Best Investments I’ve Ever Made

I’ve admitted to you in recent posts that right out of college I had no concept of money. No concept of how to save it, spend it, make it, or even the value of it. This makes for a rough start to marriage. Luckily for me, my husband had a better grasp on how to handle money. We were both teachers at the time and quickly realized we were draining our savings account each month. Andrew went to my parents (who know a thing or two about how to make money) and asked for advice. They gave him a list of books to read. Two of those books were Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant, both by Robert Kiyosaki. The books were life-changing for Andrew and he quickly continued devouring more books in this genre.

Linda and Jim McKissack (my parents) started out as individual real estate agents, then built their own team, and then began owning Keller Williams offices. My mom is now in charge of opening offices in her own assigned region of the country by Keller Williams. My dad has over 100 rental properties and continues to hold and flip houses. They are also #1 in Keller Williams for profit sharing. If you can’t tell, I’m a pretty proud daughter.

I’ve always known them as Mom and Dad, but Andrew saw them as brilliant business minds and realized early on that he wanted to learn as much as he could from them. Andrew and I started going with my dad on the weekends to look at foreclosed properties. We then started going to the monthly foreclosure sale with my dad to learn and observe the process. After months of learning and building a relationship with a bank, we bought our first foreclosed property with the hopes to flip it. The experience turned out to be a nightmare because there was a lawsuit going on between the bank who mortgaged our new property and the “home owners,” and so now we too were stuck in a lawsuit. I wasn’t sure we would recover from this financial set back. People told us this was a sign for us to stop investing, but instead we thought it would make a great story for not giving up. It took a couple of years to bounce back from that first experience, but we finally did. When Andrew decided to be a youth pastor in Dallas, we moved to Dallas and we turned our first home in Denton into our first rental property. A year later we bought another house and turned it into our second rental property. A year after that, Andrew decided to make a career change and we moved to Cuero, TX. We put our Dallas home up for lease and it became our third rental property.

While Andrew was sick, we saved our money and poured it all into paying down the mortgages on our rental properties. By the time Andrew passed away, we had two houses paid off. This may not seem like a big deal, but to me it was everything. The passive income generated from those two properties gave me the freedom to take a year to heal, get my affairs in order, adjust to being a single mom, and get some therapy, instead of having to worry about finding a new job immediately after everything we’d just been through. The passive income now gives me the freedom to write, to speak, and to coach. It allows me to create the life of my dreams.

Many of us think we can’t invest in real estate because we don’t have the money, the right connections, or the time. There are a million and one excuses we can make for not taking action, but if I can do it, so can you. With that being said, I want to create an opportunity for us to learn more about investing in real estate. My parents are the authors of the New York Times best-selling book, HOLD, and they are going to join me on a free group conference call to share their experience with us on how to buy and hold real estate. If you are interested in jumping on the call please shoot me an email at [email protected] or leave a comment below. I will send you all more details once I get the date and time nailed down.

I’m excited to share more about my investing experience with you and for us to learn more from the pros. Blessings.