of people. You probably haven’t heard of one either.   Now, note that I’m not saying you can’t get an LLC or shouldn’t get one. I’m saying, prioritize those questions to yourself. First, it’s “Should I get one?”. If that’s a definitive “yes”, only THEN ask: “How do I set one up?” Why do you think you have to? Did some attorney use fear tactics to get you to? If the result of the LLC’s administrative overburden provides a greater reward in the form of asset protection, anonymity, or tax benefit - which is typically a flow-through taxation type anyway, you might then … get an LLC. So, as a beginning real estate investor, understand that real estate is a credit-based asset - meaning it’s usually bought with a loan.  So let’s talk about getting your finances in order before you contact a lender or select an income property.  That begins with you having enough cash liquidated for a 20% down payment on the property - add about 4% for closing costs, depending on the state that you’re buying your property in - and on the lowest-priced property that’s still in a decent area of a low-cost city - which might be a $60,000 property … 24% of that then is about $14,000 that you’ll need. You should have some extra on top of that as reserves.  Now, let’s look at another part of your finances - your DTI - your debt-to-income ratio. It cannot exceed 43% to 45% - maybe up to 50% in some circumstances.  So if your monthly minimum debt payments - everywhere in your life - housing payment, minimum credit card payments, minimum car payment - if that sum is $5,000 and your gross monthly income is $10,000 - that’s a 50% DTI. You can’t exceed that. Of course, before a bank is willing to loan you money, they want to have a reasonable assurance that you aren’t weighed down with debt elsewhere because their fear factor goes up that they won’t get paid back. Next, let’s talk about your credit score. We dedicated an entire episode to this back in Episode 54. If you can remember back that far, Philip Tirone was here with us and you learned more about credit scores that you probably ever thought you would … … and he even went on to call the credit scoring system a total scam. He was quite opinionated - it was interesting and eye-opening, but ...  Playing within the scam here - as it might be.  There are many different credit scoring models, but the FICO Score - F-I-C-O - is a respected one that you’re probably going to see your mortgage lender use. It stands for Fair Isaac Company. Their credit scoring range is 300 - the worst, up to 850. 850 is essentially a perfect score. Importantly, 740 is the highest score that helps you here.  If you have a 782 or an 836, it doesn’t help you qualify for the loan or get you a lower mortgage interest rate or anything else.  740 is where you’re optimized.  Now, just a quick overview of FICO credit scoring ... There are five primary ingredients that make up your credit score. In order of importance, they are your payment history, amounts owed, length of your credit history, new credit, and finally credit mix.  That first one, Payment History, is the most heavily weighted one. It’s 35% of your score. As you might expect, the repayment of past debt is a major factor in the calculation of credit scores. It helps determine your future long-term payment behavior. Both revolving credit (i.e. credit cards) and installment loans (i.e. mortgage) are included in payment history calculations.  Although installment loans like mortgages take a bit more precedence over revolving credit - like credit cards.  This is why one of the best ways to improve or maintain a good score is to make consistent, on-time payments. The next way, your Amounts Owed – 30% This category is basically credit utilization or the percentage of available credit being used - or borrowed against. Credit score formulas “see” borrowers who constantly reach or exceed their credit limit as a potential risk. That is why it’s a good idea to keep low credit card balances and not overextend your credit utilization ratio. So if you’ve got just a $1,000 balance on a credit card with a $10,000 credit limit, that’s seen as a good ratio. You’re staying well within your limits then.  The third FICO credit score ingredient is the Length of your Credit History – 15% This factor is based on the length of time all credit accounts have been open. It also includes the timeframe since an account’s most recent transaction.  Newer credit users could have a more difficult time achieving a high score than those who have a long credit history. That’s because if you have a longer credit history, FICO has more data on which to base their payment history. The fourth of five FICO ingredients is your “Credit Mix” – Now we’re down to an ingredient only comprising 10% of your score. Credit mix just means that it helps your score if you have a combination of credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, finance company accounts and mortgage loans.  Finally, “New Credit” makes up the last 10% of your FICO score. Don’t open too many new credit accounts in a short period of time. That signifies a greater risk to lenders – and that’s especially true for you if you’re a borrower with a short credit history.  And you sure don’t want to open up any new lines of credit, down the road when you’re in the qualification process for buying a new property unless you check with your Mortgage Loan officer first. Knowing what factors make up your FICO® Credit Score can help you qualify for more loans and get better mortgage interest rates. That’s the bottom line. This helps you get pre-qualifed or pre-approved with your Mortgage Lender. To get prequalified, you just need to provide some financial information to your mortgage lender, such as your income and the amount of savings and investments you have. Your lender will review this information and tell you how much they can lend you.  After pre-qualification, you can seek the higher-level status and that is getting pre-APPROVAL for credit. Pre-approval is better than pre-qualification. If you think about it, it makes sense. Qualifying for anything in life is not as good as getting approved for something - I suppose.  Pre-approval involves providing your more detailed financial documents - like W-2 statements, paycheck stubs, bank account statements, and your previous two years tax returns. This way, your lender can VERIFY your financial status and credit. Now that you’re pre-approved with a lender, you can focus on the market and property that you’re interested in.  RidgeLendingGroup.com is the mortgage lender that we recommend most often because they SPECIALIZE in income property. They don’t have any seasoning requirements. Seasoning means that the person selling YOU the property needs to have held onto it for a certain length of time - or the lender won’t finance the property for you. While you’re in the pre-approval process, you can be learning about a cash-flowing investment market.  You want to pick a geographic metro market that typically has low-cost properties, and high rent incomes in proportion to those low costs.  In fact, the market is more important than the property. Because your income comes from your tenant, and your tenant’s income comes from a job. So you typically don’t want to own much property in a town with 14,000 people that’s an outlying area - not part of a greater metro - where 1/3rd of the employment is tied to one tungsten factory or even one semiconductor manufacturer. Because now, too much of your income stream is tied to just one industry. You also don’t want to buy slummy property. Those tenants often don’t pay the rent. You also don’t want to buy the median-priced home or higher, because the numbers don’t work out. So you want that working class housing that’s just below the median price point for the area. If you’re not already confident about that and familiar with the right provider ...  We have information on the right market, with the right provider, with properties - and they’re typically in the MidWest and South - at GREturnkey.com.  So read a market report there. That’s good, pointed information. Most investors are interested in a property for the production of cash flow. That’s the margin by which your rent income exceeds all expenses. Rent income minus expenses should be a positive number. So that’s your monthly rent minus VIMTUM. V-I-M-T-U-M.  Vacancy, Insurance, Maintenance, Taxes, Utilities, and Management. I like easy ways to remember things and VIMTUM is an easy way to remember. So, you’re listening to the Beginner’s Real Estate Investing Audio Guide here as a regular episode of Get Rich Education. If you’re not a beginner & you’re still listening, it’s either a good review and you might even be learning some new things along the way yourself.  Including, should you ever lowball a turnkey provider and a negotiation approach that I have for that - in a few minutes.  But first, one reasonable beginner question is ...   “Now why would someone would want to sell me a cash-flowing property in the first place? Why would someone sell me a good thing that pays them every month that they could continue to hold onto for cash flow? If a property pays someone every month while they hold onto it - why in the heck would they sell it to me? OK, some seller out there has a golden goose that lays a golden egg every month, so why in the world would they give me an opportunity to buy the goose? Well, there are just so many reasons for selling cash-flowing property - yes, a ton of reasons for selling even a young, healthy goose that lays golden eggs every month & is expected to so for years. Well, a turnkey provider runs out of money too. They can’t buy all the properties themselves.  They’d prefer a lump sum payout when they sell this property, because their business model is to go pay all cash for another distressed property that they can fix up.  And if you think that they snatched up the good ones themselves a while ago - yeah, they probably did do some of that. In fact - I WANT them to have snatched up some good properties from their own market earlier. It shows me that they believe in what they sell. Now, other reasons that the - I guess general public seller might want to sell you a property is ... One reason is moving. Say that a family in City A owns a few mom-and-pop rental homes that they self-manage and they’re moving to City B in another state, they’ll often sell their income properties. Some people want to self-manage their property (often because they never explored their best-and-highest use, but anyway) & if they have to move to City B, they’ll sell the property rather than try to find a Property Manager in City A.  Another reason people sell cash-flowing property is that - even if someone is not moving, that person might be tired of the self-management hassle - but yet they don’t try professional management - because that person has the DIYer mentality - that soooo common do-it-yourself mindset. OK, most people just don’t take a strategic approach to real estate investing. Other reasons for people selling cash-flowing property are death, marriage, divorce, and all kinds of either joyous or tragic life milestones. If a husband-and-wife own rental properties but running & managing them was kind of the husband’s thing & the husband dies … the wife doesn’t know how to run the properties & she’s likely to sell rather than hire a Property Manager. People may sell their cash-flowing property in case of all kinds of emergencies - medical and otherwise - because they may need a quick lump of cash - instead of the steady stream of cash flow over time that just won’t work for them in their new situation. OK, most of those situations involve some sort of external life change for property sellers - a lot of them tragic. Well - here’s a personal one for you...  A few years ago, I sold two cash-flowing apartment buildings at the same time - well, those sales actually closed on consecutive days - so nearly the same time. Both of those cash-flowing apartment buildings that I sold were 100% occupied with tenants, I had competent management in place, and there were no deferred maintenance issues with the buildings. You want to know my reason for selling two nice golden apartment gooses that were steadily laying some nice golden eggs? OK...can you guess why?  Alright, fortunately I didn't have any distress or emergency in my life. ...oh, and also, I wanted to sell them fast too, I couldn’t let these two cash-flowing apartment buildings linger on the market for a while. I really wanted to get rid of them. I had no distress like those situations I mentioned earlier. So can you guess why I wanted to sell these long-producing golden gooses in a good job growth market that produced nice cash flow, nice golden eggs? I’ll tell you why. That's because I knew I could 1031 Exchange those two gooses for two even larger gooses. Now I won’t get into the 1031 here on a beginner episode.  But I replaced the two smaller apartment buildings with two larger apartment buildings that would produce even larger eggs if I did it with a quick timeline - and I could defer any tax on my profitable gain.  I found - I guess - two very fertile egg producers that were going to produce even more cash flow over time. So...I think you get the message here. To the buyers of my smaller apartment buildings, I appeared as a very motivated seller of cash-flowing property, even though I had no external stress in my life.  It was due to internal reasons that I wanted to sell...and it’s the internal drive to expand my income.  No shrinking thinking here at Get Rich Education. Now, when you’ve found a cash-flowing property that you want to buy, should you make a lowball offer to a turnkey provider? My definition of lowball here, is, a 10% discount.  We’ll say, that a provider is offering a property for $120,000 - then you’d make the offer for 10% less, which is $108,000. That’s a lowball. My answer is ...  No. That’s not going to work. In almost every instance, that’s too much of a discount and it’s going to eat their margin too much.  Depending on how it’s presented, a seller might even be less motivated to work with you if they get a lowball offer.  This company has a business to run and with a turnkey property, you’re typically paying for the convenience. You leveraged their systems of them delivering this product to you that’s already renovated, rehabilitated, tenanted, and under management.  Now, can you can knock off $1K-$2K? And say, offer the seller then - $118K or $119K for the $120,000 property. Yeah, that might work.  It sure wouldn’t be deemed some unreasonable request. But it’s good to at least provide a reason - some rationale - in asking for the discount. Let me give you some perspective on this negotiation too.  For every $1,000 less in a mortgage loan that you take out, how much do you think that saves you in a monthly payment? Did you ever figure out how much that saves you? Well, at a 5% interest rate on a 30-year loan, reducing your mortgage loan amount by $1,000 saves you … $5. Five bucks in a reduced payment.  For more perspective, keep in mind too, that once the seller accepts your offer - it’s only the first part of the negotiation. Later, it’s a negotiation with the inspection. We’ll discuss how to navigate THAT shortly. I’m Keith Weinhold. You’re listening to Get Rich Education. ________________   Welcome back to Get Rich Education. This is your Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing. I’m your host, Keith Weinhold and we’re talking about buying an income-producing property.   That may or may not be a TURNKEY property - which just means that it’s already renovated, tenanted, and under management with a tenant on the day that you buy it.    Now, once your offer is accepted by the seller, I want to give you - really just a brief outline of what to expect next.    This isn’t intended to give you every step in exhaustive detail, but this is generally what comes next for United States real estate purchases, and custom varies somewhat from state-to-state.   So with that in mind, once the turnkey provider or seller accepts your purchase offer...   You need to send in your earnest money. Earnest money is not the down payment. It’s a smaller amount that shows good faith that you’re serious about your offer.    It’s often an amount of $5,000 or less and it shows the seller that you’re serious enough about buying the property that the seller has the confidence to take their property OFF the market and not show it to anyone else.   The seller should give you instructions on how to place your Earnest Money.    Now remember, your earnest money deposit is not going directly TO the seller, it is going to a third-party escrow account, and it is refundable to you in accordance with the terms of the contract you signed.   Your contract should have an estimated closing date in there. I want to emphasize that the key word there is “estimated”.    While it is important that all parties work towards closing by this date, between you and me - let’s just be realistic - the reality is that many transactions get delayed beyond the closing date in the contract for a variety of reasons on the seller side, sometimes having to do with construction or renovation delays.    If this happens, it is nothing to be worried about, just remain in touch with the seller and you can simply sign a contract extension if needed when the time comes.   As you are financing your property, be sure to keep getting your lender anything that they ask you for up so that they can keep processing your loan.    As your closing gets near, they will probably ask you for some updated information and have some final stipulations from the underwriter, so just remain in close touch with your lender and try to provide them what they need as swiftly as you can.   During most of this time where you’re under contract & even before you’re in-contract to buy the property, most of your relationship with your lender and seller is just sitting around, waiting for the next stage.    Once construction/renovation is completed on your property, I suggest that you order a professional home inspection before closing.    As the buyer, this is at your expense, but the home inspection is cheap insurance for you and it is an important part of your due diligence. It might cost you about $300 for a single-family turnkey income property.   A four-plex inspection might cost up toward $800.   When seeking an inspector - seek ASHI certification - that is American Society of Home Inspectors.   You’re looking for an inspector with a good reputation, licensed and bonded. It is good to look for a level of experience as well. The choice is really yours as the Buyer.   Your inspector points out deficiencies in what I’ll break into a few categories.    #1 is Major concerns – these are significantly defective, safety issues that require immediate repair. Often times, those things MUST be done in order for your lender to even finance the property so the seller is going to do those things for you. That might be adding a railing to a porch.   The second category are recommended repairs – So they’re recommended but not required. That might be adding some extra insulation in the attic.    The third category is “nice if it were done” - like a kitchen cabinet door that’s a little loose and doesn’t close snugly.   When you get your home inspection report back because the inspector has compiled their findings, the key to remember is that the inspector will ALWAYS return a (usually long) list of items that they recommend be corrected prior to closing.    Now, this even happens on new construction, so expect some findings.   And remember, you are not closing on the property in the condition it was inspected. Rather, the inspection is just part of the process on the path to getting the property to its final condition.    Then you and the seller agree on what will be fixed (at the sellers expense, and verified to your satisfaction), prior to closing.    The seller is anticipating that they will need to make some final repairs (at their own expense) after they get the inspection repair request from you. This is all part of the normal process.   Of course, you can get in a car or hop on a plane and visit the turnkey property yourself and walk the property with your inspector, but I’d say fewer than 10% of turnkey buyers do this.    But going to see the property in person is never a BAD idea.   Today, it’s easier than ever for an inspector or provider to e-mail you a property video. The report that you get from your Home Inspector after he visited the home will have lots of photos and details.   Typically, purchase offers are contingent on a home inspection of the property to check for signs of structural damage or things that may need fixing.  This contingency protects you by giving you a chance to renegotiate your offer or withdraw it without penalty if the inspection reveals significant material damage. Once the seller makes any needed repairs that the third-party inspector found, I suggest having a re-inspection done by that same inspector. This gives you the chance to confirm that any agreed-upon repairs have indeed been made. You might spend another $100 on this re-inspection. Now, if the original inspection showed that a leaky faucet needed to be replaced, and the seller said they’d do it, and the re-inspection finds that that work wasn’t done as promised, then any FURTHER re-inspection costs are often a cost borne by the seller. Which seems pretty fair - they said they’d do work - and the re-inspection that you paid for confirmed that it hadn’t been done in this case. Now, back to the negotiation. If you asked for a reduced Purchase Price, that could lean away from you asking for too much in the inspection.   How do I like to play it? Often times, I make a full price offer for the property - and I might even let the seller know at that time that I’d like to give you your price - it’s a full $120,000 in this case - and since you got your price, I’d like my terms.   My terms are - that I’m more bold in what I request the seller to do from the inspection findings.  Maybe I will ask them to add that extra insulation in the attic as one of those “Recommended buy not Required For Financing” items - or replace a window pane that had condensation inside it.   Then, what’s my justification for asking the seller for that. It’s that I’m paying your full price. Again, financing an extra $1,000 only costs me $5 per month.   Now, let’s talk about the property appraisal.    The appraisal is a tool that the bank uses to verify the quality of their collateral.    Because in your loan paperwork, at closing, the bank will basically tell you that if you don’t make your monthly payments, you’ll be foreclosed upon and the bank will take back the property - that’s their collateral.   So they want to make sure that the property seems to be worth as much or more than you’re in contract for - that $120,000 in our example.   Your lender is the one that orders the property appraisal, not you. In about 90% of U.S. states, you as the buyer pay for the appraisal. It costs up to about $500.    The appraiser is a member of a third-party company and is not directly associated with the lender. It wasn’t always that way.    In fact, one factor that led to the housing downturn of 2007 in the Great Recession is that some lenders & appraisers were “in cahoots”. Haha! That can’t happen anymore.    BTW, the appraisal and some of these other steps are all part of your closing costs. All part of that … about 4% of the property purchase price.   The appraisal is typically done by a certified appraiser physically visiting the home - and these people always seemingly have a tape measure with them.   The appraiser checks out the premises and their job is to use market comparables to make sure that the lender has adequate collateral in case you, the borrower, default.   OK, the bank doesn’t want to lend out more than the property is worth or else they could find themselves underwater if the borrower defaults. The appraisal protects against this.   And don’t confuse this appraisal with an assessment. An assessment is something that a county or municipality uses the measure the amount of property taxes that are paid. It’s really unrelated to this appraisal.   Now, before you select your Property Manager, I’d really like for you to talk with them on the phone or use a free video chat service like Zoom - it’s Zoom.us - it works a lot like Skype but Zoom is easier to use.   I mean, I don’t make many phone calls in my life anymore - much like a lot of people. But I want you to have a phone or video call with your PM because ...   I want you to have a good vibe - a good feeling about your property manager and to vet that manager just like you would vet out a manager for a non-turnkey company.   Just because a property is branded “turnkey” by a company, doesn’t mean that you can dismiss doing your due diligence. Turnkey can be a great system, but there’s nothing magical about that word alone.   Don’t overlook developing a good feeling about your Property Manager, because this is the one long-term relationship that you expect to have. I just can’t emphasize that enough. Your Manager is one of your key team members.   They’ll tell you the character of the current tenant that’s currently in the home. Find out how the manager is going to pay you. Feel them out, know what your communication flow is going to be like.    If they’re part of the same company, a good manager should also connect you with whom renovated your turnkey property in case you have some questions for them.   Now, notice that I haven’t mentioned a real estate agent. Most turnkey providers work in a direct model so that you don’t have to go through agents.   You must sign a written Management Agreement with your Property Manager.    This gives the manager written authority to manage your property for you, it will state their fees, and you’ll have your contact information in that agreement.   There are typically two fees - a leasing fee and a management fee.   A leasing fee is where you’ll spend ½ month’s rent to one month’s rent amount when the Manager screens a new tenant. So hopefully that only happens every 1 or 2 or even 5 years if you’re lucky.    Yes, you can typically approve or reject their selected prospective tenant. You are going to be the owner of the property afterall.   A management fee is often 8-10% of one month’s rent income - and that’s what you pay monthly - ongoing.   You can sign a Management Agreement with the property provider if they have management integrated in-house. If not, you can lean on your provider for some management recommendations.   Now, there’s one blank to fill in on your Management Agreement - it’s a dollar amount up to which the manager can pay for expenses that come up - against your account - without contacting you.    For example, if the number $500 is written in there, that means that if a maintenance or repair expense on your property exceeds $500, they must contact you prior to incurring that expense.   You get to choose that dollar limit. As a beginning real estate investor, go with a lower figure.    Then as you get comfortable and / or you don’t want to be bothered about the property as much, you can increase that dollar limit in which they need to contract you about approving maintenance or repairs.   Basically, if there’s something that has to do with the property & you don’t want to deal with it, then make sure it’s written in the Management Agreement that the manager will perform it.   Typically, it’s going to say that the manager will collect rent, handle tenant relations, respond to repair requests, send you the rent, keep your ledger of income & expenses on the property, post legal notices if a tenant is paying the rent late, and sooo many other associated duties that I personally don’t want to deal with. I just want to live my life.   Get that Management Agreement done - fully executed - signed by both you & the Manager BEFORE you close on the property.    Before you close, you can buy property insurance from any provider you choose.    Your turnkey provider is often happy to recommend some providers that their other clients have used in this market, or you can just Google and find your own.    Be sure to let the insurance provider know that this is a rental property (not a primary residence where you live and not a second home).    Most turnkey buyers purchase both hazard and liability insurance as part of their policy. Like any other insurance policy, you will have choices about deductibles, monthly payments, and coverage amounts.    If you are financing your property, your lender will most likely be able to combine your property taxes and insurance into your monthly payment, so you have one monthly payment for principal, interest, taxes and insurance (PITI) … much like you would on your primary residence.   The financing process typically takes about 30 days from the time you submit your EM.    Remember that YOU are a factor in how fast your property closes. If that lender needs another document, give it to them pretty promptly.   When you have finalized your due diligence, and verified that the seller has made all the agreed upon repairs from the home inspection report, you will be ready to close.    You likely live in a different state than the property and will close remotely. The title company (or its a closing attorney in some states) will prepare your closing documents - including your loan docs...    ...and can arrange for a mobile notary to meet you with the docs wherever you choose (your home, your office, your local coffee shop, etc.) so you can sign the docs in front of a notary who will then overnight the docs back to the Title Company so the transaction can fund.   Your lender will arrange for a title company to handle all of the paperwork and make sure that the seller is the rightful owner of the house you are buying.   It may seem like the closing process is a lot of work, but you’ll really spend most of the time waiting. Most of the time, you'll just be sitting on your hands, waiting for someone else involved in the transaction to come through.    So find something enjoyable to occupy your time and distract you while you wait, and feel secure in the knowledge that you've done your research and know how to make your closing process go smoothly.   When you complete that closing with the mobile notary - I’ve done these closings at my home’s dining room table, or even in my employer’s conference room back when I used to have a day job - then, hey!    You need to congratulate yourself on adding another income property to your portfolio.   You know, the good news is that of all of these stages we’ve discussed - the longest stage of them all is your ownership of the property. You Own & Collect the cash flow.   And hey, this isn’t reason enough alone - but it’s kinda cool that you own property in TN and FL and IN.  You own part of each one of those states.    And with each new turnkey property you buy, you might have just increased your mostly passive cash flow by $311 per month or $118 per month or whatever it is.   If you can swing it, it can be more efficient timewise for you to buy more than one property at a time.   As you buy more income properties, it not only gets easier because you know the process, but you often get quantity discounts.   For example, a management company might charge you a 9% management fee on your first three properties, but once you own four or more, they might charge you 8% on all four rather than 9%.   Insurance companies often have similar discounts for you….so you may very well get a little more profitable as you buy more property.   A rent-to-value ratio of 1% is generally quite desirable, meaning one month’s rent is 1% or more of the purchase price.   For example, a $120,000 property and a rent income of $1,200.    $1,000 rent income on a $120,000 property would probably work fairly well too.   You typically want to avoid properties with RV ratios of less than 7/10ths of 1%, or 0.75.    Let’s keep in mind that the RV ratio is only a rule of thumb. It doesn’t account for a major recurring expense like property taxes.   In high property tax jurisdictions like many Texas markets, you probably want that RV ratio up higher.   Now, as a beginning real estate investor, or even an advanced one, don’t worry about not know it ALL. No one’s ever going to know it all with real estate.   In fact, I’ve been actively investing in real estate since 2002 and just within the steps of ACQUIRING a property, like I carefully discussed today, some incremental half-step will come up in the process that I hadn’t been thinking about previously - like signing a Lead Paint Disclosure Form.   So, you don’t need to commit all of this stuff to memory.   Now, something that novice real estate investors say sometimes is something like: “I would only buy an income property that I would live in myself.”    I contend that that is an awful criterion upon which to found strategic fundamentals on purchasing an income property.   Once one filters property that way, they have let their emotions trump facts.    If the fact that a clean, safe, affordable, and functional property has a good occupancy rate in a sound employment market, decent ENOUGH neighborhood, and the numbers make sense - that’s more important.   OK, you aren’t living there yourself so it’s not a sound criterion.   Shoot, if I moved into any income property that I own, my lifestyle would take a substantial hit. Yet I’m not a slumlord - I provide housing that’s clean, safe, affordable and functional.   But they’re not replete with fantastic amenities, it does not have Corinthian architecture with alabaster columns - OK - but I know there’s a demographic for my rental property type that demands this responsible-but-no-frills housing over time.   It’s about asking yourself a better question, like, “Will this property secure an income stream?”    Alright, would you rather have your property look “cute as a button” - or secure an income stream?   OK, we’re investors here.   Some think that in today’s electronic age, you should be able to complete a property purchase from the time you write an offer until you close on a property in the same-day.    Well, that’s certainly not true. As you witnessed, physical things need to take place because you’re buying a real, physical asset.   We’ve been talking today about how you buy an income property - just simply that - especially as it pertains to buying an out-of-state turnkey income property - from the time that you get a property under contract and submit the earnest money to escrow all the way to closing.   ...because that’s how to generate passive income, which in turn, creates a rich life for you.   Again, this isn’t an all-encompassing guide today with EVERY little detail. But we’ve hit the major milestones in the process & more.   You’ve got a good general guide on the income property-buying structure.    You might have learned something about prioritization - perhaps LLCs matter less than you thought and a communicative Property Manager matters more than you thought.   Today’s show has the type of content that will be about as relevant 5 years from now as it does today.    Now, today is also evidence that real estate does not have the liquidity that some other investments do. It takes longer to get in & get out.   However, that low liquidity actually contributes to relative price stability in real estate. OK, there’s no panic selling in real estate.   Maybe the most important thing for you to keep in mind is that...   You cannot make any money from the property that you don’t own.   Your future depends on what you do today.   To “know” something and not “do” something is to really not know something.   The most important thing you can do is act...because you cannot make any money from the property that you don’t own.   Again, a recommended, specific INCOME property lender is Ridge Lending Group. Our network of income property providers is at GREturnkey.com   And one particular property provider to highlight over there is Memphis, Tennessee’s Mid South Home Buyers. Not only are they great with beginners, but they have profitable properties at lower price points, which some beginners would rather start with.   MidSouth Home Buyers has been rather popular for all those reasons and that’s created a longer wait list. Well, the news is that MidSouth Home Buyers has just expanded into another great investment market - Little Rock, Arkansas.   So that should help shorten their wait list.   If you can’t remember those three resources - Ridge Lending Group for the loan, GREturnkey and MidSouthHomeBuyers for the properties, I’ll be sure that they’re the first three links in the “Resources Mentioned” portion of the Show Notes accompany this episode.   There would be nothing worse than for me to share today’s knowledge with you - then not let you know where to go to act upon that knowledge.     It’s been my pleasure to bring you your Beginner’s Real Estate Investing Audio Guide today. If you got value from today’s show, I’d be grateful if you took a screenshot of the podcast player image here on your podcatcher …   ...and posted it to your Social Media account - your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn - and let your social friends know that if they’re ever interested in real estate investing, this episode is a great place to start.    Next week, I’ll talk about how you Retain your tenants at the same time you RAISE the rent.    I’m your host, Keith Weinhold. Don’t Quit Your Daydream!   

How is a credit score important to a house cleaner? We Ask a House Cleaner if you accept cash payments will it affect your credit score? Angela Brown, The House Cleaning Guru says even if you pay your bills on time, cash is hard to trace. Your credit score is a financial resume that shows your creditworthiness. Your Fico score tells the banks about money choices you've made. This includes bills, payments, loans, whether you pay your bills with a credit card and if you're responsible for a new loan. Your financial choices also show if you're a risk. If you are, you can't borrow, and they won't lend you more money. Today's sponsor is Savvy Perks - a new way to motivate employees to be loyal and keep working for you. https://savvyperks.com *** COMPLETE SHOW NOTES FOR THIS EPISODE *** https://askahousecleaner.com/credit-score/ *** MORE VIDEOS LIKE THIS *** Fire My Cleaning Employee for Being Late and Lazy? - https://youtu.be/AtfN4QDH4Qo No Money - How to Start a Cleaning Business When You're Broke - https://youtu.be/3MjZ0DyzvIs Time - My Hours Are My Own, Right? - https://youtu.be/maxtjyUVcmw Percentage of Clean vs. Messy Houses - https://youtu.be/HYRiab7ldu4 Should I Hire Family for My House Cleaning Business? - https://youtu.be/PRCkm4v8uP8 *** RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE *** How to Boost Your Credit Score 100+ Points in 30 Days Without Credit Repair - https://amzn.to/2HRuTl9 33 Ways to Raise Your Credit Score: Proven Strategies To Improve Your Credit and Get Out of Debt - https://amzn.to/2IaCUVz Your Score: An Insider's Secrets to Understanding, Controlling, and Protecting Your Credit Score - https://amzn.to/2FGeo9l What the FICO: 12 Steps to Repairing Your Credit - https://amzn.to/2Ia3cXT The One Week Budget: Learn to Create Your Money Management System in 7 Days or Less - https://amzn.to/2JPPPcR We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. *** OTHER WAYS TO ENJOY THIS SHOW *** ITUNES - http://apple.co/2xhxnoj STITCHER - http://bit.ly/2fcm5JM SOUNDCLOUD - http://bit.ly/2xpRgLH GOOGLE PLAY - http://bit.ly/2fdkQd7 YOUTUBE - https://goo.gl/UCs92v *** GOT A QUESTION FOR A SHOW? *** Email it to Angela[at]AskaHouseCleaner.com Voice Mail: Click on the blue button at https://askahousecleaner.com *** HOUSE CLEANING TIPS VAULT *** (DELIVERED VIA EMAIL) - https://savvycleaner.com/tips *** FREE EBOOK – HOW TO START YOUR OWN HOUSE CLEANING COMPANY *** http://amzn.to/2xUAF3Z *** PROFESSIONAL HOUSE CLEANERS PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP *** https://www.facebook.com/groups/ProfessionalHouseCleaners/ *** FOLLOW ANGELA BROWN ON SOCIAL MEDIA *** https://Facebook.com/SavvyCleaner https://Twitter.com/SavvyCleaner https://Instagram.com/SavvyCleaner https://Pinterest.com/SavvyCleaner https://Linkedin.com/in/SavvyCleaner *** WHAT IS ASK A HOUSE CLEANER? *** Ask a House Cleaner is a daily show where you get to ask your house cleaning questions and we provide answers. Learn how to clean. How to start a cleaning business. Marketing and Advertising tips for your cleaning service. How to find top quality house cleaners, housekeepers, and maids. Employee motivation tactics. Strategies to boost your cleaning clientele. Cleaning company expansion help. Time-saving Hacks for DIY cleaners and more. Hosted by Angela Brown, 25-year house cleaning expert and founder of Savvy Cleaner Training for House Cleaners and Maids. *** DISCLAIMER *** During the shows we recommend services, sites, and products to help you improve your cleaning and grow your cleaning business. We have partnerships or sponsorships with these companies to provide you with discounts, and savings. By clicking on and buying from these links we may receive a commission which helps pay for the production costs of the show. Support the show so we can continue to bring you free tips and strategies to improve your cleaning and help you grow your cleaning business. THANK YOU! *** SPONSORSHIPS & BRANDS *** We do work with sponsors and brands. If you are interested in working with us and you have a product or service that is cohesive to the cleaning industry reach out to our promotional department info[at]AskaHouseCleaner.com *** THIS SHOW WAS SPONSORED BY *** SAVVY CLEANER - House Cleaner Training and Certification – https://savvycleaner.com MY CLEANING CONNECTION – Your hub for all things cleaning – https://mycleaningconnection.com HOUSECLEANING360.COM – Connecting House Cleaners with Homeowners – https://housecleaning360.com SAVVY PERKS – Employee Benefits for Small Business Owners – http://savvyperks.com

This week’s guest is media theorist, culture critic, author, graphic novelist, documentarian, and podcaster Douglas Rushkoff! Chances are you’re a “digital native” banking on “social currency” and consuming “viral media” – which means that you are living in the world Doug prophesied for all of us back in the 1990s. I watched his debut documentary on social marketing, Merchants of Cool, in my college Introduction to Film class (which is how you know my teacher was, in fact, cool). His book Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now was one of the core inspirations for this podcast and its examinations of time in the digital age remain some of my most frequently-recommended writing. More recently his book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus launched a vital conversation about how to make sure that the “superabundance” of digital society actually MAKES IT TO THE PEOPLE. And his podcast Team Human offers new insightful conversations every week about how we can sculpt a future for the 100%-ers – a world that welcomes everybody, that lets everyone in, that finds something meaningful for all of us to do and be.Doug’s written shelves on our new media environment and how the digital surround retrieves our magical antiquity. He’s issued potent cautions to us, that we must Program Or Be Programmed. He’s spent his entire life helping us find the bottom-up to complement the top-down that we’re stuck with…to help everyone be literate enough to make it in this modern world.And in this episode, he looks back on his life’s work, and forward to the great responsibility we bear to help imagine systems, cultures, and relationships for a more humane and equitable future…Doug’s podcast:http://teamhuman.fmDoug’s website:http://www.rushkoff.com/This week we’re also joined by guest co-host Michael Phillip of Third Eye Drops, our sister podcast, which I’m on A LOT – episodes 102, 88, 58, 44 with Doug Rushkoff, 38 with Niles Heckman, 28 with Bruce Damer, 21 with Erik Davis, 9 with Shane Mauss, 4 with Erik Davis, and this special mashup episode – and who has appeared on Future Fossils to talk about Westworld in Episode 14 and the Blockchain in Episode 52.We Discuss:• the ethical necessity of finding planet-scale solutions that work for ALL of us, not just a certain economic class; • the externalized ecological costs of Bitcoin; • how sigils and other ancient magical practices have been modernized for info warfare in the modern age; • how the culture of our global information economy retrieves the gods of antiquity; • the conflict of interests between our present and future selves; • the problem with futurists as propagandists and how we use “the future” as a way to manipulate people;• and more!Doug Quotes:“The aspect of the blockchain that is the most real at this point is the environmental destruction…the smartest scientists I know have given up on the environment. They’re saying, ‘Let’s just have dinner. This is it.’ If that’s the case, then it feels like every conversation about blockchain has to start and end with that. It’s like, ‘Okay, while we’re destroying the planet with technology, isn’t it an interesting model for this and that…?’”“It’s all just sigil magic on a certain level…although now you can express it through code, instead of just alchemy.”“As far as the virtual is actual, the virtual is tied to our actual well-being. So thanks to cyberspace, we have a place where all of that symbolic activity becomes real – or at least as real as we’re willing to make this stuff. Your FICO score is on there. This is the landscape that’s defining our reality. So it turns programmers into potential magicians of unprecedented power.”“The gods that we are looking at today a re subsets of capitalism. They are really more unintended consequences of people looking to game the system, than they are the natural flowering of some higher power, higher agenda. So we’re in a similar relationship to those things, but we don’t want to be re-enacting those things. We want to be, if anything, recognizing them and creating alternatives.”“Psychologically, they found that people relate to their own future selves the same way they relate to a stranger. So the person you’re saving retirement money for is just some old guy. So on some level, I don’t really care so much if that person is suffering in the cold, because I want an iPhone X. So screw him.” “Especially in the heady days of early WIRED Magazine, where they’re saying, ‘Look! Everything’s changing! The tsunami’s coming! You better hire some futurists to tell you where it’s going or you’re all going to die’…I was arguing that it’s fine, that all futurists are propagandists of a certain sort. So if I’m going to be a futurist, I’m going to propagandize a world of peace and love and the egalitarian sensibility that we’re all moving into, NOT a long stock market boom of infinite wealth for venture capitalists.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If you are looking to buy a home, make sure you’re not being fooled by these common lies about home loans.Selling in the Kalamazoo area? Get a home value reportBuying in the Kalamazoo area? Click here for full MLS accessWe get lots of questions and requests from our clients pertaining to all aspects of real estate. Our request today is, “Help me better understand home loans and the home loan process.” National surveys show that there are several lies out there that people accept and believe. These include:It takes an 800 FICO score to qualify for a home. You can absolutely qualify for a home if your FICO score is below 800. You need to put 20% down on a home. There are programs out there that offer financing without a down payment.There is a “no.” There may be a “no” today if there is some issue with your financial background, but the experts that we are going to hook you up with will walk you through exactly what you need to do to get you on the fastest path to get you qualified for a home loan. If you go through these steps, it’s not a “no.” It is simply a “when.” It’s very important that right up front you clearly understand what type of property you are looking to buy because you have to qualify for a loan and the type of property you want to buy has to qualify for that type of loan. We want to make sure we are getting you qualified and prepared for the right kind of loan, so helping us understand exactly what you are looking for right away is very beneficial.   No matter what position you’re in, we’ll find out what makes the most sense for you. Your FICO score, debt-to-income ratio, career, and household income may open you up to another type of loan. These factors are going to change bi-weekly, so experts are going to walk you through where you are today and walk you through all of the different loan packages that are out there. Some people will have no money to put down, but can afford a house payment, while others will have up to 20% or more to put down. No matter what position you’re in, the loan experts we are going to hook you up with will walk you through all of your options to figure out what is going to make the most sense for you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We would be happy to help you!

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report.  Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.Let’s cover the basics of credit scores. There are three credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and Transunion. All of these institutions put together credit reports, which can vary.These unions put together a credit report known as a FICO score. The big things to remember are payments and amounts owed. Those individually weigh a third of the total weight. Your FICO score is also based on new credit, credit history, and a mix of credit. Ultimately, they focus on purchase and payment history. You really need to pay attention to your spending over time to get to the bottom of this one. Bankruptcy and civil judgements are also kept on record. Liens on your property also come into effect. A lien is a public record saying you owe a creditor money, which makes your title unclear.FICO scores range between 301 and 850. In the United States, the average is 723. Anything in the mid 700s to 800s is considered excellent credit.However, sometimes there are errors that are not your fault. They come up! There are a lot of clerical errors. To catch errors, monitor your credit report at least yearly. We even recommend quarterly! You can pull your free yearly credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com. Sites like this one can alert you when there are changes within your report. Be sure to talk to credit bureaus and let them know what’s going on if you come across these errors as you monitor. Be proactive!  How can I keep my credit score as high as possible? First, when you have open accounts, think twice before closing an account, even if they are not very active. I’m talking about that Macy’s credit line you have. One-third of your credit score is the amount you owe versus the available credit. Now, the rule of thumb in the industry is to use 30% of available credit. Additionally, small balances on multiple cards are better than one large balance on one card.If you’re thinking about buying a home, or changing jobs, try to stay within the same industry. Even switching industries can create obstacles. You can discuss this with your trusted lender.When you’re browsing listings, try not to build up credit once you start seriously considering a new home purchase. Credit has the potential to negatively affect your chances of getting the loan you want and need. Give me a call or email if you’re thinking about buying or selling a home in the Portland area. We can talk about your real estate needs and how I can best serve you during a free consultation!

Your FICO score is 300, congratulations!  Even though that type of score would bad in the consumer world, in the business world a FICO of 300 is exceptional. How much do you know about your FICO SBSS score?  You should know a lot about it as it's now become one of the major scores used by lenders and credit issuers to determine your loan approval, including SBA on most 7(a) loans.  During this show you'll discover… Why the FICO small business score has been around since 1993 but it's just now become so relevant What the SBSS score is, how it really works, and why you should care How all of the most popular SBA loans now use the FICO business score to determine approval… and what score you'll need to get approved Why your personal credit has such an impact on this score, and how your business credit has now become more important than ever before The 5 step process that is used to calculate a FICOSBSS score and where the data comes from to generate the score… knowing this can give you unprecedented ability to control your scores The FICO SBSS score range, how to get your score, and how to know if your score is “lendable” with most lenders and credit issuers 11 core factors that make up your FICO SBSS score, and over 60 factors that D&B alone uses to supply data to create the SBSS score Different SBSS score models that you might see and impact your business How the SBSS score is being used to evaluate higher-dollar loan amounts and why How credit issuers can choose the combination of data that's used in the score such as your personal versus business history The SBSS Credit Offer Index, how it works, and why it's used to determine how much money you'll be approved for A look at the past SBSS score compared to the newest 7.0 score and how it affects you 8 major banks and lending sources who are using SBSS now to determine your loan approval 5 things you can do right now to insure you have a good FICO SBSS score And much more… In this 30 minute show you'll get all of the insight and details on how your FICO SBSS business score works, and most importantly how you can control is.